Noncitizen Soldiers: Explaining Foreign Recruitment by Modern State Militaries

More than a century after citizen armies became an international norm, nearly two dozen states actively recruit foreigners into their militaries. Why do these states skirt the strong citizen-soldier norm and continue to welcome foreigners? To explain this practice, we first identify two puzzles associated with foreign recruitment. The first is practical: foreign recruits pose loyalty, logistical, and organizational challenges that domestic soldiers do not. The second is normative: noncitizen soldiers lie in a normative gray zone, permitted under the letter of international law but in tension with the spirit of international norms against mercenary armies. Next, we survey foreign military recruitment programs around the world and sort them into three broad types of programs, each with its own primary motivation: importing expertise, importing labor, and bolstering international bonds. We explain these categories and explore three exemplary cases in depth: Australia, Bahrain, and Israel. Our findings suggest that foreign recruitment can affect a state’s military operations by allowing militaries to rapidly develop advanced capabilities, by reducing the political risk associated with the use of force, and by expanding a state’s influence among former colonial and diaspora populations.     

Cantankerous Cooperation: Democracies,Authoritarian Regimes,and the Prisoner's Dilemma

One of the most important debates in the field of international relations is over the effect of regime type on militarized conflict. This debate, however, has rarely extended to how regime type influences other aspects of foreign policy. Using a computer simulated intergroup prisoner's dilemma, we investigate whether democratic decisionmaking groups are more cooperative than authoritarian decisionmaking groups. We argue that differences between cooperation tendencies of groups can be explained by the structure of the decision process. Repeated simulations show that democracies tend to be more consistent in their decisions in comparison to authoritarian groups. Implications for international relations theory and policy are discussed.     

Fencing in Warfare: Threats,Punishment, and Intra-war Deterrence in Counterterrorism

New theoretical approaches have been developed that apply deterrence and coercion to counterterrorism. Critics have suggested, however, that in the particular case of deterring terrorism by threats of punishment, a mismatch exists between deterrent goals and counterterrorism intentions: the twin aims of destroying and deterring a single opponent is logically and theoretically incompatible. These criticisms, however, neglect to take two important factors into consideration. First, threats of punishment in counterterrorism can be applied against a wide assortment of actors involved in and associated with terrorism and political violence. Second, the concept of “intra-war deterrence” suggests ways in which a state can deter certain behavior or a specific form of warfare while engaging in open conflict with that same adversary. In exploring both factors, this article posits that states can gain coercive leverage over different actors involved in terrorism, including organizations with which they are actively hoping to defeat.     

Security Threats,Enemy-Contingent Policies,and Economic Development in Dictatorships

In this article, I introduce, discuss, and formalize the argument that the type of security threat a dictatorial regime faces has implications for economic policy making and, consequently, economic outcomes. Dictators who mainly face internal threats often have incentives to conduct policies that are harmful to economic development, like underproviding productive public investment. However, dictators who mainly face external threats are more likely to conduct economic development–enhancing policies. The type of security threat facing a dictator thus contributes to explaining the large variation in economic development among dictatorships. The argument finds empirical support in cases from different geographical regions and historical periods. One particularly illustrative example, addressed in the article, is Japan in the nineteenth century, where the sharply increased severity of external threats from Western countries induced the selection of development-enhancing policies in the last half of the century.     

Strategies,capabilities, and demands: Explaining outcomes in violent intrastate nationalist conflicts

The study of nationalist and ethnic conflict has undergone considerable growth since the end of the Cold War. Much of the effort has been focused on ascertaining the nature and origins of such conflicts, and less on their process and termination. Those studies that do focus on conflict termination have generally done so using case‐study or idiosyncratic methods. Hence, we do not yet have much large‐N or statistical evidence that might suggest broad trends in how such conflicts end, or even much experience in measuring the relevant concepts in a manner conducive to such methods. This paper will address these questions by introducing a theoretical framework that seeks to explain the outcomes of violent intrastate nationalist conflicts. It will discuss measurement issues for relevant independent variables, and present data for a group of 75 violent, intrastate nationalist conflicts from 1945–1996. This data will then be used to test propositions derived from the model. The aim is to provide a useful building block for the study of the process and outcome of conflicts which political scientists now recognize to be some of the most important for the coming century.     

Japan's Quasi-Alliance Strategy:Motivations,Practices and Constraints

The quasi-alliance strategy is part of the national security strategy and lies in the grey area between alliance and neutrality.1 In recent years,major countries,including Japan,have positioned quasi-alliance as a feasibleunwritten option in their respective national security strategies.2 Japan's quasi-alliance strategy was already in its infancy when former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe first came to power in September 2006 but was put on hold after his resignation in September 2007.It was resurrected by Abe when he returned to power in late 2012,and has been subsequently inherited and strengthened by succeeding cabinets in the post-Abe era.     

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.     

中国的国际组织外交:态度、行为与成效

本文概述了中国对国际组织的基本态度演变所经历的四个历史阶段:尝试性接受、相对排斥、有限参与和积极参与,探讨了中国积极开展国际组织外交过程中所表现出的行为特征,并对中国国际组织外交的成效进行了简要的评估.文章指出,中国的国际组织外交在维护了本国的安全和发展利益的同时,对地区及全球事务的治理发挥了积极的作用.     

An Autocracy at War: Explaining Egypt's Military Effectiveness, 1967 and 1973

In the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War, Egypt shocked the world with its atrocious performance in battle, only to stun the world again with its remarkable military turnaround in the October 1973 war. Existing studies, which emphasize culture, social structure, and regime type, have a difficult time explaining why this single autocratic state, in such a short period of time, exhibited such extremes in its military competence. None can explain both why Egypt performed so poorly in 1967 and improved so significantly in 1973. Other explanations such as military strategy and learning explain the puzzle in part, but they alone cannot account for the outcome. This article presents a theory that accounts for the divergence in effectiveness, focusing on underlying differences in the fabric of the autocratic regime. It argues that changes in the balance of civil-military power in the state—born from more fundamental differences in domestic politics in the autocracy—shaped three areas of military activity critical to military effectiveness: strategic assessment, command, and control, and leadership. In developing this argument, the article both contributes to growing scholarship on the sources of states' military effectiveness and explains why Egypt's performance varied so significantly in these historically consequential wars.     

Explaining the Awakening: Engagement,Publicity, and the Transformation of Iraqi Sunni Political Attitudes

This article explores the reasons for the dramatic change in Sunni Arab Iraqi attitudes toward the United States from 2004 to 2007, which made possible the “Awakenings,” local groups of mostly Sunni tribes and former insurgents that decided to cooperate with the United States against al Qaeda in Iraq. While there have been many studies of the military strategy, there has been little attention paid to the reasons for the underlying attitude change. This article argues that the dramatic changes in the information environment and in the nature of direct contacts across a range of Sunni society played a crucial role. It draws on a wide range of Arabic language primary sources that have generally been neglected in U.S. military-centric accounts. No single dialogue flipped the Sunnis, and the change would not likely have happened without the material changes underpinning their interests. But years of ongoing, intensive dialogues across a wide range of interlocutors reshaped the foundations of the relationship and to convince those involved individuals of the possibility of a strategic shift. American counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine and the surge helped by proliferating the points of contact with Iraqis and by transforming the relations at the individual level. This has broad implications for key debates in contemporary U.S. foreign policy, as well as for counterinsurgency and international relations (IR) theory.     

Sometimes You Just Have to Leave: Domestic Threats and Forced Migration, 1964-1989

In this study we explore why persons flee their homes to become refugees and internally displaced persons. We contend that individuals will tend to flee when the integrity of their person is threatened. Further, we argue that they will flee toward countries where they expect conditions to be better. We conduct statistical analyses using fixed effects least squares, on a pooled cross-sectional time-series data set, consisting of data from 129 countries for the years 1964-1989. Our findings support the conclusion that threats to personal integrity are of primary importance in leading people to abandon their homes. Measures of state threats to personal integrity, dissident threats to personal integrity, and joint state-dissident threats each have statistically significant and substantively important effects on migrant production. We also find that countries making moves toward democracy tend to have greater number of forced migrants, once other factors are considered. We conclude the analysis by identifying several lucrative areas for further investigation.     

Global Threats and American Strategies: From Communism in 1955 to Islamism in 2005

America's current security threats—the insurgency in Iraq, Islamic terrorism, and Iran's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons—seem strange and unprecedented. Parallels can be drawn, however, between the security threats of 2005 and those of fifty years ago. The U.S. foreign policy developed to confront the communist threat offers lessons as we develop strategies to combat today's threat. Two contemporary perspectives on strategic issues—one conservative/realist, one neoconservative/idealist—apply lessons of the Cold War to today's U.S. foreign policy, but each has serious flaws. A third, neorealist perspective, suggests that by leveraging the divisions already present in the Muslim world, the United States can win the global contest against Islamic terrorism. However, this would require a transformation in American strategy that will not be easily achieved.     

Scheduled Castes Policies in Interstate Perspective: Constitutional Power,Argumentative Practices,and Governance in India

The article discusses legal and administrative dimensions that are relevant for comparing development policies for the Scheduled Castes across Indian states. The policies for the Scheduled Castes are subject to more central control than several other policy domains. The article therefore highlights the logic in India’s multilevel system of governance while specifying the constitutional meaning of the Scheduled Caste category, its related terms and discursive relevance. This provides a background to outline the relevant institutional dimensions at the center of India’s political system and the level of the regional states. The article suggests that the Scheduled Castes Development Corporations provide a useful basis to develop interstate comparisons. However, the comparison of development policies for Scheduled Castes cannot be complete without acknowledging the extent to which policies are often a result of argumentative practices among Dalit movements and actors in context, since their demands may generate decisions or information about policies.     

Explaining Styles of Financial Market Opening in Chile, Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey

This study examines financial opening in middle-income countries and identifies the variables that shape its basic features. We find that the widely noted increase in international capital mobility has not constrained financial policy-making equally across states. A country's economic conditions and need for external funds determine its government's bargaining power vis-à-vis international actors and domestic groups with respect to financial policy. Governments with low bargaining power, because domestic economic conditions are poor or need for external funds is high, must open financial markets completely to attract or retain capital. Conversely, governments with high bargaining power may be able to retain some controls on capital flows or deny foreign banks access to domestic markets and still have access to capital.
To explore these issues, this article looks at opening in Chile, Mexico, South Korea, and Turkey. These countries opened their financial systems in very different ways. Turkey and Mexico liberalized their markets almost completely, whereas Korea (1980–98) kept barriers to capital entry and Chile (1991–98) retained barriers to capital exit. Although economic conditions explain the basic style of financial opening, they cannot account for the residual barriers that persist in mostly open markets or the pace and timing of reforms. Domestic political factors, particularly, the interests of leaders and key social groups as well as their relative bargaining power, help to explain these variables. The paper develops a typology of styles of financial opening to encourage systematic thinking about the origins and consequences of differences in style.     

Soft Security Threats in the New Europe: The Case of the Balkan Region

‘You cannot have a process where Balkan countries pretend to reform and we pretend to believe them.’

Chris Patten, EU Commissioner in charge of External Relations BBC World News, 25 November, 2002

Southeastern Europe represents for Europe a significant geo-strategic and geopolitical region whose stability and security directly affects Europe’s political and security infrastructure. Conflicts and instability are still prevalent in the Balkans and, as a consequence, security cooperation in Europe is struggling to cope with risks of a non-military nature. It is widely accepted that as a region, the Balkans at the dawn of the 21^st century remains weak and unable to deal efficiently with soft security threats. This article initially provides a generic picture of the Balkans and the hard security challenges prevalent there. It also aims to identify and assess the main types of new security threats that are currently present in the region, as well as to explore how these threats would be influenced by EU and NATO membership. The article also outlines the cooperative security measures adopted by the southeastern European countries, and it concludes by providing some thoughts on how the future developments in the region will be influenced by current international developments     

普京时代俄罗斯经济转轨方向的调整:从宪政治理到威权治理

从戈尔巴乔夫改革开始,俄罗斯经济便陷入了困境,叶利钦时期的"休克疗法"更加使俄罗斯经济陷入水深火热的境地。普京执政后,俄罗斯经济逐渐走出困境,不仅实现了政局稳定、经济增长的目标,而且逐步恢复了其在世界经济的大国影响力。是什么原因造成如此大的反差?我们的观点认为正是普京的威权治国模式才使得俄罗斯经济重新崛起。中国和东亚一些国家威权治理的成功经验,反衬了叶利钦时期俄罗斯宪政治理的弊端与缺陷,从而得出在经济发展初期,必须保证国家的权威,即实行威权治理。而在具备一定经济基础的条件下,必须适时由威权治理向宪政治理转轨。     

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.