Quagmire
Kantian fractionalization predicts the conflict propensity of the international system
Skyler Cranmer, Elizabeth Menninga & Peter Mucha
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 September 2015, Pages 11812–11816
Abstract:
Network science has spurred a reexamination of relational phenomena in political science, including the study of international conflict. We introduce a new direction to the study of conflict by showing that the multiplex fractionalization of the international system along three key dimensions is a powerful predictor of the propensity for violent interstate conflict. Even after controlling for well-established conflict indicators, our new measure contributes more to model fit for interstate conflict than all of the previously established measures combined. Moreover, joint democracy plays little, if any, role in predicting system stability, thus challenging perhaps the major empirical finding of the international relations literature. Lastly, the temporal variability of our measure with conflict is consistent with a causal relationship. Our results have real-world policy implications as changes in our fractionalization measure substantially aid the prediction of conflict up to 10 years into the future, allowing it to serve as an early warning sign of international instability.
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Realism and Malarkey: Henry Kissinger's State Department, Détente, and Domestic Consensus
David Allen
Journal of Cold War Studies, Summer 2015, Pages 184-219
Abstract:
This article uses recently declassified archival documents to reassess public opinion in the United States regarding East-West détente. When Henry Kissinger was U.S. secretary of state during the Nixon and Ford administrations, he made dozens of speeches intended to educate the public in what he considered the proper methods of diplomacy. By analyzing those "heartland" speeches using recently released documents, the article shows that Kissinger and the State Department tried much harder to create a foreign policy consensus behind détente and realism than previously understood. Despite these efforts, Kissinger's message was lost on the public. The article provides the first extended analysis of a series of fact-finding "town meetings" held by the State Department in five locations across the United States — meetings that revealed how badly Kissinger had failed. By February 1976, all those involved in U.S. foreign policymaking — Kissinger's opponents, his advisers, and the wider public — desired a greater role for moral values in foreign policy.
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Borrowing Support for War: The Effect of War Finance on Public Attitudes toward Conflict
Gustavo Flores-Macías & Sarah Kreps
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does the way states finance wars affect public support for conflict? Most existing research has focused on costs as casualties rather than financial burdens, and arguments that do speak to the cost in treasure either minimize potential differences between the two main forms of war finance — debt and taxes — or imply that war taxes do not dent support for war among a populace rallying around the fiscal flag. Using original experiments conducted in the United States and the United Kingdom, we evaluate the relationship between war finance and support for war. We find that how states finance wars has an important effect on support for war and that the gap in support resulting from different modes of war finance holds across the main democracies engaging in conflict, regardless of the type of war or individuals' party identification. The findings have important implications for theories of democratic accountability in wartime and the conduct of conflict, since borrowing shields the public from the direct costs of war and in turn reduces opposition to it, giving leaders greater latitude in how they carry out war.
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Leaderless Global Jihadism: The Paradox of Discriminate Violence
Gilbert Ramsay & Sarah Marsden
Journal of Strategic Studies, Summer 2015, Pages 579-601
Abstract:
Jihadist violence is typically associated with being particularly indiscriminate. Often, as in variations of the 'new terrorism' thesis, this characteristic is proposed to correspond in some way to its other attributes such as its globalised, decentralised and 'postmodern' religious nature. Recent work appears to give more substance to such claims, by claiming to show a relationship between indiscriminate violence and decentralised group organisation. However, in this paper we show, based on an analysis of jihadist targeting in Western Europe and America from 2001 to 2013, that targeting choices by jihadists unconnected to organised militant groups have in fact been consistently more, rather than less discriminate in their targeting choices than their better-integrated peers. Drawing on this finding, as well as a broader reading of jihadist targeting discourses, we argue for a more complex understanding of the relationship between radicalisation, extremist ideology, decentralisation, and targeting choice.
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Theresa Schroeder
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
The level of female representation has been found to lead to lower military spending and a lower level of state aggression. However, I argue that previous work has largely overlooked the impact of the international system on these three domestic characteristics. Specifically, the presence of an external threat from an interstate rival increases military spending, increases state aggression, and lowers female representation. Tests of this theory on democratic states from the years 1981 to 2007 find that the level of female representation decreases in states involved in an interstate rivalry and has a greater effect on female representation than factors routinely found to influence female representation. This article brings the international system into the discussion of factors that influence female representation while adding to previous literature on how the international system influences domestic politics.
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The Impact of UN and US Economic Sanctions on GDP Growth
Matthias Neuenkirch & Florian Neumeier
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we empirically assess how economic sanctions imposed by the United Nations and the United States affect the target states' GDP growth. Our sample includes 160 countries of which 67 experienced economic sanctions over the period 1976–2012. We find, first, that UN sanctions have a statistically and economically significant influence on the target state's economic growth. On average, the imposition of UN sanctions decreases the target state's annual real per capita GDP growth rate by more than 2 percentage points (pp). These adverse effects last for a period of 10 years and lead to an aggregate decline in the target country's GDP per capita of 25.5%. Comprehensive UN economic sanctions, that is, embargoes affecting nearly all economic activity, trigger a reduction in GDP growth by more than 5 pp. Second, the effect of US sanctions is much smaller and less distinct. The imposition of US sanctions decreases the target state's GDP growth by 0.75–1 pp. This detrimental impact on growth persists for seven years and accounts for an aggregate decline in GDP of 13.4%.
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International Peacekeeping and Positive Peace: Evidence from Kosovo
Vera Mironova & Sam Whitt
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
To what extent can international peacekeeping promote micro-foundations for positive peace after violence? Drawing on macro-level peacekeeping theory, our approach uses novel experimental methods to illustrate how monitoring and enforcement by a neutral third party could conceivably enhance prosocial behavior between rival groups in a tense, postconflict peacekeeping environment. Using a laboratory experiment in postwar Kosovo, we find that third-party enforcement is more effective at promoting norms of trust between ethnic Serbs and Albanians than monitoring alone or no intervention at all. We then consider real-world extensions for building positive peace across different intervention environments. Using a dictator experiment that exploits heterogeneity in NATO peacekeeping in different regions of Kosovo, our inferences about monitoring and enforcement appear robust to ecological conditions in the field.
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External Subsidies and Lasting Peace
Philip Arena & Anna Pechenkina
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
Third parties are thought to face a trade-off in that those actions most likely to bring peace in the short run appear least likely to ensure its long-run stability. Yet the trade-off between conflict management and conflict resolution may be overstated. Analyzing an iterated three-player bargaining model with both information and commitment problems, we first demonstrate two conditions under which third parties may produce lasting peace through conditional subsidies, even without addressing underlying informational or commitment problems. Second, we illustrate this possibility by analyzing the impact of US foreign aid on patterns of conflict and peace between Israel and her neighbors. Our analysis indicates that the termination of the rivalry between Israel and Egypt was most likely not brought about by the Camp David accords or peacekeeping operations, but by sustained foreign aid provision. We discuss the implications for both this conflict and conflict management more broadly.
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The Korea Syndrome: An Examination of War-Weariness Theory
Bradford Ian Stapleton
Journal of Cold War Studies, Summer 2015, Pages 36-81
Abstract:
In recent years, numerous commentators have maintained that an Iraq syndrome (or Afghanistan syndrome, or both) will inhibit U.S. foreign policy and reduce the leeway U.S. presidents have to use force overseas. To assess the plausibility of those predictions — and the validity and scope of war-weariness theory — this article provides a thorough examination of how the Korean War influenced subsequent U.S. decisions regarding the use of military force during the Dien Bien Phu crisis in 1954 and the first offshore islands confrontation with the People's Republic of China in 1955. The analysis suggests that military quagmires (such as Korea) are likely to exert only minor influence on great powers' subsequent decisions on whether to use military force but are much more likely to influence how great powers do so.
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Austin Strange et al.
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
China's provision of development finance to other countries is sizable but reliable information is scarce. We introduce a new open-source methodology for collecting project-level development finance information and create a database of Chinese official finance (OF) to Africa from 2000 to 2011. We find that China's commitments amounted to approximately US$73 billion, of which US$15 billion are comparable to Official Development Assistance following Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development definitions. We provide details on 1,511 projects to fifty African countries. We use this database to extend previous research on aid and conflict, which suffers from omitted-variable bias due to the exclusion of Chinese development finance. Our results show that sudden withdrawals of "traditional" aid no longer induce conflict in the presence of sufficient alternative funding from China. Our findings highlight the importance of gathering more complete data on the development activities of "nontraditional donors" to better understand the link between aid and conflict.
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The Bar Fight Theory of International Conflict: Regime Type, Coalition Size, and Victory
Benjamin Graham, Erik Gartzke & Christopher Fariss
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Studies of regime type and war show that democracies tend to win the wars they fight, but questions remain about why this is the case. A simple, if underappreciated, explanation for democratic success is that democracies fight alongside larger and more powerful coalitions. Coalition partners bring additional material capabilities and may also provide intangible benefits to the war effort, such as increased legitimacy or confidence. Democracies may also find it less costly to join coalitions, as democratic war aims may be easier to apportion among the victors without diluting the spoils. Evaluating our hypotheses in a sample of all wars (or all militarized disputes) during the period 1816–2000, we find that democracies fight alongside larger coalitions and that states fighting alongside larger coalitions are more likely to win major contests. Coalition size subsumes most (and in some specifications all) of the direct effect of regime type on victory.
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Foreign Aid and Voting in International Organizations: Evidence from the IWC
Christian Dippel
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
I use a unique dispute between major aid donors in the International Whaling Commission (IWC) to investigate whether donor nations change their aid giving in response to changes in aid recipients' voting behavior inside international organizations (IOs). This relationship is difficult to pin down in most IOs because agenda items constantly change and donor coalitions fluctuate with them. I exploit the fact that the IWC has, on the one hand, seen two fixed aid donor blocs opposing each other for three decades over a single issue, but has on the other hand seen rich variation in both membership and voting behavior of aid recipient countries. Using an identification strategy that relates changes in bilateral aid to within-recipient variation in IWC voting-bloc affiliation and fixed cross-sectional variation in donors' voting bloc, the evidence suggests that Japan rewards joining the pro-whaling bloc, and that countries who recently experienced aid reductions from the three big anti-whaling donors – the U.S., the U.K., and France – are more likely to join the pro-whaling bloc.
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Serena Does & Avital Mentovich
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, January 2016, Pages 24–29
Abstract:
Moving beyond prior research establishing people's preference for underdogs, we examined the role of social dominance orientation (SDO) in shaping individuals' preference for underdogs versus top dogs in intergroup competitions. Because a victorious underdog can be seen as a threat to hierarchy, we predicted that SDO would be negatively associated with underdog support. In the context of two real-world group competitions — i.e., the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games — we found that SDO was positively associated with a greater preference for top dogs rather than underdogs (Study 1 - 3). This SDO effect on group preference was mediated by beliefs about international sports competitions as opportunities for hierarchy maintenance versus equality promotion (Study 2). Furthermore, SDO and top dog preference were positively associated regardless of the hierarchy domain — i.e., countries' economic power versus athletic achievement (Study 3). We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for intergroup research.
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Alexander Saeri, Aarti Iyer & Winnifred Louis
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Members of groups in conflict may take collective action: actions to improve conditions for their group as a whole. The psychological antecedents of collective action for groups that are party to conflict and inequality are well-established. Comparatively little is known about how uninvolved outsiders respond to an external intergroup conflict. We investigate how personal ideological orientations of Social Dominance Orientation (SDO) and Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) shape outsiders' willingness to take collective action in support of groups engaged in external conflict. In Study 1, U.S. residents read about conflicts between disadvantaged citizens and an advantaged government in Greece and Russia. In Study 2, U.S. residents read about a similar conflict in a fictional country, Silaria. Path analyses revealed that SDO and RWA shaped psychological appraisals of the conflict contexts, which predicted intentions to take collective action on behalf of either group. SDO and RWA were positively associated with advantaged group identification and anger at a disadvantaged group, and negatively associated with disadvantaged group identification and anger at an advantaged group. Group identification and anger predicted subsequent collective action intentions on behalf of either group. The sensitivity of outsiders' appraisals to ideological orientations suggests strategies for both advantaged and disadvantaged groups to recruit outsiders as allies in group conflict.
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I Want You! The Determinants of Military Conscription
Victor Asal, Justin Conrad & Nathan Toronto
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract:
What explains the use of military conscription? Using a new data set of more than 100 countries over a period of 200 years, we examine the determinants of a state's decision to implement a military draft. We argue that the decision to use conscription is largely dependent on historical factors. Specifically, we contend that former British colonies are less likely to use conscription as a means of military recruitment because of an anticonscription precedent set during the English Civil War. We find that former British colonies are far less likely to opt for conscription, even after controlling for counter arguments relating to a state's colonial legacy. We also examine a number of existing explanations for the use of conscripts, using the data to arbitrate previous debates. We find that democracies are less likely to implement the draft, while states involved in an interstate war or interstate rivalry are more likely to do so.
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Public Opinion and Foreign Aid Cuts in Economic Crises
Tobias Heinrich, Yoshiharu Kobayashi & Kristin Bryant
World Development, January 2016, Pages 66–79
Abstract:
Economic crises generally lead to reductions in foreign aid. However, the widely held view that budgetary constraints caused by economic crises reduce aid is inaccurate because donor government outlays actually tend to increase. We develop an argument that aid cuts occur because voters place a lower priority on aid during economic downturns and politicians respond by cutting aid. Using data from Eurobarometer, we demonstrate that economic downturns lead to reduced public support for helping the poor abroad. These findings are robust across a large number of alternative specifications. Our findings have implications for how advocates may prevent aid reductions during economic recessions.
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Kyle Beardsley, David Cunningham & Peter White
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
A large literature has demonstrated that international action can promote the resolution of civil wars. However, international actors do not wait until violence starts to seek to manage conflicts. This article considers the ways in which the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) reduces the propensity for self-determination movements to escalate to civil war, through actions that directly pertain to the disputing actors or that indirectly shape actor incentives. It examines the relationship between the content of UNSC resolutions in all self-determination disputes from 1960 to 2005 and the onset of armed conflict in the disputes. The study finds that diplomatic actions that directly address disputes reduce the likelihood of armed conflict, and that military force and sanctions have more indirect preventive effects.