Smart power
In Aid We Trust: Hearts and Minds and the Pakistan Earthquake of 2005
Tahir Andrabi & Jishnu Das
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
In 2005 an earthquake in Northern Pakistan led to a significant inflow of international relief groups. Four years later, trust in Europeans and Americans was markedly higher among those exposed to the earthquake and the relief that followed. These differences reflect the greater provision of foreign aid and foreigner presence in affected villages, rather than pre-existing population differences or a general impact of disasters on trust. We thus demonstrate large-scale, durable attitudinal change in a representative Muslim population. Trust in Westerners among Muslims is malleable and not a deep-rooted function of preferences or global (as opposed to local) policy and actions.
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Jonathan Renshon
International Organization, July 2016, Pages 513-550
Abstract:
Despite widespread agreement that status matters, there is relatively little in the way of focused research on how and when it matters. Relying on the assumption that it “matters” has provided few extant theories of variation in states’ concern for status and little understanding of its specific implications for international conflict. I introduce a theory of status dissatisfaction (SD) that clarifies who forms the basis for status comparisons in world politics, when status concerns should be paramount, and how they are linked to international conflict. I demonstrate the viability of conflict as a strategy for status enhancement: both initiation and victory bring substantial status benefits over both five- and ten-year periods. Using a new, network-based measure of international status, I demonstrate that status deficits are significantly associated with an increased probability of war and militarized interstate dispute (MID) initiation. Even internationally, status is local: I use “community detection” algorithms to recover status communities and show that deficits within those communities are particularly salient for states and leaders.
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Bryan Marshall & Brandon Prins
Presidential Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is an inherent connection between the party cover and policy availability theories that has been largely overlooked by the presidential use of force literature. Party cover views the president's party strength in Congress as the prominent structural source shaping presidential incentives by diffusing responsibility in foreign policy. But policy availability adds to this view by explaining how such domestic conditions shape the variety of choices (or tools) presidents have for demonstrating political leadership. Policy availability anticipates that presidential incentives to use the Constitution's Article II authority across foreign policy operations will vary depending on the president's relationship with Congress. This analysis provides insight into claims made by policy availability arguments regarding the role of Congress in explaining presidential decisions to initiate military interventions. The findings point to important differences in the effects of Congress on presidential decisions for low-risk versus high-risk military missions. We find that the president's ability to legislate decreases the likelihood of humanitarian interventions. In addition, we find that as the president's relationship with Congress becomes more legislatively productive, presidents seem significantly more drawn toward high- risk military interventions. We infer from these findings that policy availability represents a powerful motivation in the president's calculation to engage in foreign policy interventions.
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Jesse Paul Lehrke & Rahel Schomaker
Security Studies, Fall 2016, Pages 729-762
Abstract:
This article examines the effectiveness of contemporary counterterrorism strategy in the global fight against terrorism from 2001 to 2011. We seek to maximize the comparative approach more than most existing studies by examining three tactics (killing, capturing, and defending) applied at three scopes (leader, operational, and broad) on three levels (global, movement [jihadi], and organizational [al-Qaeda and Taliban]), while also measuring effectiveness along several quantitative, qualitative, and spatial dimensions. Drawing from resource theory (and its derived analytical approaches) and empirical terrorism studies, we formulate competing hypotheses that are quantitatively tested using a dataset with several original aspects. We find that both killing and capturing can have large effects but these effects vary based on both states' and terrorists' targeting strategies. The most interesting specific findings are that drone strikes seem counterproductive for counterterrorism while renditions seem effective. However, these effects were dwarfed by those of increased defenses, which reduce attacks in the West while redirecting them to other areas in the world. While we find the theory mostly sound, though in need of refocus, we believe current policy trends foretell an increase in terrorist activity in the coming years.
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Media coverage and the escalation of militarized interstate disputes, 1992–2001
Ross Miller & Scott Bokemper
Media, War & Conflict, August 2016, Pages 162-179
Abstract:
Some international crises – such as the Cuban Missile Crisis – receive widespread media coverage, while others are barely reported at all. Does this matter for the behavior of the dispute participants? Can widespread media coverage change the course of history? The authors’ goal is to assess how varying levels of coverage in elite news sources – The New York Times and The Times of London – influence the outcomes of international crises. Their analysis of over 300 dispute dyads indicates that, even after controlling for potential endogeneity and standard explanations of dispute outcomes, higher levels of media exposure make it more likely that targets of threats will escalate crises.
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Torture and the Commitment Problem
Sandeep Baliga & Jeffrey Ely
Review of Economic Studies, October 2016, Pages 1406-1439
Abstract:
We study torture as a mechanism for extracting information from a suspect who may or may not be informed. We show that a standard rationale for torture generates two commitment problems. First, the principal would benefit from a commitment to torture a suspect he knows to be innocent. Secondly, the principal would benefit from a commitment to limit the amount of torture faced by the guilty. We analyse a dynamic model of torture in which the credibility of these threats and promises is endogenous. We show that these commitment problems dramatically reduce the value of torture and can even render it completely ineffective. We use our model to address questions such as the effect of enhanced interrogation techniques, rights against indefinite detention, and delegation of torture to specialists.
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Stephen Biddle & Ivan Oelrich
International Security, Summer 2016, Pages 7-48
Abstract:
Many analysts worry that improvements in Chinese missile, sensor, guidance, and other technologies will enable China to deny the U.S. military access to parts of the Western Pacific that the United States has long controlled. Although these “antiaccess, area denial” (A2/AD) capabilities are real, they are a geographically limited long-term threat. As both the United States and China deploy A2/AD capabilities, a new era will emerge in which the U.S. military no longer enjoys today's command of the global commons, but is still able to deny China military hegemony in the Western Pacific. In this new era, the United States will possess a sphere of influence around allied landmasses; China will maintain a sphere of influence over its own mainland; and a contested battlespace will cover much of the South and East China Seas wherein neither power enjoys wartime freedom of surface or air movement. This in turn suggests that the Chinese A2/AD threat to U.S. allies is real but more limited than often supposed. With astute U.S. choices, most U.S. allies in this new system will be imperfectly, but substantially, secure.
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Transnational Repression, Diaspora Mobilization, and the Case of The Arab Spring
Dana Moss
Social Problems, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do authoritarian states deter dissent in the diaspora? Using data on Libyan and Syrian activism in the United States and Great Britain, this study demonstrates that they do through violence, exile, threats, surveillance, and by harming dissidents’ relatives at home. The analysis finds that the transnational repression of these diasporas deterred public anti-regime mobilization before the Arab Spring. I then identify the mechanisms by which Libyans and Syrians overcame these effects during the 2011 revolutions. Activists “came out” when (1) violence at home changed their relatives’ circumstances and upset repression’s relational effects; (2) the sacrifices of vanguard activists expanded their objects of obligation, leading them to embrace cost sharing; and (3) the regimes were perceived as incapable of making good on their threats. However, differences in the regimes’ perceived capacities to repress in 2011 produced significant variation in the pace of diaspora emergence over time and guarded advocacy. The study advances understanding of transnationalism by demonstrating how states exercise coercive power across borders and the conditions under which diasporas mobilize to publicly and collectively challenge home-country regimes.
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The Belligerent Origins of the Democratic Peace
Meredith Blank, Mark Dincecco & Yuri Zhukov
University of Michigan Working Paper, August 2016
Abstract:
Is the democratic peace a wholly modern phenomenon or a continuation of previous historical trends? This paper offers the first quantitative analysis of political regime type and conflict in late medieval and early modern Europe. We argue that the modern democratic peace is borne out of centuries of conflict between early parliamentary regimes, which enabled states to raise greater fiscal resources to put toward warfare. To test this argument, we construct a new dyadic panel database of all conflicts, belligerents, and political regime types for the full universe of sovereign polities in Europe between 1200 and 1800. Our database includes more than 900 conflicts and 80 polities. We find that parliamentary regimes fought significantly more than non-parliamentary regimes, both overall and against each other. Furthermore, we find that the causal relationship between parliaments and warfare was reciprocal, with war participation creating the demand for parliamentary institutions, and such institutions creating the capacity for more war. Our results suggest that the institutional predecessors of modern democracies were regimes with significant capacity to make war, but -- until recently -- not enough constraints to prevent it.
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Trading Fire: The Arms Trade Network and Civil War
Brett Benson & Kristopher Ramsay
Princeton Working Paper, September 2016
Abstract:
The last fifty years have seen two big changes in world politics. First, the most important violent conflicts now largely play out within states rather than between great powers. Second, the decrease in transportation cost has pulled even the smallest and remote countries in the the global exchange of goods and services. In this paper we study how these two fundamental elements of modern world politics interact by analyzing the effects of the trade in small arms on the severity of civil war measured in terms of battle deaths. Using an instrumental variables approach we provide credible evidence that the trade in small arms increases the deadliness for combatants in civil war. Our results also show that sanctions and arms embargoes decrease the loss of combatant life. In addition, our estimation strategy implies an effect of markets and the arms trade network on the transmission of violence to civil war locations. In essence the results show that the arms trade produces a law of conservation of violence. As one civil war ends, the resulting changes in the international market leads other war torn countries’ imports to increase, which in turn increases the number of casualties in ongoing civil wars.
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Perceptions of Recruitment Videos From Armed Forces
Kevin Carriere & Madeleine Blackman
Peace and Conflict: Journal of Peace Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Both the U.S. military and ISIS need a constant stream of new recruits. Although their goals and values are very different, both the U.S. military and ISIS display 2 main methods of advertising for recruits: communications focused on (1) glory and combat (action-oriented) and (2) community and benefits beyond the self (community-oriented). This study tests to see whether these 2 different types of messaging are perceived differently. Participants (N = 160) responded more positively to videos from both the U.S. military and ISIS featuring community-oriented content. Possible applied implications are discussed.
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Victor Asal & Aaron Hoffman
Conflict Management and Peace Science, September 2016, Pages 381-399
Abstract:
Terrorists are supposed to be influenced by opportunities for news coverage, but does this mean that groups initiate foreign attacks in response to the absence of press freedom in their country or inattention to that state by foreign media organizations? Using Asal and Rethmeyer’s BAAD1 data on terrorist organizations, we find that increasing levels of attention by the international press reduce the odds of groups launching cross-border attacks. The propensity of groups to launch foreign attacks appears unrelated to press freedom. These results suggest that the protections that states provide for the press motivate foreign terrorism less than the way the media determines newsworthiness.
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Shuying Li, Jun Zhuang & Shifei Shen
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
In recent years, various types of terrorist attacks occurred, causing worldwide catastrophes. According to the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), among all attack tactics, bombing attacks happened most frequently, followed by armed assaults. In this article, a model for analyzing and forecasting the conditional probability of bombing attacks (CPBAs) based on time-series methods is developed. In addition, intervention analysis is used to analyze the sudden increase in the time-series process. The results show that the CPBA increased dramatically at the end of 2011. During that time, the CPBA increased by 16.0% in a two-month period to reach the peak value, but still stays 9.0% greater than the predicted level after the temporary effect gradually decays. By contrast, no significant fluctuation can be found in the conditional probability process of armed assault. It can be inferred that some social unrest, such as America's troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Iraq, could have led to the increase of the CPBA in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. The integrated time-series and intervention model is used to forecast the monthly CPBA in 2014 and through 2064. The average relative error compared with the real data in 2014 is 3.5%. The model is also applied to the total number of attacks recorded by the GTD between 2004 and 2014.
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Áslaug Ásgeirsdóttir
Marine Policy, November 2016, Pages 187–195
Abstract:
The United States has the largest Exclusive Economic Zone in the world by virtue of its long coastlines and multiple dependencies in the Caribbean and the Pacific Oceans. As a result it shares 27 maritime boundaries with 20 different states and dependencies. This paper analyzes how the United States settled 10 contested maritime boundaries between 1977 and until 1997, but has since then left 17 unresolved maritime boundaries. It advances the argument that in this area of relatively low salience for the United States' foreign policy, political and economic transaction costs are key variables in explaining the pattern of settlement.
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Changing capabilities, uncertainty, and the risk of war in crisis bargaining
Brett Benson, Adam Meirowitz & Kristopher Ramsay
Research & Politics, August 2016
Abstract:
Understanding how changes to war-fighting technology influence the probability of war is central to security studies. Yet the effects of changes in the distribution of power are not obvious. All else equal, increasing a country’s power makes it more aggressive when making demands or more resistant to accepting offers, but all else is not equal. Changes in power influence the behavior of both countries and can generate countervailing incentives. In this note we characterize the conditions relating changes in war payoffs to changes in the probability of bargaining failure and war. For a variety of cases the strategic effects can be entirely offsetting and no change in the probability of war results from changes in the balance of power, a result sometimes called neutrality. When this neutralization does not occur, interesting and sometimes surprising effects can persist. For example, if countries are risk averse and neutrality fails, then supporting the weaker country can reduce the probability of war rather than make war more likely, even though the weaker side will now make higher demands and reject more proposals in favor of war.
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Old (Molotov) cocktails in new bottles? “Price-tag” and settler violence in Israel and the West Bank
Ehud Eiran & Peter Krause
Terrorism and Political Violence, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the early morning of July 31, 2015, masked attackers threw firebombs into two Palestinian homes in the West Bank village of Duma, south of Nablus, killing three Palestinian civilians. Contrary to claims by Israeli and Palestinian politicians, this attack was neither an isolated anomaly nor just another incident of settler violence. Instead, it was the latest attack in an important but largely unknown phenomenon called “price-tag,” in which a loosely connected group of young Israelis called “hilltop youth” burn Palestinian mosques and destroy property in hundreds of attacks accompanied by threatening graffiti that references Israeli settlers, outposts, and anti-Arab slogans. Using an original dataset of price-tag incidents and interviews with key actors, we demonstrate that the perpetrators, targets, and strategies of price-tag are different than previous patterns of settler violence. Whereas previous settlers saw the Israeli state as legitimate and largely decided to cooperate with it, the hilltop youth have decided to confront it by using price-tag attacks to deter settlement withdrawals and chain-gang the state into a conflict with the Palestinians. This analysis of the strategic logic of price-tag reveals its potential to shift the political landscape within and between Israelis and Palestinians.