Militant Islam and the Futile Fight for Reputation

The reputation debate in international relations has split into two camps: those suggesting actions affect perceptions of resolve and those who say they do not. This article engages the reputation debate in the context of militant Islamists. Using political psychology, we offer a theory of biased attributions that challenges Mercer's “desires” hypothesis that reputations for irresolution do not form when an act is desirable from the perceiver's eye. Motivated biases undercut any reputation for resolve in cases of firmness and challenge rationalist claims of reputation formation. Militant Islamist perceptions of U.S. and Soviet interventions in the Muslim world since the 1980s support this thesis and caution against futile wars for reputation.     

International conflict,military rule,and violent authoritarian breakdown

ABSTRACT

Why do some transitions of power from military rule occur violently while others do not? What effect, if any, does the international security environment have on how violent breakdowns of authoritarian rule are? I argue a conflict-prone security environment ameliorates the commitment problem by ensuring an influential role for the military out of power. Therefore, when facing a domestic crisis in a threatening security environment, military leaders are more likely to peacefully cede power rather than wield violent measures to stay in office. Perhaps counter-intuitively, international conflicts thus lead to transitions of power from military rule that minimize violence and human costs. International conflicts do not have this moderating effect on other types of authoritarian rule.     

Russia and the USA: The virtual games of superpowers

An analysis of the rapid and dramatic changes in the politics and economics of the world during the twentieth century reveals that the role of science and high technology becomes extremely important for international development, security and cooperation. The consequences of fundamental research become critical for mankind, and they determine and define preventive security. International scientific and technological cooperation, coupled with the financial power of the dollar, will make it possible to avoid an ‘end of history’ or a ‘clash of civilizations’, as well as to resolve many world conflicts. The importance that science and technology hold for the future of humanity must be added to the current definition of ‘democracy’.     

Signaling Resolve: Leaders,Reputations, and the Importance of Early Interactions

How do leaders develop reputations for resolve across repeated interactions? While scholars find that leaders can acquire individual reputations for resolve, we know relatively little about how these leader-specific reputations form to begin with. This article examines how leaders develop reputations for resolve from the very beginning of their tenures and present three key hypotheses regarding these leader-specific reputations. First, statements are more influential to reputational assessments during initial interactions. Second, statements create expectations of future behavior, which interact with a leader’s subsequent actions to influence reputation development. Third, initial perceptions of resolve significantly condition later assessments. Through a process tracing survey experiment, I find evidence that resolute statements are more substantively influential during early interactions. I also find early perceptions of resolve do significantly influence later perceptions. Furthermore, statements create expectations of future behavior, and it is by meeting or defying these expectations that a leader’s reputation for resolve is improved or injured within the experiment. These results remain robust even when controlling for contextual factors, including state characteristics. The implications of these findings for both scholars and policy makers are discussed, and this study illustrates how individual leaders develop these reputations for resolve across interactions.     

Interaction and participation in sub‐war conflict, 1959–63

This research is concerned with the spread of sub‐war conflicts. It is hypothesized that higher levels of interaction with the contestants in such conflicts increase the probability of participation. A study of the behavior of the states in the CREON data set toward the Cold War during the years 1959–63 supports this contention. Attention then centers on determining the types of states that are most prone toward high levels of interaction. The findings in this section indicate that alliance members have significantly higher levels of interaction than non‐members. For members there is a strong negative logarithmic relationship between a state's geographical distance from the center of conflict and its level of interaction. This suggests that security interests strongly affect the inclination of such states to participate. Among non‐members of alliances, economic involvement in the international system and ties to the Warsaw Treaty Organization are most closely associated with interaction.     

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.     

Coup Risk,Counterbalancing, and International Conflict

Contrary to the literature on rallies-around-the-flag, this article argues that, in some circumstances, leaders may use international conflict to promote domestic divisiveness. More specifically, the threat of a military coup generally prompts leaders to divide their militaries (a practice known as counterbalancing), and even to engage in international conflict to ensure that various branches of their own armed forces remain distrustful of one another. Two empirical tests of these claims are offered: a large-N statistical analysis that examines whether coup risk leads to counterbalancing, and whether counterbalanced nations engage in more low-level military conflict (controlling for other causes of conflict); and a case study of Georgia shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Both empirical studies support the arguments advanced by the authors.

     

Defensive development,combative contradictions: towards an international political sociology of global militarism in Africa

ABSTRACT

Drawing on international political sociology, this article shows how the merger of development and security has become part of the ideational architecture that facilitates a new ‘feel-good’ militarism in Africa. Contemporary international reform efforts are designed to restrain military power in the name of development, democracy and civilian oversight, but also to strengthen the coercive capacities of African security institutions and make them more efficient in the global fight against violent extremism. Such defensive development efforts have implications for the historically problematic relationship of the African state with modern forms of organised force, reconfiguring and recalibrating relations and dynamics between the state, military forces and external actors. The article concludes that defensive development is fraught with combative contradictions and risks becoming the handmaiden not only of increased militaristic violence, but also of oppression and the restriction of freedom and democracy.     

Religion as a Factor in Ethnic Conflict: Kashmir and Indian Foreign Policy

ABSTRACT

Ethnic conflicts with a strong religious component do not have merely domestic or foreign causes and consequences. As a result, internationalization of ethnic conflict has become an important subject of inquiry both in terms of pure research and policy-oriented studies. This article presents a case study of Indian-Pakistani relations over Kashmir, used to evaluate the role of religion and the explanatory power of the approach presented here. The aim of the study is to apply a foreign policy approach that simultaneously incorporates domestic and external factors in an analysis of how and in what ways religious elements of the Kashmir question affect India's foreign policy. The approach, an application of “systemism,” contributes to current developments in the realist school of international relations through its emphasis on the need to look at both international and state levels in combination. Earlier applications of realism, as both neotraditional and structural realism clearly demonstrate, tend to remain restricted to one level or the other. In this approach, a religious dynamic can have a domestic source yet be effectively examined in terms of international ramifications.     

Theorizing India–US–China strategic triangle

ABSTRACT

In this paper we build on Robert Jervis’ concept of strategic triangles, relations between three states where from the point of view of each state the others are pivotal for its security or foreign policy behavior in a given region. We argue that triangles are important in influencing state behavior in the areas of balance of power, deterrence, arms races and status competition, and consider how these dimensions might interact. In this context, this article examines the US–India–China triangle, while also addressing to a lesser extent how other related triangles interlink with it, taking into account how China’s rise and increasing economic interdependence impact these relations.     

Turning off the Taps: The Termination of State Sponsorship

ABSTRACT

Why do some states terminate their sponsorship of rebel movements while others are persistent in their provision of support? In the past, most research on external support to insurgents has focused on why states choose to sponsor rebel groups and particularly how this affects conflict duration. However, we know little about the termination of such support. This is surprising given that support has been shown to make armed conflicts more intractable and tremendous efforts are made in condemning and sanctioning such behavior. This study constitutes the first large-N analysis of support termination, employing survival analysis on global data of state support to rebel movements between 1975–2009. Surprisingly, the findings indicate that only some of the factors that explain support provision can offer insights into its termination. In particular, support is more likely to be terminated when no ethnic kinship bonds exist between the rebel movement and the government of the supporting state. Many decisions to withdraw support also seem to coincide with the transition from the Cold War. Threats and sanctions from other states appear largely ineffective. The study contributes to our understanding of the international dimensions of civil war and the role and motives of third parties.     

Does Russia need a general staff?

The institutional arrangements and mechanisms for preventing and managing conflicts will determine the future of European security and the balance of power in a wider Europe. Russian policy and Russia‐NATO relations are anaylsed within the context of the ongoing changes at Russia's southern periphery. The embryos of three distinct security systems are developing ‐ a Russia‐led, a NATO‐led and one led by the international community. The article suggests that instability in the southern periphery in the future will require security cooperation and a joint approach by Russia and NATO countries.     

Limits to deep integration: Canada between the EU and the US1

Abstract

Twenty-five years ago, as preferential trade agreements started to proliferate, Jagdish Bhagwati sounded the ‘spaghetti bowl’ alarm, arguing that the ensuing complexity would create inefficiencies in the international system and challenges for firms navigating overlapping rules. This article seeks to update and complement Bhagwati’s thesis by asking if proliferating ‘deep’ trade agreements add a new dimension of complexity to this picture. This article shows that the early answer to this question is ‘not yet’, as governments have discovered that prospective conflicts with existing or simultaneous commitments limit just how deep the provisions of an agreement can be. Governments managing multiple deep agreements play a variation on Putnam’s two-level game. As Putnam theorized, these governments reconcile domestic interests with international opportunities in formulating their strategies. However, ensuring compatibility across various, sometimes competing international opportunities is also a key consideration. Canada’s concurrent participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Canada–European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) provides a crucial exploratory case study.     

Differentiation as Affirmative Action: Transforming or Reinforcing Structural Inequality at the UNFCCC?

ABSTRACT

Structural inequality is at the heart of the struggle to prevent dangerous climate change. This makes the global climate regime a particularly interesting case, when it comes to conceptualising and assessing the role of international institutions as sites for the reproduction and transformation of macro-level inequalities that structure the international system. This article uses these interlinkages to, first, assess, in how far the debates, conflicts and doubts regarding effectiveness and justifications of affirmative action at the domestic level, introduced as a reaction to domestic structural inequality, can teach us something about the actual potential of and the obstacles to the transformation of structural inequalities through differentiation internationally. Second, it assesses whether and how institutional mechanisms of categorisation and (re-)distribution within the UNFCCC have led and are likely to lead in the future to a reinforcement or a transformation of global structural inequalities.     

Show them the flag: status ambitions and recognition in small state coalition warfare

ABSTRACT

Why do small states actively contribute to US- and NATO-led military operations? The small state literature has recently developed a novel explanation, referring to their dependency upon the alliance hegemon. The logic is that the small states aim to improve their status and reputation in order to remain relevant and to receive protection. This article contributes to this literature by moving away from this fear of abandonment motivation towards more positive status incitements. It shows how such status motives actually guide and shape small states’ military contributions in US- or NATO-led operations. It does so by using recent innovations in process-tracing methodology to create a status-seeking mechanism. Using the case of Belgium’s participation in the military coalition against ISIL, this article goes beyond the usual Scandinavian suspects in the small state literature and demonstrates that status motivations have relevance for a wider group of small states.     

Territorial nationalism in spatial rivalries: An institutionalist account of the argentine‐chilean rivalry

The rivalry concept explored in the conflict literature during the past decade offers considerable potential for theory building in international relations. This paper explores one possible avenue to this end by applying insights from historical institutionalism to a case of spatial rivalry in order to explain many of the findings from the quantitative literature. As I demonstrate in this paper, the focus on issues is a good start at explaining rivalry, yet it masks important underlying domestic processes that initiate, maintain, and terminate rivalries. I explain how the “issue” of territory came to be fused with national identity in the case of Argentina‐Chile resulting in a history of conflict and classification as an enduring rivalry. I draw on this case to argue that territorial nationalism may explain why seemingly disparate territorial conflicts separated by time and space can be considered linked to form a spatial rivalry.     

The Russian case for military intervention in Georgia: international law,norms and political calculation

Abstract

The Russian military intervention in Georgia in August 2008 has raised significant questions about Russian thinking and practice on the legitimate use of military force abroad, especially in relation to neighbour states. The arguments advanced by Russia to justify this campaign show how Russian interpretations of customary international law as well as norms related to the use of force have served as an instrument of state policy, rather than being rooted in any broader international consensus. The Russian discourse in this context about sovereignty, self-determination and the legitimacy of recognising South Ossetia and Abkhazia as states appears similarly to be strongly influenced by political self-interest and Russian views about its entitlement within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region. Among Russian claims, Moscow's commitment to support its ‘citizens’ abroad has been particularly controversial. This article examines these issues and also the possibility that, through its justifications for waging war against Georgia, Russia is more broadly contesting the interpretation of certain international norms, that it regards as essentially constructed by Western states. Some potential implications of these legal and normative arguments for future Russian policy in the CIS region, including Ukraine, are also examined.     

Power,resolve and bargaining in international crises: A spatial theory

In this paper the spatial model of crisis bargaining is utilized to derive a number of hypotheses relating the relative power and resolve of crisis participants to crisis outcomes. The resolve and two power variables are defined and the manner in which they are incorporated into the model is demonstrated. The model, which represents a synthesis of traditional utility based bargaining models and the spatial theory of voting, is then used to establish the theoretical linkages among these variables and all possible outcomes of international crises. Among the more interesting results is that crises in which one party is much more likely to win a war should one occur and the other party is much more resolved are extremely likely to end in war. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of these findings to a number of topics in the international relations literature, including Schelling's strategy of commitment.     

Agenda-setting from behind: India and the framework convention on climate change

ABSTRACT

India’s approach and policies at climate change negotiations have garnered considerable interest and attention. Over the last three decades, India’s positions have gained more importance as its carbon emissions rise. In this article, I explain India’s ratification of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) using the New Interdependence approach, a framework that explains state behavior by analyzing how global rules affects the domestic politics and policymaking around a particular issue. Specifically, I map how the conflicts around which countries should address global warming influenced the domestic politics of climate change in India, particularly the rise of MEA in leading India’s policymaking on climate change, including FCCC negotiations. MEA’s political understanding of climate change, sharpened by two domestic environmental groups – TERI and CSE, decisively shaped India’s approach at FCCC negotiations. Indian negotiators focused on hammering the differences between developed and developing countries helping shape a Framework Convention that differentiated climate responsibilities based on development constraints.     

Reputations,Perceptions, and International Economic Agreements

How do countries’ actions on the international stage affect their reputations? We propose that, particularly when evaluating countries about whom individuals may have few prior beliefs, international agreements may hold particular sway in establishing countries’ reputations. Specifically, if a relatively unknown country joins an organization with a country that has a good reputation, individuals will judge that original state to be less risky; if the better-known countries are generally perceived to have a bad reputation, the less-known state will also look more risky. This article presents evidence from a survey experiment in which individuals are asked about the weight of various factors in their perceptions of countries’ reputations. Subjects would randomly receive a prompt about a country’s domestic policy reform or its ties to other countries via economic or cultural agreements. The results show that states’ international ties play a role in assessments about country reputations. We also examine possible mechanisms underlying this finding. Lower risk associated with agreements with good countries is largely a function of anticipated economic benefits. However, the higher risk associated with agreements with bad countries seems to be more a function of anticipated political closeness between countries.