Overseas
Great Powers, Hierarchy, and Endogenous Regimes: Rethinking the Domestic Causes of Peace
Patrick McDonald
International Organization, Summer 2015, Pages 557-588
Abstract:
This paper blends recent research on hierarchy and democratization to examine the theoretical and empirical costs of treating regime type exogenously in the literature most identified with studying its impact on international politics. It argues that the apparent peace among democratic states that emerges in the aftermath of World War I is not caused by domestic institutional attributes normally associated with democracy. Instead, this peace is an artifact of historically specific great power settlements. These settlements shape subsequent aggregate patterns of military conflict by altering the organizational configuration of the system in three critical ways — by creating new states, by altering hierarchical orders, and by influencing regime type in states. These claims are defended with a series of tests that show first how the statistical relationship between democracy and peace has exhibited substantial variation across great power orders; second, that this statistical relationship breaks down with theoretically motivated research design changes; and third, that great powers foster peace and similar regime types within their hierarchical orders. In short, the relationship between democracy and peace is spurious. The international political order is still built and managed by great powers.
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Declining willingness to fight for one’s country: The individual-level basis of the long peace
Ronald Inglehart, Bi Puranen & Christian Welzel
Journal of Peace Research, July 2015, Pages 418-434
Abstract:
The Democratic Peace thesis suggests that the absence of war between major powers since 1945 is caused by the spread of democracy. The Capitalist Peace thesis emphasizes trade and the rise of knowledge economies as the forces driving peace. Complementing these interpretations, we present empirical evidence of a cultural change that is making peace more desirable to the publics of most societies around the world. Analyzing public opinion data covering 90% of the world’s population over three decades, we demonstrate that improving existential conditions elevate the life opportunities of growing population segments and lead them to become increasingly tolerant of diversity and place growing emphasis on self-realization. In recognition of life’s rising opportunities, people’s valuation of life changes profoundly: readiness to sacrifice one’s life gives way to an increasing insistence on living it, and living it the way one chooses. Hence, pro-choice values rise at the same time as willingness to sacrifice lives in war dwindles. Historical learning based on the specific experiences of given societies has also changed their publics’ willingness to fight in wars. This transformation of worldviews places interstate peace on an increasingly solid mass basis.
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Presidential Risk Orientation and Force Employment Decisions: The Case of Unmanned Weaponry
Julia Macdonald & Jacquelyn Schneider
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we explore how presidential risk orientations affect force employment decisions through an analysis of the use of unmanned weaponry during the Bush and Obama administrations. We hypothesize that the conception of risk plays an integral part in this choice of weaponry. In order to examine our hypothesis, we utilize the verbs-in-context system of operational code analysis to quantify the risk propensities of President Bush and President Obama during the Afghanistan War from 2001 to 2013. At the aggregate level, we find that the two presidents exhibit unique interpretations of risk with respect to manned versus unmanned weaponry. We further disaggregate our data to examine whether these preferences are fixed or fluctuate with situational changes. We find that President Bush’s risk calculations are influenced by a number of situational variables, highlighting the importance of changing decision contexts in explaining risk behaviors. President Obama’s risk calculations, on the other hand, remain constant over time lending credence to the importance of overall risk propensity in determining risk-taking behaviors. Our findings indicate that risk is an important variable in explaining the means of force employed during conflict, and that the source of this behavior can vary by leader.
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Military Officer Quality in the All-Volunteer Force
Matthew Cancian & Michael Klein
NBER Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
We show a statistically significant and quantitatively meaningful decline in the quality of commissioned officers from 1980 to 2014 as measured by the scores of Marine officers on the General Classification Test (GCT), using data obtained from a Freedom of Information Act request. This test has been shown to be a good predictor of success in the military. This result differs from the widely-studied increase in the quality of enlisted personnel since 1973 when conscription ended and the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) began. We consider a range of possible causes for this decline. We focus on the fact that, during this period, Marine officers had to have a four-year college degree and there has been an expansion of the pool of young Americans in college. We find that other factors, such as the increasing diversity of the pool of incoming officers, have not contributed in any meaningful way to the decline in average annual GCT scores.
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War and Revenge: Explaining Conflict Initiation by Democracies
Rachel Stein
American Political Science Review, August 2015, Pages 556-573
Abstract:
While we know much about what differentiates the conflict behavior of democracies from autocracies, we know relatively little about why some democracies are more belligerent than others. In contrast to existing studies, I argue that it is public opinion and not institutions that drives these differences. All democratic leaders have an incentive to take public opinion into account, but public opinion is not the same everywhere. Individuals’ attitudes towards war are shaped by core beliefs about revenge, which vary across countries. Leaders with more vengeful populations will be more likely to initiate conflicts because they generate popular support for war more effectively. Using retention of capital punishment as a proxy for broad endorsement of revenge, I find that democracies that have retained the death penalty for longer periods of time are significantly more likely to initiate conflicts. This research has important implications for existing theories of democracy and war.
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Hazards or Hassles: The Effect of Sanctions on Leader Survival
Amanda Licht
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent empirical work scrutinizes the ability of economic sanctions to destabilize targeted leaders. Limitations in data and modeling choices, however, may have inflated estimates of sanctions’ efficacy. I propose a unified theoretical model, incorporating the possibility that leaders targeted with threats and imposed sanctions differ in baseline risks from those who are not. I combine this hazards approach with an empirical strategy to account for differences in ex ante risks and improved data on leader failure. This approach uncovers a considerably more modest effect. Sanctions rarely destabilize their targets.
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When War Comes Home: The Effect of Combat Service on Domestic Violence
Resul Cesur & Joseph Sabia
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study is the first to estimate the effect of war service in the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) on domestic violence. We exploit a natural experiment in overseas deployment assignment among active duty servicemen by relying on theoretical and empirical evidence that, conditional on military rank and occupation, deployment assignments are orthogonal to the propensity for violence. Our results show that assignment to combat substantially increases the probability of intimate partner violence and child abuse. Descriptive evidence suggests that the effects may be explained, in part, by the stress- and substance use-related consequences of war.
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Or Rabinowitz & Nicholas Miller
International Security, Summer 2015, Pages 47-86
Abstract:
How has the United States behaved historically toward friendly states with nuclear weapons ambitions? Recent scholarship has demonstrated the great lengths to which the United States went to prevent Taiwan, South Korea, and West Germany from acquiring nuclear weapons. Yet seemingly on the other side of the ledger are cases such as Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan, where the United States failed to prevent proliferation, and where many have argued that the United States made exceptions to its nonproliferation objectives given conflicting geopolitical goals. A reexamination of the history of U.S. nonproliferation policy toward Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan, based on declassified documents and interviews, finds that these cases are not as exceptional as is commonly understood. In each case, the United States sought to prevent these states from acquiring nuclear weapons, despite geopolitical constraints. Moreover, once U.S. policymakers realized that prior efforts had failed, they continued to pursue nonproliferation objectives, brokering deals to prevent nuclear tests, public declaration of capabilities, weaponization, or transfer of nuclear materials to other states.
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The malpractice of “rationality” in international relations
Uriel Abulof
Rationality and Society, August 2015, Pages 358-384
Abstract:
This article investigates the misuse of “rationality” in academic and political discourses, focusing on the Iranian nuclear project. The concept of rationality is ubiquitous; scholars, pundits, and practitioners turn to it, sometimes unwittingly, to describe, explain, and predict. When concerning concrete security and foreign policies, however, this praxis borders on malpractice: rationality-based descriptions are largely either false or unfalsifiable; many observers fail to explicate the meaning of “rationality” they employ; and the concept is frequently used politically to distinguish between “us and them.” Empirically, I show that rationality has played an opaque and excessive role in the Western accounts of Iranian nuclear policy. Both “optimists” and “pessimists” have frequently, but faultily, turned to rationality/irrationality to explain Iran’s moderate/belligerent nuclear policy and its susceptibility/resistance to nuclear deterrence. The malpractice of “rationality” in discussing such matters has become a bad habit, which is best uprooted.
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Aggressive or Peaceful Rise? An Empirical Assessment of China’s Militarized Conflict, 1979–2010
Jun Xiang, Christopher Primiano & Wei-hao Huang
Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, August 2015, Pages 301–325
Abstract:
The recent years have witnessed a heated debate on China’s rise. Using various theoretical arguments, existing research has generated quite divergent conclusions on whether China rises peacefully. Liberals argue that China has significantly benefited from the existing international economic system and therefore China is rising peacefully. On the other hand, realists such as John Mearsheimer argue that because China is likely to challenge the status quo, a rising China poses a threat to international security. Surprisingly, despite the ample scholarship on this topic and the existing divergent conclusions, a large-N empirical evaluation of China’s rise is missing in the existing research. This study fills this important gap by providing a large-N empirical investigation of militarized interstate disputes between China and other states from 1979 to 2010. We find that although China’s GDP, military spending, and CINC score have increased remarkably since the start of its economic reform, no empirical evidence points to more conflicts between China and other states. Furthermore, trade exerts only a weak effect on China’s conflict, a surprising yet interesting finding that revises the conventional wisdom in the literature.
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When are nuclear weapons worth having?
Antti-Ville Suni
Defence and Peace Economics, September/October 2015, Pages 555-565
Abstract:
This paper introduces a cost–benefit analysis for future nuclear weapon possession using natural numbers in a simple discrete time model. In essence, I focus on the expected values (probability multiplied by magnitude of detonations) of deliberate and accidental nuclear wars among unitary states. I take the United Kingdom’s current Trident renewal program as my case study. I seek to establish the expected value of a nuclear attack on the UK in the absence of nuclear weapons necessary to make the possession of nuclear weapons worthwhile. I find the net-value of nuclear weapons to be negative even under generous parametric values in their favor. I also discuss how our cognitive biases may affect the interpretation of the results. The analysis and discussion are limited to the UK, but the implications are likely to apply to other small nuclear weapon states, as well.
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Recognition Matters! UN State Status and Attitudes toward Territorial Compromise
Nadav Shelef & Yael Zeira
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does international recognition of statehood affect support for territorial compromise among groups engaged in struggles for self-determination? We show that, contrary to skepticism about the impact of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), international recognition of statehood by the UNGA shapes mass attitudes toward territorial compromise. The impact of international recognition, however, is two-pronged. International recognition simultaneously increases support for partition as a strategy of conflict resolution and decreases support for compromise on the territorial terms of partition. We also suggest a logic to explain these impacts of international recognition based on the intuition that international recognition should improve the bargaining position of the newly recognized group. We demonstrate that international recognition has an impact on mass attitudes of groups in conflict using a combination of a panel survey and survey experiment assessing the impact of the 2012 UNGA recognition of Palestine. This study is the first to show that international recognition can shape mass attitudes toward conflict.
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Ross Miller
International Interactions, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article explores the effect of acquiescing to compellent threats on the probability that a leader loses office and on the probability that he/she is targeted in a subsequent international crisis. Using a leader specific punishment (LSP) model that corrects for the endogeneity between domestic and international politics, an analysis of over 9000 observations during the period 1919-1999 suggests that backing down generally increases both the risk of becoming a target and the probability of losing office. Leaders who back down to coercive threats without a fight are almost twice as likely to become targets in subsequent crises and much more likely to lose office than those who do not. Democratic leaders are more at risk than their autocratic counterparts for loss of office and becoming targets if they acquiesce to coercive threats.
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The Intergenerational Transmission of War
Filipe Campante & David Yanagizawa-Drott
NBER Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
We study whether war service by one generation affects service by the next generation in later wars, in the context of the major US theaters of the 20th century. To identify a causal effect, we exploit the fact that general suitability for service implies that how close to age 21 an individual’s father happened to be at a time of war is a key determinant of the father’s likelihood of participation. We find that a father’s war service experience has a positive and significant effect on his son’s likelihood of service. We estimate an intergenerational transmission parameter of approximately 0.1, across all wars, and that each individual war had a substantial impact on service in those that followed. We find evidence consistent with cultural transmission of war service from fathers to sons, and with the presence of substitutability between this direct transmission and oblique transmission (from society at large). In contrast, father’s war service increases sons’ educational achievement and actually reduces the likelihood of military service outside of wartime, suggesting that the results cannot be explained by material incentives or broader occupational choice. Taken together, our results indicate that a history of wars helps countries overcome the collective action problem of getting citizens to volunteer for war service.
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The Opportunity Cost of Conflict: Statistically Comparing Israel and Synthetic Israel
Yusaku Horiuchi & Asher Mayerson
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
What would Israel’s economy have looked like without the 2000 Palestinian Intifada? This article examines this counterfactual question by statistically comparing the economic growth trajectories of Israel and a “synthetic” Israel, which is constructed by applying a method proposed by Abadie and Gardeazabal (2003) and Abadie, Diamond and Hainmueller (2010, 2014). The results of the analysis suggest that Israel’s per capita gross domestic product during the Second Intifada was reduced by an average of about $2,003 per year (in 2005 US dollars). This amounts to about 8.6 percent of the 2000 baseline level. In the case of the Second Intifada, the opportunity cost of conflict was indeed substantial and significant.
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Ethnicity, Islam, and Pakistani Public Opinion toward the Pakistani Taliban
Karl Kaltenthaler & William Miller
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article argues that an Islamist militant group with a relatively homogenous ethnic make-up is more likely to be supported by those of the same ethnicity even if the group makes no reference to and even downplays the importance of ethnicity. Using survey data from an original survey carried out in Pakistan in 2013, with 7,656 respondents, this hypothesis is tested in a multiple regression analysis of support for the Pakistani Taliban. The results demonstrate that co-ethnicity between the respondent and the Islamist militant group is the most important predictor of support for the militant group.
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Simone Schüller
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study analyzes the causal impact of the 9/11 terror attacks on individual political orientation and political support intensity using the German Socio-Economic Panel 1999–2003. Exploiting survey interview timing in 2001 for identification and controlling for unobserved individual heterogeneity, I find 9/11 to have increased overall political mobilization. While there is no indication of a considerable switch in support between political blocks, the attacks significantly weakened support intensity among left-wing voters and increased the strength of political support among right-wing voters, indicating a shift in conservative direction.
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Barriers to Entry: Who Builds Fortified Boundaries and Why?
Ron Hassner & Jason Wittenberg
International Security, Summer 2015, Pages 157-190
Abstract:
Fortified boundaries are asymmetrical, physical barriers placed along borders. These boundaries are more formidable in structure than conventional boundary lines, but less robust than militarized boundaries. Their goal is to impose costs on infiltrators and in so doing deter or impede infiltration. A novel dataset of all such boundaries worldwide shows that states are constructing these barriers at an accelerating rate. More than half of barrier builders are Muslim-majority states, and so are the vast majority of targets. A multivariate analysis demonstrates that, contrary to conventional wisdom, states that construct such barriers do not tend to suffer disproportionately from terrorism, nor are they apt to be involved in a significant number of territorial disputes. Instead, differences in state wealth and migration rates are the best predictors of barrier construction. Qualitative case studies suggest that the most effective fortified boundaries are found where the initiating state controls the territory beyond a boundary that blocks the only access route into the state.
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Popular vs. elite democratic structures and international peace
Devin Joshi, J.S. Maloy & Timothy Peterson
Journal of Peace Research, July 2015, Pages 463-477
Abstract:
Structural theories of international peace among democratic regimes have relied on two distinct explanatory logics: democratic institutions may cause a state’s foreign policy to tend toward peace by exposing policymaking elites to pressure from ordinary citizens (the popular logic) or to pressure from other governmental agencies (the elite logic). These logics are often conflated in scholarly studies of war and peace, but we attempt to isolate the popular logic for empirical testing by developing a novel measure of institutionalized popular influence, the Institutional Democracy Index (IDI). Whereas previous usage of the Polity index to operationalize democratic structures has succeeded in testing the elite logic more than the popular logic, we use the IDI to analyze long-established democracies’ involvement in international conflict between 1961 and 2001. What we find are significant differences within the family of democratic regimes that point to a monadic structural explanation of peace: more popular democracies are less warlike with respect to all other regimes, not just other democracies. By capturing variance among democratic regimes in their structures of inclusion (especially formal rules pertaining to voter access, electoral formulae, and cameral structures), the IDI enables us to observe crucial differences between the conflict propensities of more popular and more elite types of democracy.
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Nuclear Brinkmanship, Limited War, and Military Power
Robert Powell
International Organization, Summer 2015, Pages 589-626
Abstract:
An open question in nuclear deterrence theory is whether and how the balance of military power affects the dynamics of escalation. The balance of military strength plays virtually no role in standard accounts of brinkmanship. But this is largely by assumption and seems incompatible with an apparent trade-off between power and risk that decision makers have faced in some actual crises. This paper incorporates this trade-off in a modified model of nuclear brinkmanship. A main result is that the more likely the balance of resolve is to favor a defender, the less military power a challenger brings to bear. The model also formalizes the stability-instability paradox, showing that a less stable strategic balance, that is, a sharper trade-off between power and risk, makes conflict at high levels of violence less likely but conflict at lower levels more likely. The analysis also helps explain the incentives different states have to adopt different nuclear doctrines and force postures.
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Chris Rohlfs et al.
Defence and Peace Economics, September/October 2015, Pages 465-490
Abstract:
This study investigates the effect that US medical personnel deaths in combat have on other unit deaths and ‘military success,’ which we measure using commendation medals as a proxy. We use a difference-in-differences identification strategy, measuring the changes over time in these outcomes following the combat loss of a medic or doctor and comparing it to the changes following the combat loss of a soldier who is not a medic or doctor. We find that overall unit deaths decrease in the five or ten days following the deaths of medical personnel in Vietnam, Korea, and the Pacific theater in World War II (WWII). In contrast, the WWII European and North African results indicate that overall unit deaths rise following medical personnel deaths. We find no relationship between medical personnel deaths and other unit deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. For Korea and the Pacific theater of WWII, our estimates suggest unit commendation medals decrease following the deaths of medical personnel. This pattern of evidence is consistent with a model in which units often halted aggressive tactical maneuvers and reduced pursuit of their military objectives until deceased medical personnel were replaced. The results for the other conflicts are mixed and show little connection between medical personnel deaths and commendation medals.