Sovereignty,Bargaining, and the International Regulation of Foreign Direct Investment

While developing countries have undergone a remarkable transformation in their attitudes toward foreign direct investment (FDI) during the past decade, they still resist the establishment of a multilateral regime governing FDI. This is puzzling, first, because these states are liberalising their policies anyway, and second, because a multilateral regime offers several advantages over the patchwork of unilateral and bilateral arrangements that currently exist (for instance, by contributing to increasing FDI flows). What explains this paradoxical attitude? This paper critically examines a number of potential explanations. Concerns about losing sovereignty, lack of knowledge about the costs of FDI restrictions, or lingering suspicions of multinational corporations may play some role, but cannot account for unilateral and bilateral liberalisation. Another approach highlights the role of domestic groups in supporting or opposing a multilateral agreement. Yet the pattern of variation among the attitudes of developing countries casts doubt on this explanation as well. Finally, the paper puts forth an argument that focuses on how bargaining power affects the trade-off between economic gains and the loss of sovereignty. The host state's perceived attractiveness to multinational investors conditions whether or not the government resolves this trade-off in favour of supporting a multilateral regime.     

Europe and the Common

Significant attention has been given to the necessary conditions for a viable and legitimate European polity. Drawing on traditions in political philosophy, a central strand of this debate has concerned what must be common to a set of people such that they may be ruled through the same institutions, with various types of collective bond proposed as possible bases for political community. The argument of this article is that many such approaches, which conceive a bond in terms of shared interests, cultural attributes or shared values and principles, are liable either to underplay or to overplay how much the citizens of a polity must have in common, tending either to empty public life of the pursuit of shared ends or conversely to downgrade the importance of adversarialism. Both may be seen as depoliticising moves. The article goes on to explore how a more explicitly political bond, based on the appraisal of political problems, might be conceived for a European polity.     

The Role of Media Distrust in Partisan Voting

As an institution, the American news media have become highly unpopular in recent decades. Yet, we do not thoroughly understand the consequences of this unpopularity for mass political behavior. While several existing studies find that media trust moderates media effects, they do not examine the consequences of this for voting. This paper explores those consequences by analyzing voting behavior in the 2004 presidential election. It finds, consistent with most theories of persuasion and with studies of media effects in other contexts, that media distrust leads voters to discount campaign news and increasingly rely on their partisan predispositions as cues. This suggests that increasing aggregate levels of media distrust are an important source of greater partisan voting.     

Governance reforms and public acceptance of regulatory decisions: Cross-national evidence from linked survey experiments on pesticides authorization in the European Union

Do governance reforms affect public acceptance of regulatory decisions, and if so, how? We tackled this critical but under-studied question through a pair of linked survey experiments on public attitudes toward the reform of European Union (EU) pesticides regulation among a representative sample of the adult population in six EU member states. We tested the expectation that citizens are more likely to accept a regulatory decision that runs counter to their prior policy preferences if it is taken under a procedure they support. We first conducted a conjoint experiment to study whether the specific design of decision-making procedures impacts public support for EU pesticide regulation. In a second linked experiment, we asked respondents whether farmers should be allowed to use glyphosate, the best known and most controversial pesticide. We then asked respondents if they would accept an authorization decision on glyphosate contrary to their prior expressed preference if it were taken under a decision-making procedure they supported. The results demonstrate that a regulatory decision-making procedure respondents support increases their willingness to accept a hypothetical authorization decision contrary to their prior expressed preference. Contrary to the findings of previous research, our study thus provides strong evidence that governance reforms supported by citizens can enhance acceptance of controversial regulatory decisions, even on politicized issues such as pesticides authorization.     

Handle Him with Care: The Importance of Getting Thucydides Right

Scholars from numerous disciplines continue to study, debate, and value Thucydides’ The Peloponnesian War. This review essay first explores and elaborates many of the enduring and vital contributions of Thucydides for IR theory. It then assesses and engages three new books, including a major, wide-ranging collection of new essays and a very influential (and deeply flawed) attempt to apply the lessons of that work—one that warns of a “Thucydides Trap” that might unwittingly ensnare the United States and China, resulting in an unwanted and catastrophic war between the two. This review essay argues that, as illustrated by the books under consideration here, contemporary IR scholars would be very well served by taking Thucydides seriously and would benefit from reading and considering his History with great care; at the same time, there are enormous, perilous analytical dangers inherent in attempting to draw conclusions from a superficial reading of The Peloponnesian War.     

Combating Coups d’état in Africa, 1950–2014

Recent years have seen African militaries attempt coups in virtually every geographic region, from Egypt to Lesotho and Guinea to Madagascar. They have targeted established democracies, infantile democratic experiments, increasingly authoritarian executives, power vacuums brought on by leader death, and—most recently in Burundi—leaders attempting to circumvent constitutional limitations on their tenure. These continuing acts perpetrated against regimes with such varied backdrops suggests that coups still afflict a wide range of states and remain a continuing threat to leader tenure. This is in contrast to the African Union’s emphasis on curbing the practice. This paper explores the African Union’s effectiveness to combat military coups, primarily focusing on the potential for sanctions to act as a deterrent to would-be coup plotters. The paper also considers potential limitations on the African Union’s (AU’s) ability to project power against certain states. Analyses for the years 1950–2014 indicate Africa has in fact witnessed a meaningful decline in coup activity, an impact even more pronounced than the end of the Cold War. Results also indicate that the AU’s effectiveness in deterring coups is not constrained in cases where they are expected to lack leverage.     

Did the “Road to the White House Run Through” Letterman? Chris Christie,Letterman, and Other-Disparaging Versus Self-Deprecating Humor

In this article we present the results of an experiment designed to disentangle the effects late-night talk show viewership have on presidential candidate evaluations. Respondents in one condition viewed a short video clip of David Letterman humorously disparaging New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, thought by many at the time to be considering a run for the presidency in 2016. Those in a second condition saw a short clip of Christie engaging in self-deprecating humor while appearing as a guest on Letterman's program. Compared with respondents in a control condition, those in the other-disparaging humor condition had lower evaluations of Christie and reported a lower likelihood of voting for him in 2016, while those in the self-deprecating humor condition had higher evaluations of him and expressed a greater likelihood of voting for him. The research has practical implications for modern campaigns and also serves to clarify some of the seemingly contradictory findings of earlier political humor effects research.     

Business engagement in violence prevention and peace-building: the case of Kenya

Kenyan business was important in mitigating episodes of election violence in 2007–2008 and 2013. This article finds that this role was motivated by the ethical and moral commitments of key business leaders to further peace in times of violence; and by interests in preventing future economic loss. However, by adopting a lens that situates business roles in violence prevention and peace-building within Kenya’s conflict systems and political economy, the article finds a paradox: this lens confirms the Kenyan ‘success story’ with respect to specific violent episodes; but it also reveals a much more limited role for business in transforming the underlying sources of conflict; especially when these are congruent with key business fundamentals connected to land ownership, property rights, export-oriented production or services, or a ‘limited’ access order. Overall, the article highlights that business should leverage its comparative advantages within broader multi-stakeholder coalitions, especially in terms of its ability to influence political leaders, entry-points for informal dialogue to diffuse crises and capital to support peace-building initiatives.     

Multidimensional incongruence and vote switching in Europe

Does ideological incongruence hurt parties in elections? Research on the representational relationship between parties and voters suggests that ideological congruence can boost a party’s electoral prospects. However, while the mechanism is at the individual-level, most of the literature focuses on the party-level. In this article, we develop a set of hypotheses based on a multi-issue conception of party-voter congruence at the individual-level, and examine the electoral consequences of these varying congruence levels in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Consistent with our expectations, comparative analysis finds that ideological and issue-specific incongruence is a significant factor in voting behavior in the European Parliament elections. Although the substantive effects of incongruence are understandably small compared to partisanship, government, or EU performance evaluations, party-voter disagreement consistently matters, and voters’ issue salience is an important moderator of the impact of incongruence on vote choice.     

The Dynamics of Enlargement in International Organizations

Most international organizations (IOs) expand their membership over the course of their lifespan. Although these enlargements tend to be heralded as normatively positive — for the IOs themselves, for the new members, and for cooperative outcomes more generally — expansions can also lead to conflicts in the organization. What conditions lead to enlargement rounds that reshape an organization in unexpected ways? We argue that, depending upon the diversity of the initial group of countries, members may vote to admit new entrants that can tilt organizational decision-making in unexpected directions. We anticipate fewer enlargements with lesser impact on the character of the organization among organizations that have either a smaller range of founding members or a relatively even initial dispersion. We develop an agent-based model that accounts for the complex decision-making environment and social dynamics that typify IO accession processes. The model helps us explain how the nature of decision-making in organizations can shift following enlargement, likely changing the organization’s output and goals.