A Crisis of Empire: The Anglo–Ottoman Dispute Over the Aden Frontier, 1901–1905

The crises which accompanied the rise and decline of the European empires have not been the object of systematic study in the manner of superpower crises of the Cold War period. Many of the techniques used to study Cold War crises have broader scope, including the models of governmental politics and organisational process developed by Graham Allison. The application of the Allison models to the events surrounding the delimitation of the Aden frontier between 1901 and 1905 illuminates significant aspects of the Anglo–Ottoman confrontation: they explain the manner in which non-rational elements in the policy-making process transformed a relatively insignificant issue into a crisis situation. Such insights also require a detailed examination of the documentary record which in this instance reveals the discord amongst British policy-makers and the organisational imperfections of the bureaucracy. The frontier Commissioners, the Aden Resident, the Government of India, the metropolitan government in London and the embassy in Constantinople were involved in a series of factional squabbles over the Aden frontier, the resolution of which often required the coercion of the Ottomans by the deployment of warships along the Yemen coast. Coordination amongst these different elements in the bureaucracy also played a role in generating tensions between London and Constantinople. The case of the Anglo–Ottoman dispute over the Aden frontier suggests that the analysis of internal governmental politics and organisational processes can be applied successfully to crises of empire which predate the Cold War era.     

The Location and Purpose of Wars Around the World: A New Global Dataset, 1816–2001

A critical question in the quantitative study of war is how to choose appropriate units of analysis. While most studies link wars to the sovereign states that fight them, several authors have recently offered alternative perspectives, focusing on the the properties of rebel organizations and armies or tracking events in fine-grained geographic spaces. We contribute to these developments by introducing a new dataset of wars fought from 1816–2001 on fixed territorial units of observation that conform to the grid of states in 2001. Compared to standard datasets, we expand the geographic purview to include states not recognized by the international system. We provide location codes that identify the territories on which conflicts are fought, which is especially important for the analysis of imperial wars and colonial rebellions. We also introduce a new typology of wars based upon the aims of warring parties rather than their status in the state system. This dataset is uniquely suited to explore new questions that cannot be addressed with other datasets. To illustrate, we test an institutionalist theory of war and show empirically that the types of wars fought in a territory depend on whether it is governed as a modern nation-state, an imperial dependency, or the center of an empire.     

Arbitrator in a World of Wars: The League of Nations and The Mosul Dispute, 1924–1925

The League of Nations is primarily remembered for its failures in the 1930s. Indeed, the established perception of its history usually emphasizes weaknesses. Failing to settle the question of which Power should possess the former Ottoman province of Mosul after the First World War, Turkey saw the dispute addressed to the League in summer 1924. Within a short time, a multi-leveled negotiation process that involved a large number of politicians, diplomats, and lawyers was put in motion. Sixteen months and many crises later, the League Council awarded the entire Mosul province to Iraq. The arbitration had been based upon data collected by two enquiry commissions comprising representatives from eight different Powers, the work of both numerous mediators, and a Council sub-committee. Though certainly not perfect, the League's role averted war and renewed disaster.     

The Liberal Peace Revisited: The Role of Democracy,Dependence, and Development in Militarized Interstate Dispute Initiation, 1950–1999

We test a model of the liberal peace by examining the initiation of militarized interstate disputes at the monadic level of analysis from 1950–1999. Liberal peace theory contends that both economic dependence and democratic political systems reduce conflict propensities. Extant empirical analyses of the monadic liberal peace, however, are under-specified. First, the concept of economic dependence not only includes trade, but also foreign investment. Second, existing models do not control for the influence of economic development. Previous research on the monadic liberal peace has also failed to distinguish between the initiation of conflict and participation in conflict. We find evidence for a liberal peace: trade dependence, foreign investment, and democracy reduce a state’s propensity to initiate militarized disputes.     

Political Violence and Terrorism in Turkey, 1976–80: A Retrospective Analysis

During the late 1970s, Turkey experienced a major campaign of political terrorism that was waged by a multiplicity of leftist, ultranationalist, and separatist groups. Between 1976 and 1980, more than 5000 people lost their lives in hundreds of terrorist incidents. The steady escalation of violence amidst a major political and economic crisis undermined the country's fragile democratic system and paved the way for a military coup in September 1980. This study examines the origins and growth of the terrorist movement in Turkey, the main characteristics of political violence, and the causes of the dramatic escalation of terrorism in the late 1970s. The study suggests that although state-sponsored terrorism against Turkey facilitated the rapid proliferation of leftist, rightist, and separatist armed extremist groups, the drift into total terrorism was largely the product of domestic political and social developments.     

The Imia/Kardak affair, 1995–96: A case of inadvertent conflict

On Christmas Day 1995, a Turkish freighter ran aground on a rocky islet in the northern Dodecanese islands, setting off a chain of events that would lead Greece and Turkey to the brink of war. Senior officials in Washington later admitted that the countries were literally hours from conflict over an issue of which decision makers in America and Europe were completely unaware prior to military forces being deployed. The Imia/Kardak affair raised significant questions on all sides about how relations between two NATO countries with well‐known, ongoing tensions could have deteriorated so rapidly without drawing international attention till the last moment. The conflict highlighted problems in both Athens and Ankara related to the exchange of information between civilian and military leadership. It also revealed that strategic warning in emerging conflicts might not appear when the cause of the incident remains unknown until after the commitment of forces or when the pace of conflict moves too quickly. In such a situation, decision‐making architecture within a coalition or alliance may prove too cumbersome to react to unexpected problems.     

The “Finlandisation” of Finland: The Ideal Type,the Historical Model,and the Lessons Learnt

“Finlandisation” has become a buzzword and suggested solution to the on-going Ukrainian crisis. However, in Finland, Finlandisation tends to be a pejorative term because of its negative effects on Finnish domestic politics. Negative effects notwithstanding, Finland’s Cold War experience often appears as a success: it preserved its democratic system, prospered economically, and strengthened its international status. This analysis examines the historical evidence of what role Finlandisation—understood as a policy of collaboration and friendship with the greatest potential security threat to a country’s sovereignty and as a political culture related to that policy—played during the Cold War era. Did the strategy of accommodation go too far and was it superfluous to Finland’s survival and success? In this context, the article also discusses the “dangers” of Finlandisation and the gradual end of the policy.     

The Duke of Newcastle and the Diplomatic Revolution, 1753–1757: A Historical Revision

Drawing on a diverse array of archival and secondary sources, this analysis examines the role of Thomas Pelham Holles, First Duke of Newcastle, against the background of the famous Reversal of Alliances that ushered in the Seven Years War. Contrary to historical tradition, Newcastle showed an admirable grasp of finance, politics, and diplomacy—a precondition of the political stability that facilitated Britain’s successful pursuit of military operations during the war. Unlike most noble contemporaries, with a sound understanding of European/colonial developments, Newcastle was capable of pursuing coherent policies with intelligence and resolution. In a political system that relied heavily on social connexions and diplomatic ritual, Newcastle performed as well as any minister could hope; in an extremely dynamic international environment, contending with dubious allies, implacable enemies, and the vicissitudes of military fortune, he conceived, negotiated, and executed policies that raised necessary funds and sent British forces around the globe on an unprecedented scale. This should be remembered when assessing his historical reputation.     

J.W. Young,Twentieth Century Diplomacy,A Case Study of British Practice, 1963–1976

This article explores the influence of the Cold War on the formulation and application of US narcotic foreign policy at the UN. Examination of Washington's approach toward drug control in South East Asia and the Middle East reveals how the ideologically rich and longstanding US international crusade against narcotics was often subordinated to the containment of communist expansionism. The article demonstrates how both individual and systemic factors combined to deflect US attention away from the sources of illegal narcotics. This produced a confused and contradictory policy despite increasing fears during the 1950s that drugs from abroad posed a real threat to the American way of life.     

The sack of Mostar, 1992–1994: The politico‐military connection

To date, most of the academic and journalistic accounts and analyses have treated the Bosnian War as a relatively uniform conflict among two or three warring parties along a nearly 1,000 km‐long front line. Yet the most militarily charged and conflictual spots along this line were several strategic urban areas such as Bihac, Mostar, Sarajevo, Brcko, Tuzla, Srebrenica and Gorazde. The war in Bosnia and Herzegovina can thus also be viewed as a collection of local wars. By focusing on the case of Mostar the authors argue that these local conflicts were part of a state‐building process, but that, due to the connivance among the different militias and state armies on the ground, the Mafia‐style war economy, as well as thanks to the newly emerged ethnically based institutions and ruling elites, such process resulted in a polity that more resembles a seventeenth‐century pirate colony than a modern state. In this sense the word ‘sack’ instead of ‘war’ describes more aptly the politico‐military dimension of the war waged in and around Mostar.     

Repression,Grievances, Mobilization,and Rebellion: A New Test of Gurr’s Model of Ethnopolitical Rebellion

The concept of polarity has been subject to imprecise and often diverse use. This note explores problems associated with the varied use of the term and proposes an alternative approach to classifying international systems which treats horizontal and vertical dimensions of power as distinct structural variables. In this approach, the present system is distinguished from the classical balance of power system containing pluralized patterns of conflict on the one hand and from the Cold War system with a marked concentration of power on the other. In the contemporary system polarized patterns of conflict coexist with processes of power diffusion. To the extent polarizations persist in a more diffuse power setting, the decentralized power balancing system through which stability was sought in multipower systems cannot function‐nor are the polarized conflicts likely to be controlled as a result of the two‐power effort at balancing power which occurred during the post‐war period. The factors affecting the stability of the present system, it is suggested here, can be better understood by examining analogous structures in which processes of power diffusion occur in the context of polarized conflict and not as a result of spurious comparisons which mistake the diffusion of power for the pluralization of conflict.     

The “Inner Kowtow Controversy” During the Amherst Embassy to China, 1816–1817

The Amherst embassy has a long-standing reputation as a diplomatic failure in Britain’s early relations with China. This analysis concentrates on a greatly overlooked aspect of the Amherst mission—the controversy within the embassy’s leadership about whether to perform kowtow before the Jiaqing emperor. George Thomas Staunton, basing his arguments on some “local inside knowledge,” successfully prevailed on Amherst to refuse to kowtow. This decision directly resulted in the rejection of the embassy from Beijing. To explain this unpleasant outcome, both sides of the controversy downplayed the importance of their decision and, instead, constructed a capricious image of the Chinese emperor, which helped to lay the foundations for the deterioration of Sino–British relations in the run up to the Opium War.     

The Italo–Yugoslav Conflict over Albania: A View from Belgrade, 1919–1939

After the Great War, Yugoslavia found her most dangerous enemy in Italy, which made every effort to destabilise its Adriatic neighbour—Albania played an important role in this policy. This analysis examines the Yugoslav stance towards aggressive Italian policy, arguing that Belgrade firmly believed it a matter of utmost importance to prevent the Italians from creating a foothold in the Balkans from which they could stir Albanian irredentism in Kosovo and menace Yugoslavia in its strategically sensitive southern regions in conjunction with Bulgaria. To prevent Italian interference, Yugoslavia championed the independence of Albania with its 1913 frontiers from the Paris Peace Conference onwards: it dropped Serbia’s—Yugoslavia’s pre-war predecessor’s—territorial ambitions centred on the town of Shkodra. Yugoslav policy-makers, however, could not maintain the allegiance of Ahmed-bey Zogu, a major Albanian chieftain, who took power in Tirana with Yugoslav support; but he then turned to Rome, which was more capable of and willing to provide financial means for the maintenance of the Albanian administration than Belgrade. There were also a number of officials who favoured a more forward policy that would put northern Albania under Yugoslavia’s control and thus more efficiently keep Italian aggressive designs in check.     

Measuring Military Effectiveness: Calculating Casualty Loss-Exchange Ratios for Multilateral Wars, 1816–1990

In this article, we introduce and utilize a new dataset that provides battle- and war- level Loss Exchange Ratios (LERs) for combatant states involved in multilateral wars between 1816 and 1990.The battle-level data provide an alternative to the widely used, but problematic, HERO/CDB-90 data set on battle outcomes. To demonstrate the utility of the new data, we weigh in on the debate over democratic military effectiveness arguments by replicating models by Reiter and Stam (2002, 2009) and Downes (2009), finding that, when effectiveness is measured using LERs, democracies do not have an edge over their non-democratic counterparts.     

A Review of: “The Take”

This study uses four waves of panel data to analyze inadvertent learning—that is, learning in the absence of interest or motivation—from watching public service television channels. Previous research suggests that motivation-based gaps in political knowledge are at least partly a function of the political information opportunities provided by the major television channels in a country, which influence the likelihood of being inadvertently exposed to news and current affairs programs. The present study puts the inadvertent learning hypothesis to a thorough empirical test by analyzing individual-level growth in knowledge over time, based on panel data collected during five months leading up to the Swedish 2010 national election. Using multilevel growth curve modeling and an extensive battery of surveillance knowledge questions, the results show not only (a) that public service channel viewing was related to learning, but also (b) that knowledge growth occurred among public service viewers independently of their political motivation and news attention, and (c) that such learning was even more pronounced among viewers lacking an interest in politics. The findings are discussed in light of ongoing media environmental transformations as well as cross-national comparative media systems research.     

The Relevance of Détente to American Foreign Policy: The Case of Greece, 1967–1979

This article contributes to the historiography of détente from an original viewpoint, namely the relationship between the United States and Greece. It substantiates the argument that the supposed spirit of détente did not help lessen American realpolitik considerations concerning Greece and its surrounding geostrategic region; in fact, the more Cold War antagonisms intensified in the region, the more Greece was locked in the morass of superpower rivalries. This tendency was also, ironically, re-invigorated following Greece’s adoption of its own Ostpolitik largely thanks to the spirit of détente. This paradigm was reflected in the policy of the four successive American administrations between 1967 and 1979 during which détente had become the most popular notion in the Cold War lexicon.     

The effect of alliance membership on national defense burdens, 1953–88: A test of Mancur Olson's theory of collective action

Olson and Zeckhauser (1966) offered the first theoretical explanation for variation in the defense burdens of allies. Since then, the theory of collective action (Olson, 1971 [1965]) has been extensively tested using the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Warsaw Pact (WTO). While most studies indicate that allied defense burdens (the ratio of military expenditures to gross domestic product) are correlated with economic size, this relationship has rarely been assessed for non‐allied states. Here we examine the association between national defense burdens and economic size, 1953–1988, for NATO, the WTO, the Rio Pact, and the Arab Collective Security Pact in a nested test using most of the non‐allied nations of the world as a control group. Our results generally support the theory. NATO and the Warsaw Pact consistently conform to theoretical expectations, and evidence regarding the Rio Pact, on balance, is positive. Defense burdens are not correlated with economic size within the Arab Pact, however. In addition, nations’ defense burdens are affected by the external threat, as indicated by arms races and war; but the effect of involvement in war is surprisingly small.     

The Personalization(s) of Politics: Israel, 1949–2003

The relationship between the United States and Iran has had an important influence on world affairs during the past two decades. Accordingly, the U.S. news media have an instrumental role in portraying U.S.‐Iran relations to the public. The Iranian Revolution and hostage crisis of 1979–1981, the TWA hijacking of 1985, the Irangate controversy of 1986–1987, and the Persian Gulf War of 1990–1991 are examples of important media events that have impacted public opinion regarding U.S. policy toward Iran. This research analyzes government and print media portrayals of the Reagan administration's U.S.‐Iran policy during Irangate. Results supported the prediction that the print media would fulfill their “watchdog” function by providing more critical portrayals of the United States' policy toward Iran than the Tower Commission Report, an investigative document published by President Reagan's Special Review Board. Among the three leading newspapers analyzed, there was significant diversity in the reporting of U.S.‐Iran relations. Results indicate the Reagan administration's attempt to “spin” its version of Irangate did not successfully pressure the media to neglect their watchdog role. Although the Tower Commission Report was less critical of U.S. policy toward Iran than the print media, all four print media sources portrayed the Reagan administration's policy as a flawed approach that degenerated into trading arms for hostages. Implications of these findings for future research are discussed.     

The Enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles, 1919–1923

This paper uses the episode of the Kapp putsch in March 1920 to isolate and analyze a number of high policy themes that dominated the period from the signature of the Treaty of Versailles through to the Franco-Belgian invasion of the Ruhr. These included: the questions of what mechanisms existed to enforce the treaty; the sanctions available to the victorious governments to enforce their will; the position and problems of the German government; the relationship and suspicions existing between Britain and France and the differing aims, ambitions, and approaches of the major participants.