Conflicts of Interest
Elite Competition, Religiosity, and Anti-Americanism in the Islamic World
Lisa Blaydes & Drew Linzer
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract: The battle for public opinion in the Islamic world is an ongoing priority for U.S. diplomacy. The current debate over why many Muslims hold anti-American views revolves around whether they dislike fundamental aspects of American culture and government, or what Americans do in international affairs. We argue, instead, that Muslim anti-Americanism is predominantly a domestic, elite-led phenomenon that intensifies when there is greater competition between Islamist and secular-nationalist political factions within a country. Although more observant Muslims tend to be more anti-American, paradoxically the most anti-American countries are those in which Muslim populations are less religious overall, and thus more divided on the religious-secular issue dimension. We provide case study evidence consistent with this explanation, as well as a multilevel statistical analysis of public opinion data from nearly 13,000 Muslim respondents in 21 countries.
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Examining the Terror Exception: Terrorism and Commitments to Civil Liberties
Jeffery Mondak & Jon Hurwitz
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract: Faced with the threat of terrorism, many Americans have supported policies aimed at promoting security even when those policies possibly infringe upon civil liberties. To what extent does this policy support constitute a "terror exception" made by citizens who would otherwise seek the preservation of those liberties, and to what extent does it represent a more general rejection of constitutional principles? In order to address this question, attitudes regarding anti-terror policies must be viewed in a broader context. Toward this end, we examine data from a split-ballot experiment included as part of the 2006-2007 Congressional Elections Study. Respondents were asked policy items focused on either terrorism or serious crime. We find that respondents are almost as willing to sacrifice civil liberties to fight crime as to fight terrorism, and that attitudes regarding terrorism and crime policy exhibit considerable structural similarity. These findings cast doubt on the civil libertarian convictions of Americans even outside of the realm of anti-terror policy.
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Social Media and the Decision to Participate in Political Protest: Observations From Tahrir Square
Zeynep Tufekci & Christopher Wilson
Journal of Communication, April 2012, Pages 363-379
Abstract: Based on a survey of participants in Egypt's Tahrir Square protests, we demonstrate that social media in general, and Facebook in particular, provided new sources of information the regime could not easily control and were crucial in shaping how citizens made individual decisions about participating in protests, the logistics of protest, and the likelihood of success. We demonstrate that people learned about the protests primarily through interpersonal communication using Facebook, phone contact, or face-to-face conversation. Controlling for other factors, social media use greatly increased the odds that a respondent attended protests on the first day. Half of those surveyed produced and disseminated visuals from the demonstrations, mainly through Facebook.
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Victim Countries of Transnational Terrorism: An Empirical Characteristics Analysis
Levan Elbakidze & Yanhong Jin
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract: This study empirically investigates the association between country-level socioeconomic characteristics and risk of being victimized in transnational terrorism events. We find that a country's annual financial contribution to the U.N. general operating budget has a positive association with the frequency of being victimized in transnational terrorism events. In addition, per capita GDP, political freedom, and openness to trade are nonlinearly related to the frequency of being victimized in transnational terrorism events.
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Republican Elites and Foreign Policy Attitudes
Joshua Busby & Jonathan Monten
Political Science Quarterly, Spring 2012, Pages 105-142
Abstract: Joshua W. Busby and Jonathan Monten analyze opinion polls, focusing on the degree of congruence between Republican elites and the general public on foreign policy. They find Republican elites to be consistently more internationalist than the public on most dimensions.
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Cyberwar: A New ‘Absolute Weapon'? The Proliferation of Cyberwarfare Capabilities and Interstate War
Adam Liff
Journal of Strategic Studies, forthcoming
Abstract: This article examines the implications of the proliferation of cyberwarfare capabilities for the character and frequency of war. Consideration of strategic logic, perceptions, and bargaining dynamics finds that the size of the effect of the proliferation of cyberwarfare capabilities on the frequency of war will probably be relatively small. This effect will not be constant across all situations; in some cases the advent of cyberwarfare capabilities may decrease the likelihood of war. On the other hand, the use of computer network attack as a brute force weapon will probably become increasingly frequent.
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The Paradox of Revenge in Conflicts
Atsu Amegashie & Marco Runkel
Journal of Conflict Resolution, forthcoming
Abstract: The authors consider a two-period game of conflict between two factions, which have a desire for revenge. It is shown that, in contrast to conventional wisdom, the desire for revenge need not lead to escalation of the conflict. The subgame-perfect equilibrium is characterized by two effects: a value of revenge effect (i.e., the benefit of exacting revenge) and a self-deterrence effect (i.e., the fear of an opponent's desire to exact revenge). The authors construct examples where the equilibrium is such that the self-deterrence effect paradoxically outweighs the value effect and thereby decreases the factions' aggregate effort below the level exerted in the no-revenge case. This paradox of revenge is more likely, the more elastically the benefit of revenge reacts to the destruction suffered in the past and the more asymmetric is the conflict. The authors discuss the implications of revenge-dependent preferences for welfare economics, evolutionary stability, and their strategic value as commitment devices.
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The Nonlinear Relationship between Terrorism and Poverty
Walter Enders & Gary Hoover
American Economic Review, May 2012, Pages 267-272
Abstract: In spite of the common wisdom that poverty breeds terrorism, econometric tests usually find that terrorism is influenced by population and various measures of democratic freedom, but not per capita GDP. Unlike previous studies, we use a data set containing separate measures of domestic and transnational terrorism and estimate models allowing for a nonlinear relationship between terrorism and poverty. When we account for the nonlinearities in the data and distinguish between the two types of terrorist events, we find that poverty has as a very strong influence on domestic terrorism and a small, but significant, effect on transnational terrorism.
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Strongmen and Straw Men: Authoritarian Regimes and the Initiation of International Conflict
Jessica Weeks
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract: How do domestic institutions affect autocratic leaders' decisions to initiate military conflicts? Contrary to the conventional wisdom, I argue that institutions in some kinds of dictatorships allow regime insiders to hold leaders accountable for their foreign policy decisions. However, the preferences and perceptions of these autocratic domestic audiences vary, with domestic audiences in civilian regimes being more skeptical of using military force than the military officers who form the core constituency in military juntas. In personalist regimes in which there is no effective domestic audience, no predictable mechanism exists for restraining or removing overly belligerent leaders, and leaders tend to be selected for personal characteristics that make them more likely to use military force. I combine these arguments to generate a series of hypotheses about the conflict behavior of autocracies and test the hypotheses using new measures of authoritarian regime type. The findings indicate that, despite the conventional focus on differences between democracies and nondemocracies, substantial variation in conflict initiation occurs among authoritarian regimes. Moreover, civilian regimes with powerful elite audiences are no more belligerent overall than democracies. The result is a deeper understanding of the conflict behavior of autocracies, with important implications for scholars as well as policy makers.
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Common Drivers of Transnational Terrorism: Principal Component Analysis
Gaibulloev Khusrav, Sandler Todd & Sul Donggyu
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract: This article applies principal component analysis to decompose transnational terrorism during 1970-2007 into common (worldwide) and idiosyncratic (country-specific) factors. Regardless of alternative thresholds and filtering procedures, a single common factor is related to individual countries' transnational terrorist events. Based on a conventional criterion, Lebanon's transnational terrorism is the key common driver of global transnational terrorist incidents. With a more conservative criterion, four additional countries - United States, Germany, Iraq, and the United Kingdom - are core countries in explaining cross-sectional correlation across 106 countries' transnational terrorism. The analysis shows that there is a marked cross-sectional dependence among transnational terrorist incidents worldwide.
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Marianne Dahl & Bjørn Høyland
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract: In a widely cited study, Collier, Hoeffler & Söderbom show that economic growth reduces the risk of post-conflict peace collapse - particularly when the UN is present with a peace mission. These findings are encouraging for interventionist international policymakers. We replicate their study using data from the UCDP/PRIO Armed Conflict Database instead of the Correlates of War database. We generate a series of different datasets on the basis of different coding criteria commonly used in the literature, and rerun a simplified version of their model. Our results do not support their findings regarding the risk-reducing effect of economic growth and UN involvement. At best, the results are mixed. Some of the models even suggest that economic growth may increase the risk of post-conflict peace collapse. Overall, we are forced to conclude that the impacts of economic growth and UN involvement on the risk of post-conflict peace collapse are neither clear nor simple. The differences in the results seem to be driven by two sources: the conflicts included in the original datasets and the coding of the start and end dates of the conflicts.
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Redeeming Sunni Islam: Al-Qa‘ida's Polemic against the Muslim Brethren
Meir Hatina
British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Spring 2012, Pages 101-113
Abstract: The appearance of al-Qa‘ida at the beginning of the 1990s challenged the modern Islamic discourse by bringing the struggle against the ‘new Crusaders' - the United States and Europe - to centre stage. Impelled by frustration with the meagre record of Sunni radicalism in achieving substantive political change, and by its own aspiration for leadership, the organisation singled out the non-violent, influential Muslim Brethren as a main rival and a prime target for polemics. The formative basis for this polemic was provided by an essay written by Ayman al-Zawahiri, al-Hisad al-murr [The Bitter Harvest], around 1989. The essay, which has not been dealt with in the research literature until now, constitutes a biting attack against the Brethren. It undermines their historical legacy and goes so far as to shatter the image of their charismatic founder, Hasan al-Banna. More broadly, al-Zawahiri's essay reveals the close affinity between historical memory and politics, and illuminates the clash within modern Islam.
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Interest groups in Russian foreign policy: The invisible hand of the Russian Orthodox Church
Nikita Lomagin
International Politics, forthcoming
Abstract: Among the domestic interest groups that play a role in influencing Russian foreign policy the Russian Orthodox Church has become an important actor. Its most important role has been that of supporting the emergence of a new nationalist Russian identity to undergird Russian policy. On specific policy issues, it has advocated the political reunification of Eastern Slavic Orthodox peoples, the emergence of a multipolar international system and the restatement of traditional values as the foundation for the pursuit of global human rights.
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J'accuse! Does Naming and Shaming Perpetrators Reduce the Severity of Genocides or Politicides?
Matthew Krain
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract: This study tests the effectiveness of naming and shaming by transnational advocacy networks in reducing the severity of ongoing instances of genocide or politicide. I argue that naming and shaming should force perpetrators to reduce the severity of these ongoing atrocities in order to shift the spotlight, save their reputation, reframe their identity, maintain international legitimacy and domestic viability, and ease pressure placed on them by states or IOs. I test whether naming and shaming by NGOs, the media, and IOs significantly reduces the severity of the killing. Ordered logit analyses of ongoing genocides and politicides from 1976 to 2008 reveal that naming and shaming by Amnesty International, the Northern media, and the UNCHR have significant ameliorative effects on the severity of the most extreme atrocities. Transnational advocacy networks have the potential, through naming and shaming, to lead to life-saving changes in these murderous policies.
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Bringing the Media in: Newspaper Readership and Human Rights
Rob Clark
Sociological Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract: Cross-national studies examining human rights outcomes have seldom considered the role of the news media. This is unfortunate, as a large body of work in media studies suggests that the news industry effectively educates citizens, shapes public attitudes, and stimulates political action. I juxtapose these two literatures in a cross-national context to examine the print media's impact on a state's human rights performance. First, examining micro-level evidence from the World Values Survey, I show that an individual's level of media consumption, including newspaper readership, is positively associated with participation in human rights organizations. Next, I present macro-level evidence regarding the aggregate effect of a society's newspaper readership on its human rights record. Analyzing an unbalanced dataset with a maximum of 459 observations across 138 countries covering four waves during the 1980-2000 period, I use ordered probit regression to examine the relationship between a state's newspaper readership and its Amnesty International rating. I find that newspaper readership exerts strong, positive effects on a state's human rights practices net of other standard predictors and temporal/regional controls. Moreover, the effect of readership is robust to a number of alternative specifications that address concerns with ceiling effects, measurement bias, influential observations, sample composition, mediation, endogeneity, and the impact of alternative forms of media consumption (i.e., the Internet and television).
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Catie Snow Bailard
Journal of Communication, April 2012, Pages 330-344
Abstract: This study contributes to the research on the Internet's effect on political behavior and organization by examining how the Internet influences the types of evaluations that may motivate individuals to organize politically. This study employs a randomized field experiment to determine whether the Internet influenced individuals' perception of the fairness of the 2010 Tanzanian presidential election. It provides a direct causal test of the Internet's effect on political evaluations, and the findings reveal that the Internet negatively influenced individuals' perception of the fairness of the election and recount. However, the findings also reveal that the impact of the Internet on political life may not always enrich democratic values. In this case, more critical Internet users also became less likely to vote.
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Matthew Powers & Seung-Whan Choi
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract: Although several existing studies examine the economic impact of transnational terrorism by referring to its potential to reduce foreign direct investment (FDI), they overlook possible differences in the effects of business-related and non-business-related terrorism. We argue that the former type of terror negatively affects FDI since it damages multinationals' buildings, destroys their products, kills their employees, and causes a rise in insurance premiums. The latter type of terror, however, does not induce the same ramifications and should thus have little or less influence on a country's FDI. In order to examine the effects of these two different types of transnational terrorism, we employ three different statistical techniques using data gleaned from the International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE) dataset. A cross-sectional, time-series data analysis of 123 developing countries during the period from 1980 to 2008 reveals that transnational terrorism that harms multinational businesses contributes to a decrease of foreign investment but transnational terrorism that afflicts non-business-related targets is statistically irrelevant. This implies that when countries implement counterterrorism measures that are directly intended to mitigate the impact of business-related terrorist activities, they are likely to attract more foreign capital and should therefore realize a greater degree of economic development.
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Authoritarian Responses to Foreign Pressure: Spending, Repression, and Sanctions
Abel Escribà-Folch
Comparative Political Studies, June 2012, Pages 683-713
Abstract: This article explores how international sanctions affect authoritarian rulers' decisions concerning repression and public spending composition. Rulers whose budgets are not severely constrained by sanctions will tend to increase spending in those categories that most benefit their core support groups. When budget constraints are severe, dictators are more likely to increase repression. Using data on regime types, public expenditures and spending composition (1970-2000) as well as on repression levels (1976-2001), I show that the empirical patterns conform well to the theoretical expectations. Single-party regimes, when targeted by sanctions, increase spending on subsidies and transfers which largely benefit their key constituencies. Likewise, military regimes increase their expenditures on goods and services, which include military equipment and soldiers' and officers' wages. Conversely, personalist regimes targeted by sanctions reduce spending in all categories and thus increase repression more than other autocracies.
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Matthew Moore
International Interactions, Summer 2012, Pages 325-347
Abstract: Civil wars are primarily fought with small and light arms, but the availability of major conventional weapons to states and rebels can alter the nature of the war being fought. This study explores the impact of major conventional weapons transfers on civil war severity and duration. By using a recipient based approach to arms transfers, I find rebel acquisition of major conventional weapons from international sources leads to conflict escalation and deadlier conflicts. State importation of major conventional weapons is associated with longer conflicts. These findings provide researchers a means to account for rebel capabilities in civil war research and policy makers insight to limit the destructiveness of civil wars.
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Triadic Deterrence: Coercing Strength, Beaten by Weakness
Boaz Atzili & Wendy Pearlman
Security Studies, Spring 2012, Pages 301-335
Abstract: Triadic deterrence is the situation when one state uses threats and/or punishments against another state to coerce it to prevent non-state actors from conducting attacks from its territory. Under what conditions is triadic deterrence successful? Some attribute outcomes to the balance of power between states. By contrast, we argue that the complex asymmetrical structure of this conflict requires attention to the targeted regime's relationship to its own society. The stronger the targeted regime, the more likely deterrent action will prove effective. Moving against non-state actors requires institutional capacity, domestic legitimacy, and territorial control, which only strong regimes are able to furnish. Whereas strong regimes can act to uphold raison d'état, weak regimes lack the political tools and incentives to undertake controversial decisions and enforce them. We illustrate this argument through analysis of between- and within-case variation in Israel's attempts to deter Palestinian groups operating from Egypt between 1949 and 1979, and from Syria since 1963.
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It's the weather, stupid! Individual participation in collective May Day demonstrations
Peter Kurrild-Klitgaard
Public Choice, forthcoming
Abstract: We investigate the possible explanations for variations in aggregate levels of participation in large-scale political demonstrations. A simple public choice inspired model is applied to data derived from the annual May Day demonstrations of the Danish labor movement and socialist parties taking place in Copenhagen in the period 1980-2011. The most important explanatory variables are variations in the weather conditions and consumer confidence, while political and socio-economic conditions exhibit no robust effects. As such accidental or non-political factors may be much more important for collective political action than usually acknowledged and possibly make changes in aggregate levels of political support seem erratic and unpredictable.
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A Competing Risks Model of War Termination and Leader Change
Alejandro Quiroz Flores
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract: Recent research suggesting that leader transitions increase the probability of war termination is based on the assumption that leader change is exogenous. However, the exogeneity of leader change needs to be tested, not assumed. This paper uses a bivariate discrete survival model to test the exogeneity of leader change and correctly estimate its partial effect on war termination. The paper extends the analysis by estimating a competing risks model of types of leader transitions. The evidence shows that leader change in large coalition systems never increases the probability of war termination, while leader change in small coalition systems never reduces the probability of war termination. In short, leader transitions in autocratic systems are more likely to bring interstate war to an end than leader transitions in democratic ones. The study also shows that the marginal effect of leader change fades away as the war progresses, and that war has negative duration-dependence.