Domestic Effects of Foreign Threats
Diverting the Legislature: Executive-Legislative Relations, the Economy, and US Uses of Force
David Brulé & Wonjae Hwang
International Studies Quarterly, June 2010, Pages 361-379
Abstract:
Given distinct partisan macroeconomic preferences, the partisanship of the president or majority in Congress should influence presidential decisions to use force in the face of poor economic conditions-the diversionary use of force. But previous research posits contradictory accounts of the influence of partisanship. We seek to resolve this debate by developing a game theory model, which predicts that leaders divert when government is divided and economic conditions hurt the opposition party's constituency. Leaders seek to divert the legislature from the economy in order to prevent the legislature from passing a remedial economic bill. Analyzing US conflict behavior since World War II, we examine the conditional influence of presidential partisanship and the president's cohesive partisan support in Congress on the effects of inflation and unemployment. Consistent with the model's predictions, we find that as their cohesive partisan support in Congress declines, Democratic presidents tend to use force in response to inflation and Republican presidents tend to use force in response to unemployment.
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The Impact of Terrorism on the Defence Industry
By Claude Berrebi & Esteban Klor
Economica, July 2010, Pages 518-543
Abstract:
This paper analyses the impact of terrorism on Israeli companies related to the defence, security or anti-terrorism industries, relative to its impact on other companies. We match every Israeli company to the American company with the closest expected return among all the companies that belong to the same industry and trade in the same market, in order to isolate the effect of terrorism from other common industry shocks. The findings show that whereas terrorism had a significant negative impact of 5% on non-defence-related companies, it had a significantly positive overall effect of 7% on defence-related companies.
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Joel Westra
International Studies Quarterly, June 2010, Pages 513-533
Abstract:
Much of the existing literature has accorded the Security Council with collective authority to confer legitimacy on actions involving the use of armed force. However, because of the veto, scholars have been able to point to relatively few instances in which the Charter has functioned thusly to legitimate or to restrain the actions of powerful states. This article provides an alternative conceptualization, treating the Charter as the basis of a broader system of international order in which legitimacy is conferred cumulatively, by both states within the Security Council and those outside of it, based on the extent of actions' congruence with Charter rules that serve states' shared interests. States' expressions of acceptance confer legitimacy, while their expressions (and acts) of resistance withhold legitimacy, evoking prudential restraint from major powers attempting to signal their continuing commitment to the existing, postwar international order. The article applies this conceptualization to a case study of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
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Costly Interference: A Game Theoretic Analysis of Sanctions
Catherine Langlois & Jean-Pierre Langlois
Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, 2010
Abstract:
Sanctions are often described as having two strikes against them: they are costly to the sanctioner, and they take time to achieve their goal, if they succeed at all. We argue in this paper that these are instead characteristics of rational sanctioning strategies. We view the sanctioning game as a subtle mix of bargaining and war of attrition. Our formal analysis shows that equilibrium behavior involves making one's opponent indifferent between accepting an ungenerous offer and continuing the struggle, a condition we call countervailing. Countervailing behavior implies that the costs incurred by the sanctioner correlate positively with the probability that the target will acquiesce to the sender's demands, and conversely. This insight runs counter to the conventional wisdom on the impact of costs in sanctioning episodes and suggests that policy makers think differently about the success or failure of sanctions.
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Dealing with Tyranny: International Sanctions and the Survival of Authoritarian Rulers
Abel Escribà-Folch & Joseph Wright
International Studies Quarterly, June 2010, Pages 335-359
Abstract:
This paper examines whether economic sanctions destabilize authoritarian rulers. We argue that the effect of sanctions is mediated by the type of authoritarian regime against which sanctions are imposed. Because personalist regimes and monarchies are more sensitive to the loss of external sources of revenue (such as foreign aid and taxes on trade) to fund patronage, rulers in these regimes are more likely to be destabilized by sanctions than leaders in other types of regimes. In contrast, when dominant single-party and military regimes are subject to sanctions, they increase their tax revenues and reallocate their expenditures to increase their levels of cooptation and repression. Using data on sanction episodes and authoritarian regimes from 1960 to 1997 and selection-corrected survival models, we test whether sanctions destabilize authoritarian rulers in different types of regimes. We find that personalist dictators are more vulnerable to foreign pressure than other types of dictators. We also analyze the modes of authoritarian leader exit and find that sanctions increase the likelihood of a regular and an irregular change of ruler, such as a coup, in personalist regimes. In single-party and military regimes, however, sanctions have little effect on leadership stability.
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Arming the Embargoed: A Supply-Side Understanding of Arms Embargo Violations
Matthew Moore
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nearly every international arms embargo has been systemically violated by arms exporting states. Although much work has been done exploring why states transfer arms, little has been done to answer the question of why states choose to violate arms embargoes. Earlier studies have found that states transfer arms to one another for a variety of economic and strategic reasons. This study constructs a time series cross-section data set to test whether the same interests that drive dyadic arms transfers also influence the likelihood and size of arms embargo violations. Using a two-stage model of dyadic arms transfers, this study finds that measures for arms import dependence and alliance portfolio similarity best predict the likelihood and size of arms embargo violations. These results provide evidence that state decisions to violate embargoes are driven by political interests more than economic interests.
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Sanctioning Faith: Religion, State, and U.S.-Cuban Relations
Jill Goldenziel
Journal of Law and Politics, 2009, Pages 179-210
Abstract:
Fidel Castro's government actively suppressed religion in Cuba for decades. Yet in recent years Cuba has experienced a dramatic flourishing of religious life. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cuban government has increased religious liberty by opening political space for religious belief and practice. In 1991, the Cuban Communist Party removed atheism as a prerequisite for membership. One year later, Cuba amended its constitution to deem itself a secular state rather than an atheist state. Since that time, religious life in Cuba has grown exponentially. All religious denominations, from the Catholic Church to the Afro-Cuban religious societies to the Jewish and Muslim communities, report increased participation in religious rites. Religious social service organizations like Caritas have opened in Cuba, providing crucial social services to Cubans of all religious faiths. These religious institutions are assisted by groups from the United States traveling legally to Cuba on religious visas and carrying vital medicine, aid, and religious paraphernalia. What explains the Cuban government's sudden accommodation of religion? Drawing on original field research in Havana, I argue that the Cuban government has strategically increased religious liberty for political gain. Loopholes in U.S. sanctions policies have allowed aid to flow into Cuba from the United States via religious groups, tying Cuba's religious marketplace to its emerging economic markets. The Cuban government has learned from the experience of similar religious awakenings in post-Communist states in Eastern Europe and has shrewdly managed the workings of religious organizations while permitting individual spiritual revival. By allowing greater public expression of religious faith, the Cuban government has opened the door to religious pluralism on the island while closely monitoring religious groups to prevent political opposition. As the Obama Administration has already begun to ease U.S. sanctions on Cuba, these recent changes in Cuban law may allow the U.S. to promote political change in Cuba through religious civil society institutions.
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Location optimization of strategic alert sites for homeland defense
John Bell, Stanley Griffis, William Cunningham & Jon Eberlan
Omega, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research uses a location analysis approach for selecting aircraft alert sites for the defense of important national areas of interest identified by the US Department of Defense. Solutions are generated in a two step approach where the minimum number of sites is first identified using the Location Set Covering Problem and then the result is improved by finding the minimum aggregate network distance or p-median solution from the alternate optimal solutions to the LSCP. This approach also identifies the p-center solution to the problem ensuring equitable response to all areas of interest. Sensitivity analysis is performed to determine the impact of altering aircraft launch and flying times on the number of required alert sites and the amount of coverage provided by selecting fewer locations. Results indicate a significant increase in the number of alert locations needed in comparison to original military estimates. The research points out significant implications about future military base closure decisions and the tradeoffs between cost and required response times of aircraft in a defense emergency.
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‘Elite' young Muslims in Britain: From transnational to global politics
June Edmunds
Contemporary Islam, July 2010, Pages 215-238
Abstract:
Studies on the politics of young western Muslims have been diverse; however, radicalisation theory has achieved dominant status. As espoused by its key proponents Kepel (2004) and Roy (2004), this theory argues that young, western Muslims are being radicalised by the dislocations and uncertainties of globalization, and trying to forge a religious identity in a secular environment. Focusing on a cohort of ‘elite' young British Muslims, this paper highlights an often overlooked current of thinking whereby sectarianism/localism has been replaced with a commitment to universal principles such as human rights and other global causes. This cohort of young Muslims was less ‘home-centred' (i.e. transnational) than their parents' generation and more global in political orientation, reinforcing the view that ethnic and/or religious politics and universalism are not necessarily counter-posed. This shift is explained as a process whereby inter-generational differences (in terms of aspirations and resources) have created a momentum for intra-generational cohesion across boundaries and peer-to-peer information transfer heightened by experience of major traumas, either directly or indirectly, and by new global communications. In the face of global traumas such as 9/11, the first generation's localism and transnationalism is regarded as inappropriate to the new global context.
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Lashkar-i-Taiba: Roots, Logistics, Partnerships, and the Fallacy of Subservient Proxies
Ryan Clarke
Terrorism and Political Violence, July 2010, Pages 395-418
Abstract:
This article provides a discussion of the foundation of Lashkar-i-Taiba (LeT), the development of its modus operandi, and engages in an investigation of LeT's activities in India and Pakistan, including the Kashmir region. Further, LeT's fundraising methods are touched upon and LeT's relationships with regional state and non-state actors such as Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Dawood Ibrahim's D-Company are analysed. This article argues that although LeT has been a vital component of Islamabad's regional strategy in the past, the organisation has grown beyond the control of its former patron and is largely self-sufficient and is able to operate independently of the political process. These developments challenge the long-held notion that irregulars can be sustainably used to achieve limited objectives in an asymmetric conflict and should serve as a clear warning to other state sponsors of terrorism. However, contrary to many analyses, LeT is not likely to sacrifice its independence and come under Al-Qaeda's umbrella. Rather, LeT will continue to evolve into a distinctive terrorist actor in its own right while still receiving aid from fringe elements in Pakistan's security and intelligence apparatus and elsewhere.
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Alan Lambert, Laura Scherer, John Paul Schott, Kristina Olson, Rick Andrews, Thomas O'Brien & Alison Zisser
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, June 2010, Pages 886-903
Abstract:
Rally 'round the flag effects (J. E. Mueller, 1970) represent sudden and dramatically powerful situation-specific shifts in attitudes toward the American president. However, the extant literature has yet to fully clarify the nature of the psychological dynamics associated with this effect. These ambiguities reflect fundamental differences of opinion among scholars on some very basic questions such as whether overtly experienced emotion should mediate these attitudinal shifts or whether these changes reflect more general shifts in conservative ideology. Across 4 experiments, the authors sought to gain greater clarity on these and other important matters using a multimethod approach in which the authors varied whether participants viewed documentary footage of the 9/11 attacks (Experiments 1-2), generated autobiographical memories of that event (Experiment 3), or retrieved nonpolitical memories from their past (Experiment 4). The authors discuss the relevance of the present findings for theory and research across a variety of different theoretical and methodological paradigms, including social psychological models of threat, emotional appraisal models, and the political science literature.
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Rivalry and Revenge: Violence against Civilians in Conventional Civil Wars
Laia Balcells
International Studies Quarterly, June 2010, Pages 291-313
Abstract:
Recent research on violence against civilians during wars has emphasized war-related factors (such as territorial control or the characteristics of armed groups) over political ones (such as ideological polarization or prewar political competition). Having distinguished between irregular and conventional civil wars and between direct and indirect violence, I theorize on the determinants of direct violence in conventional civil wars. I introduce a new data set of all 1,062 municipalities of Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) and I show that the degree of direct violence against civilians at the municipal level goes up where prewar electoral competition between rival political factions approaches parity. I also show that, following the first round of violence, war-related factors gain explanatory relevance. In particular, there is a clear endogenous trend whereby subsequent levels of violence are highly correlated with initial levels of violence. In short, the paper demonstrates that an understanding of the determinants of violence requires a theory combining the effect of political cleavages and wartime dynamics.
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Mobilizing nationalist sentiments: Which factors affect nationalist sentiments in Europe?
Mikael Hjerm & Annette Schnabel
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article tests three classical theoretical assumptions about the cause of nationalism. It does so by testing if elite discourse, or internal- and external threats have any impact on nationalist sentiments in Europe. Macro data from various sources is combined with attitudinal data from the International Social Survey Programme 2003 for 21 European countries. It is concluded that the articulation of nationalism by political elites does not matter. Internal threats in the form of foreign-born population and language fractionalization affect nationalist sentiment negatively, i.e. nationalist sentiments are weaker in more heterogeneous countries. Finally, it is shown that external threats, in the form of loss of territory, have a positive impact on nationalist sentiments: people are more nationalist in countries that have a more recent loss of territory.