Forcing Change
Ideology and Global Conflicts: Revolutionary Actors and Their Opposition to Liberalism
Robert Snyder
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, forthcoming
Abstract:
The concept of the revisionist state has been central to IR, and the literature demonstrates that they initiate international conflicts. As a subset of the revisionist state, revolutionary states in particular have been shown to foment international conflicts. Moreover, ideology has come to explain international conflicts, especially the Second World War, Cold War, and "War on Terror." Nevertheless, the literature on revolutionary states discounts the role of ideology and that on ideology often discounts the role of revisionist or revolutionary states. This paper develops the concept of a distinct type of revisionist state -- the revolutionary actor -- that explains the outbreak of the Second World War, the Cold War, and War on Terror, three of the greatest global conflicts of the last century. It first develops a model of the revolutionary actor, linking the ideologies of Marxism-Leninism, Nazism, and jihadism that led to the Second World War, the Cold War, and War on Terror. It then offers a theory based on ideology as to why the revolutionary actors initiated these three global conflicts. Lastly, it offers a research design to test the theory and highlights the three cases with recent literature on them.
The Elite-Citizen Gap in International Organization Legitimacy
Lisa Dellmuth et al.
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars and policy makers debate whether elites and citizens hold different views of the legitimacy of international organizations (IOs). Until now, sparse data has limited our ability to establish such gaps and to formulate theories for explaining them. This article offers the first systematic comparative analysis of elite and citizen perceptions of the legitimacy of IOs. It examines legitimacy beliefs toward six key IOs, drawing on uniquely coordinated survey evidence from Brazil, Germany, the Philippines, Russia, and the United States. We find a notable elite-citizen gap for all six IOs, four of the five countries, and all of six different elite types. Developing an individual-level approach to legitimacy beliefs, we argue that this gap is driven by systematic differences between elites and citizens in characteristics that matter for attitudes toward IOs. Our findings suggest that deep-seated differences between elites and general publics may present major challenges for democratic and effective international cooperation.
How China Lends: A Rare Look into 100 Debt Contracts with Foreign Governments
Anna Gelpern et al.
Georgetown University Working Paper, May 2021
Abstract:
China is the world's largest official creditor, but basic facts are lacking about the terms and conditions of its lending. Very few contracts between Chinese lenders and their government borrowers have ever been published or studied. This paper is the first systematic analysis of the legal terms of China's foreign lending. The authors collect and analyze 100 contracts between Chinese state-owned entities and government borrowers in 24 developing countries in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Oceania, and compare them with those of other bilateral, multilateral, and commercial creditors. Three main insights emerge. First, the Chinese contracts contain unusual confidentiality clauses that bar borrowers from revealing the terms or even the existence of the debt. Second, Chinese lenders seek advantage over other creditors, using collateral arrangements such as lender-controlled revenue accounts and promises to keep the debt out of collective restructuring ("no Paris Club" clauses). Third, cancellation, acceleration, and stabilization clauses in Chinese contracts potentially allow the lenders to influence debtors' domestic and foreign policies. Even if these terms were unenforceable in court, the mix of confidentiality, seniority, and policy influence could limit the sovereign debtor's crisis management options and complicate debt renegotiation. Overall, the contracts use creative design to manage credit risks and overcome enforcement hurdles, presenting China as a muscular and commercially savvy lender to the developing world.
The Enemy of My Enemy Is Not My Friend: Arabic Twitter Sentiment toward ISIS and the United States
David Romney et al.
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
A counter-intuitive finding emerges from an analysis of Arabic Twitter posts from 2014 to 2015: Twitter participants who are negative toward the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) are also more likely to hold negative views of the United States. This surprising correlation is due to the interpretations of two sets of users. One set of users views the United States and ISIS negatively as independent interventionist powers in the region. The other set of users negatively links the United States with ISIS, often asserting a secretive conspiracy between the two. The intense negativity toward the United States in the Middle East seems conducive to views that, in one way or another, cause citizens to link the United States and ISIS in a conspiratorial manner.
Cosmopolitan morality trades off in-group for the world, separating benefits and protection
Xuechunzi Bai, Varun Gauri & Susan Fiske
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 5 October 2021
Abstract:
Global cooperation rests on popular endorsement of cosmopolitan values-putting all humanity equal to or ahead of conationals. Despite being comparative judgments that may trade off, even sacrifice, the in-group's interests for the rest of the world, moral cosmopolitanism finds support in large, nationally representative surveys from Spain, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, Japan, the United States, Colombia, and Guatemala. A series of studies probe this trading off of the in-group's interests against the world's interests. Respondents everywhere distinguish preventing harm to foreign citizens, which almost all support, from redistributing resources, which only about half support. These two dimensions of moral cosmopolitanism, equitable security (preventing harm) and equitable benefits (redistributing resources), predict attitudes toward contested international policies, actual charitable donations, and preferences for mask and vaccine allocations in the COVID-19 response. The dimensions do not reflect several demographic variables and only weakly reflect political ideology. Moral cosmopolitanism also differs from related psychological constructs such as group identity. Finally, to understand the underlying thought structures, natural language processing reveals cognitive associations underlying moral cosmopolitanism (e.g., world, both) versus the alternative, parochial moral mindset (e.g., USA, first). Making these global or local terms accessible introduces an effective intervention that at least temporarily leads more people to behave like moral cosmopolitans.
The Moral Foundations of Restraint: Partisanship, Military Training, and Norms of Civilian Protection
Andrew Bell, Thomas Gift & Jonathan Monten
Journal of Peace Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does partisan identification shape the attitudes of U.S. military officers toward targeting civilians in war? Drawing on unique surveys of soon-to-be commissioned officers in twelve Army ROTC programs, we find that Democratic-leaning soldiers exhibit greater emphasis on norms of civilian protection -- known also as norms of restraint -- than Republican-leaning soldiers. This gap remains partially resilient after sustained exposure to military training and socialization. We attribute these partisan differences to insights from Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), which suggests that the moral values of Democrats and Republicans guide their views toward the individual use of force in combat. Our findings have implications for the impact of military training and socialization on restraint toward civilians in war.
The Curious Case of Theresa May and the Public That Did Not Rally: Gendered Reactions to Terrorist Attacks Can Cause Slumps Not Bumps
Mirya Holman, Jennifer Merolla & Elizabeth Zechmeister
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Terrorist attacks routinely produce rallies for incumbent men in the executive office. With scarce cases, there has been little consideration of terrorism's consequences for evaluations of sitting women executives. Fusing research on rallies with scholarship on women in politics, we derive a gender-revised framework wherein the public will be less inclined to rally around women when terrorists attack. A critical case is UK Prime Minister Theresa May, a right-leaning incumbent with security experience. Employing a natural experiment, we demonstrate that the public fails to rally after the 2017 Manchester Arena attack. Instead, evaluations of May decrease, with sharp declines among those holding negatives views about women. We further show May's party loses votes in areas closer to the attack. We then find support for the argument in a multinational test. We conclude that conventional theory on rally events requires revision: women leaders cannot count on rallies following major terrorist attacks.
Alliance Participation, Treaty Depth, and Military Spending
Joshua Alley
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does alliance participation affect military spending? Some argue that alliance membership increases military expenditures, while others contend that it produces spending cuts. I argue that deep formal defense cooperation modifies the impact of alliance participation on military expenditures and can explain increases and decreases in spending by small alliance members. Security-seeking junior members of deep alliances usually decrease military spending because these treaties are more credible. Joining shallow alliances often increases junior alliance member military spending, however. I test the argument by creating a latent measure of alliance treaty depth and using it to predict differences in how alliance participation affects military spending. The research design generates new empirical evidence linking alliance participation and percentage changes in state military spending from 1919 to 2007. I find that deeper alliance treaties tend to decrease military spending by junior alliance members, and shallow alliances often increase military spending. These results help scholars and policymakers better understand a central question about alliance politics that has been debated in scholarship for decades.
Terrorist Peer Review: Which Autonomous Attacks Does ISIL Accept for Publication?
Joseph Brown
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) claims some attacks by autonomous jihadists in the West, but not all of them. This article argues that ISIL selectively takes credit for attacks that fit tactical norms laid out in the group's propaganda. These norms include lethality toward the victims and martyrdom for the assailant. Probit regression analyses of a new database of autonomous attacks in the West confirm that lethality and martyrdom increase the probability of ISIL's official propaganda claiming a given incident. The Islamic State's "peer review" and selective credit-claiming incentivize autonomous jihadists to adopt more lethal and suicidal tactics so that their actions will gain acceptance and they will be recognized as soldiers of the caliphate.
Do Intergovernmental Organizations Have a Socialization Effect on Member State Preferences? Evidence from the UN General Debate
Nicola Chelotti, Niheer Dasandi & Slava Jankin Mikhaylov
International Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The question of whether intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) have a socialization effect on member state preferences is central to international relations. However, empirical studies have struggled to separate the socializing effects of IGOs on preferences from the coercion and incentives associated with IGOs that may lead to foreign policy alignment without altering preferences. This article addresses this issue. We adopt a novel approach to measuring state preferences by applying text analytic methods to country statements in the annual United Nations General Debate (UNGD). The absence of interstate coordination with UNGD statements makes them particularly well suited for testing socialization effects on state preferences. We focus on the European Union (EU), enabling us to incorporate the pre-accession period -- when states have the strongest incentives for foreign policy alignment -- into our analysis. The results of our analysis show that EU membership has a socialization effect that produces preference convergence, controlling for coercion and incentive effects.