Political competition and foreign policy power sharing

In this essay I examine the intersection of domestic and international politics in the formation and conduct of foreign policy. 1 develop a three‐actor model that allows us to specify the incentives for power sharing under different assumptions about the distribution of preferences and capabilities between a government, a domestic opposition, and a foreign state. The model generates several interesting hypotheses about the interaction of policy goals and the willingness of actors to share power. In particular, I show that under certain conditions there are important asymmetries whereby doves may be more willing to share power than hawks. Importantly, this willingness is endogenous to the model and comes from the alignment of preferences in the policy space, rather than from an a priori value for the democratization of foreign policy making. The model also suggests several hypotheses about the circumstances under which states have incentives to meddle in the foreign policy processes of other states.     

The Political Determinants of Foreign Direct Investment: A Firm-Level Analysis

Many large-N cross-national studies claim to show that political institutions and phenomena determine where foreign direct investment (FDI) flows. In this article, I argue that these studies tend to overemphasize statistical significance and often neglect to assess the explanatory or predictive power of their theories. To illustrate the problem, I estimate variations of a statistical model published in an influential article on “Political Risk, Institutions, and FDI.” I find that none of the political variables that the authors consider accounts for much of the variation in aggregate FDI inflows. To ensure that this underwhelming result is not driven by misspecification or measurement error, I leverage a large firm-level data set on the investment location decisions of thousands of multinational firms. Using nonparametric machine-learning techniques and out-of-sample tests, I show that gravity variables can help us develop very accurate expectations about firm behavior but that none of the 31 “political determinants” of FDI that I consider can do much to improve our expectations. These findings have important implications because they suggest that governments retain some room to move in the face of economic globalization.     

Diversionary cheap talk: economic conditions and US foreign policy rhetoric, 1945-2010

ABSTRACT

This study explains how the economy affects the foreign policy rhetoric used by American presidents. When economic conditions deteriorate, presidents criticize foreign nations to boost their approval ratings. Presidents use this “diversionary cheap talk” in response to the misery index of unemployment plus inflation, which poses a unique threat to their popularity. They target historical rivals, which make intergroup distinctions most salient. Diversionary cheap talk is most influential for and most frequently used by Democratic presidents, whose non-core constituents prefer hawkish foreign policy but already expect it from Republican presidents. I test the observable implications of the theory with the American Diplomacy Dataset, an original record of 50,000 American foreign policy events between 1851 and 2010 drawn from a corpus of 1.3 million New York Times articles.     

The legislature and agenda politics of social welfare: a comparative analysis of authoritarian and democratic regimes in South Korea

The article mainly seeks to explain the legislature’s preferences in social welfare before and after democratization using South Korea as a case study. Based on an original dataset that consists of all executive and of legislative branch-submitted bills between 1948 and 2016 – roughly 60,000– legislative priority on social welfare is compared over time, and tested using logistic regressions. The key focus of analysis is whether and how the level of democracy affected the degree and universality of social welfare priority. The findings show that the promotion of social welfare is positively related to higher levels of democracy in a continuous fashion, which clearly points to the need to avoid applying a simple regime dichotomy – authoritarian or democratic – when seeking to understand social welfare development. Going further, the article examines the legislature's priority in welfare issues within a presidential structure and under majoritarian electoral rule, at different levels of democracy. The result shows that the higher levels of democracy are, the more the legislative branch contributes to the overall salience of social welfare legislative initiatives as compared to the executive branch. Moreover, the legislative branch itself prioritizes a social welfare agenda – alongside democratic deepening – over other issues.     

The psychological effects of state socialization: IGO membership loss and respect for human rights

We present an interdisciplinary theory that considers how loss of membership in international organizations affects states’ human rights practices. Drawing mostly from social psychology and international relations research, we argue that states are socialized into the international community through a process of social influence, whereby they are incentivized to comply with group norms by the promise (threat) of social rewards (punishments). Social influence occurs when states form social bonds through interactions with other states. When social bonds are severed, fewer opportunities for social influence occur due to lower information to both the remaining states and the state that lost those social bonds. Thus, we hypothesize that the loss of membership from IGOs reduces incentives to comply with group norms and adversely affects human rights practices at home. A combination of propensity score matching/regression and autoregressive distributed lag (ADL) models on a global cross-section across the years 1978–2012 supports the theory. Specifically, losing at least one IGO membership leads to a long-run drop in human rights respect of about one quarter to one half standard deviation.     

The Madrid Bombings and Negotiations With ETA: A Case Study of the Impact of Terrorism on Spanish Politics

This article analyzes the impact that two terrorism-related matters had on Spanish politics and electoral processes in the country. First, the article analyzes the terrorist attacks perpetrated by jihadists on March 11, 2004, three days before Spain's general election. The indiscriminate, lethal attacks caused a state of shock in the country, brought the election campaign to a sudden end, and led to the defeat of the party in power. Second, the article analyzes the negotiations entered into with the ETA terrorist organization by the new government during its first term, from 2004 to 2008. This controversial step, upheld by the Spanish government despite massive opposition by civil society and the main opposition party, failed to bring about the end of ETA. Both the Madrid attacks and the negotiations with ETA were responsible for the breakdown of the consensus in regard to terrorism that had existed among the main Spanish political parties. The article analyzes how both events generated an unprecedented level of polarization and tension among political parties and society from 2004 to 2008, and how each event had a different impact on the general elections held during that period. The period under examination provides an example of adversarial politics; terrorism was highly influenced by the management of both events by the main political players.     

The ghosts of state terror: knowledge,politics and terrorism studies

Employing a discourse analytic approach, this paper examines the silence on state terrorism within the broader terrorism studies literature. An analysis of this literature reveals that state terrorism is noticeable mainly for its absence as a subject of systematic academic study. Following the textual analysis, the main finding – the silence on state terrorism within terrorism studies – is subjected to both a first- and second-order critique. A first-order or immanent critique uses a discourse's internal contradictions, mistakes and misconceptions to criticise it on its own terms. In this case, the absence of state terrorism is criticised for its illogical actor-based definition of terrorism, its politically biased research focus, and its failure to acknowledge the empirical evidence of the extent and nature of state terrorism. A second-order critique entails reflecting on the broader political and ethical consequences of the representations enabled by the discourse. It is argued that the absence of state terrorism from academic discourse functions to promote particular kinds of state hegemonic projects, construct a legitimising public discourse for foreign and domestic policy, and deflect attention from the terroristic practices of states. The exposure and destabilisation of this dominant narrative also opens up critical space for the articulation of alternative and potentially emancipatory forms of knowledge and practice.     

The primacy of political security: contentious politics and insecurity in the Tunisian revolution

The removal of Ben Ali's regime in Tunisia signalled the start of the Arab Spring. The abrupt nature of the regime change raises questions about why it happened in the way it did. This article examines the contextual factors that precipitated the regime change through the lens of political security. The aim is to examine how political insecurity in society led to the emergence of opposition sufficiently organized to unseat Ben Ali. The paper develops a framework to consider how the loss of legitimacy by the regime opened the space for opposition. Attempts to restrict opposition failed to address underlying claims, leaving the way open for the opposition to unite following the self-immolation of Mohammed Bouazizi.     

The Social Construction of Policy Reform: Economists and Trade Liberalization Around the World

We argue that the global spread of ideas contributes to trade liberalization. Building on insights from a rich case-based literature, we suggest an explicit mechanism of trade policy diffusion: US-trained Ph.D. economists, who share a common belief in the benefits of free trade, and who operate with varying degrees of political influence around the world. We offer the first cross-national test of the impact of economists on trade liberalization using a unique dataset recording the country of residence of all 6,493 foreign-based, US-trained American Economic Association (AEA) members over the period 1981–1997. Specifically, we measure the influence of economists on the timing and extent of trade liberalization. First, we endogenize the date of trade liberalization using hazard and probit models. Controlling for alternative diffusion mechanisms and other confounding variables, our results suggest that economists significantly speed up the reform process. Second, we find that countries with greater numbers of economists are more open to trade at the end of the period. All of our results are robust to an instrumental variables strategy that employs the number of Fulbright grants allocated by the United States as an instrument for the number of US-trained economists.     

The High Representative and directoires in European foreign policy: the case of the nuclear negotiations with Iran

ABSTRACT

The negotiations with Iran about its nuclear programme have seen the most protracted involvement of the High Representatives of the European Union in a high-profile policy case. This article traces the evolution of the High Representatives’ participation in the negotiations, from the first contacts with the E3 (Germany, France and the United Kingdom) in 2003 to the adoption of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action in 2015. It focuses on the institutional role the High Representatives played in relation with the directoires leading the talks with Iran – first the E3 and, since 2006, E3/EU. In this context, it examines the personal and organisational factors that affected the influence each of the three High Representatives (Javier Solana, Catherine Ashton and Federica Mogherini) had in regard to the directoires. The analysis distinguishes specifically between the phases before and after the 2009 Lisbon Treaty. The article shows how similar personal qualities of the three High Representatives in terms of problem-solving and trust-building gave them political capital that enabled them to adopt a fairly constant role as bridge-builders within the directoires and between the directoires and other actors. The reforms of the Lisbon Treaty had only a minor impact.     

Mapping foreign policy behavior: An assessment and evaluation of events structures

Employing events indices for cooperation and conflict from the COPDAB data set, the graphic structuring process established by Steven Brams, and several alternative methods of quantifying the resulting event digraphs, this paper examines the utility of the graphic structuring process in efforts at explanation and prediction. Arguing that if the graphic structure represents an underlying structural order in the foreign policy behavior of states, predictability should exist between the graphic portrayal and other behavioral structures around it. Despite face validity in the sociometric qualities of the digraph results, little predictive capability was uncovered. The paper explains the testing process, disc asses the test results, and proposes alternative uses for the structural mapping procedure.     

Propaganda and United States foreign policy: The case of panama

Abstract

This paper probes the use of propaganda by the U.S. government as a device for generating domestic public support for its invasion of Panama. The findings indicate that the government did succeed in influencing domestic public opinion. What accounted for the success? First, through the propaganda technique of selection, the U.S. government carefully chose those “facts” that supported its predetermined objective of removing General Manuel Noriega from power. Concomitantly, it concealed the information that would have undermined the veracity of its story: (1) the fact that Noriega was its Frankenstein monster; (2) its poor record on democracy in Panama; (3) the fact that there was no serious threat to American lives or interests; (4) the enormous human and material carnage occasioned by the invasion; and (5) the various violations of international law. Further, the traditional sources of public influence—the Democratic party, major opposition party to the Republicans, and the American press—failed to provide competing perspectives. In fact, they joined the government's propaganda bandwagon. The result was that the American public became convinced that the Bush administration's “official story” was the truth.     

Question wording and mass policy preferences: The comparative impact of substantive information and peripheral cues

Understanding the dynamics of mass political behavior requires attention to the mechanisms and processes citizens use in evaluating political affairs. At its structural core, a political appraisal has much in common with most of the other decisions individuals must make each day. Consequently, insight can be gained by examining political judgments from the perspective of those psychological theories concerned with information processing and decision making. More specifically, because the American citizen typically must maximize cognitive efficiency when evaluating political phenomena, those psychological mechanisms that facilitate expedience and simplicity in decision making are likely to operate on a great diversity of political judgments. Hence theoretical perspectives concerning the role of heuristic principles of judgment may be of considerable utility for the study of mass political behavior. One such perspective, the heuristic‐systematic model, is discussed. The tenets of the heuristic‐systematic model guide quasi‐experimental examination of the influence of variance in question wording on public support for the Reagan defense build‐up. Results indicate that source cues enable individuals to apply source evaluations when forming policy assessments but that the impact of source cues is overwhelmed when individuals are simultaneously exposed to relevant policy information.     

The Electoral Salience of Trade Policy: Experimental Evidence on the Effects of Welfare and Complexity

Why do some trade policies become electorally salient while others do not? While much of the literature argues that citizens act as a domestic constraint in the formation of trade policy, a general consensus has emerged that trade is most often a nonsalient issue among voters. This poses a paradox. On the one hand, trade models hinge upon voters’ rational self-interest and preferences for varying levels of protectionism to keep their governments accountable. On the other hand, the conditions by which trade becomes salient to these very voters in the first place are both undertheorized and untested. Using experimental evidence, I argue that two dimensions of a trade policy affect the likelihood of that issue becoming electorally salient. First, policies with large welfare effects should be more salient. Second, more complex issues should be less salient because such agreements are more likely to obfuscate an individual’s ability to discern its effects. I find support for my hypotheses that a trade policy’s salience tends to increase with the magnitude of its welfare effects and decrease with its complexity.     

The dynamics of donor and domestic elite interaction in Mozambique: formal decentralisation and informal power structures

Abstract

This paper analyses the interaction of domestic political elites and external donors against the backdrop of Mozambique’s decentralisation process. The empirical research at national and local levels supports the hypothesis that informal power structures influence the dynamics of this interaction. Consequently, this contributes to an outcome of externally induced democratisation different to what was intended by external actors. The decentralisation process has been utilised by ruling domestic elites for political purposes. Donors have rather focused on the technical side and ignored this informal dimension. By analysing the diverging objectives and perceptions of external and internal actors, as well as the instrumentalisation of formal democratic structures, it becomes clear, that the ‘informal has to be seen as normal’. At a theoretical level, the analysis contributes to elite-oriented approaches of post-conflict democratisation by adding ‘the informal’ as an additional factor for the dynamics of external-internal interaction. At a policy level, external actors need to take more into account informal power structures and their ambivalence for state-building and democratisation.     

The Interaction Effects of Bargaining Power: The Interplay Between Veto Power,Asymmetric Interdependence,Reputation, and Audience Costs

In international relations, different rationalistic theories have developed to explain negotiators’ behavior and the outcomes of negotiations. The compatibility and interaction effects between the different forms of bargaining power, however, remain unexplored. In this article, I seek to fill this gap by connecting four rationalistic concepts of bargaining power: veto power, asymmetric interdependence, reputation, and audience costs. By showing that domestic veto players are only semiveto players in international politics – because they can veto an improvement but not a deterioration of the status quo – threats based on asymmetric interdependence to disrupt a mutually beneficial cooperative relationship can be connected to veto power; the incompatibility of the factors concerned would otherwise make this impossible. The combination of veto power and asymmetric interdependence, however, raises a theoretical question: Will rational actors ever approve a deterioration of the status quo? Theories of reputation and audience costs can help answer this question. According to these approaches, threatening parties suffer ex post costs when they back down from their own threats. This theoretical analysis sheds new light on how different forms of bargaining power interact with each other and also helps to address some of the theoretical inconsistencies of the original individual concepts. Finally, this analysis suggests some of the weaknesses of empirical studies that have neglected these interaction effects.