Showing papers in "International Studies Quarterly in 2023"

Government Choices of Debt Instruments

Abstract: Governments borrow from a range of creditors—commercial banks, sovereign bondholders, official bilateral creditors, and multilateral financial institutions. Sovereigns’ creditor portfolios vary significantly across space and time. While creditor portfolios partly reflect supply-side considerations (macroeconomic profiles and associated default risk), they also reflect governments’ preferences over fiscal transparency. Governments that prefer to disclose less information about economic outcomes will choose borrowing instruments that are less public, such as private loans from banks (versus bondholders) and official sector borrowing from bilateral (versus multilateral) creditors. Empirical analyses of government debt composition across developing nations confirm these predictions. We also find support for our claims at the subnational level, using data from Mexican municipalities. We treat various types of credit (bilateral lending, multilateral finance, and sovereign bonds) as related, rather than distinct.

Mapping the Characteristics of Foreign Investment Screening Mechanisms: The New PRISM Dataset

Abstract: Since the 2008 financial crisis, many advanced industrialized economies, while eager to attract foreign direct investment (FDI), have also implemented or tightened investment screening mechanisms (ISMs), which empower governments to restrict foreign takeovers. ISMs, at the nexus between international political economy and international security, are an understudied phenomenon, although they have recently gained in policy prominence worldwide as a result of emerging technological risks and new threat actors. This research note introduces the Politics and Regulation of Investment Screening Mechanisms dataset, a newly coded dataset on ISMs in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries from 2007 to 2021, examining the evolution of seven key features of investment screening over time. Based on these novel data, we then describe patterns in the evolution of foreign investment screening policies. Next, we consider likely applications of the dataset to answer questions about the politics of investment as well as broader questions of economic exchange and institutional design in an age of great power competition—including by providing some initial statistical exercises on the relationship between Chinese FDI and R&D spending on ISM features. Finally, we suggest how investment screening fits within the new arsenal of unilateral instruments of economic statecraft currently being developed by liberal democracies.

The Normativity of Global Ordering Practices

Abstract: This article integrates normative theoretical analysis into accounts of international order by connecting the study of international practice to debates about the nature and moral purpose of states’ social association. Combining English School and social practice theory with insights from scholarship on colonialism, race, and empire, we conceptualize international order as a dynamic, contested, but often stable and durable, set of patterns of practice and show how they set ethical reference points and privilege certain claims over others in relation to legitimate agency and morally appropriate conduct. To allow for a grounded normative analysis of global ordering practices, we connect actors’ capacity to exercise creative normative agency to debates about legitimate membership and morally appropriate conduct in international society. We highlight the normative significance of historical context for the study of international practices and illustrate our theoretical arguments with examples from various ordering practices, including international law, war, diplomacy, and economic practice, where actors frequently draw on foundational values to construct normative claims about inclusion and exclusion. At the same time, agents’ creative capacity to alter existing and create new rights and obligations has transformed our thinking, acting, and arguing about the nature and moral purpose of world order.

Checking for Updates: Ratification, Design, and Institutional Adaptation

Abstract: Although most international agreements are concluded for indefinite periods, the issues they address and parties’ preferences are constantly evolving. In some cases, parties seek to close any growing gaps between negotiators’ expectations and the changing context by updating their original agreement to its new circumstances. States have several formal tools at their disposal to do so, such as protocols, amendments, and addenda. We refer to this process as institutional adaptation. This paper seeks to explain why some agreements are adapted numerous times during their lifetime while others are not. It argues that state parties are more likely to adapt their international agreements when they acquire new information about their partners’ behavior, preferences, or the state of the environment. We focus on two key elements facilitating this process. The first consists of unexpected variation in treaty participation, and the second concerns the design features of the agreement. Relying on event history analysis and an original dataset of design features and membership of 371 multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), we find that low levels of ratifications, high levels of accessions, highly institutionalized MEAs, and anticipatory design features are associated with more frequent institutional adaptation. These findings provide important lessons for the design of dynamic treaties. A pesar de que la mayoría de los acuerdos internacionales se celebran por períodos indefinidos, tanto las cuestiones que abordan como las preferencias de cada una de las partes evolucionan constantemente. En algunos casos, las partes tratan de cerrar cualquier brecha creciente entre las expectativas de los negociadores y el contexto cambiante actualizando el acuerdo original a las nuevas circunstancias. A este efecto, los Estados tienen varias herramientas formales a su disposición, tales como protocolos, enmiendas y adendas. Llamamos a este proceso adaptación institucional. Este artículo trata de explicar por qué algunos acuerdos se adaptan numerosas veces durante su existencia mientras que otros no se adaptan nunca. El artículo argumenta que es más probable que los Estados participantes adapten sus acuerdos internacionales cuando adquieran nueva información sobre el comportamiento, las preferencias o el estado del entorno de sus socios. Nos centramos en dos elementos clave que facilitan este proceso. El primero consiste en un cambio inesperado en relación con la participación en el tratado, y el segundo se refiere a las características de diseño del acuerdo. Teniendo en cuenta el análisis histórico de eventos, así como un conjunto original de datos en relación con las características de diseño y de adhesión de 371 acuerdos multilaterales sobre medio ambiente (MEAs, por sus siglas en inglés), encontramos que tanto los bajos niveles de ratificaciones como los altos niveles de adhesiones, los MEAs altamente institucionalizados y las características de diseño anticipatorio están asociados con una adaptación institucional más frecuente. Estas conclusiones proporcionan lecciones importantes de cara al diseño de tratados dinámicos. Bien que la majorité des accords internationaux soient conclus pour des durées indéfinies, les problématiques traitées et les préférences des parties évoluent constamment. Dans certains cas, les parties cherchent à refermer les écarts qui s’élargissent entre les attentes des négociateurs et l’évolution du contexte en mettant à jour l'accord initial pour prendre en compte les nouvelles circonstances. Pour ce faire, les États disposent de différents outils formels, comme les protocoles, les amendements et les addenda. Nous qualifions ce processus d'adaptation institutionnelle. Cet article tente d'expliquer pourquoi certains accords font l'objet de nombreuses adaptations au cours de leur durée de vie, et d'autres, d'aucunes. Il affirme que les parties étatiques adapteront plus certainement leurs accords internationaux quand elles acquièrent de nouvelles informations concernant le comportement, les préférences et l’état de l'environnement de leurs partenaires. Nous nous focalisons sur deux éléments clés favorisant ce processus : les variations inattendues dans la participation à un traité et les caractéristiques de la conception d'un accord. En nous fondant sur une analyse historique d’événements et un ensemble de données original sur les caractéristiques de conception et l'adhésion à 371 accords environnementaux multilatéraux (AEM), nous constatons que des niveaux de ratification faibles, des niveaux d'adhésion élevés, des niveaux d'institutionnalisation élevés des AEM et l'anticipation des caractéristiques de conception augmentent la fréquence de l'adaptation institutionnelle. Ces conclusions fournissent des enseignements importants pour la conception de traités dynamiques.

Where Should Multinationals Pay Taxes?

Abstract: The international tax system is a pillar of the post-war economic order, but it faces major challenges with the rise of global value chains, digitalization, and tax avoidance. Debates over international tax reform usually occur within a small epistemic community of experts and technocrats. In this article, we step outside this restricted circle to assess the sources of bottom-up legitimacy and support for the rules that govern where multinationals must report profits and which governments are entitled to tax those profits. We conduct survey experiments in Brazil, France, and the United States to assess mass attitudes toward the allocation of the tax base across countries. We find that people’s views clash with the core principles of the current regime, but are aligned with reform proposals that allocate more taxing rights to market jurisdictions. These findings are strikingly consistent across three countries and three distinct studies. At first glance, the consistency of attitudes across countries could spell good things for international cooperation in this arena. However, we also find a significant level of “home bias” in the public’s views on tax allocation. These results shed new light on the legitimacy of tax reform and on the prospects for cooperation in a key area of international economic relations.

From Norm Violations to Norm Development: Deviance, International Institutions, and the Torture Prohibition

Abstract: How do violations affect international norms? This article demonstrates that violations develop norms by analyzing how international institutions determine the meaning of deviant behavior and the breached norm. Decisions by courts, ad hoc tribunals, commissions of inquiry, and expert committees influence formal and informal lawmaking and drive the contested and often ambiguous development of international norms. To illustrate the impact of these norm applications and lawmaking efforts, the article compares two institutions with different mandates to oversee the international torture prohibition. In the 1960s and 1970s, the European human rights institutions defined torture for human rights law and found that Greece and the United Kingdom had violated the torture prohibition, but created ambiguity regarding the threshold of torture. In 1984, the UN Convention against Torture (CAT) adopted this definition, which was informed by earlier norm violations. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the UN Committee against Torture (CmAT) applied the torture prohibition to interrogation techniques used by Israel and the United States in counterterrorism operations. CmAT’s decisions that both countries had deviated from the norm led to General Comment No. 2 on CAT, which reaffirmed and specified the absolute and non-derogable nature of the torture prohibition.

Monitoring the Monitor? Selective Responses to Human Rights Transgressions

Abstract: Sanctions are among the most frequently used foreign policy tools to address human rights violations, but they can be highly politicized. Since the early 2000s, human rights sanctions have been increasingly triggered by standardized rankings of states’ performances. While research on economic statecraft suggests that coercive measures based on cross-national assessments may be less influenced by strategic considerations, scholarship on rankings highlights how standardized performance indicators can also be political. This paper investigates whether sanctions based on standardized human rights assessments are also influenced by senders’ strategic political and economic interests. Empirically, we examine the case of United States human trafficking sanctions that combines universal rankings in the first stage and country-specific sanctions waivers in the second. The analysis leverages novel data on all Trafficking in Persons (TIP) rankings by the US State Department and presidential sanctions waivers from 2003 to 2018. Despite the TIP report's reputation as a reliable indicator, we find that both stages in the process of imposing human trafficking sanctions are driven by strategic attempts to minimize the economic and political costs of sanctions for the US. These findings have broader implications for the reputation and effectiveness of other human rights rankings by the US.

A PROBLEM of RULES: Sexual Exploitation and UN Legitimacy

Abstract: Twenty years ago, the UN adopted a zero-tolerance policy on sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) by its personnel. After prohibiting sex with children and the exchange of sex for “cash, food and things,” it “strongly discourages” sexual relationships with beneficiaries because “they are based on inherently unequal power dynamics” and undermine the UN’s credibility and integrity. Taking inspiration from critical feminist project of understanding what happens when feminist ideas and projects become institutionalised, I consider the effectiveness and unintended consequences of the policy's discouraged relationships standard. I argue that by centring an “inherent power imbalance” between peacekeepers and local people, the policy undermines the UN’s capacity to meaningfully address that imbalance in practice. Moreover, the discouraged relationships standard diminishes the policy’s perceived legitimacy among staff, with ramifications beyond the prevention and punishment of sexual misconduct. Based on research in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Timor-Leste, Geneva, and New York, this article generates insights about the persistent challenges to preventing and punishing SEA and situates them in relation to broader questions around how international missions view and interact with local populations, and how this affects the integrity and effectiveness of their work.

Stabilizing Authoritarian Rule: The Role of International Organizations

Abstract: Research has demonstrated how membership in more democratic regional intergovernmental organizations (ROs) can strengthen the prospects for democracy. However, a significant number of ROs are dominated by autocratic members who have quite different preferences: to limit democratic contagion and consolidate authoritarian rule against democratic challengers. We outline a menu of mechanisms through which ROs with authoritarian memberships might have pernicious effects on the prospects for democratic rule. We use cross-national quantitative analyses to demonstrate that membership in more deeply authoritarian international organizations is associated with autocratization. We supplement the quantitative results with an analysis of twenty-nine of the most authoritarian ROs and illustrative case studies. The multi-method approach strengthens inference by showing that authoritarian international organizations do in fact engage in behaviors inimical to democratic rule.

The Power of Specialization: NGO Advocacy in Global Conservation Governance

Abstract: Organizational ecology has attracted growing interest in global governance research in recent years. As a structural theory, however, organizational ecology has overlooked how organizations may shape the organizational environment by their own choices. Bridging the insights of organizational ecology and the study of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), I argue that the organizational choice of specialism (as opposed to generalism) increases the power of NGOs to influence an environmental condition—issue salience—by targeting a small but engaged segment of the public. Focusing on wildlife conservation governance, I collected new comprehensive data on NGOs and issue characteristics (2008–2015). My empirical analysis shows that specialist NGO density is strongly associated with issue salience. I further examined causal processes in the case of pangolin conservation advocacy, in which specialist NGOs first raised issue salience and generalist NGOs followed. The findings suggest a division of labor among NGOs and challenge a conventional view that the power of NGOs is concentrated in a small number of prominent organizations.

Microsoft's Challenge to US Militarization of Cyberspace: A Lacanian Study of Norm Entrepreneurship

Abstract: Microsoft is making strategic attempts to change the US government's practices of exploiting technical vulnerabilities in Microsoft software for military and intelligence purposes. So far, these efforts have not borne fruit. Microsoft's strategy has much in common with one of the most common strategies proposed by the International Relations literature on norm entrepreneurship in terms of exposing the contradictions between the government's ideals and practices. The article contributes to this literature by examining Microsoft's strategy through Lacanian psychoanalysis and suggests that it fails to work as intended, not because the US public or those in government remains unaware of the contradictions, but because the strategy is unable to address the existing desire to transgress the cyber ideals. Lacan's formula for transformation, the Analyst Discourse, provides an alternative framework for examining norm entrepreneurial potential in light of such transgressions. It proposes that the entrepreneur must occupy a position as the (psycho)analyst who hystericizes the norm violator. The article revisits Microsoft's attempt to halt the militarization of cyberspace and argues that the proposal of becoming a “Cyber Red Cross” holds a potential to hystericize but cannot succeed as long as Microsoft refuses to repress its status as a profitable cyber expert.

Racial Discrimination in International Visa Policies

Abstract: Abstract Does racial discrimination persist in global mobility rights? While many states explicitly discriminated based on race far into the twentieth century, contemporary migration policymaking is now putatively objective. The rise of white supremacist violence against all varieties of migrants, politician statements, and public support for restrictive policies calls this supposed color blindness into question. However, existing work is not discerning because most policies appear objective. In this article, I use new data on bilateral visa waiver policies from 1973 to 2013 to show that racial difference predicts whether a country receives a visa waiver, even after accounting for its economic, political, and security context. This conditional racial discrimination has worsened since 9/11. In so doing, I provide evidence of systematic racial discrimination in international visa policymaking. The results have important implications for the study of racial inequality in the international system.

Philanthropic Foundations and Transnational Activist Networks: Ford and the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights

Abstract: Foundations provide key funds for nongovernmental organizations. We know little about what they do for transnational activism or the mechanisms via which they seek/achieve influence. We carve a middle ground between those who see donors as supporting actors in transnational advocacy networks (TANs) and those who think they distort activism through impersonal market forces. Our negotiation-oriented approach looks at the micro-dynamics of donor–grantee relations. We argue that influence is a function of donors’ organizational characteristics. Only some, especially foundations, have the vision/means to shape grantees. However, internal complexity can cause coordination problems, complicating influence. Additionally, if many donors exist, recipients’ leverage increases. It does so too if their expertise is in short supply. Using archival evidence, we reconstruct how Ford tried to shape the Inter-American Human Rights Institute, a pillar of the region's human rights regime, and the factors conditioning success. For Ford, the Institute could play a role in a fledging TAN, but only if it downplayed its emphasis on research and directly engaged activists. Coupled with analyses of USAID’s relationship with the Institute and Ford's relationship with Americas Watch, we shed light on the activities of an important class of donor and illuminate foundations’ role in the development of TANs.

One Step Forward, One Step Back: The Micro-Level Impacts of Conflict on Women's Security

Abstract: Despite conflict's violent and deleterious impacts, scholarship increasingly demonstrates that women's political rights at the macro-level increase after conflict. However, relatively less is understood about how conflict impacts women's security at the micro-level, especially regarding how it impacts men's and women's attitudes toward intimate partner violence. While conflict can challenge traditional gender roles that justify wife beating, it also promotes hypermasculinity, normalizes violence, and leads to backlash against women in an attempt to re-establish traditional gender hierarchies. International actors, particularly through aid, moderate the impact of conflict on attitudes toward wife beating by encouraging progressive gender roles and increasing socio-economic development. Using Demographic Health Survey data in Uganda, this analysis compares the influence of conflict and international aid at the microlevel on approval of wife beating. The results demonstrate that women exposed to both conflict and aid are relatively less likely to approve of wife beating relative to women exposed to conflict alone. In contrast, men exposed to violence and aid do not alter their justification of wife beating. This study clarifies how conflict impacts attitudes toward women's rights at the microlevel.

Is the Bad News about Compliance Bad News about Human Rights? Evidence from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights

Abstract: How do authoritative international bodies decide that states have complied with their orders? Compliance research has mostly focused on how states react to rulings and how interest groups mobilize for and against compliance. Less has been said about how international bodies certify compliance with their orders in contexts of conflicting interests and incomplete information. Because in theory the seal of compliance could be given to different types and volumes of state actions, we argue that when nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) monitor implementation closely, international adjudicators will be more demanding in compliance certification, resulting in more protracted compliance monitoring processes. We test our expectations in the case of the Inter- American Commission of Human Rights and find that recommendations take longer to reach status of full compliance when more NGOs act as petitioners and when they have more experience with monitoring compliance. If NGOs help that more effective implementation receives an international organization's seal of approval, large numbers of orders without full compliance might not necessarily be bad news about human rights on the ground.

Beyond State and Hegemony: International Orders as Anarchic Meta-Fields

Abstract: This paper extends a Bourdieusian practice-based approach to a novel understanding of international orders as “Anarchic Meta-Fields” (AMFs). It first explores the metatheoretical advantages inherent in Field Theory's expansion toward questions of order, considering the position of Bourdieu at the intersection of Weberian, Durkheimian, and Marxist social theory. It then increases the analytical breadth of preceding “imperial” and “hegemonic” applications of Bourdieu's framework through two disaggregations—of order and realist notions of hegemony, and realist and neo-Gramscian forms of the same. In a first, Hobbesian turn, the international social space is subsequently conceptualized as an “AMF” created by outward rather than inward projections of power and practice by state nobilities; variations within this global AMF are identified as “subfields”. The openness of Bourdieu's framework is then argued to allow for the widest range of international orders based on specific configurations of multidimensionally defined capital, and varying forms of doxic practice. The framework is illustrated through an application to the Cold War order as a composite social space, consisting of the global AMF itself, and four distinct, yet heteronomous subfields. The paper concludes with a proposed conceptual and empirical research agenda.

Do Different Coercive Strategies Help or Hurt Deterrence?

Abstract: Abstract Powerful states build different coercive tools to manage their broad foreign policy agenda. Do different coercive strategies help or hurt deterrence success? I analyze a simple crisis model where the Defender seeks to deter a Challenger from investing in a novel coercive technology through hassling and preventive threats. Subtle differences between my model and those of Schram, Bas and Coe, and others generate different logics that clarify the Defender’s costs and benefits for building diverse coercive tools. Unlike others, I show that hassling can complement and undercut the threat of war in a one-shot, complete information crisis. I show that adverse effects arise when we want deterrence to hold the most: against technologically sophisticated rivals with moderately to severely opposed preferences. After I detail my model, I connect different core specifications to different empirical domains. This exercise helps connect formal theory to empirical research. I argue that my model best fits Defenders who want to deter Challengers from building novel coercive technologies in the modern era. I propose a novel approach for modeling policy implications.

Thinking Outside of the Box: Transnational Terrorism in Civil Wars

Abstract: Scholars have written on the extensive risks that transnational terrorism entails for militant groups that perpetrate such attacks. However, despite these risks, transnational terrorism has become an increasingly common feature of civil wars. This raises the question: Why do rebel groups launch terrorist attacks outside of the countries they are fighting civil wars in? I argue that weaker rebel groups are more inclined to turn to such tactics because they are desperate, and as a result, are more willing to make the gamble to signal their resolve, impose costs on their enemies, avoid direct military confrontation with domestic security forces, and generate external support. Using data on the transnational terrorist attack patterns of all rebel group–government dyads present in the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) Dyadic Dataset from 1970 to 2013, I find that conventionally weak rebel groups are more likely to rely on transnational terrorism.

Strategic Ontologies: Narrative and Meso-Level Theorizing in International Politics

Abstract: This paper offers a theory of incremental theoretical evolution connecting the practice of international politics with disciplinary IR. It theorizes how international political actors engaged in strategic local decision-making exert productive power over dominant scientific ontologies of the international system. We refer to the narratives emerging from these processes as strategic ontologies, defined as gradual reformulations of the subjects, objects, and relational logics of the international system according to positionally determined priorities. As strategic ontologies gain acceptance, their innovations endure beyond the context of their utterance, leading to meso-level theoretical evolution. We substantiate this account with comparative case studies of contested strategic ontologies that have yet to become dominant in either the international arena or IR theory. Without strategic ontology as an analytical lens, scholarship might miss embryonic theoretical innovations in the process of gaining traction. First, we examine how Israel and West Germany engaged in strategic ontological contestation when negotiating a reparations agreement following the Holocaust. Second, we analyze how states have used vulnerability in climate negotiations in 2020–2021 to recast global policy priorities. Recognition of strategic ontologies across contexts illuminates theoretical innovations in real-time and opens a path for dynamic new bridges between the academy and policymaking.

Historical Claims to the International: The Case of the Suez Canal Experts

Abstract: What IR scholars refer to as “the international” gets constructed and performed to specific ends, depending on time and place. This results in a plurality of claims to the international, subject to historical variation. To bring such variation into view, this article shows how nineteenth-century claims to internationality were tied to particular conceptions of legitimacy. The article explores this legitimation-by-experts through a case study of the 1855–56 Suez Canal Commission. Based on original archival research, the article shows that expert advice played an important role in claiming the internationality of the Suez Canal by limiting contestation to technical aspects. The central argument is that expertise and claims to the international can get co-constituted in arrangements that are intended to produce legitimacy. These arrangements narrow the terms of contestation in self-serving ways. A technocratic claim to the international was tightly linked to the mobilization and making of the Suez Canal experts, on two fronts. One, expertise and internationality were repeatedly articulated in conjunction, so they would signify each other. Two, the article shows that expert involvement was driven by legitimation concerns more than by epistemic optimization purposes. In sum, the article proposes a new way of historicizing internationality claims and sheds light on the distinctiveness of international expertise.

Aiding War: Foreign Aid and the Intensity of Violent Armed Conflict

Abstract: Does foreign aid reduce violence during ongoing wars? In the policy community, there has been growing optimism about the prospect for aid to improve conflict-affected and fragile areas. We investigate whether foreign aid decreases, or even increases, violence during ongoing armed conflict. We advance a theoretical argument that concentrated foreign assistance allocated during ongoing armed conflicts increases military fatalities but decreases civilian fatalities. Using geographically coded data on all sub-Saharan African countries in conflict between 1989 and 2008, within a matching frontier design and supplemented by instrumental variable analysis, we find strong substantive and statistical support for our expectations about military conflict intensity though less support for the expectations about civilian fatalities. The paper provides novel insights about the effects of concentrated aid on military versus civilian conflict intensity, characterizes the effects at a sub-national level, and expands the spatial-temporal period of the analysis. We also probe the plausibility of the causal mechanism using interview evidence drawn from ex-commanders of the Lord’s Resistance Army and generals of the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces in northern Uganda. The paper offers both academic and policy insights, including that foreign aid allocated during ongoing wars may be more problematic than it is helpful.

Authoritarian Propaganda Campaigns on Foreign Affairs: Four Birds, One Stone, and the South China Sea Arbitration

Abstract: Why do authoritarian states sometimes play up dangerous international crises and embarrassing diplomatic incidents in domestic propaganda? Is it to mobilize, threaten, divert, or pacify? Recent studies in comparative politics have focused on regime legitimacy and stability as key drivers of authoritarian propaganda practices, leaving aside other possible motivations such as mobilization of the regime’s domestic allies or strategic signaling aimed at foreign audiences. Foreign policy analysts, meanwhile, have emphasized international dimensions of the propaganda behavior of China—the contemporary world’s most powerful and technologically sophisticated authoritarian state—but have often mistakenly framed complementary theories as competing alternative explanations. This article argues that once the multiple domestic and international audiences for authoritarian propaganda are brought into view, many supposedly competing explanations turn out to be logically compatible and, in many cases, mutually reinforcing. We identify four sets of explanations—mobilization, signaling, diversion, and pacification—first showing how they fit together logically, before illustrating their convergence in the PRC’s otherwise puzzling high-intensity propaganda campaign in 2016 over the Philippines vs. China arbitration on the South China Sea.

Punching before the Bell Rings: United Nations Signaling and Pre-Deployment Violence in Civil Wars

Abstract: In the post-Cold War era, United Nations (UN) peacekeeping has been an effective civil conflict mitigation tool. On the path to peacekeeping, the UN Security Council often signals its growing likelihood to deploy an operation by passing resolutions addressing the conflict. How do these signals affect violence levels in a pre-operation environment? We posit that conflict actors have incentives to improve their relative positions through violence as the UN signals its likelihood to intervene. Using a new dataset that links UNSC resolutions to active civil wars from 1989 to 2014, we find that resolution passage is significantly related to an increase in combatant use of anti-civilian violence. Additionally, as the signal strengthens with the passage of a greater number of resolutions, violence increases. Thus, although deployed peacekeeping operations may effectively protect non-combatants, the process leading to deployment can produce a dangerous environment for civilians.

Crisis Bargaining in the Shadow of Third-Party Opportunism

Abstract: Abstract The prospect of a rival opportunistically pressing for gains while one is at war with another rival highly influenced Britain's “two-power standard” as well as the US's “two-war standard.” Conflict scholars have documented numerous instances of third-party opportunism. I analyze a game-theoretic model of crisis bargaining in the shadow of third-party opportunism. Under complete information, a country with multiple rivals, that lacks overwhelming military power, incurs bargaining vulnerabilities with each rival due to potential opportunism by the others. Under incomplete information, uncertainty across dyads can lead to war even if there is complete information within dyads, adding more uncertainty to the interaction can actually reduce the likelihood of war, resolve across disputes can be endogenously correlated in equilibrium (in contrast to the exogenous assumption of reputational models), and a commitment problem can be conducive to peace rather than war.

Fed Up: The Global Ascension of the Federal Reserve in the Era of Migration

Abstract: In recent decades, the Federal Reserve has emerged as a global lender of last resort. In this article, we investigate whether the prospect of unwanted migration has driven lawmakers’ support for the Fed's increased international role. During an economic crisis, declines in investor confidence and capital flight to developed economies often cause economic hardship in the developing world, thus encouraging increased migration into advanced industrial economies. Concerned about voter opposition to increased immigration, immigration-averse policymakers of migrant-receiving states will seek ways to reduce the economic distress of migrant-sending states. To corroborate our argument, we analyze congressional voting on the “Audit the Fed” bills in the US House of Representatives from 2012 to 2015. Using the district-level foreign-born population as an indicator of migration pressure, our evidence suggests that anti-immigrant lawmakers are more likely to support the Federal Reserve's international initiatives when their districts face a disproportionately high level of migrant pressure.

When to Go? A Conjoint Experiment on Social Networks, Violence, and Forced Migration Decisions in Eastern and Southeastern Turkey

Abstract: How do heterogeneous patterns of violence affect people's decision to flee? We provide individual-level evidence on flight decision-making in light of violence with a conjoint experiment in Turkey. The results suggest that intense indiscriminate violence nearby forces individuals into the decision to leave. In contrast to previous studies, we find that the fear of repeated violence plays a more important role in flight decision-making than the attack frequency. The survey experiment reveals that violence committed by the government makes a decision to flee abroad more likely than rebel violence. We find that individuals with support networks abroad are less responsive to patterns of violence, making flight decisions more independently and being generally more inclined to move. Our findings contribute to the growing literature on forced migration with individual-level evidence on the decision-making process underlying flight reactions to violence.

Rebel Governance of Marriage and Sexuality: An Intersectional Approach

Abstract: Extant research links forced marriage and sexual violence in rebel groups with their respective political projects, social control, and group cohesion. However, forced marriage and sexual violence are rare in many rebel groups, including the Maoists in Nepal who claimed to have a “progressive,” “scientific,” and “modern” framework for governing marriage and sexuality. In the light of this puzzle, I ask, what does a noncoercive/nonviolent rebel governance of marriage and sexuality mean for a rebel group's political project of social control and power? What is the gendered impact of such governance? Importantly, how does it impact female combatants at the intersection of multiple oppressions? Using abductive analysis of extensive interviews with female ex-combatants and their leaders, I build a theoretical explanation about the noncoercive/nonviolent governance of marriage and sexuality that is not just linked to the formation, consolidation, and legitimation of political agendas, but also enabled social control and political power for the Maoists. However, this further marginalized those female combatants who were already disadvantaged. I employ a feminist intersectional framework while critically reflecting on my own positionality. The implications of these findings extend beyond Nepal, illuminating dynamics of rebel governance and the complexity of war and postwar social organization.

The Problem with Trade Measurement in International Relations

Abstract: Trade statistics are widely used in studies and policymaking focused on economic interdependence. Yet, researchers in International Relations (IR) have largely disregarded half the data available to study trade. Bilateral trade flows are usually recorded twice: by the sending economy as an export and by the receiving one as an import. These two values should match, but discrepancies between them tend to be large and pervasive. Most studies ignore this issue, which we label the “mirror problem” for short, by using only one entry. However, it is not self-evident which one is consistently most accurate. Hence, IR's reliance on error-prone trade statistics may be distorting its study of economic interdependence. This article explores this problem in three steps: first, we quantify the mirror problem in trade data. Second, we investigate the origins of the mirror problem, using statistical analyses, archival records, and interviews with statistical experts. Third, we illustrate the implications of the mirror problem through replications covering diverse topics in IR. We find that accounting for the mirror problem can variably strengthen, undermine, or overturn conclusions of such analyses. The findings underscore the severity of measurement problems in IR and suggest particular ways to address those problems.

When are International Organizations Responsive to Policy Problems?

Abstract: When are international organizations (IOs) responsive to the policy problems that motivated their establishment? While it is a conventional assumption that IOs exist to address transnational challenges, the question of whether and when IO policy-making is responsive to shifts in underlying problems has not been systematically explored. This study investigates the responsiveness of IOs from a large-n, comparative approach. Theoretically, we develop three alternative models of IO responsiveness, emphasizing severeness, dependence, and power differentials. Empirically, we focus on the domain of security, examining the responsiveness of eight multi-issue IOs to armed conflict between 1980 and 2015, using a novel and expansive dataset on IO policy decisions. Our findings suggest, first, that IOs are responsive to security problems and, second, that responsiveness is not primarily driven by dependence or power differentials but by problem severity. An in-depth study of the responsiveness of the UN Security Council using more granular data confirms these findings. As the first comparative study of whether and when IO policy adapts to problem severity, the article has implications for debates about IO responsiveness, performance, and legitimacy.