Staging an Intervention
Fighting to win: Wartime morale in the American public
Andrew Sidman & Helmut Norpoth
Electoral Studies, June 2012, Pages 330-341
Abstract: The ingredients of wartime morale are the subject of lively debate, with casualties, prospect of victory, and elite cues representing the major points of view. This research covers the wars in Korea and Vietnam with expanded time series of public support and rare surveys that probed perceptions of victory during those military interventions. The prospect of victory affected wartime morale during both of those conflicts. It did so quite uniformly in the American public, cutting across elite cues such as partisanship. Casualties left only a weak, if any, imprint on popular support for the wars in Korea and Vietnam. Wartime morale suffered during those interventions not so much because of battlefield casualties or the breakdown of elite consensus, but because the prospect of victory collapsed.
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Retributive Support for International Punishment and Torture
Peter Liberman
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract: This article tests the hypothesis that ordinary people favor punishing badly behaved foreign actors to make them "pay" for their crimes rather than purely to protect national security interests. In an undergraduate sample, people's endorsement of the principle of retributive punishment was related to their support for punishing transgressor states and their support for torturing detainees, controlling for partisanship, ideology, humanitarian and security values, and beliefs about the efficacy of force. The interstate transgression scenarios included a state sponsoring terror attacks against a rival, a nuclear proliferator, and a small, unnamed aggressor. Retributive dispositions were also strongly related to support for the death penalty, which helps explain prior findings that American death penalty supporters are unusually bellicose toward foreign wrongdoers.
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The General Age of Leadership: Older-Looking Presidential Candidates Win Elections during War
Brian Spisak
PLoS ONE, May 2012
Abstract: As nation-state leaders age they increasingly engage in inter-state militarized disputes yet in industrialized societies a steady decrease in testosterone associated with aging is observed - which suggests a decrease in dominance behavior. The current paper points out that from modern societies to Old World monkeys increasing both in age and social status encourages dominant strategies to maintain acquired rank. Moreover, it is argued this consistency has shaped an implicit prototype causing followers to associate older age with dominance leadership. It is shown that (i) faces of older leaders are preferred during intergroup conflict and (ii) morphing U.S. Presidential candidates to appear older or younger has an overriding effect on actual election outcomes. This indicates that democratic voting can be systematically adjusted by activating innate biases. These findings appear to create a new line of research regarding the biology of leadership and contextual cues of age.
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The Arctic: No big bonanza for the global petroleum industry
Lars Lindholt & Solveig Glomsrød
Energy Economics, forthcoming
Abstract: Petroleum companies and arctic states are carefully watching the sea ice withdrawal and the future access to petroleum resources in the Arctic. We raise the question if the global market for petroleum actually will keep the door open for substantial supply of oil and gas from the Arctic, a region with almost a quarter of global undiscovered petroleum resources, but at high costs and long lead times. This makes future arctic supply highly dependent on oil and gas prices, influenced by future supply of unconventional oil and gas and also huge amounts of conventional gas in the Middle East coming on stream. We study the oil and gas supply from 6 arctic regions during 2010-2050 using the FRISBEE model of global oil and gas markets, based on arctic resource estimates from U.S. Geological Survey. Following the IEA reference oil price assumption, we find that even if almost a quarter of the world´s undiscovered petroleum is situated in arctic basins, the future share of global production will only be 8-10 per cent in our reference scenario. Although a major part of the undiscovered arctic resources is natural gas, the relative importance of the Arctic as a world gas supplier will decline, while its relative importance as a global oil producer might be maintained. Less undiscovered oil resources will have minor effect on total arctic oil production and a marginal effect on arctic gas extraction as Arctic Russia is the dominant petroleum producer with a sufficiently large stock of already discovered resources at relatively low costs to support their petroleum production before 2050.
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Jonathan Chanis
American Foreign Policy Interests, May/June 2012, Pages 144-148
Abstract: In studying petroleum issues, some analysts tend to overestimate the role of markets in promoting U.S. energy security. In particular, these analysts assume that crude oil moves internationally as if it were traded in a "free market." They often repeat phrases such as "oil always moves to the highest bidder," or "oil is fungible and where it comes from does not matter." But global petroleum markets are not "free." They are severely constrained by many factors, including logistical limitations, increasingly non-interchangeable types of crude oil, and limitations on where companies can produce oil and to whom they can sell it. Most important, the markets for petroleum are distorted by the practices of Saudi Arabia and the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). A misunderstanding of the above factors can lead to, among other misconceptions, an underestimation of the role of Canada in promoting U.S. energy security and an exaggeration of the ability of markets to protect consumer or U.S. national interests, both before and after supply disruptions. A more realistic understanding would recognize the imperfect hold markets have on global crude oil allocation and would stop confusing the theory of "free markets" with the reality of international politics and oligopoly.
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Kai He & Huiyun Feng
European Journal of International Relations, June 2012, Pages 227-250
Abstract: Why did the US prefer multilateral alliances in Europe, but bilateral alliances in Asia after World War II? Rationalists and constructivists debate the impact of power, institutions, and identities in explaining this highly contested question. We introduce a new argument embedded in prospect theory from political psychology - a prospect-threat alliance model - to account for the variation in US alliance strategy toward Europe and Asia after World War II. Through setting the threat level as a reference point for leaders' prospects of gains or losses, we suggest: (1) high threats frame decision-makers in a domain of losses, and multilateral alliances become a favorable alliance choice because states are more likely to take the risk of constraining their freedom of action in return for more help from multiple allies as well as for avoiding further strategic losses; (2) low threats position leaders in a domain of gains, and bilateral alliances win out because states are risk-averse in terms of maintaining their freedom of action in seeking security through alliances with fewer allies. US alliance policy toward Asia after World War II is a within-case analysis that tests the validity of the prospect-threat alliance model.
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Democratic Inefficiency? Regime Type and Suboptimal Choices in International Politics
Muhammet Bas
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract: This article examines the relationship between regime type and decision makers' tendency to make suboptimal choices in international crises. To test hypotheses on the optimality of democratic foreign policy, the author uses a novel statistical measure of suboptimality in foreign policy behavior. This estimator builds on Signorino's statistical strategic models to allow for actor-level variation in deviations from optimal behavior in a strategic setting. An analysis of the international disputes from 1919 to 1999 shows that democratic leaders have a greater tendency to choose policies not optimal for their citizens than do nondemocratic leaders.
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Increasing Social Conservatism in the Pakistan Army: What the Data Say
Christine Fair
Armed Forces & Society, July 2012, Pages 438-462
Abstract: This essay interrogates popular beliefs about Islamization of the Pakistan Army officer corps and the polity from which the army recruits. It first assembles and synthesizes the extant secondary literature on Islamization of Pakistan generally, and the army in particular. As access to the Pakistan Army diminished after 1990 when numerous US sanctions on Pakistan limited defense cooperation and other forms of bilateral engagements, this secondary literature is generally truncated to 1990. To expand what is known about the Pakistan Army, this essay next presents the results of an ongoing quantitative analysis of district-level officer recruitment (and retirement) data. This ecological study finds that, as recently as 2002, districts that produce army officers are actually more socially liberal and urban than is commonly believed. This essay discusses the implications of the changes in the officer corps and concludes with a call for a robust research agenda on the Pakistan Army.
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Organizational legacies of violence: Conditions favoring insurgency onset in Colombia, 1964-1984
Sarah Zukerman Daly
Journal of Peace Research, May 2012, Pages 473-491
Abstract: Why do insurgencies erupt in some places and not in others? This article exploits an original violent event database of 274,428 municipality-month observations in Colombia to determine the conditions favoring organized violence at the subnational level. The data cast doubt on the conventional correlates of war: poverty, rough terrain, lootable natural resources, and large, sparsely distributed populations. The evidence suggests that rebellions begin not in localities that afford sanctuaries, impoverished recruits, and abundant finances, but instead in regions providing receptacles of collective action: the organizational legacies of war. Specifically, the data indicate that regions affected by past mobilization are six times more likely to experience rebellion than those without a tradition of armed organized action. The significant correlation between prior and future mobilization is robust across different measurements of the concepts, levels of aggregations of the data, units of analysis, and specifications of the model. These include rare events and spatial lag analyses. These results highlight the need for micro conflict data, theory disentangling the causes of war onset from those of war recurrence, and a reorientation away from physical geography and back to the human and social geography that determines if rebellion is organizationally feasible. The findings suggest new avenues of research on the post-war trajectories of armed organizations, the causes of repeated war, and the micro-foundations of rebellion.
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Land Reform as a Counterinsurgency Policy: Evidence from Colombia
Michael Albertus & Oliver Kaplan
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract: Can targeted land reform reduce levels of civil war conflict by mitigating the factors that contribute to rural rebellion? This article uses new micro-level data on land reform and insurgency at the municipal level from Colombia from 1988 to 2000, a country with high rates of land inequality and informal land ownership, to test whether land reform undercut subsequent guerrilla activity. The reform had two distinct aspects. Politically powerful large landholders blocked most large-scale reform, which resulted primarily in an enduring, low-intensity, and geographically dispersed reform that spurred low levels of insurgent activity. Larger-scale reforms were only implemented in areas that threatened serious violence and had the potential to harm elite interests, and in these limited areas reform reduced guerrilla activity. This suggests that while land reform can be an effective counterinsurgency policy, it may be politically difficult to implement at a sufficient scale because it threatens the status quo.
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In Search of Soft Power: Does Foreign Public Opinion Matter for US Foreign Policy?
Benjamin Goldsmith & Yusaku Horiuchi
World Politics, July 2012, Pages 555-585
Abstract: Does "soft power" matter in international relations? Specifically, when the United States seeks cooperation from countries around the world, do the views of their publics about US foreign policy affect the actual foreign policy behavior of these countries? The authors examine this question using multinational surveys covering fifty-eight countries, combined with information about their foreign policy decisions in 2003, a critical year for the US. They draw their basic conceptual framework from Joseph Nye, who uses various indicators of opinion about the US to assess US soft power. But the authors argue that his theory lacks the specificity needed for falsifiable testing. They refine it by focusing on foreign public opinion about US foreign policy, an underemphasized element of Nye's approach. Their regression analysis shows that foreign public opinion has a significant and large effect on troop commitments to the war in Iraq, even after controlling for various hard power factors. It also has significant, albeit small, effects on policies toward the International Criminal Court and on voting decisions in the UN General Assembly. These results support the authors' refined theoretical argument about soft power: public opinion about US foreign policy in foreign countries does affect their policies toward the US, but this effect is conditional on the salience of an issue for mass publics.
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Zhong Xiang Zhang
Energy Policy, forthcoming
Abstract: This paper argues that both China and the Western countries need to de-politicize China's global quest for energy security. The Western politicians need to recognize that their rhetoric in relation to China's efforts to secure energy supplies overseas has done nothing but intensify China's fear that they might seek to deny China's access to the oil it needs for the development. China needs to reconsider its stance of distrusting global oil markets and to recognize that the reliance on aggressive acquisitions of overseas oil fields and equity oil production has been of little help in strengthening its energy security. Given that China's energy security depends increasingly and deeply on the stability of global oil markets and reliable and growing oil supplies to the market, China shares with other major oil importing countries profound common interests in maintaining and strengthening the stability of global oil markets and reducing the chance of potential disruptions to oil supply and the resulting damaging oil price shocks.
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God vs. Westphalia: Radical Islamist movements and the battle for organising the World
Barak Mendelsohn
Review of International Studies, July 2012, Pages 589-613
Abstract: This article presents the operation of al-Qaeda and Hizb ut-Tahrir, two of the most radical Islamist movements, through the lens of the relationship between religion as an organising principle for world politics and the state-based logic. It examines these groups in the context of repeated attempts by religious actors throughout history to render religion the dominant and constitutive element in world politics. Prior to the Peace of Westphalia, religion had a critical role in shaping the political landscape, but Westphalia relegated religion to a secondary position. While it accepted religion's role in the domestic affairs of the units in the international system, the Westphalian order kept religion subordinated to the logic of the state system. But religion maintained its ability to provide an alternative organisation for world politics. While al-Qaeda and Hizb ut-Tahrir are highly unlikely to bring about systemic change, their ascendance should remind scholars that the existing order is not inevitable and that the resurgence of religion in international politics also involves the resurrection of interpretations of religion that compete with and challenge the logic of the state-based system.
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Does Foreign Investment Really Reduce Repression?
Jason Sorens & William Ruger
International Studies Quarterly, June 2012, Pages 427-436
Abstract: Cross-national empirical studies have found that foreign investment has beneficial effects on human rights. We argue that these studies poorly operationalize foreign investment to test theoretical predictions and suffer from sampling bias. We demonstrate that investment stock, rather than inflow, is the superior operationalization of structural dependence theory. We construct regression models of government repression of physical integrity rights, include much more data than previous studies, and use a new multiple imputation algorithm for time-series cross-section data to resolve sampling bias. We find no evidence that foreign investment affects repression, contradicting conventional wisdom and suggesting that the political gains from repression frequently dwarf any economic costs for governments.
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Reintegrating Rebels into Civilian Life: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from Burundi
Michael Gilligan, Eric Mvukiyehe & Cyrus Samii
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract: Considerable resources are devoted to ex-combatant reintegration programs in current peace processes, but evidence on their effectiveness remains thin. We use original survey data to study an ex-combatant reintegration program implemented after Burundi's 1993-2004 civil war. Previous quantitative studies have found reintegration programs to be ineffective, but only ex-combatants who self-selected into programs were studied. We avoid such selection problems with a quasi-experimental design exploiting an exogenous bureaucratic failure. We find the program resulted in a 20 to 35 percentage point reduction in poverty incidence among ex-combatants and moderate improvement in livelihoods. But this economic boost does not seem to have caused political reintegration: while we find a modest increase in propensities to report civilian life as preferable to combatant life, we find no evidence that the program contributed to either more satisfaction with the peace process or a more positive disposition toward current government institutions.
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Terrorism and Civil War: A Spatial and Temporal Approach to a Conceptual Problem
Michael Findley & Joseph Young
Perspectives on Politics, June 2012, Pages 285-305
Abstract: What is the relationship between civil war and terrorism? Most current research on these topics either explicitly or implicitly separates the two, in spite of compelling reasons to consider them together. In this paper, we examine the extent to which terrorism and civil war overlap and then unpack various temporal and spatial patterns. To accomplish this, we use newly geo-referenced terror event data to offer a global overview of where and when terrorist events happen and whether they occur inside or outside of civil war zones. Furthermore, we conduct an exploratory analysis of six separate cases that have elements of comparability but also occur in unique contexts, which illustrate some of the patterns in terrorism and civil war. The data show a high degree of overlap between terrorism and ongoing civil war and, further, indicate that a substantial amount of terrorism occurs prior to civil wars in Latin America, but yet follows civil war in other regions of the world. While the study of terrorism and of civil war mostly occurs in separate scholarly communities, we argue for more work that incorporates insights from each research program and we offer a possibility for future research by considering how geo-referenced terror and civil war data may be utilized together. More generally, we expect these results to apply to a wide variety of attitudes and behaviors in contentious politics.
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Private Military Companies, Opportunities, and Termination of Civil Wars in Africa
Seden Akcinaroglu & Elizabeth Radziszewski
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract: The article analyzes the impact of private military companies (PMCs) on the duration of civil wars in Africa from 1990 to 2008. We develop an "opportunity structure" theory to argue that while PMCs are profit-oriented entities, the prevalent opportunities in conflicts will determine how they behave in war zones. Empirical findings for civil wars with at least 1,000 battle deaths show that as level of competition among government-hired PMCs increases, they are more likely to deliver optimal services and help bring an end to violence. In the absence of competition, the prevalent structure creates opportunities for PMCs to underperform in order to maximize profits by staying in conflicts longer. The authors also show that swift cessation of hostilities could benefit those profit-seeking PMCs that are compensated with contracts to extract natural resources because resource extraction generates more wealth in peace time. In such cases, the prevalent opportunities in conflict create an incentive for companies to deliver optimal service and terminate hostilities.