While states have accelerated the energy transition in some sectors, they have also obstructed fossil phase-out in other sectors. Aviation has an outsized and rapidly growing climate impact, and as...

Are countries that use conscription more restrained in their use of military force? A common argument holds that military conscription restrains leaders from using force because it increases the political cost of war and distributes them more evenly and broadly across the population. Despite this intuition, empirical evidence to support it is at best inconclusive. This article introduces a novel perspective

How do leaders select their top-level foreign policy appointees? Through a formal model of the domestic and intragovernmental politics surrounding an international crisis, I investigate the trade-offs shaping leaders’ appointment strategies. In the model, a leader selects a foreign policy appointee, anticipating how the appointment will affect the advice he receives in the crisis, the electorate's

Are states more interested in claiming territories that have economic resources? While previous theories of international relations assume that resources make a territory more tempting to claim, all else equal, I argue that certain types of economic resources can make states less willing to claim a territory. The presence of capital-intensive resources—such as oil or minerals—raises concerns about

A large literature has argued that domestic competition increases a militant organization's use and severity of terrorism to differentiate their “brand” and “outbid” other organizations. However, most empirical analyses infer such competition from the quantity of groups present in a geographic area. This approach neglects specific group relationships, such as cooperation, rhetorical or violent rivalry

Moderate (or ‘limited’) rebel goals and inclusive political institutions have been suggested to increase the chances of rebel–government negotiations. This article attempts to shed light on the politics of rebel–government negotiations by presenting new, systematic data on the scope of rebel goals and demonstrating both theoretically and empirically that it is the interaction of moderate rebel goals

This article introduces a novel corpus containing all resolutions adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) from 1946 to 2019, the network of citations between them, and an online tool for exploring them. Resolutions adopted by the organization provide a valuable record of the evolution of multilateralism and political ideas on the global stage. Given that resolutions typically cite past

Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has increasingly used peacekeeping operations (PKOs) to manage crises between and within states. The mandates of contemporary PKOs are demanding, calling on peacekeeping personnel to separate belligerent parties, enforce ceasefire agreements, and protect the physical security of civilians. The pursuit of these distinct objectives presents a unique challenge

When and why do foreign policy officials believe that it is important to fight for credibility? Conventional wisdom suggests that policymakers tend to care uniformly about how others perceive them. Yet this logic overlooks substantial variation in how officials prioritize credibility when weighing policy options. I argue that organizational identity affects the dimensions of credibility that policymakers

As illustrated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the recent revival of nationalism has triggered a threatening return of revisionist conflict. While the literature on nationalism shows how nationalist narratives are socially constructed, much less is known about their real-world consequences. Taking nationalist narratives seriously, we study how past “golden ages” affect territorial claims and conflict

Conflict research is rife with ethical issues, and the field is increasingly reflecting on how to best address these. Recent debates in political science have mainly focused on ethics in practice, leaving questions of procedural ethics to the side. But procedural ethics are important: they are increasingly required across all areas of research, they are the bedrock of institutional approaches to regulating

We are encouraged to think of refugees as resilient people with agency and capacity for flourishing, rather than passive victims needing help. This framing purports to uphold and celebrate refugees’ humanity. But some scholars worry that it problematically serves to demand resilience from refugees, normalize their displacement, and legitimate state bordering practices. This article builds on this critique

International courts lack traditional enforcement mechanisms. Scholars theorize that compliance with human rights rulings is therefore often driven by domestic processes, including political mobilization and parliamentary agenda setting. A necessary condition underlying these processes is attention to the rulings which is in part expected to be mediated by media attention. However, these conditions

Previous work in International Studies Quarterly shows higher levels of humanitarian aid prolong civil conflicts. It also finds, among conflict–years in which aid is received, that this conflict-prolonging effect is more acute in insurgency-based civil conflicts, albeit with weaker supporting evidence. However, I show this work accidentally generated its conflict duration variable incorrectly, with

States often intentionally stall crisis negotiations, hoping to build arms or attract allies to achieve a more favorable bargaining position. Why do their adversaries tolerate delay in some cases, but attack upon delay in others? I argue that this is because states cannot perfectly distinguish between intentional and unavoidable delays. This presents a strategic tension: a state prefers to attack preventively

This article explores the phenomenon of high levels of public trust in the military across the Global South. We extend arguments from the US civil-military relations literature to a broader context and generate testable hypotheses to explain trust in the armed forces driven by the military’s performance and professionalism, and the public’s patriotism and partisanship. Using public opinion survey data

How is service history associated with returning veterans' attitudes about democracy? Existing research predicts pro-government militia veterans have less support for democracy because of political efficacy gained from service and divergent policy preferences from the general population. We test that theory in Ukraine through surveys of both returning veterans and the general population between 2019

How might international institutions matter? To consider this central question of International Relations, we analyze a most-likely case for the importance of materially driven enforcement: the Financial Action Task Force’s (FATF) use of blacklisting in the global regime targeting money laundering and terrorism financing. Scholars and practitioners often argue that fear of financial harm caused by

Though previous research has recognized that armed groups do not always recruit fighters on a voluntary basis, varieties and determinants of insurgent forced recruitment are still poorly understood. What drives armed groups to employ certain methods of coercive recruitment? This article conceptualizes and studies a particular form of coerced recruitment—insurgent conscription—whereby rebel groups rely

International tribunals are pulled between a commitment to judicial autonomy and the need to manage their members’ political expectations, lest these rein in the tribunal’s power. We argue that whe...

Why do some states assist other countries to reach across national borders and repress their diaspora, while others do not? Transnational repression involves host countries (including democracies) working closely with origin states (typically autocracies) to transfer their citizens living abroad into their custody and silence dissent. We expect international cooperation on transnational repression

International relations theory tends to build on the conventional narrative of the Wars of Religion (WoR), which holds it was the irrationality of religious violence that generated the modern international system of pragmatic secular states—resulting in the presumed secularized, rational, and unemotive nature of politics. In contrast, this article reorients our focus to Durkheim's more social view

Following regime change, how does wartime victimization shape political attitudes and participation in the long run? I argue that it increases post-war political vigilance: greater sensitivity to illiberal politics and poor governance, but with dampened effects on participation under authoritarianism due to greater fear of harm. I examine Protected Villages (PVs) in the Zimbabwe Liberation War (1972–1979)

This article explores the challenge of sustaining development-oriented political coalitions in ‘dependent intermediate democratic economies’ (IDDEs). Scholars have pointed out that the absence of u...

How has financial globalization changed the nature of external vulnerability of emerging economies? To answer this question, we first present an overview of the changes in international capital flo...

Illiberal regimes have become central players in international organizations. In this introduction to the special issue, we provide a unified framework for understanding their effects. We start by outlining the theoretical foundations of this work, focusing first on why regime type matters for international cooperation. We then show how differing memberships and decision-making processes within international

How do racial stereotypes affect perceptions in foreign policy? Race and racism as topics have long been marginalized in the study of international relations but are receiving renewed attention. In this article we assess the role of implicit racial bias in internal, originally classified assessments by the US foreign policy bureaucracy during the Cold War. We use a combination of dictionary-based and

How do US foreign military deployments impact the defense policies of host states? Dominant scholarship holds that these deployments play a pivotal role in assuring allies that their security is guaranteed, which in turn leads host countries to neglect their national defense contributions. In this research note, we examine the micro-foundations of this conventional wisdom, investigating how nuclear

Why do some individuals with military experience support the insurrection of January 6? With US military veterans playing a central role in the assault on the US Capitol, answering this question is of immediate scholarly and policy concern. To better understand the impact of military service, we conducted the first nationally representative survey of support for pro-Trump anti-democratic violence (“insurrectionist

Autocratic elections are often marred with systematic intimidation and violence towards voters and candidates. When do authoritarian regimes resort to violent electoral strategies? I argue that electoral violence acts as a risk-management strategy in competitive authoritarian elections where: (a) the regime’s prospects for coopting local elites, competitors, and voters are weak, and (b) the expected

This article returns to the existentialist roots of ontological security theory (OST) and proposes a phenomenological re-reading of ontological security through the theoretical language of spherology and immunology in order to bring OST into a more substantive engagement with the spatial and immunological realities and practices of the globalizing world. Departing from the work of Peter Sloterdijk

In contexts marked by high violence and widespread impunity, how do citizens articulate and justify their preferences about crime and punishment? What kind of moral logic and reasoning do they employ when discussing punishments? Does support for punitive punishment derive from moralistic and deontological concerns that perpetrators need to be punished because it is right and proper? Or do people support

This article examines trends in organized violence based on new data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP). In 2023, fatalities from organized violence decreased for the first time since the rapid increase observed in 2020, dropping from 310,000 in 2022 to 154,000 in 2023. Despite this decline, these figures represent some of the highest fatality rates recorded since the Rwandan genocide in

Finance plays an increasing role in the global governance of sustainability. To explain the rise of finance, scholarship is increasingly turning to the financial sector as a producer of policy-rele...

We investigate the impact of UN peacekeeping on voluntary returns and negative attitudes towards displaced persons. We posit that peacekeeping missions can have beneficial effects by improving security and alleviating the socio-economic burden imposed by new arrivals on receiving communities. Focusing on the critical case of South Sudan, we combine information on peacekeepers' subnational deployment

How can one increase openness towards conflict refugees in states that have experienced conflict? While highlighting shared war experience may reduce hostility toward refugees by enabling people to better understand the plight of refugees, it may also foment higher levels of out-group antipathy due to heightened feelings of threat. To answer this question, we leverage the context of South Korea, a

Published in Review of International Political Economy (Vol. 31, No. 4, 2024)

Published in Review of International Political Economy (Vol. 31, No. 4, 2024)

The global space industry is booming. While governmental agencies used to dominate outer space activities, private space organizations (PSOs) now launch rockets, operate strategic satellites, and e...

When do political risks lead to divestment from a profitable market? Existing theories argue both that foreign investors may be sensitive to political tensions, but that they may only be sensitive ...

International organizations’ lives often extend far beyond the moment of their initial contracting. How IOs do adapt to shifting circumstances in their member states global geopolitical changes, and even internal dynamics within the IO itself? This special issue on the life cycle of international cooperation explores the ebbs and flows of the IOs that underpin the international system. Firm theory

Private intrusion, interception, and surveillance (PIIS) markets represent a key vehicle for the global expansion of digital surveillance regimes. Yet, due to their opacity and notorious secrecy, t...

Why do some international agreements yield more cooperation than others? I argue that the network context of agreements conditions their effectiveness. I focus on bilateral defense cooperation agreements (DCAs), which promote defense activities like joint military exercises, peacekeeping, arms trade, and the sharing of classified information. Because DCAs emphasize ongoing cooperative actions, they

Faced with a more multipolar world, scholars of International Political Economy are sharpening their tools to make sense of the longue durée of post-colonial institutions, international financial s...

s The number of fortified borders around the world has risen precipitously. This surge in walls is an important part of the larger globalization “backlash,” as countries react to the unwanted consequences of economic openness and globalization, with a rise in illicit trade and smuggling being a prominent example. Despite the prominence of the idea that walls are built to combat illicit flows, no research

Reputations for resolve are critical in international relations for deterring adversaries and reassuring partners. However, a state’s resolve is unobservable and can change unbeknownst to its audience. How does the possibility of unobserved change impact reputation dynamics? I provide a theory of long-run reputations with changing resolve via a formal model covering conflict and cooperation domains

This article intends to investigate to what extent, how, and when individuals who are below the leader’s level affect the processes and outputs of international politics. It does so by analyzing one group of below-leader actors—diplomatic negotiators in EU foreign policy. It first shows how, despite all the bureaucratic layers they are embedded in, individual negotiators have de facto acquired ultimate

Embedded liberalism prescribes compensating workers hurt by globalization, but government compensation programs are often criticized for their lack of responsiveness. I explain the lack of responsiveness by illuminating bureaucrats who approve the compensation programs in the frontline. I examine how career bureaucrats distribute Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) benefits, the single largest federal

s How do rebel groups form in cities? What makes urban-based insurgent organizations effective? Urban armed conflicts have become an important subject of research due to the political, economic, and demographic significance of cities. Yet, we know little about the mechanisms of insurgent group formation and effectiveness in urban contexts. Building on the case of the formation and initial urban campaign

Scholars commonly argue that international law and organizations promote democracy by helping dictators to credibly commit to accountability, individual rights, and transparency. Yet dictators routinely join treaties and international organizations without transitioning to democracy. International law and organizations can generate asymmetric costs for domestic actors because international rules often

Among the defining features of the contemporary global economy are the digital disruption of economic sectors and the accompanying political and regulatory conflicts. Across the world, multinational technology firms have mobilized consumers as a key ally in these conflicts, a critical element of the platform power they wield. In this article, I examine how non-consumer identities can limit the exercise

A growing body of literature studies how expert practices constitute issues such as climate change, migration, or public health as international objects of expertise. The article contributes to this research agenda by highlighting the role of digital visual technologies and infrastructures in the constitution and governance of these international objects. It develops the concept of visual objects and

In the wake of the fall of the Daesh Islamic State “Caliphate” in 2019, the international community has been faced with the fact that thousands of displaced persons are stranded in Iraqi and Syrian detention centers. This article interrogates the governmental policies of ten Western European countries toward their nationals and legal residents held in the prisons and camps. We analyze the discourse