Economics,security, and individual-level preferences for trade agreements

Empirical research on the determinants of individual-level support for trade liberalization has focused almost entirely on the economic effects of trade. Yet, international relations scholarship has long recognized that commerce also has a variety of security implications. This paper explores if and when security considerations influence individual attitudes toward trade. In this study, we ask two questions: First, to what extent do expectations about the security implications of trade affect individual-level attitudes toward trade agreements? Second, does the introduction of security concerns into the discussion of trade agreements influence how heavily individuals weigh their economic costs and benefits? We employ an original experiment embedded in a conjoint survey to investigate the relative impact of a variety of economic and security considerations on respondents’ support for trade. Our findings suggest that security information matters and undermines the appeal of some, though not all, economic arguments for trade liberalization among our respondents.     

Sir/St. Thomas More on the US Constitution: ‘More Perfect’ is not Utopian

Sir Thomas More was a politician, statesman, visionary humanist, and a friend of Erasmus, Colet, and Henry VIII. His most famous literary work is Utopia, a word coined based on the Greek for ‘no place’. Its influence has been enormous, inspiring social thinkers as diverse as Rousseau and B. F. Skinner. Using the principles More seemed to advocate, this article addresses the question: ‘What would he have thought of the Constitution of the United States had he lived to read it and experience life under its aegis?’ Much of what the Americans have done he would appreciate, much he would deplore. He would appreciate the federal nature of government, the elective nature of the legislature, and the freedom granted to citizens. He would have deplored slavery based on race and applauded the 13th Amendment. He would have looked askance at the role of the president and the necessity for a military. In sum, if we can believe that what he wrote in Utopia reflects his attitudes correctly, Thomas More’s would be a mixed verdict on American republicanism.     

Security-Civil Liberties Trade-offs: International Cooperation in Extraordinary Rendition

Following the launch of the WoT, the United States established a global rendition network that saw the transfer of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) terrorist suspects to secret detention sites across the world. Conventional accounts of foreign complicity show that 54 diverse countries were involved, including many established democracies. What determined more than a quarter of the world’s countries to participate in RDI operations during the post-9/11 period? Given the sensitive nature of cooperation required, I argue that the United States screened countries according to their preferences on security-civil liberties trade-offs. Countries with similar preferences to the United States on human rights were cheaper to buy off and would have required less persuasion to cooperate. This theory is consistent with the existing claim that cooperation is more likely between countries with similar preferences as both actors are better off when the partnership increases. I test this hypothesis on global data using UNGA voting data as a proxy for common interest and develop a spatial variable that models a country’s logistical utility during the transfer of a detainee based on its distance to a central rendition transit corridor between the United States and Afghanistan. The analysis provides robust empirical support for my theoretical argument.     

North Korea’s Resurgence and China’s Rise: Implications for the Future of Northeast Asian Security

Today, Northeast Asia’s security situation is changing rapidly. North Korea is reviving and China’s power is growing at an alarming rate. While the U.S. continues to suffer diplomatically and militarily in the Middle East and from international terrorism, China’s and North Korea’s power is likely to futher increase, polarizing the Northeast Asian security structure, with South Korea, Japan (and Taiwan) all allied with the U.S. versus North Korea allied with China. The liberal democracies should pursue peace with North Korea and China to preclude the situation from aggravating, but should be ready in the longer term to meet, in diverse ways including strengthening their alliances, the challenges posed by rising powers.

Recouping after Coup-Proofing: Compromised Military Effectiveness and Strategic Substitution

In order to counter the threat of a coup, states often undertake a number of strategies to “coup-proof” their militaries, such as creating institutional redundancy, severely limiting interbranch communications, and basing promotions on loyalty rather than merit. As a result of such policies, however, the fighting effectiveness of these armed forces is degraded, and the marginal return on military investment is greatly reduced. We argue that leaders who have coup-proofed their militaries undertake several substitution policies in order to offset their military weakness when faced with external threats. These policies include pursuing chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons and forging alliances. We find support for these theoretical predictions in quantitative tests on data with global coverage between 1970 and 2001.     

Revolutionary Pathways: Leaders and the International Impacts of Domestic Revolutions

How much and in what ways do individual leaders matter for international politics? This article sheds new light on these questions by considering the consequences of domestic revolutions in international relations. We argue that revolutions have international effects due to two separate pathways, one associated with the event and one associated with the new leader’s administration. In the first pathway, a revolutionary event disrupts established relationships and perceptions, creating uncertainty both within the state and abroad. In the second pathway, revolutions put individuals into office who are more willing to challenge the status quo and who have publicly committed to a sustained shift in policies during their administration. These two distinct pathways suggest that the important question about revolutions is not whether leaders or events matter most but rather the conditions under which they matter. Consequently, we studied these pathways on three phenomena: international economic sanctions, domestic economic growth, and interstate alliances. We find that revolutionary events have a short-term negative effect on domestic economic growth, while revolutionary leaders have a long-term effect on the probability that a revolutionary state is targeted for sanctions. Both the revolutionary leader and the revolution’s immediate events alter the state’s international alliances. Our findings suggest that no single level of analysis completely dominates, and the answer depends on the outcome of interest.     

西方“技术联盟”:构建新科技霸权的战略路径

新一轮科技革命与产业变革正在深入发展,科技正成为大国战略竞争的主战场。围绕科技发展与应用之规则、标准、体系等因素的竞争,将直接影响到国际战略的权力结构与国际体系的重塑。基于"技术多边主义"战略,美国将与其伙伴国家围绕高科技领域组建"技术联盟",共同制定全球科技发展与治理的新规则、新标准,进而实现对新科技塑造权力的掌握。随着西方"技术联盟"框架体系日渐成型,全球力量结构、国际格局与国际体系都将受到深刻影响。     

Between willing and reluctant entrapment: CEE countries in NATO's non-European missions

The article focuses on Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries' experiences related to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, three non-European theatres of Western military operations, in predominantly Muslim lands, in the decade between 2001 and 2011. CEE countries readily became involved in two of these foreign missions (Afghanistan and Iraq) because of their deep ties to Western politico-economic structures, without direct security interests compelling them to do so, but not without normative convictions regarding what were seen by them as virtues of the two missions. In Libya, however, they were reluctant to join the Western intervention. In light of this, the article is interested in examining how political elites within the region relate to the generally constrained security policy agency that they have. A key argument advanced is that such agency may be located in how external hegemony is mediated in elite discourses of threat and legitimacy construction. This as well as the three case studies outlined in the article show that the seeming changes in CEE countries' behaviour in fact boil down to a simple set of rules guiding their behaviour. Having identified this “algorithm” as an implicit pattern of CEE foreign policy behaviour, originating in the intra-alliance security dilemma within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the article formulates its conclusions about the alliance policy of these countries largely within a neorealist framework.     

How International Reputation Matters: Revisiting Alliance Violations in Context

We investigate the role of international reputation in alliance politics by developing a signaling theory linking past alliance violations with the formation of future alliance commitments. In our theory, past violations Are useful signals of future alliance reliability conditional on whether they effectively separate reliable from unreliable alliance partners. It follows that states evaluating potential alliance partners will interpret past violations in their context when deciding to enter a new alliance, attaching less weight to violations in “harder times,” when many states are defaulting on their alliance commitments together, and more weight to violations in “easier times,” when fewer states are defaulting on their alliances. We test our theory and find that states are empirically more likely to form new alliances with states that violated in harder times compared to states that violated in easier times. The results have important implications for how scholars understand and estimate the impact of international reputation.     

Engagement,Disengagement, or Exit: A Theory of Equilibrium Associations

This article considers the possibility of mutually beneficial communication among groups when any group may choose to unilaterally join or exit an alliance. My main concern is the trade‐off groups face between the informational benefits of associating with others in a large society versus the costs imposed by power sharing and preference diversity. When these costs are sufficiently high, groups may prefer exit to association. The results of this article characterize the associations of groups that can be sustained in equilibrium, and within those associations, the types of groups that choose to meaningfully communicate with others. The results demonstrate that there can be benefits or costs associated with the inclusion of preference extremists in a diverse society, whether or not those extremists choose to actively communicate with outgroups. The results also speak to institutional mechanisms for fostering communication across diverse groups.