ABSTRACT Why and how do information and communication technologies (ICTs) shape the intensity of rebel violence? Recent studies find that ICTs can both increase and decrease such violence. We argue that, during civil wars, this effect depends on the type of ICTs. Mobile phones give rebels better military coordination to organize violence. In contrast, the internet increases the constraints of rebel

ABSTRACT Are emergency zones effective counterinsurgency measures? In response to Kurdish rebellion, the Turkish state put 13 provinces under emergency rule (1987–2002). In this paper, we investigate the link between emergency rule and electoral support for a pro-insurgent party. First, using the first-differencing method, we show that the tenure of provinces under emergency rule contributes to the

ABSTRACT Colonially inherited institutions are a key determinant of the regime type and economic outcomes of postcolonial countries. This study extends this claim to civil-military relations, arguing that former French colonies are especially likely to invest in structural coup-proofing. France created paramilitary units throughout its colonies for which many natives were recruited. After independence

ABSTRACT Those who would revolt against an autocrat often face a dilemma caused by uncertainty: they would like to revolt if the ruler would respond with democratization, but they would prefer to concede if the ruler would choose instead to violently suppress the revolution. Consequently, the autocrat must decide how to best signal his willingness to use violence in hope of deterring revolt. Using

ABSTRACT How can democratic governments convince their citizens to support a costly military alliance? We theorize about two rhetorical tools that foreign policy leaders have historically used to achieve this goal: instrumental cues emphasizing national interests and ideational cues highlighting shared values. We then assess the effects of these appeals in various forms and contexts by analyzing two

ABSTRACT In 2012, several Jihadi armed groups stormed the northern part of Mali and became the unchallenged rulers of two-thirds of the country. Each group governed based on Islamic Law, codifying violence against their enemies in combat and the populations they controlled. Despite drawing on similar jihadist ideology, these governing systems differed significantly in their uses of violence and jurisprudence

ABSTRACT How does combatant rank influence the adoption of international humanitarian law (IHL) norms—or “norms of restraint”—within military organizations? To date, few political science studies have directly examined the impact of rank in influencing combatant socialization to norms of restraint. Such a gap in the literature is striking: rank is perhaps one of the most fundamentally important characteristics

ABSTRACT What are the effects of partisan electoral interventions on the target’s subsequent cooperation with the intervener? Attempts by the great powers to affect the election results in other countries have been quite common with electoral interventions occurring in one of every nine elections between 1946 and 2000 as well as in the 2016 US presidential election. One important reason for such interventions

ABSTRACT Research on international conflict management remains largely siloed, with studies omitting conflict events and focusing on disparate conflict management strategies (e.g., mediation, or peacekeeping); yet we know that strategies regularly interact with conflict events and one another (e.g., within the same conflict). If one imagines conflict events and conflict management strategies as train

ABSTRACT This study groups third-party conflict management techniques (CMTs) into binding and non-binding approaches to examine whether and how their sequence and, in more detail, changes therein explain the outcome of international issue claims. Third parties can intervene in disputes by providing good offices or mediation; they also engage with more binding approaches such as arbitration and adjudication

ABSTRACT A growing body of literature has suggested that, in the long-run, humanitarian aid, while well-intentioned, might be counter-productive to civil war conflict management because aid provides resources that help belligerents sustain their conflict, increasing the intensity of civil wars and lengthening their duration. This unintended consequence of humanitarian aid creates a paradox for policymakers

(2021). Interactions among conflict management techniques: extending the breadth and depth of the framework. International Interactions: Vol. 47, Making Trains from Boxcars: Studying Conflict and Conflict Management Interdependencies, pp. 181-189.

ABSTRACT The years immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union were characterized by high hopes for an expansion of the liberal world order and for lasting peace. In the meantime, discord between western democracies, led by the US, and non-democratic states has been increasing. In the present article, I ask in how far these tensions have reached the working level of international cooperation

ABSTRACT Approximately 20% of contemporary rebel groups have expressed commitment to international law and signaled their intention to exercise restraint during wartime. Which rebel groups make these commitments and under what conditions? We argue that international engagement shapes the likelihood of rebel commitment to international law. Rebel groups with transnational non-military support and clear

ABSTRACT Women have historically been excluded from combat roles in state militaries. However, in recent years, women’s growing involvement in combat roles has sparked public debate. Currently, only a small minority of countries allow women into their ground combat forces. Given the policy relevance, it is important to examine the conditions under which militaries will allow women into combat roles

ABSTRACT While the conflict literature has examined the use of forced recruitment in conflict, the question remains why groups would choose to do so when forced recruits require expensive coercion and time intensive socialization processes. The prevailing wisdom in the literature is that forced recruitment is a tactic of the weak; yet empirically, we often observe relatively strong rebel groups employing

ABSTRACT Mediators improve the chances disputants in civil wars sign a peace agreement by exerting pressure or influence, referred to as leverage. This paper explores how sources of mediator leverage complement one another and draws attention to an under-explored form of influence: credible staying power. I argue that softer forms of leverage (i.e. relationships with the disputants and credible staying

ABSTRACT This paper explores why certain IOs officially categorize their member-states while others do not. It also examines the specific problems that categorization mechanisms are intended to solve. Building on theories of rational design, I argue that categorization is intended to provide a solution to cooperation problems in IOs and assist in preventing possible defections of participating member-states

ABSTRACT This study examines when and why threats of economic sanctions lead to the successful extraction of policy concessions. Scholars identified three (not mutually exclusive) hypotheses that explain the success of sanction threats: (a) the coercive, (b) the informational and (c) the public commitment hypothesis. The underpinning mechanisms for the hypotheses are, respectively, the economic cost

ABSTRACT What explains the complex processes of democratization and conflict management? Are new democracies more likely to use peaceful means or engage in militarized means when presented with opportunities to resolve their territorial disputes? In this paper, we hypothesize that democratizing states still engaged in territorial disputes are more likely to attempt conflict management following the

ABSTRACT This article argues that dramatic political change in State A poses a threat to the interests that other states B share with it. The more salient those interests are to State B, the greater the threat posed by domestic political change within State A. Thus major changes in one state place the leaders of formerly friendly states into a domain of losses, motivating risk-seeking behavior in hopes

ABSTRACT Escalating political conflict between major trade partners such as the US and China appears puzzling given theories linking trade to pacific international relations. We reconsider theories on bilateral trade, exposure to the global economy, and politics in order to explain contemporary events. Our approach departs from previous work in three key ways: we examine a broader range of conflictual

ABSTRACT A burgeoning body of work examines the connection between migration and security. Studies link migration to an increased volume of terrorism in destination states. More recent work examines the humanitarian consequences for political migrants and shows that refugees confront repression by state agents in recipient states. We argue that these consequences can generalize to society writ large

ABSTRACT The literature on forced migration reveals a linkage between conflict-related violence and displacement. However, it often neglects the potential that variable forms of violence have differential impacts on the decision to flee violence. Moreover, there is a mobility bias in the empirical literature, whereby analyses often focus upon individuals that leave their homes, neglecting to assess

ABSTRACT Fractious splits of rebel groups debilitate the military capacity of these organizations which increases their vulnerability to anti-rebel operations. Despite the risks of disunity and the battlefield advantages of remaining cohesive, our new global sample of rebel groups (1980–2014) reveals that two-fifths of these (but not the remaining) groups have split into distinct, competing factions

ABSTRACT This paper examines the propensity for host governments and the groups they sponsor to engage in violence in areas that host refugee populations. Drawing on arguments that governments strategically delegate violence to affiliated groups for “plausible deniability” purposes, it argues that, due to concerns over self-settled refugees’ welfare burden as well as the concern that these refugees

ABSTRACT In this article, we present the results of two survey experiments on public support for nuclear, chemical, and conventional strikes. We examined how moral values of individuals interact with the approval of different kinds of strikes and with the effects of information about the ingroup and out-group fatalities. Our results show that while the public is more averse to the employment of chemical

ABSTRACT Intelligence gathering presents a dilemma when states attempt military coercion. New information may bolster the case for war and the credibility of threats to fight. But it may also undermine the case for war, thereby preventing states from achieving their aims through coercive threats. I argue that this incentivizes leaders to decline to gather available information about the state of the

ABSTRACT When multiple attempts to manage a given conflict occur, are these attempts interdependent – and if so, how? Policymakers and practitioners regularly report that such interdependence exists; and yet, explicit theorizing about it remains underdeveloped. The need for theorizing motivates the current study. Using the concept of a conflict management trajectory as a foundation, I develop four

ABSTRACT Why do countries welcome some refugees and treat others poorly? Existing explanations suggest that the assistance refugees receive is a reflection of countries’ wealth or compassion. However, statistical analysis of a global dataset on asylum admissions shows that states’ approaches to refugees are shaped by foreign policy and ethnic politics. States admit refugees from adversaries in order

ABSTRACT Do aspects of current UN peacekeeping operations affect the willingness of that body to authorize new operations? Our theoretical arguments center on the capacity and costs of the organization – specifically the committed resources and risks associated with ongoing operations – with the assumption that greater existing commitments and perceived risks lessen the likelihood that the UN will

ABSTRACT Guided by the multi-theoretical, multilevel (MTML) framework, this study draws from the World Polity Theory and World System Theory to examine factors shaping the structure and evolution of an international human rights network which included INGOs, IGOs, and countries as key players. Using a longitudinal research design and network modeling, this study collected data from 197 countries and

ABSTRACT How does sourcing affect which events are included in international relations datasets? The increasing number of machine-coded datasets offers the promise of coding a larger corpus of documents more quickly, but existing automated processes rely exclusively on databases of news reports for coverage. We exploit source variation in the UCDP GED dataset, which includes events from media reports

ABSTRACT This study emphasizes the place that cognitive processes rather than objective concerns have in ratification of multilateral treaties. We argue that secondary securitization by non-security experts hinders treaty ratification. When security is at stake, the potential costs of undesired action by the treaty’s IO are deemed higher, risk-aversion increases, and asymmetry among the member states’

ABSTRACT Episodes of genocide and politicide show remarkable variation in how long they last. Some end within months; others continue for decades. Why do some persist while others end soon after they start? I argue that uncertainty influences the duration of killing. When a government has difficulty identifying members of a target group, it is less certain that it has accomplished its violent goals

ABSTRACT The study of nuclear proliferation has recently undergone a renaissance, one element of which is the widespread application of a particular statistical technique known as survival modeling. But survival models are often misapplied and this misapplication has consequences for our understanding of nuclear proliferation. Scholars of nuclear proliferation consistently fail to account for two methodological

Why do individuals sympathize with others’ wars, an antecedent of the decision to become a foreign fighter? By collecting original public opinion data from Lebanon, in 2015, and Turkey in 2017, abo...

ABSTRACT Both foreign aid and sanctions are foreign policy tools to promote democracy. Yet, it is unclear how far incentives and coercion enhance democratization. Since sanctions and aid are often employed at the same time, the goal of this study is to determine their joint effect on democratization in target/recipient countries. We argue that sending democracy aid through civil society organizations

ABSTRACT Are sanctions and sanctions threats costly for the sanctioning state? The costs of sanctions for the sender are an important feature of many theories developed to explain the use and utility of economic sanctions. Despite the prominence of this assumption in existing research, there are only a handful of studies that have endeavored to analyze or estimate the economic consequences of sanctions

ABSTRACT Scholars generally view flexibility in international institutions as a trade-off – flexible agreements attract more signatories at the cost of limiting the institution’s ability to change behavior, because flexibility allows states to make shallow commitments that require little, if any, deviation from current behavior. This paper argues that this trade-off is less severe than previous research

ABSTRACT How do donor governments respond to recipient government violence against civilians? Violence against civilians undermines a common goal of aid: to reduce the risk and impact of instability or civil conflict. We show that donors care about recipient violence against civilians, under certain circumstances. We argue that government use of violence against civilians reduces aid allocations to

ABSTRACT This paper examines the participation of human rights-abusing countries in UN peacekeeping operations. This seemingly growing occurrence raises questions given the UN’s emphasis in recent decades on protecting the physical integrity of civilians. How extensive are the contributions of human rights-violators in UN peacekeeping operations? And, what explains this phenomenon? I posit that peacekeeping

ABSTRACT The United Nations (UN) has developed a complex and interconnected system of committees, representatives, and missions in support of its peace and security mandate. This article introduces the United Nations Peace Initiatives (UNPI) data set, which provides information on 469 UN initiatives aimed at conflict prevention and crisis management, mediation, peacekeeping, and peacebuilding. The

ABSTRACT Although much previous research has investigated the impact of sanctions on trade and global capital, few academic studies have explored the effect of sanctions on stock markets in targeted countries. The lack of research is surprising as a frequent goal of sanctions is to inflict pain on financial markets in targeted countries to promote policy change. Using monthly market data for 66 countries

ABSTRACT Recent theoretical work has suggested that mutual uncertainty of a particular kind can promote credible reassurance and cooperation among states with compatible preferences. Specifically, on issues where cooperation is subjective, such that states are uncertain what types of actions the other will view as cooperative, credible reassurance under mutual uncertainty is straightforward. This finding

ABSTRACT Are human rights a core value of US foreign policy? If so, how does the United States enforce human rights standards? Extant studies maintain that mass media, public opinion, and/or political concerns drive US decisions to engage in humanitarian military interventions. In this study, we explore the extent to which “human rights institutionalization” through the State Department’s human rights

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the effect of private military and security companies (PMSCs) on levels of civilian casualties in Iraqi governorates from 2004 to 2007. Within a principal-agent framework, we argue that the capacity to monitor and evaluate PMSC performance is conditioned by the availability of performance-related information. Crucially, PMSC corporate structure impacts the information

ABSTRACT A relatively large body of research emphasizes the vital role of the tenure of leaders in explaining conflict behavior. In some accounts, new leaders are more likely to be attacked than their more seasoned counterparts. But are all new leaders equally susceptible to challenge? This research note argues that a key characteristic of leaders – whether or not they have combat experience prior

ABSTRACT Under what conditions are regional human rights courts effective? I argue that in order for regional human rights courts to be effective, they should deter future human rights abuses and this is more likely when the executive adopts and implements rights-respecting policy in response to adverse regional court decisions. When the executive expects the domestic judiciary to implement regional

ABSTRACT In many political contexts, antagonistic actors face a tradeoff. Broadly, they profit from noncooperative actions. But taking those actions signals unfriendly preferences to their targets, who may then take proactive countermeasures to mitigate the damage of later defections. We develop a model to investigate how actors can manipulate the signaling incentives. We show that the target best

ABSTRACT Do framing strategies that are effective at encouraging pro-social behavior, such as participation in human rights campaigns, also mobilize support for violence within the same subjects? We use an experimental research design to examine individuals’ reactions to personal, humanizing narratives about past victimization. Participants are randomly assigned to one of eight treatment groups, which

ABSTRACT Conventional wisdom claims that reputation leads sovereign states to full debt repayment. However, defaults are recurrent, some debtor countries take a lot of time to end them, and some extract costly concessions from investors. This article argues that these differences are largely explained by the political regimes in the borrowing countries. While previous research examines whether democracies

ABSTRACT Recent research on multi-actor civil wars highlights that rebel organizations condition their conflict behavior on that of other rebel organizations, with competition and free-riding constituting the core theoretical mechanisms. We provide a new actor-centric approach to explicitly model strategic interdependence in multi-actor civil wars. We argue that rebel organizations have incentives

ABSTRACT Does hate speech – rhetoric that targets, vilifies or is intended to intimidate minorities and other groups in society – fuel domestic terrorism? This question is, unfortunately, relevant given the convergence of the use of hate speech by political figures and domestic terrorist incidents in a variety of countries, including the United States. In this study I theorize that hate speech by politicians

ABSTRACT Does foreign aid strengthen or weaken post-conflict states? We examine the effects of aid on tax collection after civil war, an important dimension of state effectiveness. While the literature emphasizes aid’s perverse effects, the relationship between aid dependence and the growth of tax collection is unclear. We argue that the impact of aid reflects its political utility for ruling elites

ABSTRACT Do private firms act beyond “business as usual” and proactively build peace? Firms are largely absent from the conflict management literature, despite studies suggesting their importance. What conditions encourage firms to actively prevent or resolve violent conflict? Are such actions interdependent with ongoing international conflict prevention and management efforts? I argue international

ABSTRACT Does the introduction of UN forces impact terrorism? We argue that at least initially, UN peacekeeping missions may significantly shift the local conflict bargaining process, creating incentives for terrorist and insurgent groups to increase their attacks against civilians. UN missions create a symbolic endpoint to initial negotiations, alter the balance of power between combatants, and may

ABSTRACT Leadership decapitation, as a means of hindering the operations and hastening the demise of terrorist organizations, has been the subject of a growing body of research. However, these studies have not examined how an organization’s position in a broader network impacts its ability to weather decapitation. We argue that highly networked organizations possess characteristics that make decapitation

ABSTRACT We examine voting behavior of Western allied countries in line with the United States over the period 1949 until 2019. Descriptive statistics show that voting in line with the United States on resolutions in the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) was on average 7.2 percentage points lower under Donald Trump than under the preceding United States presidents. The policy shift is especially