Looking Inward
Mark Harrison & Nikolaus Wolf
Economic History Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Wars are increasingly frequent, and the trend has been steadily upward since 1870. The main tradition of western political and philosophical thought suggests that extensive economic globalization and democratization over this period should have reduced appetites for war far below their current level. This view is clearly incomplete: at best, confounding factors are at work. Here, we explore the capacity to wage war. Most fundamentally, the growing number of sovereign states has been closely associated with the spread of democracy and increasing commercial openness, as well as the number of bilateral conflicts. Trade and democracy are traditionally thought of as goods, both in themselves, and because they reduce the willingness to go to war, given the national capacity to do so, but the same factors may also have been increasing the capacity for war, and thus its frequency.
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Paper Tiger? Chinese Soft Power in East Asia
Gregory Holyk
Political Science Quarterly, Summer 2011, Pages 223-254
Abstract:
Gregory G. Holyk uses survey data to examine the supposed rise of Chinese soft power and parallel decline of U.S. soft power in East Asia. He finds that contrary to conventional wisdom, Chinese soft power is relatively weak, while U.S. soft power remains strong.
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Race, Gender, and Attitudes Toward War in Chicago: An Intersectional Analysis
Rachel Allison
Sociological Forum, September 2011, Pages 668-691
Abstract:
Although prior research has documented persistent racial and gender differences in public opinion on war across U.S. military conflicts, there is little understanding as to how race and gender simultaneously shape war opinion. Using data from the 2008 Chicago Area Study, this analysis locates gender within an intersectional examination of black-white differences in support for the U.S. war in Iraq. "Structural" and "racialized" explanations for blacks' lower level of support relative to whites are tested, first using all respondents, and then for men and women. Exploratory analyses show the race gap in war support to exist solely among Chicago women. Racial differences in partisanship and education are most strongly associated with black-white differences in Iraq War support among Chicago women. In addition, while affiliation with the Republican Party increases the odds of support among both men and women, education and political alienation decrease the odds of support only among women and the odds of support increase with age only among men. Results highlight the utility of an intersectional lens to the study of public opinion on foreign policy.
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Diversionary Nationalism: Economic Inequality and the Formation of National Pride
Frederick Solt
Journal of Politics, July 2011, Pages 821-830
Abstract:
What accounts for differences in the extent of nationalist sentiments across countries and over time? One prominent argument is that greater economic inequality prompts states to generate more nationalism as a diversion that discourages their citizens from recognizing economic inequality and mobilizing against it. Several other theories, however, propose different relationships between economic inequality and nationalism. This article provides a first empirical test of whether and how economic inequality is related to nationalism. Multilevel analyses using survey data on nationalist sentiments in countries around the world over a quarter century and data on economic inequality from the Standardized World Income Inequality Database provide powerful support for the diversionary theory of nationalism. This finding is an important contribution to our understanding of nationalism as well as of the political consequences of economic inequality.
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The origins of terrorism: Cross-country estimates of socio-economic determinants of terrorism
Andreas Freytag et al.
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior research has concluded that socio-economic development does not significantly affect terrorism. We take an alternative view. First, we note that a country's socio-economic circumstances affect terrorists' behavior through terrorism's opportunity costs. We argue that this reasoning also holds in the case of supreme value terrorism. Then, we employ a series of negative binomial regressions for 110 countries between 1971 and 2007 to test the hypothesis that poor socio-economic development is conducive to terrorism. We find that socio-economic variables indeed matter to terrorism, contrary to other results. Our findings imply that countries can benefit from economic development and growth in terms of a reduction in terrorism.
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An Evaluation of Interpol's Cooperative-Based Counterterrorism Linkages
Todd Sandler, Daniel Arce & Walter Enders
Journal of Law and Economics, February 2011, Pages 79-110
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the payback from efforts of the International Criminal Police Organization (Interpol) to coordinate proactive counterterrorism measures by its member countries to arrest terrorists and weaken their ability to conduct operations. We use Interpol arrest data and data on utilization of Interpol resources by member countries to compute counterfactual benefit measurements, which, when matched with costs, yield benefit-cost ratios. The average of these ratios is approximately 200 over 12 alternative counterfactual scenarios, so each dollar of Interpol counterterrorism spending returns approximately $200. This paper also puts forward a perspective on benefits derived from Interpol's Stolen and Lost Travel Document database. Interpol provides an inexpensive proactive measure against transnational terrorism that, unlike military operations, does not result in backlash attacks.
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The Effect of Sanctions on U.S. Foreign Direct Investment
Glen Biglaiser & David Lektzian
International Organization, July 2011, Pages 531-551
Abstract:
For years, the United States has imposed economic sanctions to compel countries to alter their behavior. An important concern is whether government sanctions influence private foreign direct investment (FDI) decisions, the largest source of foreign capital. In the first study to assess empirically the relationship between economic sanctions and FDI, we consider whether U.S. sanctions influence U.S. FDI inflows into targeted countries. Using panel data for 171 countries from 1965 to 2000, we find strong evidence that U.S investors pull out of countries targeted for U.S sanctions prior to their imposition. This disinvestment is not permanent and investment tends to return after the sanctions are imposed. The results provide support for FDI studies that show the effect of risk on investor decision making.
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Content Disputes in Wikipedia Reflect Geopolitical Instability
Gordana Apic, Matthew Betts & Robert Russell
PLoS ONE, June 2011, e20902
Abstract:
Indicators that rank countries according socioeconomic measurements are important tools for regional development and political reform. Those currently in widespread use are sometimes criticized for a lack of reproducibility or the inability to compare values over time, necessitating simple, fast and systematic measures. Here, we applied the ‘guilt by association' principle often used in biological networks to the information network within the online encyclopedia Wikipedia to create an indicator quantifying the degree to which pages linked to a country are disputed by contributors. The indicator correlates with metrics of governance, political or economic stability about as well as they correlate with each other, and though faster and simpler, it is remarkably stable over time despite constant changes in the underlying disputes. For some countries, changes over a four year period appear to correlate with world events related to conflicts or economic problems.
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Foreign military intervention and women's rights
Dursun Peksen
Journal of Peace Research, July 2011, Pages 455-468
Abstract:
A large body of scholarly work has been devoted to the possible consequences of foreign military intervention for the target state. This literature, however, tends to be state-centric and mostly neglects the insight from gender-specific theoretical and empirical perspectives. The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which military intervention affects women's rights. It is argued that unilateral interventions are prone to diminishing women's status by encouraging the persistence or creation of repressive regimes and contributing to political disorder in the target state. If the use of armed forces ever helps or causes no damage to women's well-being, it will likely be during interventions led by intergovernmental organizations (IGOs). This is because IGO interventions are unlikely to protect or support an authoritarian, patriarchal political system. Furthermore, such multilateral missions will increase international awareness of women's status along with other human rights issues in the target society, thereby creating more pressure on the government to enforce women's rights. To empirically substantiate these arguments, three different indicators that tap socio-economic and political aspects of women's status are used, including the indices of women's economic, political, and social rights from the Cingranelli-Richards database. The results indicate that while women's political and economic status suffer most during unilateral US interventions, IGO interventions are likely to have a positive influence on women's political rights. Non-US unilateral interventions, on the other hand, are unlikely to cause any major change in women's status. Finally, military interventions in general have no major statistically significant impact on women's social rights.
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On the simultaneity problem in the aid and growth debate
Markus Brückner
Journal of Applied Econometrics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper shows that foreign aid has a significant positive average effect on real per capita gross domestic product (GDP) growth if, and only if, the quantitatively large negative reverse causal effect of per capita GDP growth on foreign aid is adjusted for in the growth regression. Instrumental variables estimates show that a 1 percentage point increase in GDP per capita growth decreased foreign aid by over 4%. Adjusting for this quantitatively large, negative reverse causal effect of economic growth on foreign aid shows that a 1% increase in foreign aid increased real per capita GDP growth by around 0.1 percentage points.