World order
The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters
Michael Beckley
International Security, Fall 2018, Pages 7-44
Abstract:
Power is the most important variable in world politics, but scholars and policy analysts systematically mismeasure it. Most studies evaluate countries’ power using broad indicators of economic and military resources, such as gross domestic product and military spending, that tally their wealth and military assets without deducting the costs they pay to police, protect, and serve their people. As a result, standard indicators exaggerate the wealth and military power of poor, populous countries, such as China and India. A sounder approach accounts for these costs by measuring power in net rather than gross terms. This approach predicts war and dispute outcomes involving great powers over the past 200 years more accurately than those that use gross indicators of power. In addition, it improves the in-sample goodness-of-fit in the majority of studies published in leading journals over the past five years. Applying this improved framework to the current balance of power suggests that the United States’ economic and military lead over other countries is much larger than typically assumed, and that the trends are mostly in America's favor.
How Hawkish Is the Chinese Public?: Another Look at ‘Rising Nationalism’ and Chinese Foreign Policy
Jessica Chen Weiss
Journal of Contemporary China, forthcoming
Abstract:
Chinese leaders often invoke the feelings of the Chinese people in denouncing foreign actions in international confrontations. But most survey research on Chinese public opinion on international affairs has looked at measures of nationalist identity rather than beliefs about foreign policy and evaluations of the government’s performance. Five surveys of Chinese citizens, netizens, and elites help illuminate the public attitudes that the Chinese government grapples with in managing international security policy. The results show that Chinese attitudes are more hawkish than dovish and that younger Chinese, while perhaps not more nationalist in identity, may be more hawkish in their foreign policy beliefs than older generations. Netizens and elites are even more inclined to call on the Chinese government to invest and rely more on military strength.
Economic Sanctions and Public Opinion: Survey Experiments From Russia
Timothy Frye
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do economic sanctions turn the public against the target government or cause it to rally around the flag? How do sanctions affect attitudes toward the sanctioner? How does bad economic performance under sanctions shape support for the target government? Despite their importance, these questions have rarely been explored with survey data. Results from two surveys in Russia find that exposure to information about economic sanctions does not generate a rally around the flag, leads some groups to withdraw support from the target government, and reduces support for the sanctioner. Respondents also react more strongly to the reasons why sanctions were put in place — the annexation of Crimea — than to the sanctions themselves. These results suggest the need to reevaluate theories of the impact of economic sanctions and blame-shifting under autocracy.
Chinese influence, U.S. linkages, or neither? Comparing regime changes in Myanmar and Thailand
Mathew Wong
Democratization, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study examines the potential influence of foreign linkages on regime outcomes by comparing Myanmar and Thailand. Linkages with the West are supposed to facilitate democratization, whereas those with autocracies usually promote regime survival. This study focuses on Myanmar and Thailand’s linkages with the U.S. and China, which at first sight seem to demonstrate the hypothesized effects. Myanmar gradually liberalized while strengthening its Western linkages, whereas Thailand experienced democratic breakdown amid a shift in alignment from the U.S. to China. However, in-depth analysis suggests that the influence of foreign linkages on domestic political change was minimal and that the relationship may very well be endogenous. The findings of this study call for a more careful theorization and handling of the external factors in studies of regime change and highlight the importance of simultaneously analyzing democratic and autocratic linkages.
War Abroad and Homicides at Home: Evidence from the United States
Jonas Bunte, Nadine Connell & Zachary Powell
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
We analyze why domestic homicide rates in a country sending troops into war increase with some international wars, but not others. Drawing from research on the brutalization effect, we first explain how war can have an effect on homicides through individuals learning acceptable behavior from the state. Second, we explain why we observe the brutalization effect with some wars, but not others. We argue that illegitimate wars are associated with increased homicide rates, while state participation in legitimate wars should not affect homicide rates. Pursuing an illegitimate war may serve as a signal to society that norms and morals have been suspended, leading to a period of moral deregulation in the form of anomie. To test our theory, we conduct time-series analyses of data for the United States between 1928 and 2014. After examining the characteristics of eleven international wars pursued by the United States, we find that a brutalization effect occurs when the country engages in illegitimate, but not legitimate, conflicts. We also examine the validity of several potential alternative explanations and provide directions for future research.
Would U.S. Leaders Push the Button? Wargames and the Sources of Nuclear Restraint
Reid Pauly
International Security, Fall 2018, Pages 151-192
Abstract:
Why since 1945 have nuclear weapons not been used? Political scientists have cited five basic reasons: deterrence, practicality, precedent, reputation, and ethics. Scholars attempting to weight these factors face a dearth of empirical data. Declassified records of political-military wargames played by U.S. policymakers, however, open up new avenues for theory testing. An investigation of the willingness of U.S. “strategic elites” — experts with experience in diplomatic or military strategy — to use nuclear weapons in a sample of twenty-six political-military wargames reveals that elite players were reluctant to cross the nuclear threshold against both nuclear-armed and nonnuclear-armed adversaries. The only uses of nuclear weapons in the sample occurred in two wargames with nuclear adversaries. Players’ arguments for restraint in the wargames invoked reputational aversion: decisionmakers feared the opprobrium they would face if they used nuclear weapons. Wargame records also strongly support the power of deterrence and basic practicality — whether conventional weapons could accomplish the same goals — as reasons for widespread hesitation to use nuclear weapons. Precedent and ethical aversions to using nuclear weapons were less common. Finally, players also demonstrated some conformity to what they thought the president expected of them.
US Military Response to the Risk of Terrorist Attacks
Jean-Paul Azam & Véronique Thelen
Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper reports that the econometric findings of Azam & Thelen (2010) remain valid when the sample is extended by 10 years to cover 1990–2014 in Azam & Thelen (2018). They blame the presence of US troops in oil-exporting countries and their neighbors for increasing transnational terrorist attacks by nationals from these countries. They also confirm that foreign aid and educational capital are playing the opposite role by reducing the number of such attacks. The “Obama years” saw a lowered presence of US troops overseas and their smaller marginal impact on transnational terrorism.
Demonstrating Credentials? Female Executives, Women’s Status, and the Use of Force
Jonathan Powell & Karina Mukazhanova-Powell
Journal of Women, Politics & Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research has found that though higher levels of women’s equality are associated with more peaceful interstate relations, female executives have been found to be significantly more hawkish than their male counterparts. We argue that this paradox can be explained by considering the gender environment in which those executives are operating. First, in contrast to prior quantitative findings that female-led states are more conflictual, we find that after distinguishing between initiation and being targeted, female executives only seek to “demonstrate their security credentials” when governing countries with very poor women’s status. Female-led states are increasingly more peaceful when women’s rights improve. Second, we find that male leaders also respond to the domestic gender environment and are significantly more likely to initiate disputes against states with female executives but are also increasingly less likely to do so as women’s rights in their state improve.
Boosting intelligence analysts’ judgment accuracy: What works, what fails?
David Mandel, Christopher Karvetski & Mandeep Dhami
Judgment and Decision Making, November 2018, Pages 607–621
Abstract:
A routine part of intelligence analysis is judging the probability of alternative hypotheses given available evidence. Intelligence organizations advise analysts to use intelligence-tradecraft methods such as Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) to improve judgment, but such methods have not been rigorously tested. We compared the evidence evaluation and judgment accuracy of a group of intelligence analysts who were recently trained in ACH and then used it on a probability judgment task to another group of analysts from the same cohort that were neither trained in ACH nor asked to use any specific method. Although the ACH group assessed information usefulness better than the control group, the control group was a little more accurate (and coherent) than the ACH group. Both groups, however, exhibited suboptimal judgment and were susceptible to unpacking effects. Although ACH failed to improve accuracy, we found that recalibration and aggregation methods substantially improved accuracy. Specifically, mean absolute error (MAE) in analysts’ probability judgments decreased by 61% after first coherentizing their judgments (a process that ensures judgments respect the unitarity axiom) and then aggregating their judgments. The findings cast doubt on the efficacy of ACH, and show the promise of statistical methods for boosting judgment quality in intelligence and other organizations that routinely produce expert judgments.
What Explains Counterterrorism Effectiveness? Evidence from the U.S. Drone War in Pakistan
Asfandyar Mir
International Security, Fall 2018, Pages 45-83
Abstract:
For years, the U.S. government has been waging counterterrorism campaigns against al-Qaida and other armed groups in safe havens and weak states. What explains the effectiveness of such campaigns? The variation in effectiveness may result from differences in select tactical, organizational, and technological capabilities of the counterterrorism state and its local partner, captured by the concept of the Legibility and Speed-of-Exploitation System (L&S). Empirical studies, including novel fieldwork data, on the U.S. drone war in Pakistan's Waziristan region from 2004 to 2014 reveal the influence of the L&S on targeted groups. From 2004 to 2007, a lack of U.S. counterterrorism capabilities aligning with the L&S allowed both al-Qaida and the Pakistan Taliban to build their operational infrastructure, expand their bases, engage in extensive recruitment drives, and broker important local alliances. In contrast, as the United States made substantial improvements in the L&S from 2008 to 2014, the campaigns against both groups became increasingly effective. Both al-Qaida and the Pakistan Taliban experienced sustained reductions in operational capabilities, losses of bases, and high desertion rates; they also faced growing political challenges, including from within their own organizations. These findings contrast with the view that counterterrorism offers short-term gains at best and is counterproductive at worst.
The Credibility of Public and Private Signals: A Document-Based Approach
Azusa Katagiri & Erin Min
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Crisis bargaining literature has predominantly used formal and qualitative methods to debate the relative efficacy of actions, public words, and private words. These approaches have overlooked the reality that policymakers are bombarded with information and struggle to adduce actual signals from endless noise. Material actions are therefore more effective than any diplomatic communication in shaping elites’ perceptions. Moreover, while ostensibly “costless,” private messages provide a more precise communication channel than public and “costly” pronouncements. Over 18,000 declassified documents from the Berlin Crisis of 1958–63 reflecting private statements, public statements, and White House evaluations of Soviet resolve are digitized and processed using statistical learning techniques to assess these claims. The results indicate that material actions have greater influence on the White House than either public or private statements; that public statements are noisier than private statements; and that private statements have a larger effect on evaluations of resolve than public statements.
Could Global Democracy Satisfy Diverse Policy Values? An Empirical Analysis
Thomas Hale & Mathias Koenig-Archibugi
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
An important strand in contemporary political theory argues that democratic methods of political decision making should be extended to the global level. But are people’s fundamental views on public policy issues too diverse across the world for democracy? We examine systematically the empirical basis of two related concerns: that global democratic decision making would leave more people dissatisfied with the outcome of decisions than keeping democratic decision making within national settings and that it would increase the risk of persistent minorities, that is, groups who are systematically outvoted on most policy issues they care about. Using opinion polls covering 86% of the world population, we compare the distribution of policy values within countries to the distribution of policy values in the world as a whole. We find that the amount of dissatisfaction with policy and the risk of persistent minorities would not increase in a global democratic polity compared to individual states.
Terrorism and Bathtubs: Comparing and Assessing the Risks
John Mueller & Mark Stewart
Terrorism and Political Violence, forthcoming
Abstract:
The likelihood that anyone outside a war zone will be killed by an Islamist extremist terrorist is extremely small. In the United States, for example, some six people have perished each year since 9/11 at the hands of such terrorists — vastly smaller than the number of people who die in bathtub drownings. Some argue, however, that the incidence of terrorist destruction is low because counterterrorism measures are so effective. They also contend that terrorism may well become more frequent and destructive in the future as terrorists plot and plan and learn from experience, and that terrorism, unlike bathtubs, provides no benefit and exacts costs far beyond those in the event itself by damagingly sowing fear and anxiety and by requiring policy makers to adopt countermeasures that are costly and excessive. This article finds these arguments to be wanting. In the process, it concludes that terrorism is rare outside war zones because, to a substantial degree, terrorists don’t exist there. In general, as with rare diseases that kill few, it makes more policy sense to expend limited funds on hazards that inflict far more damage. It also discusses the issue of risk communication for this hazard.
Sizing Up the Adversary: Leader Attributes and Coercion in International Conflict
Michael Horowitz et al.
Journal of Conflict Resolution, November 2018, Pages 2180-2204
Abstract:
Leaders negotiate, not states. Yet the extensive body of work on coercive diplomacy in international relations pays little attention to variation among leaders. In contrast, we argue that individual-level attributes directly influence leaders’ beliefs about their own military capabilities and, by extension, their selection of disputes. Specifically, leaders with combat experience and careers in national militaries are relatively better judges of their own military power. As a consequence, targets tend to take their threats more seriously. In contrast, leaders who have military careers but lack combat experience tend to be less selective in their demands and correspondingly less successful when they make threats. Similar patterns hold for those with rebel experience. Drawing on new data on leader attributes, we find strong evidence that these leader-level attributes influence both dispute and compellent threat reciprocation. This leader-level approach provides a new explanation for why some countries initiate disputes against determined adversaries who are likely to escalate rather than back down.
Evaluating the Conflict-Reducing Effect of UN Peacekeeping Operations
Håvard Hegre, Lisa Hultman & Håvard Mokleiv Nygård
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Several studies show a beneficial effect of peacekeeping operations (PKOs). However, by looking at individual effect pathways (intensity, duration, recurrence, diffusion) in isolation, they underestimate the peacekeeping impact of PKOs. We propose a novel method of evaluating the combined impact across all pathways based on a statistical model of the efficacy of UN PKOs in preventing the onset, escalation, continuation, and recurrence of internal armed conflict. We run a set of simulations based on the statistical estimates to assess the impact of alternative UN policies for the 2001–13 period. If the UN had invested US$200 billion in PKOs with strong mandates, major armed conflict would have been reduced by up to two-thirds relative to a scenario without PKOs and 150,000 lives would have been saved over the 13-year period compared to a no-PKO scenario. UN peacekeeping is clearly a cost-effective way of increasing global security.
Empty Threats: How Extremist Organizations Bluff in Terrorist Campaigns
Charles Mahoney
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do extremist organizations issue terrorist bluffs? According to previous research, empty threats against civilians are likely to negatively influence assessments of groups’ strength and credibility, thus making it more difficult for extremists to achieve their goals. Despite these potential audience costs, bluffing is a common terrorist tactic. This inquiry assesses data on the bluffing patterns of three organizations — Boko Haram, Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, and the Real Irish Republican Army — and finds that groups suffer few costs for making empty terrorist threats. Furthermore, extremists bluff to advance a variety of strategic goals including outbidding rival factions, spoiling peace settlements, and intimidating civilians.
The distance bias in natural disaster reporting – empirical evidence for the United States
Michael Berlemann & Tobias Thomas
Applied Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
Whenever governments or international organizations provide aid in the aftermath of natural disasters, they typically justify this support by humanitarian motives. Previous empirical research found that media reports on natural disasters have a systematic impact on the amount of provided disaster aid. While this is unproblematic as long as media reports are unbiased and thus deliver an undistorted picture of the occurrence and severity of worldwide occurring disasters, systematic reporting biases would lead to distorted aid flows and perhaps other distortions like an insufficient perception of a region in international organizations. Based on data on three US news shows we show that disaster reporting is subject to a distance bias, e.g., the likelihood that a disaster is covered by the media depends on the distance between the country where the media are located and the country where the disasters occur. We also find evidence that besides the distance bias the state of economic development of a country and importance as export markets have a positive effect on the probability that US news shows are reporting on a natural disaster. As a result, international aid flows might be systematically biased and not distributed in line with the needs of the victims.
Help is close at hand? Proximity and the effectiveness of peacekeepers
Edward Goldring & Michael Hendricks
Research & Politics, October 2018
Abstract:
How do the national origins of peacekeepers influence peacekeeping operations’ success? We argue that peacekeeping operations better protect civilians when a higher percentage of peacekeepers come from geographically proximate countries. These peacekeepers have been exposed to similar societal and cultural norms and are more invested in preventing conflict diffusion. Peacekeepers from proximate countries can better collect and analyze intelligence, are more effective at separating combatants, and are therefore more successful at protecting civilians. In making this argument, we also challenge the theory that diversity in a peacekeeping operation matters. We find support for both our mechanisms and show that the importance of diversity may have been overstated. Where a peacekeeping operation is present in civil conflicts, if a quarter of its personnel come from proximate countries, then all things being equal, it would completely prevent civilians dying. The results show policymakers the importance of recruiting peacekeepers from countries near to conflicts.