Keeping enemies closer
Disillusionment and Anti-Americanism in Russia: From Pro-American to Anti-American Attitudes, 1993–2009
Boris Sokolov et al.
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the early 1990s, the Russian public held overwhelmingly favorable attitudes toward the United States; in recent years, attitudes toward the United States have been overwhelmingly unfavorable. Analysts often trace this dramatic change to (1) the emergence of Russian-American conflicts such as those in former Yugoslavia and (2) Russian leaders’ attempts to escape blame for their country's failures by attributing them to a powerful external enemy. We point to another major factor of Russian anti-Americanism that preceded the international conflicts and the government-led anti-American propaganda: (3) disillusionment, or an emotional and ideological dissatisfaction with the outcome of pro-Western reforms that started among the liberal elites and then spread among the general public. Using data from the New Russian Barometer surveys, we analyze the dynamics of attitudes toward the United States from 1993 to 2009. We find that mass disappointment in the perestroika outcomes preceded the spread of anti-Americanism in Russia and that anti-American sentiment was stronger and occurred earlier among the elite than among the mass public. Furthermore, those (especially better-educated) people who express disappointment with the outcomes of pro-Western reforms prove significantly more anti-American. Our findings illustrate a general ideological phenomenon that may explain the growth of anti-Americanism in unsuccessful democracies worldwide.
The Distribution of Identity and the Future of International Order: China's Hegemonic Prospects
Bentley Allan, Srdjan Vucetic & Ted Hopf
International Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Existing theories predict that the rise of China will trigger a hegemonic transition and the current debate centers on whether or not the transition will be violent or peaceful. This debate largely sidesteps two questions that are central to understanding the future of international order: how strong is the current Western hegemonic order and what is the likelihood that China can or will lead a successful counterhegemonic challenge? We argue that the future of international order is shaped not only by material power but also by the distribution of identity across the great powers. We develop a constructivist account of hegemonic transition and stability that theorizes the role of the distribution of identity in international order. In our account, hegemonic orders depend on a legitimating ideology that must be consistent with the distribution of identity at the level of both elites and masses. We map the distribution of identity across nine great powers and assess how this distribution supports the current Western neoliberal democratic hegemony. We conclude that China is unlikely to become the hegemon in the near term.
How Sanctions Affect Public Opinion in Target Countries: Experimental Evidence from Israel
Guy Grossman, Devorah Manekin & Yotam Margalit
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do economic sanctions affect the political attitudes of individuals in targeted countries? Do they reduce or increase support for policy change? Are targeted, “smart” sanctions more effective in generating public support? Despite the importance of these questions for understanding the effectiveness of sanctions, they have received little systematic attention. We address them drawing on original data from Israel, where the threat of economic sanctions has sparked a contentious policy debate. We first examine the political effects of the European Union’s (EU) 2015 decision to label goods produced in the West Bank, and then expand our analysis by employing a survey experiment that allows us to test the differential impact of sanction type and sender identity. We find that the EU’s decision produced a backlash effect, increasing support for hardline policies and raising hostility toward Europe. Our findings further reveal that individuals are likely to support concessions only in the most extreme and unlikely of circumstances — a comprehensive boycott imposed by a sender perceived as a key strategic ally. These results offer theoretical and policy implications for the study of the effects of economic sanctions.
The Things They Carried: Generational Effects of the Vietnam War on Elite Opinion
Jonathan DiCicco & Benjamin Fordham
International Studies Quarterly, March 2018, Pages 131–144
Abstract:
Do foreign policy elites who shared formative political experiences also share similar views on subsequent policy issues? Proponents of a generation effect suggest that they do, but this argument overlooks two facts: (1) not everyone experiences major historical events in the same way and (2) different experiences might give rise to quite different policy views. Here we investigate the impact of the Vietnam War on elite opinion about foreign policy during the following two decades using elite surveys conducted by the Foreign Policy Leadership Project (FPLP) from 1976 through 1996, assessing their susceptibility to what has been called the Vietnam Syndrome. Not surprisingly, we find that age and military service influenced elite opinion about the Vietnam War. More importantly, we find that different trajectories of opinion about the Vietnam War influenced later views about a wide range of foreign policy issues during the Cold War, even after controlling for party identification and ideology. However, we see little evidence that these effects persisted after the end of the Cold War. This finding holds even on matters like civil war intervention, for which we might expect the experience of the Vietnam War to remain relevant. Our analysis suggests that the Vietnam Syndrome is restricted to matters involving Cold War rivalry.
Conflict and counterinsurgency aid: Drawing sectoral distinctions
Travers Barclay Child
Journal of Development Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the impact of counterinsurgency aid on conflict in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2009. To enable this analysis we combine unique aid project data from NATO, household data from the Afghan government, and conflict data from US government sources. Our panel data analysis accounts for district and time period fixed effects across 398 districts and 57 months. Projects in the health sector successfully promote stability, whereas those in the education sector actually provoke conflict. Our findings are robust to reverse causation, confounding aid programs, and other sources of endogeneity. The results shed new perspective on the ‘hearts and minds’ theory commonly discussed in this vein of inquiry.
Assessing the Nuances of Counterterrorism Programs: A Country-Level Investigation of Targeted Killings
Jennifer Varriale Carson
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although there has been research assessing the effectiveness of targeted killings in a variety of contexts, there remains important gaps in the literature. This study addresses these gaps by evaluating previously established nuanced effects together in one analysis, while at the same time incorporating vital country-level controls. This investigation utilizes two types of analytic strategies, ZINB and series hazard models, with multiple independent and dependent variables. Overall, this study fails to find clear evidence that targeted killings are correlated with terrorism outcomes in the three countries in which they are most commonly used: Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.
The Budgetary Origins of Fiscal-Military Prowess
Gary Cox & Mark Dincecco
Stanford Working Paper, April 2018
Abstract:
Why modern democracies tend to win the wars they fight has been much debated. In this paper, we investigate the budgetary sources of fiscal-military prowess from the mid-17th to the early 20th centuries. We first review evidence that states adopting credible budgets accrued substantial advantages in raising taxes and loans. Because victory in war has, since the early modern period, been largely a matter of out-spending one’s opponent, credible budgets have also conferred an advantage in winning wars. Using panel data on 10 major European powers, we show that credible budgets led to significantly larger wartime expenditures and thus better chances of winning. Since credible budgets could be adopted by decidedly non-democratic countries, such as England in 1689 or Prussia in 1848, ours is not a theory of democracy leading to military strength, as in the literature beginning with Lake (1992). Rather, it is a theory of limited government leading to military strength, as in Schultz and Weingast (1998).
Organized violence, 1989–2017
Therése Pettersson & Kristine Eck
Journal of Peace Research, July 2018, Pages 535-547
Abstract:
This article reports on trends in organized violence from data collected by the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). With almost 90,000 deaths recorded by UCDP last year, 2017 saw a decrease for the third consecutive year to a level 32% lower than the latest peak in 2014. This trend in declining levels of organized violence is driven by state-based armed conflict, and by the case of Syria in particular. Forty-nine state-based conflicts were active in 2017, down by four compared to 2016, and ten of these reached the level of war, with at least 1,000 battle-related deaths. The overall decrease in fatalities lends support to the claim that conflict deaths are in decline and that the world is increasingly peaceful. This trend holds even more strongly when controlling for increases in world population. In contrast, non-state conflict has increased: a new peak of 82 active non-state conflicts was recorded in 2017 and fatalities have increased concurrently. Much of this is due to escalating violence in DR Congo and the Central African Republic. However, fatalities from non-state conflict remain but 15% of the total number of fatalities from organized violence. As for actors engaged in one-sided violence, their number also increased during 2017, although the number of fatalities remained at the same level as in 2016.
Terrorism, Wealth, and Delegation
William Spaniel
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, May 2018, Pages 147-172
Abstract:
I develop a model in which a terrorist organization delegates tasks to recruits. The organization wants to assign sensitive tasks to the most reliable recruits but cannot perfectly identify commitment to the cause. In equilibrium, the organization interprets the desirability of a recruit's opportunities in the civilian sector as a credible signal. When the recruit has attractive options available, the organization infers his commitment and gives him a sensitive task; when it is low, the organization conservatively assigns him a non-sensitive task. I then extend the model to allow for a third party to endogenously improve economic conditions among the civilian population. Despite raising the opportunity cost of terrorism, such subsidies can increase violence because they help the organization identify committed types.
Flying to Fail: Costly Signals and Air Power in Crisis Bargaining
Abigail Post
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Theories of crisis bargaining suggest that military mobilizations act as costly signals of resolve, increasing the credibility of coercive threats. In this article, I argue that air mobilizations, as a subset of military signals, demonstrate a lack of resolve during coercive bargaining for four reasons: they cost less in terms of human and financial resources (sunk costs), generate lower political costs (hand-tying), do not raise the risks of engagement (manipulation of risk), and do not significantly shift the balance of power — all compared with other military signals. Using new data that disaggregates military demonstrations into air, naval, and land signals during 210 cases of compellence, this article presents systematic evidence that air signals decrease the probability of coercive threat success compared with the alternatives. This finding holds important implications for theoretical and policy debates regarding the role of costly signals in international bargaining.
Contested Ground: Disentangling Material and Symbolic Attachment to Disputed Territory
Devorah Manekin, Guy Grossman & Tamar Mitts
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Territorial disputes are prone to conflict because of the value of territory to publics, whether due to its strategic and material worth, or to its intangible, symbolic value. Yet despite the implications of the distinction for both theory and policy, empirically disentangling the material from the symbolic has posed formidable methodological challenges. We propose a set of tools for assessing the nature of individual territorial attachment, drawing on a series of survey experiments in Israel. Using these tools, we find that a substantial segment of the Jewish population is attached to the disputed West Bank territory for intangible reasons, consisting not only of far-right voters but also of voters of moderate-right and centrist parties. This distribution considerably narrows the bargaining space of leaders regardless of coalitional configurations. Our empirical analysis thus illustrates how the distribution of territorial preferences in the domestic population can have powerful implications for conflict and its resolution.
Peacekeeping for profit? The scope and limits of ‘mercenary’ UN peacekeeping
Katharina Coleman & Benjamin Nyblade
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Developing states furnish the vast majority of UN peacekeeping troops, a fact academics and policymakers often attribute (at least partly) to developing states’ supposed ability to derive a profit from UN peacekeeping reimbursements. In this article, we argue that this ‘peacekeeping for profit’ narrative has been vastly overstated. The conditions for significantly profiting from UN peacekeeping are in fact highly restrictive, even for developing states. We begin by highlighting two potent reasons for re-examining the peacekeeping for profit narrative: developing states emerged as the UN’s principal troop contributors in a period of stagnant reimbursement rates when UN peacekeeping was becoming less financially attractive; and the quantitative evidence scholars have presented as supporting the peacekeeping for profit narrative is flawed. We then identify the scope conditions within which peacekeeping for profit provides a plausible explanation for a developing state’s UN troop contributions. First, the deployment and its attendant reimbursements must be significant not only in absolute and per-soldier terms but also in relation to the state’s total armed forces and military expenditure. Second, the state must have an exceptional ability, compared with other troop contributors, to benefit from UN reimbursements. The scope for generalized profit-making from either equipment or personnel contributions is limited by intense political pressure against reimbursement rate increases. Individual states can nevertheless make a profit if they (1) invest in inexpensive and old but functional equipment, especially if deployed with usage restrictions, and/or (2) limit the deployment allowances (rather than salaries) they pay their peacekeepers. We establish that only a limited subset of developing states meets the plausibility conditions for the peacekeeping for profit narrative – and many top UN troop contributors do not.