Risky Inference: Unobserved Treatment Effects in Conflict Studies

This article illustrates the importance of testing empirical models in samples appropriate to the theories the models are intended to test. While social science appears to mandate that we prefer general theories to limited ones, the generality of a theory rests in its logical application to a set of observations, not solely to its statistical survival in a large data set. Theories in international relations, especially those linking domestic turmoil and international conflict, are advancing, but are sometimes applied to samples larger than the related theories indicate. This paper examines the statistical consequences of estimation in overexpansive samples with unmodeled treatment effects; we argue that samples containing cases that cannot experience the causal phenomenon in question produce unmodeled treatment effects, and we reexamine three published articles whose samples are perhaps broader than their theories suggest they should be. The empirical analyses demonstrate that overexpansive samples can produce somewhat misleading results: the new models produce interesting findings that emerge as treatment effects are identified.     

The Joint Democracy–Dyadic Conflict Nexus: A Simultaneous Equations Model

Many statistical studies in international relations investigate the claim that democracies do not fight one another. Virtually all of these studies employ a single-equation design, where the dependent variable measures the presence or absence of a dyadic militarized interstate dispute (MID). A separate group of studies argues that conflict affects democracy and that its effect could be positive or negative. By and large, these two bodies of literature have not incorporated one another's insights. We argue that democracy and dyadic conflict affect each other significantly and that statistical models that ignore the reciprocal nature of these effects may make incorrect inferences. To test this argument, we develop a simultaneous equations model of democracy and dyadic conflict. Our sample includes all the politically relevant dyads from 1950 to 1992. We find that dyadic military disputes reduce joint democracy and joint democracy reduces the probability of MIDs. Compared with the single-equation estimates in the literature, the absolute effect of joint democracy in our paper is smaller while in relative terms, the effect is similar in size. The effect of joint democracy on MID involvement is considerably smaller for noncontiguous countries than for contiguous ones. The effects of a number of control variables in the MID equation are also found to differ from those reported previously in single- equation–based studies.     

"Small Peoples": The Existential Uncertainty of Ethnonational Communities

This exploratory paper attempts to extend the boundaries of research on the "smallness" of polities. It introduces the concept of "small peoples," a term coined by Czech author Milan Kundera to denote communities that lack a "sense of an eternal past and future." The paper posits "small peoples" as ethnic communities characterized by prolonged and deep-rooted uncertainty regarding their own existence. I argue that in modern times, "small peoples" doubt the validity of their past-based ethnic identity and the viability of their future-driven national polity . Empirically, I analyze two distinct "small peoples"—Israeli Jews and French Canadians (Québécois)—and argue that while the former have been more concerned with the future survival of their polity, the latter have been more concerned with insecurity about their identity. The paper suggests that a focus on communities and their intersubjective processes can enrich the study of states and their objective state.     

特朗普“美国优先”的诉求与制约（英文）

"America First," featuring its appeals in prioritization and choice of new policies, has become a constant motif of Trump's diplomacy, but shortcomings of leadership capabilities and constraints from domestic politics have dulled its initial cutting edge. Ironically, Trump's confusion in strategic thinking of "America First" might make the US the biggest loser of the concept he has long advocated.     

Contingent Borders, Ambiguous Ethics: Migrants in (International) Political Theory

The article engages a critical analysis of liberal theory in the context of transnational migration. Normative arguments provided by liberal-cosmopolitan and liberal-communitarian authors are contrasted. While sympathetic to such approaches, we argue that traditional liberal theory has attempted to downplay the contingency and resultant ambiguity of many of its moral precepts. Historically contingent borders underpin neat universal categories like "citizen" and "refugee," which fail to reflect the diverse and contested experiences of migration. But such ambiguities need not undermine liberal approaches. Indeed, a proper engagement with the problematic and uncertain realities of migration can provide a spur to a more thoroughgoing ethical praxis. We draw on the philosophical pragmatism of Richard Rorty to outline an approach to migration that remains open to the contingent construction of terms like "migrant,""refugee," and "asylum-seeker." By extending Rorty's concept of sentimental education, we provide an imaginative and politically challenging set of agendas for the ethics of migration.     

How Measurement Error in Content Analysis and Self-Reported Media Use Leads to Minimal Media Effect Findings in Linkage Analyses: A Simulation Study

In the debate on minimal media effects and their causes, methodological concerns about measurement are rarely discussed. We argue that even in state-of-the-art media-effects studies that combine measures of media messages and media use (i.e., linkage analyses), measurement error in both the media content analysis and the media use self-reports will typically lead to severely downward-biased effect estimates. We demonstrate this phenomenon using a large Monte Carlo simulation with varying parameters of the content analysis and the survey study. Results show that measurement error in the content analysis and media use variables does indeed lead to smaller effect estimates, especially when the media messages of interest are relatively rare. We discuss these findings as well as possible remedies and implications for future research.     

Framing participation

Major efforts have been made bydevelopment organisations tomake their systems ofproject and programme management more participatory, in order to be accountable to local participants (or beneficiaries), while also creating opportunities for them to shape their own processes. These measures may look participatory, but have in effect become new (and often costly) forms of management and control, which do not result in great benefits for project participants. The authors argue that the dominance of three components- projects, professionals, and organisations-has beentaken for granted; andthat theyinvolve practices and processes which are primarily instruments of control, rather than of participation. Attempts to generate participation will thus require a fundamental change in the way in which these components operate. Inthe meantime, the authors call for attentiontobe paidtothe ways inwhichthe current tools of participatory development, including PRA, can be used to promote either participation or control, depending on how they are used.     

Lobbying as a Private Good with Intra-Industry Trade

Intra-industry trade—trade in different varieties of the same product between countries with similar factor endowments—has been an important and surprising feature of the postwar international economy. Economists have explained this trade with models of monopolistic competition, which suggest that intra-industry trade does not have the stark distributional consequences that the more traditional "endowments-based" trade does. I do not dispute that claim here, although I do dispute a political implication drawn from it—that intra-industry trade produces less political action than endowments-based trade. I argue that, because firms involved in intra-industry trade are monopolists, lobbying essentially becomes a private good . If intra-industry trade places costs on firms, they do not have less incentive to take political action to stop it, as the conventional wisdom suggests. I provide evidence for this contention from complaints lodged with the International Trade Commission. The results show that the higher the degree of intra-industry trade the more likely an industry will request protection from the ITC.     

Explaining Costly International Institutions: Persuasion and Enforceable Human Rights Norms

Why do states create enforceable international human rights norms that empower third parties to prevent and sanction domestic human rights abuses? Recent theories suggest that international institutions are shaped not only by power and interests but also by the content of arguments during intensive communication and argumentation processes. Moving beyond the simple notion that "communication matters," I argue that states are likely to be persuaded by arguments that draw on widespread taken-for-granted norms, in particular, prohibitions on bodily harm, the importance of precedent in decision making, and the link between cooperation and progress. This model extends previous theories by specifying mechanisms and scope conditions for international change through persuasion. I illustrate the argument by examining the convention against torture, a costly international institution that allows domestic courts to prosecute crimes that occur in the territory of other states (universal jurisdiction). Because of its enforcement mechanisms, the torture convention poses a difficult case for theories explaining international institutions. If persuasion models can explain even costly institutions, they should be more widely considered as explanations for all kinds of international institutions.     

The Discursive Demolition of the Asian Development Model

I demonstrate the constitutive effects of discursive strategies and explore the discursive conditions in which changing ideas generate these effects. I perform an extensive analysis of the discursive strategies generated by three key actors in the Asian financial crisis. I argue that all three, U.S. Treasury, the International Monetary Fund, and the Kim Dae-jung South Korean administration, represented key practices associated with the Asian model as "cronyism" and as "corruption," thereby normatively delegitimating these practices, thereby effecting the demise of the Asian model of development in Korea. I argue that these discursive practices generate narrative structures that have a constitutive effect on the subsequent discursive and economic practices of actors. The manner in which the narratives represent "causes" of the crisis constitute and reconstitute the social meanings by which past and current social and economic practices are legitimated or de-legitimated. The structures constituted by these social meanings re-create and reconstitute the present and future conditions for strategic action. I conclude with a demonstration of how these narratives institutionalize the discourses they construct through changes in Korean state and commercial institutions.     

Chen''s Scrappiing of "NUC" and U.S. Predicament

On February 27, 2006, Chen Shuibian announced his decision to cease the operation of the "National Unification Council (NUC) and the application of its guidelines," which further increased the risk of "Taiwan independence." Chen's campaign for "Taiwan independence," which in essence was an attempt to change the status quo, thus gravely damaging the cross-strait relations. The next day,the White House and U. S. State Department made a separate response. On the one hand, they argued that Chen didn't change the status quo as he only "freezed" instead of "abolishing" the "NUC"and its guidelines. On the other hand, they urged the leaders of mainland China and the Taiwan authorities to go back to the negotiation table. ① Such understatement and seeming evenhandedness by the U.S. shows its acquiescence to the reality of Chen's abolition of the"NUC," and its limited ability to control Chen's activities for "Taiwan independence." In the coming two years, Washington's current Taiwan policy will hardly continue to work, as Chen will steadily promote the modification of "The Constitution" and the "legal independence." The U. S. must make an option between allowing the "Taiwan independence" forces to impinge on its "one-China policy' and clearly suppressing the movement for "Taiwan independence."     

Survival and Accountability: An Analysis of the Empirical Support for "Selectorate Theory"

This study re-examines the empirical support for one of the most influential explanations of leadership tenure, "selectorate theory," by testing for consistency across key regime categories. The argument made herein is that if the measures are good, the consistency of their relationships should not be limited to particular nominal regime categories, and they should capture the implications of the theory differentiating it from competing theories. Current measures of selectorate theory concepts are wanting on both fronts. I find that the measure used for winning coalition size is correlated with the destabilization of leaders in democracies and the stabilization of leaders in nondemocracies. I also find that the measure of selectorate size exhibits two behaviors inconsistent with the theory: larger selectorates are only stabilizing after the leader has already been in office for an extended period of time; and the effect is only substantial for differentiating between types of military regimes. These findings have five implications: (1) they cast serious doubt on the utility of current measures of selectorate theory; (2) they raise conceptual questions about the treatment of political regimes as vectors or categories; (3) they define substantive, not just statistical, issues that future measures will need to address; (4) they give baselines for re-analysis of the effect of these measures on other implications of interest; and (5) they provide an interesting comment on the comparative politics literature on hybrid regimes and the effect of parliamentary institutions in nondemocratic regimes.     

Talking Tough: Gender and Reported Speech in Campaign News Coverage

Building on the notion of "gendered mediation," we argue that conventional news frames construct politics in stereotypically masculine terms, and we examine the implications of these news frames for the coverage of female party leaders. Content analysis of reported speech in television news coverage of the 1993 and 1997 Canadian elections, combined with the results of an experiment, reveals that the speech of the three women leaders was subject to more interpretation by the media and was reported in more negative and aggressive language. The study concludes that gendered mediation may hinder women's chances of electoral success.     

Questions of Research Design in Developing New Tests of the Democratic Peace

We argue that the prevailing dyad-year research design employed in quantitative tests of the theoretical literature on the democratic peace suffers from several limitations. We propose an alternative research design that focuses on three different stages or "games" that typically emerge in the evolution of international disputes over time. In this type of research design the units of observation are the policy choices of "challenger" and "target" states in each of these three games. We argue that this alternative research design has several advantages, such as requiring researchers to test a more complete and extensive set of hypotheses as well as helping them to address statistical issues related to strategic behavior and selection effects.     

Cognitive orientation and consumer behaviour

Modern advertising research place too much emphasis on product differentiation, disregarding the more “traditional” theories of consumer behaviour as bases for market segmentation. In the present study, the author argues that these two strategies can not be separated, by developing reliable scales for the measurement of consumer orientation and indicating how it affects product evaluation.     

Contestation and resistance: the politics of and around transitional justice in Nepal

The shift to adopting holistic approaches in transitional justice indicates an intention to pay (greater) attention to politics in transitional justice. However, transitional justice actors frequently encounter difficulties in doing so, misread politics and misconstrue where to locate it in post-conflict contexts. Using research from Nepal I argue that there is considerable political activity taking place that challenges transitional justice on multiple scales. This research demonstrates that actors frequently seek to advance their interests and make claims utilising the process, institutions and language of transitional justice. In particular, I draw upon resistance literature and contentious politics literature to elucidate the complex relationships and interactions at the local and national level, which are often omitted from discussions about transitional justice in Nepal. Accordingly, I argue it is more useful to consider actors’ actions in relation to transitional justice on a continuum where there is co-option, resistance, contestation and compliance with a wide range of variation within each.     

Strategy and Selection in International Relations

It is widely recognized that many of the samples we use for statistical analysis in international politics are the result of some selection process. Not surprisingly, selection models are becoming increasingly popular. At the same time, the role of strategic interaction has begun to play a more important role in statistical analyses. However, it has not been clear how statistical strategic models and selection models relate to each other, or what the effects are of employing one when the other is the more appropriate model. In this article, I 1) clarify why international relations scholars cannot shield themselves from selection bias simply by assuming their results are limited to a given sample; 2) show how recent statistical strategic models relate to traditional selection models and generalize the two sets of models by deriving a correlated strategic model; and 3) examine the effects of misspecifying either correlated errors or strategic interaction. My results indicate that failure to model the strategic interaction produces worse specification error than failure to account for correlated disturbances. In fact, traditional bivariate probit models appear to be superior only when states are almost completely uncertain about each others' preferences.     

“Mtwara will be the New Dubai”: dashed expectations,grievances, and civil unrest in Tanzania

When does inequality lead to conflict? Despite recent studies highlighting the effects of group exclusion, this question has not been fully answered. We argue that objective group inequality is not sufficient to fuel unrest. Structural inequalities need to be perceived as unfair, and become grievances, in order to spark mobilization. While most conflict scholars recognize this on a theoretical level, statistical tests of the effect of inequality on conflict almost exclusively rely on objective data. This limits their ability to distinguish when inequality is politically relevant and when it is not. Southern Tanzania is a case in point. Despite decades of marginalization, the population remained peaceful until natural gas was discovered, and the government was perceived to break their promises of local development. Demonstrating that objective regional inequalities have remained relatively constant, while group grievances seems to have increased, we argue that direct measures of grievances are needed to pinpoint when inequality becomes politically salient. Using novel survey data, we find that people who think that the region is treated unfairly have the highest likelihood of supporting and participating in civil unrest.