The Nature of Borders and International Conflict: Revisiting Hypotheses on Territory

This study examines the utility of moving beyond a simple "on–off" dichotomous view of contiguous land borders. For each of the 301 contiguous land borders between states in the international system, measures of ease of interaction, salience, and overall border "vitalness" have been developed using Geographical Information Systems technology. These variables are used to test two major extant lines of thought in international relations literature, as well as our proposed alternative, regarding the expected effect of the "nature" of borders on interstate behavior. We conclude not only that the "nature" of contiguous borders matters but also that the relationship between each of the three border measures and the likelihood of conflict is curvilinear concave—with both high ease of interaction and high salience related to lower levels of conflict, and the middle range of both variables related to higher levels of conflict.     

Chinese Choices: A Poliheuristic Analysis of Foreign Policy Crises, 1950–1996

This paper uses the Poliheuristic Theory (PH), developed by Mintz, which incorporates both psychological and rational choice components in a synthesis of these previously isolated approaches, to explain decision making in Chinese foreign policy crises. China is an interesting initial case for this project for two reasons. One is its importance as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and rising superpower. The other is China's reputation as a nearly unique "black box"—an especially challenging case—with regard to decision making in foreign policy crises. Taken from the authoritative compilation of the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project, the nine cases (with available data) in which China is a crisis actor span the period from 1950 to 1996. A comparative analysis of Chinese decision making in times of crisis is used to test hypotheses derived from the PH. The hypotheses focus on how decisions are anticipated to occur over two stages. Principal expectations are that the non compensatory rule, which places priority on political considerations, will determine viable alternatives at the first stage, while choices more in line with expected value maximization or lexicographic ordering will characterize the second stage.     

Seeing the Forest for the Trees: Does Physical Geography Affect a State's Conflict Risk?

This article considers why and how physical geography may influence conflict patterns within African states. It juxtaposes arguments relating to four features of the physical environment— distance, resources, terrain, and size—to those purporting rebels base insurgency tactics on the strategic value of locations. Using GIS and spatial econometrics, a geographically disaggregated dataset of population, distance to capitals, borders, resources, terrain, and road densities is tested against conflict data from ACLED (Armed Conflict Location and Events Dataset). ACLED disaggregates data on internal conflict into georeferenced individual events. The analysis covers six of the most conflict prone states in Central Africa. The analysis confirms that an area's physical attributes do not have a uniform effect on the likelihood of experiencing a conflict event. Areas of high strategic value, including densely populated areas and military zones, have a higher risk of conflict than rural, peripheral areas.     

Explaining Rivalry Escalation to War: Space, Position, and Contiguity in the Major Power Subsystem

Vasquez's (1996) rivalry escalation theory stressed territorial disputes as the principal focus for a two-path explanation of war. Neighbors fight over adjacent space and non-neighbors sometimes join ongoing wars between neighbors. But major powers are also much concerned with positional issues. Expanding the war motivation focus to encompass both spatial and positional issues facilitates the development of a new, more elaborate theory from which several new hypotheses can be derived, in addition to the older ones. Testing of the new theory can also proceed with rivalry data not based on dispute density measures, different types of contiguity can be assessed, and the presence of spatial-positional issues can be measured directly, as opposed to relying on a proximity proxy. The empirical outcome strongly supports the two-path, two-issue theory. In the major power subsystem, noncontiguous rivals outnumber contiguous rivals, dyadic wars are scarce, and war joining has been the norm. Spatial issues alone would have a hard time accounting for this pattern. Variable mixes of spatial and positional issues are able to account for it and a number of derived hypotheses reasonably well. This is not the last word on rivalry escalation to war but it appears to be an additional step in the right direction.     

The Diffusion of Military Intervention: Testing a Network Position Approach

This study assesses the fruitfulness of applying network analysis to diffusion of interstate military conflict. Specifically, the network position approach is applied in a statistical analysis, using a new global dataset of interstate military interventions in conflict systems, 1945-1991. We find that the network position approach is consistently supported, whereas competing or complementary approaches are less empirically successful. The findings reported in the present study can be utilized to refine the results of previous studies. While these show that interstate conflict diffusion tends to occur among contiguous states, the network position approach is able to identify which of the contiguous states are most likely to become targets of diffusion.     

Geographic Opportunity and Neomalthusian Willingness: Boundaries,Shared Rivers,and Conflict

International conflict has been analyzed extensively through the framework of opportunity and willingness. Opportunity has mainly been operationalized as physical proximity. Willingness has been measured in a number of ways, and remains a somewhat more elusive concept. Several scholars have called for boundary length to represent opportunity. Heeding such calls, Harvey Starr has used GIS methods to generate boundary length for 1993 and has found it to be associated with increased propensity to conflict. A number of his measures of willingness were not. Using a new and much more extensive dataset on boundary length for the entire Correlates of War period, this article finds very different results. We study the relationship with shared rivers and water scarcity as measures of neomalthusian factors in willingness over a 110-year period. The results indicate that the neomalthusian factors are significant although not dramatic in their effects. Boundary length, while associated with conflict in a bivariate analysis, fades into insignificance when the neomalthusian willingness measures are introduced.     

States and their international relations since 1816: introducing version 2 of the International System(s) Dataset (ISD)

ABSTRACT

We introduce version 2 of the International System(s) Dataset (ISD), a register of sovereign states across the 1816–2016 period that include numerous states that are missed in commonly used datasets like the Correlates of War (COW) Project. Whereas ISD version 1 identified 363 states between 1816 and 2011, version 2 identifies 482. This version also records valuable information on a range of corollary variables, including start dates, end dates, estimated population sizes, diplomatic relations with Europe, conflict episodes, the existence of borders, and the location of capital cities. This dataset makes an important contribution to the study of international relations. It provides a more accurate understanding of the development of the international system over the last two centuries, it moves beyond the Eurocentric bias that sits at the heart of existing quantitative IR scholarship, and it will enable scholars to pursue a range of research topics such as the historical importance of state borders and boundaries, the practices surrounding recognition, and the frequency and intensity of conflict across regions. In this article, we discuss the existing state system membership lists and show how the ISD addresses their shortcomings. We outline the key concept and operationalization of statehood that the ISD adopts. We detail the variables included in this version of the ISD, discuss the data collection process, and show temporal and spatial distributions that illustrate the uniqueness of the ISD. Finally, we demonstrate the utility of bringing the ISD into one of many potential research topics: the study of conflict.     

Protecting labor rights in preferential trade agreements: The role of trade unions,left governments,and skilled labor

This paper investigates variation in the design of labor provisions in preferential trade agreements (PTAs) by focusing on the power of trade unions, the role of government partisanship, and the relative strength of skilled labor. We expect strong trade unions and left-leaning governments to be associated with more, and more far-reaching labor provisions in PTAs. We also expect the strength of skilled workers relative to the strength of unskilled workers to negatively correlate with the depth of labor provisions in PTAs. In addition, the effect of trade unions should be conditional on both the presence of left government and democracy. We test these hypotheses relying on an original dataset of labor provisions included in 483 PTAs signed between 1990 and 2016. This dataset covers 140 different labor provisions that relate to six overarching dimensions. The quantitative analysis finds support for the expectations concerning the influence of trade unions and the role of a country’s skill profile.     

Militarized disputes,incidents, and crises: Identification and classification

The Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) dataset was generated as part of the broader data‐generation efforts of DDIR. The paper (1) briefly lays out the underlying rationale and procedures used in developing the MID dataset, (2) highlights some conceptual and empirical problems associated with the dataset, (3) discusses the conceptual and empirical distinctions made among incidents, disputes, crises, and wars, and (4) offers suggestions for updating and expanding the MID dataset.     

Ethnicity,political survival,and the exchange of nationalist foreign policy

How does leadership’s desire for political survival in ethnically heterogeneous democracies affect the probability of states exchanging nationalist foreign policy? I define nationalist foreign policy as foreign policy that aims to fulfill national self-governance using a civic or ethnic frame. I argue that civic-nationalist policy disputing the territoriality of one’s own state is more likely, while ethno-nationalist policy favoring the leadership’s foreign co-ethnics is less likely, when the size of the leadership’s ethnic group is small and the level of democracy is relatively high. This is because the leadership, under such domestic conditions, has to mobilize support from other ethnic groups in order to stay in power. Civic-nationalist policy allows the leadership to increase domestic solidarity across ethnic lines and mobilize support from other ethnic groups, whereas ethno-nationalist policy would risk other ethnic groups criticizing the leadership of being ethno-centrist. These hypotheses are supported by quantitative analysis using an original dataset.     

Credibility,preferences, and bilateral investment treaties

When is a commitment mechanism employed as a solution to a time-inconsistency problem? This article provides a nuanced answer to this question by studying bilateral investment treaties (BITs). We develop a game theoretic model of BIT signing in which the government of a capital-importing country and an investor from a capital-exporting country strategically interact. The model predicts that, on the one hand, when host states highly value foreign direct investment (FDI), the likelihood of BITs increases as their judicial institutions lack credibility. On the other hand, when their preferences for FDI are only modest, the likelihood of BITs increases as their judicial institutions become more credible. We employ Cox proportional hazard models to test our hypotheses, and the results largely support our theory. Our findings have broad implications for the large literature on credible commitment, which has paid insufficient attention to the interplay between preferences and credibility.     

Global Energy Governance: Trade,Infrastructure, and the Diffusion of International Organizations

Why do states choose to join and form international governmental organizations (IGOs) that regulate energy policy? In this article we make three specific contributions to the literature on international cooperation and diffusion. First, we show that countries form and join energy IGOs in response to memberships previously gained by direct competitors among oil and gas producers and consumers. Moreover, we demonstrate that energy IGOs diffuse among countries that share oil and gas pipelines. Finally, we provide evidence that the institutional design of established energy IGOs impacts the development of their membership network. To test these hypotheses, we rely on original data on oil and gas pipelines and the design of energy IGOs as well as on a newly compiled dataset that includes 152 countries and covers 38 years (1970–2007). We employ both network analysis and spatial econometrics.     

The Effect of Negotiation Practices on the Relationship between Suppliers and Customers

This article examines the effects of negotiation practices, such as coercion and contract formality, on how suppliers and customers perceived the resulting business relationship. We conducted a purchasing negotiation simulation with students in a classroom setting in which participants competed for resources in a mock supply-chain context. The participants were surveyed at key stages of the ongoing negotiation in order to measure their behaviors as a customer–supplier relationship developed. The data were used to test several hypotheses developed from the marketing and purchasing literature. The hypotheses were analyzed using structural equation modeling.
Results demonstrated that the use of coercive techniques by negotiators during negotiation had a negative effect on satisfaction. In addition, the findings showed that, as expected, negotiators entering a negotiation with a cooperative orientation would tend to avoid the use of coercive practices during negotiation. The cooperative orientation also exhibited an unexpected positive effect on the formalization of the design of the contract between the parties. This study contributes to the current knowledge base focusing on the creation of agreements between companies and will, we hope, encourage the integration of suppliers and customers in an operating context within a supply-chain setting.     

A Means of First Resort: Explaining “Hot Pursuit” in International Relations

This article provides a new theory of hot pursuit—the use of military force by a state against a nonstate actor across borders—in international relations. Drawing from the literature on civil-military relations, I argue that attitudes on limited use of force in peripheral areas will vary between civilian and military, with the latter preferring to treat hot pursuit as a policing operation, whereas the former will treat it as a military one. The logic of my argument is that militaries are oriented structurally and culturally to fight conventionally and against state near-peer adversaries. Threats emanating from nonstate actors, while at times perceived to be existential, require “pin-prick”-style targeted airstrikes, raids by commando forces, or policing operations along a state's periphery. I draw on an original dataset of “hot pursuit” (1975–2009) I collected and examine two recent case studies: India's hot pursuit of ethnic militants into Myanmar and Turkey's pursuit of Kurdish militants into Iraq and Syria.     

Central Bank Independence in the World: A New Data Set

This article introduces the most comprehensive dataset on de jure central bank independence (CBI), including yearly data from 182 countries between 1970 and 2012. The dataset identifies statutory reforms affecting CBI, their direction, and the attributes necessary to build the Cukierman, Webb and Neyapty index. Previous datasets focused on developed countries, and included non-representative samples of developing countries. This dataset’s substantially broader coverage has important implications. First, it challenges the conventional wisdom about central bank reforms in the world, revealing CBI increases and restrictions in decades and regions previously considered barely affected by reforms. Second, the inclusion of almost 100 countries usually overlooked in previous studies suggests that the sample selection may have substantially affected results. Simple analyses show that the associations between CBI and inflation, unemployment or growth are very sensitive to sample selection. Finally, the dataset identifies numerous CBI decreases (restrictions), whereas previous datasets mostly look at CBI increases. These data’s coverage not only allows researchers to test competing explanations of the determinants and effects of CBI in a global sample, but it also provides a useful instrument for cross-national studies in diverse fields, such as liberalization, diffusion, political institutions, democratization, or responses to financial crises.     

Television,Power, and the Public in Russia,by Ellen Mickiewicz

In the fall of 1994 a nonpartisan and nonprofit voter information organization Project Vote Smart-designed and implemented an education project for "atrisk" voters in northern California. The Project Vote Smart (PVS) effort was a systematic attempt to provide typically nonvoting groups both information and incentive to participate in the November general election. The results presented here suggest that the receipt of PVS materials did not directly increase the likelihood of voting or election interest. However, the receipt of PVS materials did make voters feel better about the resources they had to bring to bear on electoral choices.     

Intergovernmental Organizations,Interaction, and Member State Interest Convergence

This article presents a general theory of how the interaction of state agents within intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) leads to a convergence in member state interests over time. The theory is based on the notion that, all else being equal, IGOs that facilitate more interaction between individuals from various states are conducive to greater member state interest convergence over time because there are more opportunities for agents from one or more member states to persuade agents from other member states to accept new ideas that affect how they define their states’ interests. I argue that such persuasion does not necessarily have to involve a shift in state identities but can also involve a diffusion of ideas about cause-and-effect relationships. Also, by focusing on IGOs as structures within which state agents interact, I argue against a narrow focus on socialization defined as the induction of new members into community norms. I present three hypotheses regarding which institutional attributes are conducive to member state interest convergence and test them using an original IGO data set. The findings are supportive of my general theory but provide some interesting support for existing theory that runs counter to one of the hypotheses presented here.     

Nationalising International Theory: Race,Class and the English School

Much work has been done to deconstruct the links between knowledge and power in IR as "an American Social Science". This topic has arisen again with the re- launching of the English School of IR Theory in 2001. This essay argues that although the English School is critical of the power-knowledge dynamic, it actually exacerbates the problem by deliberately "nationalising" international theory. The essay traces the emergence and logic of the English School and its key concept "International Society". It argues that the English School is tied not only to national identity but to the rules of European Empire. Using the case of International Society's intervention in China, the essay shows how International Society uses "standards of civilisation" to draw borders between the subjects and objects of IR. But rather than tracing civilisation/empire to racial/national differentiation, the essay argues that "class" is used to differentiate between aristocratic member states of the club of International Society, and lower class colonies outside Europe. In other words, rather than looking to international ethics to regulate world politics, International Society relies on aristocratic etiquette for world ordering. Hence the theory is not as radical as its promoters suggest; rather, by limiting theoretical discussion to nation-states, the English School is a conservative confederate of other state-centric approaches to world politics. To do this, the essay looks beyond Eurocentric discourse and high diplomacy; it engages in a comparative IR theory that uses a new set of texts from China and the popular culture of manners.