Prepping
Do the Best and Brightest West Point Officers Stay in or Leave the Army?
Everett Spain, Eric Lin & Andrew Farina
Armed Forces & Society, forthcoming
Abstract:
Studying archival data from 16 West Point cohorts (classes of 1992-2007, N = 13,309), this article operationalizes the concept of "best and brightest" and then investigates whether the best and brightest West Point cadets depart the Army at a higher rate than their average-performing peers. A combination of multi-variable regression and survival analysis indicates that the best and brightest West Pointers are as likely to stay in the Army past year 6 (to serve as a company commander) and are more likely to stay in the Army past year 10 (to serve as a field grade officer) as compared with their average- and lower-performing peers. In addition, among the best and brightest West Pointers, both female and minority officers are as likely to stay in the Army past year 6 as their male and Caucasian officer peers, respectively, although minority officers are much less likely to stay past year 10 than their Caucasian male peers.
The Topography of Nations
Treb Allen
NBER Working Paper, October 2023
Abstract:
How does the interplay of geography and political-economic forces affect the shape of nations? This paper presents a quantitative framework for characterizing the equilibrium evolution of national boundaries in a world with a rich geography. The framework delivers simple equilibrium conditions based on the efficient transportation of resources that arise from disparate political economic micro-foundations. I characterize the existence, uniqueness, and efficiency of the equilibrium and provide a simple algorithm for its calculation. When combined with detailed spatial geography data from Europe, the equilibrium conditions well approximate observed borders, and the framework is able to successfully predict the evolution of national boundaries and resulting conflict over the past millennia. Finally, I apply the framework to ask how the changing spatial distribution of resources arising from climate change may alter European borders in the future, finding that the Crimean peninsula and surrounding area is especially susceptible.
The Lion's Share: Evidence from Federal Contracts on the Value of Political Connections
Şenay Ağca & Deniz Igan
Journal of Law and Economics, August 2023, Pages 609-638
Abstract:
We examine the role of political connections in receiving federal funds during an unexpected surge in government defense spending. While the data do not allow identification of a causal link, the analysis shows that politically connected firms were awarded larger amounts in federal contracts when available funds increased. Defense contracts awarded to firms that lobbied were around one-third higher than contracts awarded to firms that did not lobby. Similar evidence holds for campaign contributions and board connections. The increase in the contract amount is observed primarily for firms with limited ability to efficiently support the Pentagon's efforts and when contracts received less scrutiny. Between political connections and merit as potential channels to affect government contracting, the results mainly, but not exclusively, support the first channel.
Leader age and international conflict: A regression discontinuity analysis
Andrew Bertoli, Allan Dafoe & Robert Trager
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does leader age matter for the likelihood of interstate conflict? Many studies in biology, psychology, and physiology have found that aggression tends to decline with age throughout the adult lifespan, particularly in males. Moreover, a number of major international conflicts have been attributed to young leaders, including the conquests of Alexander the Great and the ambitious military campaigns of Napoleon. However, the exact nature of the relationship between leader age and international conflict has been difficult to study because of the endogeneity problem. Leaders do not come to power randomly. Rather, many domestic and international factors influence who becomes the leader of a country, and some of these factors could correlate with the chances of interstate conflict. For instance, wary democratic publics might favor older leaders when future international conflict seems likely, inducing a relationship between older leaders and interstate conflict. This article overcomes such confounding by using a regression discontinuity design. Specifically, it looks at close elections of national leaders who had large differences in age. It finds that when older candidates barely defeated younger ones, countries were much less likely to engage in military conflict. Its sample is also fairly representative of democracies more broadly, meaning that the findings likely hold true for cases outside the sample. The results demonstrate the important role that individuals play in shaping world politics. They also illustrate the value of design-based inference for learning about important questions in the study of international relations and peace science.
Move First to Avoid the Worst: Leadership Turnover and the Targeting of New Leaders
Chen Wang
International Studies Quarterly, December 2023
Abstract:
Are leaders more likely to face militarized challenges earlier in their tenure? Existing studies posit contradictory hypotheses: new leaders can both invite challengers to take advantage of their inexperience and deter challengers by their strong incentive to establish a reputation for resolve. This paper seeks to reconcile these competing propositions by developing an argument that centers on the direction of foreign policy preference change associated with leadership turnover. I argue that foreign adversaries are likely to challenge a new leader in their rival state only when the newcomer is perceived to be more hawkish than the predecessor. The perception of a heightened risk of conflict accompanied with the emergence of a more hawkish leader in the rival state gives foreign adversaries a stronger incentive to seek for an early confrontation in which they can (re)demonstrate their own position to the new hawk. In contrast, when the newcomer is perceived to be more dovish than the predecessor, optimistic expectations of future interactions tend to restrain foreign adversaries from provoking the new dove, whose reputation concerns are high. A series of statistical analyses on post-WWII dyadic rivalries with democratically elected leaders on the target side yield strong evidence that supports this conditional hypothesis.
Threats and the Public Constraint on Military Spending
Matthew DiGiuseppe, Alessia Aspide & Jordan Becker British
Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The public places an important constraint on funding security in Europe, and austerity risks making the constraint tighter. Several recent studies show that curtailing military spending is a popular way to reduce debt in Europe. Yet it remains unclear if military spending aversion persists when threats are salient. We fielded an original survey experiment in Italy weeks before the Russian invasion of Ukraine to examine how information about security threats influences military spending preferences and fiscal trade-offs. We found that information about threats increases support for military spending. To validate the survey experiment, we recontacted and remeasured our respondent's preferences three weeks after Russia's invasion and find evidence consistent with our initial experiment. Our findings suggest that, while public opposition to military spending remains high in Italy, external threats dampen the public's opposition to military spending, even under high debt burdens.
Terrified or Enraged? Emotional Microfoundations of Public Counterterror Attitudes
Carly Wayne
International Organization, Fall 2023, Pages 824-847
Abstract:
Despite the widespread assumption of terrorism's "terrifying" effect, there has been little systematic testing of the specific emotional microfoundations underlying public opinion about terrorism. While fear is one well-recognized emotional response to terror threats, in societies where terrorism is rare, anger may play a more pivotal role, with distinct consequences for citizens' downstream political attitudes. To test the impact of these emotional mechanisms on public opinion in the wake of terrorism, I employ a multi-arm mechanism experiment (n = 5,499) in the United States that manipulates both exposure to news about different types of terror attacks and the encouraged emotional response. I supplement this experimental study with observational analyses of the emotional content of social media posts in the wake of sixteen real-world terror attacks in the United States. I find that not only is anger the dominant emotional response to terrorism across both studies, but also that punitive motivations and support for retaliation are both directly shaped by experimentally induced anger after exposure to news about terrorism. These findings illuminate strategic incentives shaping militants' use of terror tactics, electoral constraints leaders face in formulating counterterror policy, and the emotional mechanisms fueling cycles of political violence.
Interactive Leader Psychology and the Ebb and Flow of Interstate Rivalry
Dennis Foster & Jonathan Keller
International Studies Quarterly, December 2023
Abstract:
A great deal of scholarship links leaders' psychological traits to their monadic tendency to use force abroad, but virtually no work considers how the interaction of leadership psychology influences the systematic likelihood of dyadic interstate conflict. We develop and test several competing explanations of how the interactive conceptual complexity of leaders -- a psychological trait that consistently predicts monadic conflict propensity -- might affect the ebb and flow of conflict within rivalries. Our time-series analyses of the US-Soviet Cold War rivalry, utilizing the leadership trait analysis coding scheme, demonstrate that, in accordance with the monadic logic, increases in the interactive conceptual simplicity between US presidents and Soviet premiers predict a significantly higher incidence of militarized interstate dispute initiation and a greater volume of conflictual dyadic (COPDAB, conflict and peace data bank) behavior. At the same time, however, the least conflict-prone pairing is one in which a conceptually complex leader interacts with a conceptually simplistic counterpart. This suggests that the presence of even one complex leader can increase empathy and diminish the aggressive misperception and retaliatory "downward spirals" that haunt rivalries.
Drafting the Great Army: The Political Economy of Conscription in Napoleonic France
Louis Rouanet & Ennio Piano
Journal of Economic History, December 2023, Pages 1057-1100
Abstract:
Napoléon Bonaparte revolutionized the practice of war with his reliance on a mass national army and large-scale conscription. This system faced one major obstacle: draft evasion. This article discusses Napoléon's response to widespread draft evasion. First, we show that draft dodging rates across France varied with geographic characteristics. Second, we provide evidence that the regime adopted a strategy of discriminatory conscription enforcement by setting a lower (higher) conscription rate for those regions where the enforcement of conscription was more (less) costly. Finally, we show that this strategy resulted in a rapid fall in draft dodging rates across France.