The Strategist's Curse: A Theory of False Optimism as a Cause of War

This article proposes a new theory of false optimism as a cause of war. Named for its similarity to the winner's curse in auctions, this theory explains how and why established sources of misperception (cognitive, psychological, bureaucratic, and organizational) interact with the selection of one military strategy from a set of alternatives to produce a surprising amount of additional false optimism. Even if a state's general perceptions of how well it will fare in a potential war are not biased toward optimism, this theory explains why its perceptions of the particular strategy on which it will base its plans for fighting that war will be systematically biased toward optimism. Simulations and formal modeling confirm the logic of the theory and suggest that the strategist's curse can sharply increase the probability of war due to false optimism.     

The Petroleum Paradox: Oil,Coercive Vulnerability,and Great Power Behavior

Why do great powers fear oil coercion, and what explains the strategies they adopt to protect themselves from it? The paper identifies three types of anticipatory strategies great powers pursue: self-sufficiency, indirect control, and direct control. A state's choice of strategy depends on its degree of vulnerability to oil coercion, which in turn is determined by two independent variables: the amount of oil the country possesses compared to what it needs to meet strategic objectives and the susceptibility of its imports to physical disruption. Great powers fear oil coercion not only because they worry about damage to their economies; petroleum denial also threatens a country's military capabilities. Four case studies illustrate the theory, including Great Britain's efforts to reduce coercive vulnerability at the close of the First World War and Adolf Hitler's attempts across three periods to safeguard German oil access before and during World War II.     

McDonaldisation of Sovereignty: A Foucauldian Analysis of Responsibility to Protect

The importance of the principle of Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) has typically been attributed either to its character as a presumed new norm (normative ontology) or to its capacity to influence international politics by mobilising political actors to protect civilians through military interventions and other forms of intervention (causal ontology), as witnessed in the recent cases of Libya and Côte d'Ivoire. This article will argue for an additional model of explanation, according to which the main significance of RtoP might best be understood by reference to its character as a political statement of global policy networks (discursive ontology) calling for the reinterpretation of the sovereignty regime. The article will apply Michel Foucault's theory of discursive fields to demonstrate that RtoP beneficially introduces human security as an additional criterion of state sovereignty, thus contributing to the “humanitarisation of sovereignty”. However, RtoP also engenders “McDonaldisation of sovereignty” and “sovereignty-consumption” mentality in that it attempts to transform and homogenise pluralistic state sovereigns into a universal, seemingly humanitarian mould. As a drawback, this McDonaldisation process excludes some victimised groups from the remit of international concern.     

The new sciences,self‐organization and democracy

Social scientists have argued recently that the theory and findings of the new sciences (quantum mechanics, chaos theory, and new evolutionary biology) corroborate the essences of liberal democracy. Specifically, scholars have argued that the new sciences’ principle of self‐organization is closely associated with the idea of individual liberty. This article traces the evolution of the new sciences’ self‐organization theory. It then argues that the effort to anchor liberal democracy in self‐organization is misleading; that is to say self‐organization behaviour neither depends on democracy nor does it culminate in democracy. It is also dangerous, because it absolves human agency from the need to protect the vulnerable institutions of liberal democracy.     

The Moore thesis: what's left after 1989?

This article reconsiders the work of Barrington Moore and his critics on the historical emergence of democracy in the light of post-communist democratization. What are we to make of a region which violates Moore's dictum – “No bourgeoisie, no democracy”? Using the tools of comparative historical analysis, it makes sense of how democracy emerged in the region by developing a theory which both explains why this was possible and what social actors were essential to this outcome. With attention to patterns of social development in the region, the politics of elite alliance in the final phase of communism, the strength of civil society at extrication, and the role of the international system, it explains differences in regime outcomes across the region.     

Informal Institutions and Democracy

Informal institutions have grown in relevance for the analysis of new ‘third wave’ democracies. The research strategy receives its impetus from the debate on neo‐institutionalism theory, which offers a productive perspective for structuring the field of analysis. This article explains the distinguishing factors between formal and informal institutions. It addresses five basic types of informal institutions, examines the ways in which they function and discusses their relevance in terms of democracy theory. Each type is characterized by the way in which it enacts its respective means of political influence. The study distinguishes between forms of specific relationship (clientelism), of material exchange (corruption), of violent exertion of influence (putsch threat), of civil resistance (civil disobedience) and of legal practice (custom law), and discusses their relevance to democracy. The central argument maintains that a differentiated study of informal institutions is crucial to addressing this question. The necessary typological differentiation allows us to make an appropriate assessment ‐one that does not manifest itself in a simple clear‐cut choice of affirmative or negative answers.     

Assessing the historical turn in IR: an anatomy of second wave historical sociology

This article reassesses what is at stake in the historical turn in international relations (IR) and the attendant debate between the Second Wave of neo-Weberian historical sociology (WHS) and Political Marxism (PM). Firstly, it endeavours to recast what is at stake in the ‘historical turn’ in IR: the critique of reification and chronocentrism. Secondly, it examines WHS's argument against reductionism in the light of Weber's own work. We show how the Weberian dualism between the politics and the economics inhibits its capacity to complete its project of historicizing IR. Finally, it explains why recent Weberian's defence of multicausalism creates even more obstacles on the road towards an ontologically consistent historical turn.     

Continuity despite change: Kenya's new constitution and executive power

What explains the continuation of strong executive power despite the introduction of new formal constraints on presidents? This article focuses on the elites working within the state agencies that execute presidential power, who benefit materially from their authority and have incentives to defy formal constraints placed on their own power. To evaluate this claim, I examine Kenya's 2010 constitution, which intended to reduce the power of Kenya's “imperial presidency” through formal constraints on the executive. As implementation has progressed, however, the executive bureaucracy – the Provincial Administration (PA) – has not changed in size, structure, or function, contrary to the explicit goals of the constitution's drafters. Using original interview and archival evidence, I find that the persistence of this agency – and by extension strong executive power – is due to PA administrators’ attempts to protect their material interests. This article shows that formal rule change may be insufficient to spur democratization in the face of entrenched authoritarian bureaucracies with strong incentives to maintain their pre-existing interests.     

Institutionalizing ASEAN: celebrating Europe through network governance

This article provides a new piece for two of the puzzles of institutionalized cooperation in Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). First, with regard to the organization's four decades of existence, there has always been a marked gap between ASEAN's rhetorical goals of cooperation and its actual achievements. What explains these systematic failures of implementation? Second, from the outset, ASEAN was criticized for its light institutionalization, which failed to deliver the substantial cooperation goals. Despite selected institutional reforms, ASEAN's autonomy has not increased remarkably and it has not made any major institutional innovations. Why does ASEAN design institutions it does not use? Why does this transformation gap occur? The author suggests a sociological institutional explanation and argues that major impulses for cooperation have come from outside Southeast Asia, most importantly from Europe. By mimicking the European integration process, ASEAN member states have effectively created an isomorphic organization. The Association's institutional development reflects a concern for international legitimacy and less an objective functional demand arising from the specific interactions of member states. This copying process has led to network governance within the organization.     

Institutional divergence and convergence in the Asia-Pacific? ASEAN in practice and in theory

This paper gives attention to the geopolitics related to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an alternative model of regionalism in theory and practice. Offering a rough periodization of ASEAN in IR theory, it considers interacting theoretical and empirical developments, and their geopolitics as one way to think about, first, ASEAN, its defining dynamics and processes of change, and, second, ASEAN's relationship to a larger IR theory literature defined by US preoccupations and the institutional trajectory of the European Union. Three periods are considered: a Cold War period, when ASEAN norms and practices developed relatively insulated from great power expectations and theorizing about ASEAN was minimal; the 1990s, when constructivist theorizing encouraged new thinking about alternative institutional models; and the 2000s, a period characterized by correlating great power pressures and a ‘functional’ turn in academic and theoretical debates about ASEAN. Special attention is given to the United States as a major, leading actor in both world politics and the institutionalization of international relations as a discipline, as well as the possibilities and constraints of institutional divergence in theory and practice.     

A Bargaining Theory of Minority Demands: Explaining the Dog that Did not Bite in 1990s Yugoslavia

This article develops a general theory of bargaining between a minority, its host state, and outside lobby actor to explain why minorities shift their demands from affirmative action to cultural autonomy to secessionism and back, often in the absence of clear economic or security incentives. This paper uses a simple game tree model to show that if a minority believes that it enjoys significant support from a powerful national homeland or other external actor, it radicalized its demands against the host state, even if the center has credibly committed to protect minority rights . Conversely, if a minority believes that it enjoys no external support, then it will accommodate the host state, even in the presence of significant majority repression . As a general theory of claim-making, this model challenges structural theories of demands that rely on static economic differences or historical grievances to explain claim-making. It also challenges security dilemma arguments that hold that minority radicalization is mainly a function of ethnic fears. The model's hypotheses are tested using longitudinal analysis of Hungarians in Vojvodina during the 1990s, as the Yugoslav dog that "barked but did not bite." Careful examination of claim-making in this case demonstrates the superior explanatory power of the ethnic bargaining model as compared with dominant theories of minority mobilization in the literature.     

Political memory after state death: the abandoned Yugoslav national pavilion at Auschwitz

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between political memory, state ontological security, and populist movements after state death. When a state dies, ideological space opens up for new state agents to narrate a different version of the past, one that delegitimizes the ideological underpinning of the old state order and creates ontological insecurity in the new polity. Populism becomes an especially attractive ideology, as it feeds on a sense of insecurity at home and abroad. The argument is illustrated with the case study of transformed Holocaust remembrance after the death of Yugoslavia. Tracing the history of the Yugoslav memorial exhibition at Auschwitz, the article demonstrates ways in which post-Yugoslav Holocaust remembrance has focused on delegitimizing Yugoslavia’s communist past, especially its antifascism. Once antifascism is removed from state political memory, political space opens up for a revival and ideological normalization of populist—and at its most extreme—fascist ideological movements in the present.     

Saab,British aerospace and the JAS 39 Gripen aircraft joint venture

While most combat aircraft used by the Royal Swedish Air Force (RSAF) were designed and manufactured in Sweden and, with the exception of surplus aircraft, only delivered to the RSAF, the JAS 39 Gripen multi‐role aircraft is different. Gripen aircraft being delivered to the RSAF are partly manufactured by British Aerospace (BAe), and Saab and BAe are, ‘arm in arm’, marketing it abroad. This article describes the background of as well as the Saab‐BAe Gripen joint venture as such, and raises a few issues involved in Europe's ‘globalization’ of national military‐industrial activities.

By joining up with BAe, Saab has joined one of the major aerospace companies in Europe. It seems likely that the Saab‐BAe joint venture is Sweden's exit from indigenous combat aircraft designs, and the entrance to European multinational projects in the future. BAe's role in Europe's aircraft and missile industrial restructuring is likely to decide Sweden's place and role. The joint venture as such, and the problems involved in reaching a united, binding and in its implementation restrictive European export Code of Conduct, suggests that the Gripen will be exported according to the common export interests in Britain and Sweden.     

New Security Dynamics in the Asia-Pacific: Extending Regionalism from Southeast to Northeast Asia

This article explains the emerging security dynamics in the Asia-Pacific in the context of the project to establish an “Asian Community”. Although the model of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has been constrained by a post-colonial attachment to sovereignty, new processes of domestic democratisation, taking in new members and dealing with non-traditional security threats have led to an acceptance of the need to deepen its social and political pillars. The real test for this project, however, will be whether it can be extended to Northeast Asia, where relations between states are still characterised by traditional power-balancing and rising nationalism.     

Creating the Financial Stability Forum: What Role for Existing Institutions?

The Financial Stability Forum (FSF)—now rebranded as the Financial Stability Board (FSB)—has become a focal point for financial regulatory initiatives in the aftermath of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis. Despite its central status, the body has received little attention from scholars. This is particularly striking both in light of the increasing centrality of the FSF/FSB within the realm of financial regulatory governance and the body's unusual structure and composition. Indeed, the creation and design of the FSF pose an empirical puzzle: what explains the creation of a new, informal and loosely structured institution and the centre of a financial regulatory governance regime? At the time of the Forum's creation, the broader financial architecture was marked by significant institutional density, with a large number of international organisations engaged in governance activities. This paper argues that it is precisely the structure and activities of these existing institutions, particularly the International Monetary Fund, the Bank for International Settlements and the Joint Forum on Financial Conglomerates, which account for the creation and design of the FSF, and points to the need for scholars to take seriously the role of organisations operating within institutionally dense spaces.     

Russian military strategies in the Arctic: change or continuity?

This paper examines the nature of Moscow’s military strategies in the Arctic. It is argued that the roles of military power have radically changed since the Cold War era. According to Russian strategic thinking, instead of being a coercive instrument in a global confrontation between two superpowers and capitalist and socialist systems, now military power has new functions, such as to ascertain Russia's sovereignty over its (not their) exclusive economic zone and continental shelf in the region, protect Moscow’s economic interests in the North, prevent illegal migration and potential terrorist attacks against critical industrial and infrastructural objects, fulfil some dual-use functions (such as search and rescue operations, monitoring air and maritime spaces, providing navigation safety, mitigating natural and man-made catastrophes), help academic community in developing Arctic research, and carry some symbolic functions. These new roles, however, do not preclude military power from fulfilling its traditional functions, such as territorial defence, power projection, deterrence, and containment. Russia’s military modernisation programmes are described. The authors arrive at a conclusion that these programmes do not provoke an arms race or undermine the regional cooperation. To prevent negative security trends, a system of arms control and confidence- and security-building measures should be developed in the region.     

Still lying abroad? On the institution of the resident ambassador

What explains the persistence and proliferation of the resident ambassador? Why is the role apparently important both to the conduct of international affairs and to the work of governments? I do not try to propose a new theory of ambassadors, but I do offer conclusions about the nature of living in a globalized society of states where the economic logic of markets and the political logic of communities are at cross-purposes. It is a world in which we depend on institutions to help us maintain order and stability. Ambassadors are one of those institutions. At one level they are the concrete day by day reproduction of the society of states. At another level they act on behalf of the members of their community, helping that community to maintain its strength and cohesion by doing what needs to be done, abroad. An increase in the intensity of interactions among states, therefore, seems to lead to an increase in diplomatic representation facilitated rather than impeded by the new technologies of transportation and communications. Ambassadors are still lying abroad, it seems, because changes in technology have brought 'abroad' much closer to home while the myriad effects of globalization have made much more of abroad relevant to people and their governments. Far from being in decline, the resident ambassador seems likely to continue flourishing.     

The failure of the Philippine presidential system

This article explains why the Philippines continues to be a weak state and that the prospects for building a stronger, sustainable state are dim under the current political system. Philippine elections are won through a mix of popularity, populism and money politics. This seriously undermines the strength of the state since the oligarchy expects returns for their investment in a candidates campaign. The extraordinary power of the president and the ministers makes it possible to repay and buy the loyalty of the financial and political oligarchy by giving away jobs within the bureaucracy. A predatory political elite, whose prime goal it has been to win the coming elections and to assure that their family interests are protected and promoted further undermines the independence and meritocracy of the Philippine bureaucracy. I argue that as long as the current presidential system continues to exist in the Philippines the chances for building a strong state are slight.This article represents an abbreviated version of the introduction of the MA thesis of Bastiaan van de Loo titled: The Election and Presidency of Joseph Estrada: A Case Study of Philippine Politics. The complete version of the thesis can be found on http://www.thephilippines.org     

Tactical Means,Strategic Ends: Al Qaeda's Use of Denial and Deception

This analysis surveys Al Qaeda's employment of denial and deception (D&D) and shows that it uses D&D on tactical and operational levels in order to achieve strategic results. It defines denial and deception and explains how they relate to Al Qaeda, overviews Al Qaeda's changing network structure and seeks to summarize how Al Qaeda employs D&D throughout its operations. This paper is structured to show that denial and deception are institutionalized factors that manifest themselves through all aspects of bin Laden's organization and that the traditional conception of D&D—that nonstate actors are incapable of employing deception as an element of grand strategy—is incorrect.