Explaining Wars of Choice: An Integrated Decision Model of NATO Policy in Kosovo

This study explains the behavior of democratic states during wars of choice using an integrated decision model. Integrated models are an attractive choice for explaining multifaceted decisions, particularly when simpler, existing theories have an uneven or only partial ability to explain conflict behavior. To illustrate these points, this study assesses the behavior of key NATO members during the 1999 intervention in Kosovo. I compare the behavior of France, Germany, Italy, the U.K., and the U.S. with the expectations of theories of collective action, balance of threat neorealism, public opinion, and government institutional structures. As an alternative, I introduce a simple, integrated, decision-making model that incorporates the core concepts from the other explanations in a staged, conditional manner. The integrated model does a better job of explaining state behavior in Kosovo than do existing theories. The integrated model also is applicable to other conflicts. The results of this study, and the potential of integrated models, have implications for our thinking about foreign policy analysis, for behavior during military interventions and the fight against terrorism, and for future U.S. leadership of alliance and coalition war efforts.     

Incentives for Talking: Accepting Mediation in International and Civil Wars

This paper examines the conditions under which warring parties will accept an outside party's offer to mediate. Specifically, we explore variation in the incentives for accepting third-party offers in interstate conflicts as compared to civil wars. We argue that since mediation in civil wars transfers legitimacy to the non-state actor and can generate a precedent of exceptions to the norm of sovereignty, the political cost associated with accepting international mediation will be substantially higher in civil wars compared to international conflicts. States should therefore only accept mediation in the most serious disputes, or when the costs of legitimizing an opponent are outweighed by the benefits of conflict resolution. Building on this theoretical reasoning, the paper analyzes the implications of differences in incentive structures between inter- and intrastate conflicts for offer and acceptance of mediation. We find an empirical discrepancy between interstate and civil wars in regard to demand-side (acceptance) of mediation, and to a somewhat lesser extent the supply-side (offer) of international mediation. In line with our argument, we find that the historical ties between the potential intermediary and at least one of the disputants play different roles in regard to acceptance of mediation in interstate compared to civil wars. This is important to take into consideration in the emerging debate on mediation bias.     

State Building for Future Wars: Neoclassical Realism and the Resource-Extractive State

Neorealist theory holds that the international system compels states to adopt similar adaptive strategies—namely, balancing and emulation—or risk elimination as independent entities. Yet states do not always emulate the successful practices of the system's leading states in a timely and uniform fashion. Explaining this requires a theory that integrates systemic-level and unit-level variables: a “resource-extraction” model of the state in neoclassical realism. External vulnerability provides incentives for states to emulate the practices of the system's leading states or to counter such practices through innovation. Neoclassical realism, however, suggests that state power—the relative ability of the state to extract and mobilize resources from domestic society—shapes the types of internal balancing strategies that countries are likely to pursue. State power, in turn, is a function of the institutions of the state, as well as of nationalism and ideology. The experiences of six rising or declining great powers over the past three hundred years—China, France, Great Britain, Japan, Prussia (later Germany), and the United States—illustrate the plausibility of these hypotheses.     

Bringing the Insurgents Back In: Early Wars in British India

What role do weaker actors play in determining the outcomes of irregular wars? The literature on counterinsurgency outcomes has tended to explain weak-side victory either as a result of informational asymmetries caused by constraints on counterinsurgent forces, or as a result of suboptimal strategic choices by the state. We suggest that this underplays the role of insurgents themselves; we attempt to “bring the insurgents back in,” giving variation in insurgent polity a role in explaining their own victories and defeats. In order to do so, we focus inductively on a relatively novel pool of cases: Great Britain's wars in India from the mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries. Doing so allows us to hold the counterinsurgent side constant while evaluating variance among the insurgents themselves. We find that variance on the insurgent side is indeed significant in determining outcomes, and suggest possible reasons why this occurs.     

Military Culture and Restraint toward Civilians in War: Examining the Ugandan Civil Wars

What explains armed-group conduct toward civilians in war? The National Resistance Army (NRA) of Uganda demonstrated notable restraint toward civilians during its wars in northern Uganda in the 1980s, restraint that is puzzling given the overdetermined predictions for mass atrocity under rationalist, identity, and regime-type theories. Instead, the NRA case demonstrates that military culture—the organizational norms underlying combatant socialization—is a primary determinant of armed-group behavior, influencing combatant conduct in ways not conceptualized under existing theories of victimization. This review of the NRA case, based on field interviews with Ugandan military officers and examinations of Ugandan documentary archives, reveals three key points regarding the role of military culture in effecting restraint. First, the NRA case shows that organizational factors like military culture can determine military behavior toward civilians. Second, it reveals that theories of military culture, incorporating both formal and informal mechanisms of combatant socialization, can provide a more complete theoretical account than existing theories of armed-group conduct. Finally, the NRA provides potential hypotheses for mechanisms through which culture influences military behavior. I analyze the effect of culture on the NRA's conduct as a plausibility probe, generating inductive insights drawn from detailed field research to shed light on the organizational drivers of armed-group restraint. The NRA case thus points the way to a reconceptualization of military culture and the role of organizational factors that influence conflict behavior.     

Norway and the ESDP: Explaining Norwegian Participation in the EU's Security Policy

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to a better understanding of why various Norwegian governments of recent years have been willing to contribute to European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) operations and integrate into the ESDP structures despite their country's increasingly limited access to the decision-making and/or decision-shaping process in this policy area. Norway participates in most of the ESDP structures in one way or the other—it contributes with troops and personnel to ESDP operations, participates in a battle group and has an association agreement with the European Defence Agency. The result of Norway's will to integrate is that, as a non-member, it has become more integrated into the ESDP structures than members such as Denmark, who have chosen to opt out from this policy area. How can this be explained? Does the Norwegian government decide to participate because that is seen as the best way of pursuing Norwegian national interests, or are there other institutional or normative explanations for this policy choice?     

Thickening Civil Society: Explaining the Development of Associational Life in Mexico

Scholarship has demonstrated the important role that associational life has played in democratic transitions, democratic consolidation, and making democracy work. Unfortunately, however, many countries that have recently completed the transition to democracy lack a strong history of autonomous associations. Given their importance, this research seeks to understand how nonprofit organizations emerge in current-day Mexico, a recent transition country with a traditionally weak associational life, historically controlled by the state. Through a comparison of four Mexican cities this research finds that a transition from one-party rule to competitive elections was necessary to break the incentives for clientelism. Even following the transition, however, the persistence of informal rules from the old regime operating in both government and society restricts the opportunities available to potential ‘public entrepreneurs’. As a result, such entrepreneurs are highly dependent on already existing social infrastructure to obtain necessary human, organizational, and financial resources.     

Balance of Loyalties: Explaining Rebel Factional Struggles in the Nicaraguan Revolution

Abstract

What explains the causes and outcomes of rebel factional struggles? Existing explanations focus on exogenous and material factors that disrupt rebel organizations’ internal processes. Yet rebel groups succumb to infighting and organizational splinters even in the absence of external shocks. In this article I present an endogenous and social theory of rebel factional struggles, in which leadership disputes result from a shifting balance of loyalties within a rebel organization. In my model, rival rebel leaders cultivate the loyalty of two types of networks, recruitment networks and operational networks, which serve as power bases to initiate leadership struggles, launch coups, or split organizations. I build my theory through a case study of Nicaragua’s Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN), which splintered into three factions in 1975–76. Drawing on an original network dataset of FSLN commanders, I trace how the organization’s network structure changed over time, spurring disputes over rank-and-file fighters’ loyalties that tore the FSLN apart.     

A Rising Naval Challenger in Asia: Lessons from Britain and Japan between the Wars

The end of Great Britain's standing as a superpower conjures up a frightening picture of how a post-American world might come about, not by a gradual, managed decline of the United States, but rather by a sudden defeat at sea. Some 70 years ago, Britain's navy suffered staggering losses at the hands of an emerging peer competitor in Asia. Could a reversal of fortune of this magnitude—the world's leading naval power being soundly beaten by a rising challenger—happen again? Britain's naval downfall in Asia provides a sobering parable, warning of potential dangers looming for the United States in the twenty-first century.     

Explaining civil protection cooperation in the EU: the contribution of public goods theory

Abstract

In recent years the European Union has taken a number of steps towards improving civil protection cooperation in Europe. European leaders regularly declare the importance of boosting cooperation to prepare for and respond to disasters and emergencies afflicting member states. Those declarations have been accompanied by a flourish of policy activity, the building of new structures, and even treaty changes. On the surface, this little-known area of European integration appears to be proceeding with great success. A closer look, however, reveals significant gaps between member states' general expressions of enthusiasm and problematic cooperation in practice. We draw upon public goods theory to explain why this might be the case; more specifically, we identify likely game-theoretic obstacles to cooperation in different areas of the civil protection field. We evaluate our theoretical propositions by examining the current state of cooperation in marine pollution response, chemical contamination management, and flood response. We find that cooperation success in practice corresponds generally, but not perfectly, with the predictions of public goods theory. Our findings offer a nuanced view of civil protection cooperation in Europe and illuminate options for improved cooperation in the future.     

Outside the box: Explaining sanctions in pursuit of foreign economic goals*

Despite a marked increase in research on economic sanctions, empirical work has been constrained to a set of cases where sanctions are used for political or security issues, i.e., “high politics.” Since most theories of sanctions are generalizable to cases of political economy, i.e., “low politics,” this ad hoc empirical restriction is puzzling. This paper examines how well the existing theories of economic coercion can explain sanctions used to extract concessions on trade or regulatory issues. These theories are tested on a data set of 86 observations of the United States using or threatening section 301 action against a variety of target states. The results indicate that a conflict expectations approach is able to explain these cases as well as cases of high politics sanctions. Approaches stressing domestic politics or the use of sanctions as signals are of little use.     

Financing the United Nations: Explaining variation in how donors provide funding to the UN

When donors contemplate providing financial support to United Nations institutions they encounter a menu of funding options. Some UN institutions require mandatory dues, but most rely substantially on voluntary contributions, which donors can choose to earmark for specific purposes. How donors provide resources has widespread effects on the authority of UN governing bodies, donor control over UN programs, and the efficiency of UN operations. What explains how donors choose to fund UN programs and agencies? We advance a theory that emphasizes member state preferences over the affordability and policy substance of IO activity. Using data from two novel experiments and a case study of U.S. funding practices toward the United Nations (1945–1980s), we provide mixed-method evidence showing that a state is more likely to provide voluntary contributions when its preferences over the affordability and policy of IO activity differ from those of the governing coalition and more likely to provide mandatory contributions when its preferences are consistent with those of the governing coalition. Further, we demonstrate that preferences over policy substance are particularly important in explaining recent trends in donor earmarking.     

政治转型中的军人:军队特性与政变结果

军队特性是影响军队夺权结果的关键变量。在政治转型前,军队特性可分为自主性军队和依附性军队两类。这两种类型军队可从控制模式、介入政治纠纷程度和身份认同差异等三个维度进行区分。由于自主性军队和依附性军队在以上三个维度所存在的差异,导致了其在夺权行动中出现了行动能力、话语权建构和灵活性等方面的差异,从而最终导致了夺权结果的不同。作者以埃及、土耳其和伊朗三国军队为案例,阐述了政治转型之前军队特性对转型之后其夺权结果的影响,进而分析军队在政治转型后与文官争夺的主导权的斗争中获胜的原因。自主性军队行动能力强,同时凭借其军事特性可以实现与前政权的脱钩,并且其长期以来在民众中积累的话语权和灵活性优势也使其在与文官势力的博弈中占据上风,因此能够夺权成功。而在依附性军队中,由于其缺乏自主决策能力,并且紧密卷入前政权事务,因此其难以获得民众的支持,并会成为新上台政治势力首先消灭的对象,故而其夺权行动往往失败。     

Security Versus Liberty in the Context of Counterterrorism: An Experimental Approach

A critical question in counterterrorism studies concerns the extent to which governments adequately balance the continual provision of individual rights and freedoms with the appropriate level of national security when faced with a terrorist attack. We experimentally assess this tradeoff utilizing a 2 × 2 × 2 between-groups factorial design, manipulating (a) the extent of terror-related threats, (b) the level of invasiveness of subsequent counterterrorism policies, as well as (c) the terror context: transnational and domestic. The results provide evidence that the public is more willing to accept greater reductions in civil liberties under a greater threat of terrorism only when the perceived effectiveness of those policies to prevent future acts of terrorism is high. Furthermore, we find these results to be specific to the context of a transnational terror threat. This suggests that the public will be unwilling to accept reductions in civil liberties when the source of the attack is domestic, regardless of the level of threat or how effective subsequent policies may be in preventing future attacks.     

Explaining recent increases in calorie intake in rural India: the role of social policy strengthening

ABSTRACT

During the past decade, considerable research efforts have sought to explain India’s “calorie consumption paradox”, namely, the coexistence of a decline in average per capita calorie intake in rural India alongside increased material living standards. Evidence from the most recent (68th) round of the National Sample Survey (NSS), released in 2014, however, indicates increases in calorie intake, notably among poorer income quintiles. This paper argues that the turnaround in these data is linked to the improved performance of pro-poor social protection measures. Analysis of data suggests a close association between states that have made the greatest improvements in social policy delivery systems, and increased calorie intake for the poorest quintile of rural populations. This conclusion supports wider international evidence on the importance of social protection strengthening for nutrition-sensitive economic growth.