ABSTRACT

Political shocks are used extensively in research on foreign policy and international politics yet the analysis of political shocks, as its own topic of study, remains underdeveloped, and especially so when compared to analyses of other key concepts in the field. What we do know about shocks primarily comes from work where the focus is typically on other phenomena driving the inquiry. In this effort we reconceptualize what is meant by political shocks, focusing on actual versus potential shocks, create a methodology for identifying actual political shocks, based on a punctuated equilibrium approach to foreign policy change, illustrate its utility with application to human rights violations by countries, and suggest at the conclusion a theoretical framework that may help to spur a more comprehensive approach to explaining political shocks effects for both interstate and intrastate politics.

摘要

政治冲击在外交政策和国际政治研究中被广泛使用，但政治冲击的分析作为其自己的研究主题仍然不发达，尤其是与该领域其他关键概念的分析相比。我们对冲击的了解主要来自于通常关注推动调查的其他现象的工作。在这项工作中，我们重新定义了政治冲击的含义，重点关注实际冲击与潜在冲击，创建一种识别实际政治冲击的方法，基于对外交政策变化的间断均衡方法，说明其适用于国家侵犯人权行为的效用,