Showing papers in "International Studies Quarterly in 2018"

Apples and Dragon Fruits: The Determinants of Aid and Other Forms of State Financing from China to Africa

Abstract: Chinese “aid” is a lightning rod for criticism. Policymakers, journalists, and public intellectuals claim that Beijing is using its largesse to cement alliances with political leaders, secure access to natural resources, and create exclusive commercial opportunities for Chinese firms—all at the expense of citizens living in developing countries. We argue that much of the controversy about Chinese “aid” stems from a failure to distinguish between China’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) and more commercially-oriented sources and types of state financing. Using a new database on China’s official financing commitments to Africa from 2000-2013, we find the allocation of Chinese ODA to be driven primarily by foreign policy considerations, while economic interests better explain the distribution of less concessional flows. These results highlight the need for better measures of an increasingly diverse set of non-Western financial activities.

Recognizing International Status: A Relational Approach

Abstract: How do states achieve status? Although we rely on status to explain important phenomena in international politics—such as wars and the foreign policy of emerging powers—we still do not understand what status is or where it comes from. Previous research treats status as a function of state attributes, such as wealth and military capability. Following Weber, I argue that status depends on social recognition: it concerns identification processes in which an actor gains admission into a club once they follow the rules of membership. Therefore, systematic social processes, which cannot be reduced to state attributes, influence status. In particular, status is self-reinforcing. Moreover, social closure influences status—which implies that (i) a state’s existing relations influence its ability to achieve status, and (ii) states recognize similar states rather than states with the largest portfolio of certain attributes. To investigate the determinants of international status, I move beyond ranking states based on attributes to examine quantitatively how status emerges from state relations. Leveraging inferential network analysis, I examine state practices that express recognition—specifically, the network of embassies. The analysis indicates that self-reinforcing dynamics and social closure, rather than state attributes directly, drive status recognition.

The New Public Address System: Why Do World Leaders Adopt Social Media?

Abstract: The growth of social media—and, in particular, Twitter and Facebook—has led scholars to study its effects on mass behavior and protest. But leaders are also active on social media. They use their accounts to communicate with domestic and international audiences. By the end of 2014, more than 76 percent of world leaders had an active presence on social media. What explains variation in their adoption and use of social media? We look at several different potential hypotheses: higher income per capita and internet penetration (modernization), social pressure, level of democratization, and geographic spread of adoption (diffusion). We find strong support that (1) increased political pressure from social unrest and (2) higher levels of democratization correlate with leader adoption of social media platforms. Although our findings are correlational, they reveal that institutional and political pressures are related to social media adoption and the political communication of world leaders.

Citizenship for Sale and the Neoliberal Political Economy of Belonging

Abstract: Recent research considers the proliferation of citizenship-by-investment schemes primarily as a manifestation of the commodification of citizenship and of states succumbing to the logic of the market. I argue that these schemes exceed mere processes of commodification. They are part of a neoliberal political economy of belonging which prompts states to include and exclude migrants according to their endowment of human, financial, economic, and emotional capital. Hence, I show how the growing mobility opportunities for wealthy and talented migrants, the opening of humanitarian corridors for particularly vulnerable refugees, and the hardening of borders for “ordinary” refugees and undocumented migrants are manifestations of the same neoliberal rationality of government. Conceptually, I challenge mainstream understandings of neoliberalism as a process of commodification characterized by the “retreat of the state” and “domination of the market.” I approach neoliberalism as a process of economization which disseminates the model of the market to all spheres of human activity, even where money is not at stake. Neoliberal economization turns states and individuals into entrepreneurial actors that attempt to maximize their value in economic and financial, as well as moral and emotional terms. This argument advances existing scholarship on the neoliberalization of citizenship by showing how this process encompasses the emergence of distinctively neoliberal forms of belonging.

Women and the History of International Thought

Abstract: Existing surveys and anthologies wrongly convey the impression that women in the past did not think seriously about international politics. This article provides evidence of the magnitude of the exclusion of historical women from the field by analyzing sixty texts in the history of international thought and disciplinary history. It also begins the process of remedying this exclusion. I map a new agenda for research on the history of women's international thought. Work in feminist historiography, as well as new archival research, suggests that a diverse array of historical women thought deeply about international relations, but their intellectual contributions have been obscured—and even actively erased. To illustrate what international studies can gain by pursuing a research agenda on historical women's international thought, I discuss a neglected, but at the time extremely important figure, in what might be called “white women's international relations,” the influential scholar of colonial administration, Lucy Philip Mair.

Labor Migrants as Political Leverage: Migration Interdependence and Coercion in the Mediterranean

Abstract: How do states attempt to use their position as destinations for labor migration to influence sending states, and under what conditions do they succeed? I argue that economically driven cross-border mobility generates reciprocal political economy effects on sending and host states. That is, it produces migration interdependence. Host states may leverage their position against a sending state by either deploying strategies of restriction—curbing remittances, strengthening immigration controls, or both—or displacement—forcefully expelling citizens of the sending state. These strategies’ success depends on whether the sending state is vulnerable to the political economy costs incurred by host states’ strategy, namely if it is unable to absorb them domestically and cannot procure the support of alternative host states. I also contend that displacement strategies involve higher costs than restriction efforts and are therefore more likely to succeed. I demonstrate my claims through a least-likely, two-case study design of Libyan and Jordanian coercive migration diplomacy against Egypt in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. I examine how two weaker Arab states leveraged their position against Egypt, a stronger state but one vulnerable to migration interdependence, through the restriction and displacement of Egyptian migrants.

The Value of Precision in Probability Assessment: Evidence from a Large-Scale Geopolitical Forecasting Tournament

Abstract: Scholars, practitioners, and pundits often leave their assessments of uncertainty vague when debating foreign policy, arguing that clearer probability estimates would provide arbitrary detail instead of useful insight. We provide the first systematic test of this claim using a data set containing 888,328 geopolitical forecasts. We find that coarsening numeric probability assessments in a manner consistent with common qualitative expressions—including expressions currently recommended for use by intelligence analysts—consistently sacrifices predictive accuracy. This finding does not depend on extreme probability estimates, short time horizons, particular scoring rules, or individual attributes that are difficult to cultivate. At a practical level, our analysis indicates that it would be possible to make foreign policy discourse more informative by supplementing natural language-based descriptions of uncertainty with quantitative probability estimates. More broadly, our findings advance longstanding debates over the nature and limits of subjective judgment when assessing social phenomena, showing how explicit probability assessments are empirically justifiable even in domains as complex as world politics.

Voters Get What They Want (When They Pay Attention): Human Rights, Policy Benefits, and Foreign Aid

Abstract: How do the human rights practices abroad affect decisions about the allocation of foreign aid? This article provides a new approach to this long-standing question. We bring donor government, donor citizens, and recipients’ attributes together in a single analytical framework. We argue that donor citizens are more self-serving than previously assumed; they do not wholeheartedly support their government punishing human rights abusers when those states provide important policy benefits. When donor governments believe that their citizens will hold them accountable for their policy choices, they make foreign aid decisions that mirror citizens’ self-serving policy preferences. Thus, they avoid punishing repressive regimes that are the sources of valuable benefits. Our experimental and observational results provide support for our claims. Overall, our findings suggest that aid donors selectively punish human rights violators with aid cuts, but their variegated treatment of human rights violators largely stems from the self-serving policy preferences of their voters.

Rumors and Refugees: How Government-Created Information Vacuums Undermine Effective Crisis Management

Abstract: Although more than 800,000 displaced people arrived in Greece by sea in 2015, fewer than 5 percent applied for asylum in this first country of arrival. Instead, they either traveled northward informally or remained in Greece in legal limbo. The resultant chaotic conditions deprived many refugees of the benefits of asylum and formal relocation procedures, and also reduced the Greek government's popularity among natives. We argue that governments, regional and international organizations, and aid groups can undermine compliance with their own policies by mishandling information dissemination. Common crisis-management tools—such as frequent policy changes, information dissemination limits, and ad-hoc policy implementation—can easily backfire. Information mismanagement can lead people to develop deep distrust in government and aid organizations, and instead turn to informal brokers like smugglers. To assess our theory, we draw on over 80 discussions with migrants and refugees in Greece, on 25 semistructured interviews with aid workers and government officials, and on weekly rumor correction newsletters produced by the nongovernmental organization Internews. We conclude that governments must prioritize effective communication and policy transparency, especially in crisis contexts.

Intra-Industry Trade, Global Value Chains, and Preferential Tariff Liberalization

Abstract: This research note presents a new dataset on the speed of tariff liberalization in sixty-one preferential trade agreements (PTAs) signed by fifty states and regional economic organizations over the period 1995 to 2013. We use this dataset to test prominent arguments concerning the impact of intra-industry trade and global value chains on the political economy of trade. Our results indicate that the speed of tariff liberalization through PTAs is considerably faster for intermediate goods than for finished products. This is in line with the most prominent argument about how global value chains affect the political economy of trade liberalization. At the same time, we find mixed evidence for the impact of intra-industry trade on the ease of trade liberalization, which reflects strong cross-country variation. We conclude with a discussion on how the dataset can help tackle important questions in international political economy and inform ongoing debates on trade agreements.

Commercial Diplomacy and Political Risk

Abstract: The modern investor-state arbitration regime was explicitly designed to replace commercial diplomacy as a mechamism for protecting foreign investment. I argue, however, that diplomacy continues to play an important role in managing political risk, particularly in countries with weak rule of law. Yet since commercial diplomacy occurs primarily behind closed doors in confidential negotiations, it is difficult to observe, let alone test for its effects. To assess the effectiveness of contemporary commercial diplomacy, I exploit variation in vacancies among U.S. ambassadors to foreign countries—conditions which are determined overwhelmingly by U.S. domestic political factors, and thus represent a quasi-natural experiment for testing the effects of commercial diplomacy. I show that American investors are significantly more likely to initiate investor-state arbitration disputes when the position of U.S. ambassador to the host state is temporarily vacant, and that these effects are particularly strong in countries with weak rule of law. The results suggest American investors frequently seek assistance from the U.S. government in informally resolving incipient investment disputes; if diplomatic channels are unsuccessful or unavailable, investors then file formal arbitration cases. These findings have important implications not only for the investment protection regime but more broadly for understanding the role of commercial diplomacy in global economic governance. Note: This paper has been conditionally accepted for publication at International Studies Quarterly. Thanks to Taylor St. John, Karolina Milewicz, Noel Johnston, Clint Peinhardt, Catherine Laporte-Oshiro, Rachel Wellhausen, Louis Wells, participants at the 2015 International Studies Association Annual Meeting and the Oxford IR Colloquium, two anonymous reviewers and the editors of ISQ for valuable comments on earlier drafts. The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit organization devoted to independent research and policy solutions. Its mission is to conduct high-quality, independent research and, based on that research, to provide innovative, practical recommendations for policymakers and the public. The conclusions and recommendations of any Brookings publication are solely those of its author(s), and do not reflect the views of the Institution, its management, or its other scholars. Brookings recognizes that the value it provides is in its absolute commitment to quality, independence and impact. Activities supported by its donors reflect this commitment and the analysis and recommendations are not determined or influenced by any donation. A full list of contributors to the Brookings Institution can be found in the Annual Report at https://www.brookings.edu/about-us/annual-report/.

Targeted Foreign Aid and International Migration: Is Development-Promotion an Effective Immigration Policy?

Abstract: Immigration from poor countries continues to be one of the most salient concerns among voters and politicians in the United States and in countries of Western Europe. Faced with the failure of traditional immigration policies, scholars and policymakers in these high-income countries are increasingly turning towards foreign aid to reduce migrant inflows. This approach reflects the conventional wisdom that individuals in the Developing World migrate to countries of the Global North in an effort to escape poverty, underdevelopment, and other problems at home. Leaders representing high income countries believe that aid can improve the well-being of would-be migrants, thereby deterring them from uprooting their lives and migrating abroad. However, there remains little consensus as to whether foreign aid actually reduces migration, as only a few studies have tackled this subject and they have produced contradictory results. We suspect that this literature has failed to produce definitive findings due to its tendency to treat all aid the same way. Therefore, we examine the distinct effects of three types of aid on emigration patterns: governance aid, economic aid, and social aid. To do so, we analyze a panel of 101 low and middle income countries over a time series spanning 25 years (1985-2010). Our findings indicate that governance aid is accompanied by reductions in the emigration rates of developing countries, whereas other types of aid have no discernible relationship to emigration. These results suggest that some, but not all, types of foreign aid can act as an effective and development-friendly immigration policy.

Does Science Fiction Affect Political Fact? Yes and No: A Survey Experiment on “Killer Robots”

Abstract: Some scholars suggest popular culture shapes public attitudes about foreign policy in ways that can affect real-world political outcomes, but relatively few studies test this proposition. We examine whether—and more importantly how—popular culture affects public opinion on foreign policy through a survey experiment on American attitudes toward fully autonomous weapons. We queried respondents about their consumption of popular culture—including a number of iconic science-fiction films featuring armed artificial intelligence (AI)—before or after questions about autonomous weapons. We find that science fiction “priming” exerts no independent effect on political attitudes, nor does referring to autonomous weapons as “killer robots.” However, consumption of frightening armed AI films is associated with greater opposition to autonomous weapons. This “sci-fi literacy” effect increases for the highest consumers of science fiction if they are “primed” about popular culture before reporting their attitudes—what we call the “sci-fi geek effect.” Our project advances current understanding of how popular culture affects public opinion on foreign policy and suggests avenues for further inquiry.

State capacity, insurgency, and civil war: A disaggregated analysis

Abstract: Country-level indicators such as gross domestic product, bureaucratic quality, and military spending are frequently used to approximate state capacity. These factors capture the aggregate level of state capacity, but do not adequately approximate the actual distribution of capacity within states. Intra-state variations in state capacity are critical to understanding the relationship between state capacity and civil war. We offer nighttime light emissions as a measure of state capacity to differentiate its impact on civil war onset within the country from its effect at the country level. We articulate pathways linking the distribution of nighttime light with the expansion of state capacity, and validate our indicator against other measures at different levels of disaggregation across multiple contexts. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that civil wars are more likely to erupt where the state exercises more control. We advance three mechanisms accounting for this counterintuitive finding: rebel gravitation, elite fragmentation, and expansion reaction. In the first scenario, state presence attracts insurgent activities. In the second, insurgents emerge as a result of the fragmentation of political elites. In the third, anti-state groups react violently to the state penetrating into a given territory. Finally, we validate these mechanisms using evidence from sub-Saharan Africa.

Monopoly Rents and Foreign Direct Investment in Fixed Assets

Abstract: In the past two decades, much of foreign direct investment in the primary sector has flowed to unconventional, politically risky destinations. This presents a puzzle for theories that emphasize the ex post immobility of --- and hence high potential expropriation risk for --- fixed asset investment. Existing theories overlook one critical aspect of fixed assets: large capital requirements and high sunk costs act as entry barriers, resulting in market concentration and strong firm incentive for monopoly rent extraction. Personalist dictatorships, we posit, provide an attractive institutional environment for fixed asset investors because the lack of institutional constraints and leaders' families' control of key economic sectors facilitate rent-seeking activities. We find that personalist dictatorships have significantly more foreign investment in the primary sector, and fixed-asset intensive industries in general, than other regimes. This study highlights the importance of accounting for heterogeneity among investors and political regimes to understand the politics of FDI.

Founding the World State: H. G. Wells on Empire and the English-Speaking Peoples

Abstract: Herbert George Wells was one of the leading public intellectuals of the first half of the twentieth century. Most famous today as a founder of modern science fiction, he was once known throughout the world as a visionary social and political thinker. Questions of global order occupied a central place in his work. From the opening decade of the century until the close of the Second World War, he campaigned tirelessly for the creation of a world state, which would act as a guarantor of universal peace and justice. Yet, scholarship on Wells pays insufficient attention to the complex and conflicted nature of Wells’s early views about how to build a world state. In particular, it neglects the tensions between his advocacy of a New Republic, formed by the unification of the English-speaking peoples, and his support for liberal imperialism. I analyze the development of this theme in Wells’s political thinking during the years before WWI, a formative period in his intellectual life. I demonstrate how his conceptions of race, empire, and Anglo-American union shifted over time, show how his political arguments connected to his underlying views about social explanation and language, and highlight how his interpretation of the United States profoundly influenced his ideas about world order.

U.N. Peacekeeping Forces and the Demand for Sex Trafficking

Abstract: Issue Section: Original Article Views   PDF  Cite  Permissions  Share   U.N. peacekeeping missions succeed in preventing the resumption of con ict and saving lives. At the same time, a series of sexual exploitation and abuse scandals since the early 2000s has raised concerns about the conduct of peacekeepers. We examine a related, but generally overlooked, potential negative externality of peacekeeping missions: the forced tra cking of sex workers. We argue that U.N. peacekeepers increase demand for sex work and that this demand may be met through human tra cking for forced prostitution. Using data on U.N. peacekeeping missions between 2001 and 2011, we evaluate the e ect of a peacekeeper presence on human sex tra cking in and around the host state. We nd that the presence of U.N. peacekeeping forces correlates positively with a state being cited as a destination for forced prostitution. This has important implications for the future deployment of peacekeeping forces around the world.    8/23/2018 U.N. Peacekeeping Forces and the Demand for Sex Trafficking | International Studies Quarterly | Oxford Academic https://academic.oup.com/isq/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isq/sqy017/5076386 2/38 Skip to Main Content In 1999, an American contractor working for Dyncorp, a company contracted by the United Nations (U.N) to conduct police work during the Bosnia peacekeeping mission, attempted to expose the tra cking of women and girls into Bosnia to serve as sex slaves. The contractor, Kathryn Bolkovac, argued that women were being taken to brothels to service U.N. peacekeeping personnel. She alleged that some peacekeepers were themselves implicated in sex tra cking. Bolkovac's whistleblowing attempt earned her threats from, among others, U.N. personnel. She lost her job with Dyncorp and eventually won a wrongful dismissal lawsuit against her former employer. Her allegations brought worldwide attention to the case of Bosnia and to the potential general connection between U.N. peacekeeping and sex tra cking (Bolkovac and Lynn 2011; Vulliany 2012). Peacekeeping is one of the U.N.’s most visible activities. Unfortunately, along with its success stories of preventing the re-initiation of con ict have come reports alleging that peacekeepers have abused the very people that they are supposed to protect. Beyond widely reported accusations of rape and sexual abuse, the presence of U.N. peacekeepers also creates demand for sex workers—a demand that we argue is met through human tra cking. We investigate the general relationship between the presence of U.N. peacekeeping forces within a state and the occurrence of human tra cking for the purposes of forced prostitution. Several studies nd that the presence of peacekeeping forces reduces violence and helps to prevent the reemergence of con ict in the host state (Fortna, 2004, 2008; Doyle and Sambanis 2006). We do not dispute these ndings. However, others argue that peacekeeping deployments have “served to increase some local people's insecurity rather than alleviate it,” (Whitworth 2004, 12). We argue that some of these negative e ects also extend beyond the boundaries of peacekeeping operations (PKOs). Mendelson (2005, 1) notes that human rights organizations and U.N. agencies have cited “a dramatic rise in the number of tra cked females” following large, long-term, military deployments. While human tra cking has long generated concern, few systematic analyses examine the subject. Smith and Smith (2011) provide case study evidence showing that U.N. peacekeepers’ presence led to greater human tra cking ows into Kosovo, Haiti, and Sierra Leone. Recent reports highlight numerous cases of abuse, but these cases may not accurately characterize the more general e ects of peacekeeping missions (Fortna 2015). Thus, rigorous analysis of the relationship between peacekeeping forces and sex tra cking will help us to understand if the instances highlighted by news reports and case studies are isolated ones, or if they represent generalizable patterns of abuse across U.N. peacekeeping missions. We argue that peacekeeping forces increase the market demand for sex workers, thereby creating incentives for individuals to engage in human tra cking to meet this demand. 1