Graham Allison,Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap?

Journal of Chinese Political Science -     

The Thucydides Trap and the Korean Peninsula: So why Won’t the USA and China Get Caught?

Journal of Chinese Political Science - “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that it instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable” as Thucydides famously stated. But are we destined...     

Did Thucydides Believe in Thucydides’ Trap? The History of the Peloponnesian War and Its Relevance to U.S.-China Relations

Journal of Chinese Political Science - The Peloponnesian War, a conflict between the Greek city-states of Athens and Sparta and their respective allies, is held to be a classic example of war...     

The Perils of Hubris? A Tragic Reading of “Thucydides’ Trap” and China-US Relations

In the last few years, Graham Allison’s “Thucydides’ Trap” has stimulated much discussion within International Relations (IR). Most IR scholars understand Thucydides’ Trap as a shorthand for power transition theory, and view it as highly inadequate for analyzing China-US relations. This article seeks to offer an alternative, tragic, understanding of Thucydides’ Trap that may have more purchase on the analysis of the dynamic of China-US relations. It first argues that while Thucydides’ Trap shares power transition theory’s focus on the shifting balance of power, it is also different from the latter in its emphasis on the emotional implications of changes in the balance of power. This article then explores a tragic understanding of Thucydides’ Trap. Economic success often encourages a rising power to display ambition, confidence and enhanced sense of self (what Allison calls “rising power syndrome”), which leads to loosened restraint, overextension, and strategic blunder; meanwhile, its assertive and ambitious moves spark a ruling power’s fear, insecurity and even paranoia (what Allison calls “ruling power syndrome”), which prompts it to take “preventive” actions in response to the rising power’s assertiveness. This article finally looks at China-US relations through this tragic lens. It suggests that this tragic understanding of Thucydides’ Trap can illuminate the emotional aspect of China-US relations, and also argues that the Thucydides Trap Research Project should henceforth develop an emotional line of inquiry into interaction between the great powers.

     

Uncertainty,Shifting Power and Credible Signals in US-China Relations: Why the “Thucydides Trap” Is Real,but Limited

Journal of Chinese Political Science - Is conflict between a rising China and a declining United States inevitable? One of the main purported drivers of the “Thucydides Trap” is that...     

Conceptualizing China–Latin America relations in the twenty-first century: the boom,the bust,and the aftermath

Despite the emergence of a rich literature on the rise of China in Latin America (LAC) since 2000, we are still grappling with this phenomenon. In this article we seek to theorize this expanding South–South relationship from two vantage points. First, from the perspective of China, we argue that, by necessity, the PRC has had to internationalize its development strategy in order to compensate for its serious natural resource deficit, feed the world's largest domestic population, and fuel the soon-to-be largest economy in the world. LAC has been just one slice of China's ‘go out’ strategy. Our second perspective probes the effect of China's entry into the region. Through the lens of development economics, we identify three separate political economy scenarios that have been accentuated within those countries that have the strongest economic ties with China. We rely on measures of institutional performance and macro-economic trends to illustrate the variable effects of China on LAC.     

Selfish and Cooperative Voting: Can the Majority Restrain Themselves?

At every scale from small committees to national elections, voters face tradeoffs between self-interest and the common good. We report three experiments in which participants vote for policies with real payoffs at stake. We manipulate self-interest by randomly assigning participants to two groups in society with different policy payoffs. Participants in the majority group are confronted by a simple choice between a policy that is better for themselves or a policy that is best for society. Overall, we find a clear effect of self-interest: Participants are more likely to choose the policy that earns them more money, compared to participants in the other group, even when the policy is detrimental to the common good. Simultaneously, we observe considerable levels of cooperative voting among participants in the majority, ranging from 47% to 79% across different payoff regimes. Finally, participants were not more cooperative when voting compared to when they chose between the same policies with a lottery or leader institution, departing from the hypothesis that voting institutions promote cooperative motives. We discuss implications for multiple literatures about voting behavior.

     

Are China and Japan rivals in Latin America? A rivalry perception analysis

Abstract

This article investigates whether the People’s Republic of China and Japan perceive each other as rivals in Latin America (LA; both the Chinese and Japanese governments tend to refer to the region as Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), but for the purposes of this article we focus mainly on LA), and what impact such a perception might have on their foreign policy decision-making. We take LA as a case study because China’s and Japan’s recent (re-)engagement there began almost simultaneously in the early 2000s, and has developed against the background of domestic leadership transitions, growing demands for energy and markets, as well as international political agendas in which LA might play a key role. Developing the work of Thompson [(1995). Principal rivalries. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39 (2), 195–223; (2001). Identifying rivals and rivalries in world politics. International Studies Quarterly, 45(4), 557–586] and Vasquez [(1993). The War Puzzle. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press; (1996). Distinguishing rivals that go to war from those that do not: Aa quantitative comparative case study of the two paths to war. International Studies Quarterly, 40 (4), 531–558] on rivalry, in combination with perception theory [Jervis, R. (1976). Perception and misperception in international politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press], the article suggests three indicators by which to measure the extent to which China and Japan might perceive each other as rivals. Drawing on content analysis of a range of Chinese- and Japanese-language official writing, news reports, and academic analysis, the article argues that, despite some media representation of China and Japan as competitors for resources and power in LA, in fact mutual perceptions concerning rivalry have not affected LA policy decisions of these two countries.     

Gated communities in America: Walling out the world?

Abstract

Gated communities—enclaves of homes surrounded by walls, often with security guards—are becoming increasingly popular in America. This article introduces and analyzes findings of a Fannie Mae Foundation—sponsored panel on gated communities held at the 1997 Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning annual conference. A key finding is that many people choose to reside in gated communities because they believe that such places reduce risk, ranging from the mundane (e.g., unwanted social exchanges) to the high stakes (e.g., declining home values).

In many ways, gated communities deliver what they promise, by providing an effective defense against daily intrusions. However, some of their benefits entail a high social cost. A sense of community within gated communities comes at the expense of a larger identity with the region outside. Gated communities manifest and reinforce an inward‐focused community culture, where the tension between the individual and society tilt toward self‐interest.     

Virtue,Law and Chinese Political Tradition: Can the Past Predict the Future?

This paper intends to build a case for a third alternative that can reconcile the two opposing views of democracy, i.e., the consensual vs. the adversarial, through a reexamination and reconstruction of Chinese traditional theories of political governance. The paper links the rule of virtue with consensual politics, and the rule of law with adversary politics, By focusing on the roles of virtue and law, and their importance to the acquisition and maintenance of original and utilitarian dimensions of political legitimacy, the paper proposes a hybrid version of democracy that will continue the dualist political tradition while enabling necessary political modernization.     

Pulling the Region into its Orbit? China’s Economic Statecraft in Latin America

Journal of Chinese Political Science - Latin America is a critical region for analyzing China’s economic statecraft. Following the Monroe doctrine, Latin America has long been seen as part of...     

But Can She Make America Great Again? Threat,Stability, and Support for Female Candidates in the United States

Political Behavior - Drawing on the literature on system justification, I argue that the fate of female candidates in the U.S. is tied to whether the election is occurring in relatively good or bad...     

Campaigns and the prediction of election outcomes: Can historical and campaign-period prediction models be combined?

There are two approaches to predicting election outcomes: (1) a historical approach, which uses past election results alongside macroeconomic and political variables to forecast election results up to a year in advance, and (2) a campaign-oriented approach, which uses current campaign trends to forecast vote shares at the end of the campaign. They are in some way at odds—one approach says the campaign doesn't matter, the other focuses entirely on the campaign. This article considers whether the two approaches might be usefully combined; it considers whether the prediction errors in historical models may be related to trends during the campaign. That possibility is tested here using 17 elections in the US, UK and Canada, combining historical predictions and automated content analyses of campaign-period media content. Results suggest that campaigns do not account for errors in the historical predictions; but there may be other ways in which campaigns matter in conjunction with historical models.