Soft Power
The White House Middle East Policy in 1973 as a Catalyst for the Outbreak of the Yom Kippur War
Boaz Vanetik & Zaki Shalom
Israel Studies, Spring 2011, Pages 53-78
Abstract:
We focus on the part that was played by the U.S. Administration, in particular by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, in the failure of efforts to bring about an Israeli-Egyptian settlement in 1973, the year in which the Yom Kippur War broke out. Documents recently declassified in the United States and Israel support that the behavior of the White House, especially of Nixon's influential NSA, Kissinger, in the Middle East arena that year not only failed to prevent war but also indeed catalyzed its outbreak. We shall claim that in the examined period Kissinger led a "stalemate policy", which in practice meant undermining any peace initiative that surfaced if it was not in accordance with Israel's position on a possible settlement. With this in mind, the Egyptian government understood that the United States would have no real interest in promoting a peace process, pressuring Israel to withdraw from the Sinai Peninsula and perhaps also from other territories occupied in the Six-Day War. This assessment prompted the Egyptians to abandon diplomacy and (together with Syria) attack Israel in October 1973. They assumed that such a move would get the White House directly involved in the peace process in the Middle East and lead to the return of Egyptian territories occupied by Israel in the Six-Day War.
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One-party rule or multiparty competition? Chinese attitudes to party system alternatives
Robert Harmel & Alexander Tan
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article tests multifactor explanations for variance among Chinese citizens' attitudes to two related but separable party system concepts: the appropriateness of the current one-party system for China today, and the more abstract notion that multiple parties lead to chaos. Using data from The China Survey, conducted with a nationwide sample in 2008, the authors find that feelings of satisfaction with life and with the government contribute more to the explanation of support for China's current one-party system, while more general attitudes concerning competition relate more strongly to judgments directed at the abstraction of multipartyism. The data also reveal that while a bare majority of those expressing an opinion accept the argument that multiple parties necessarily bring chaos, the vast majority support the one-party regime for China, suggesting that even if Chinese citizens were to adopt more pro-democratic attitudes, rejection of the current one-party rule would not necessarily follow.
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Challenging the State: Transnational TV and Political Identity in the Middle East
Erik Nisbet & Teresa Myers
Political Communication, October 2010, Pages 347-366
Abstract:
Several scholars have linked the growth of transnational Arab TV in the Middle East over the past decade to a rise in transnational Muslim and Arab political identification at the expense of national political identity. However, a theoretical context for understanding how media exposure may influence political identification in the Middle East at an individual level of analysis has been lacking, and to date very little quantitative evidence has been presented. Our article addresses this gap by presenting a theoretical framework for linking individual media use to political identity in the Middle East and then employing this framework to quantitatively test the association between transnational Arab TV exposure and individual political identification using a set of cross-national surveys conducted in six Middle Eastern states between 2004 and 2008. We find evidence that exposure to transnational Arab TV increases the probability of transnational Muslim and Arab political identification at the expense of national political identities, though the influence of transnational TV on identity salience varied significantly across levels of education. Theoretical implications for the role of media in political socialization and identity salience, as well as implications for American foreign policy, are discussed.
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China and the United States: A succession of hegemonies?
Ian Clark
International Affairs, January 2011, Pages 13-28
Abstract:
This article critically reviews the suggestion that we are experiencing a ‘succession of hegemonies' from the United States to China. It develops Martin Wight's writings on hegemony, and introduces a fundamental distinction (not made by Wight) between a power transition and a hegemonic succession. Wight held complex views about the nature of power and at times seemed to subscribe to a purely materialist account. Elsewhere he was more nuanced and appealed to the purpose of dominant states as part of his argument that influence does not correlate exactly with mass and weight. This suggestion is developed in the author's view of hegemony - as distinct from primacy - as denoting a legitimate practice within international society. These ideas are then superimposed upon current debates about a power transition, or a succession of hegemonies, as between the United States and China. The existing debate conflates those two issues. Accordingly, while it can readily be acknowledged that there are important indicators of a shift in the material distribution of power, this in no way amounts, as yet, to any kind of hegemonic succession. For the latter to occur, there would need to be clear evidence of an effective socialization of the aspirant hegemon's purpose and support for its preferred order. On the contrary, to date China has been largely content to operate within existing frameworks, rather than instigate a revision of them, and does not yet present a model for emulation elsewhere. It is possible that a power transition, without any hegemonic succession, could be corrosive of global governance.
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Edward Anderson
System Dynamics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
A system dynamics model of insurgencies is built using the U.S. Army and Marine Counterinsurgency Manual (FM 3-24) as a basis. It must, however, be supplemented by additional theory from outside sources to enable calibration to a historical dataset. Parameter and policy analyses are conducted. These highlight the criticality of some features of insurgencies described by FM 3-24 such as the importance of obtaining and maintaining popular support and employing sufficient counterinsurgency forces to gather intelligence. Other features, not highlighted by FM 3-24, are also shown to be important such as the rate at which the number of violent incidents committed per insurgent increases during the insurgency and how easily detained/eliminated insurgents can be replaced. A number of sensitivity and policy tests are conducted. One finding, which supports conventional wisdom, is that the timing of withdrawal of counterinsurgency forces is critical. In particular, if the withdrawal is too early, the insurgency may end up being worse than if no counterinsurgency forces had ever been deployed. A second result is support for the contention that counterinsurgency policies are synergistic, which implies that policies are most effective if deployed together. Finally, contraindicating the expectations of FM 3-24 and other conventional wisdom, results from optimization simulations suggest that counterinsurgency forces should in many cases initially emphasize intelligence-gathering efforts and minimize direct combat action against the insurgents. Only later in the counterinsurgency effort should counterinsurgency forces reverse this policy and ramp up direct combat action against the insurgents.
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An empirical investigation of the determinants of democracy: Trade, aid and the neighbor effect
Stefan Csordás & Markus Ludwig
Economics Letters, March 2011, Pages 235-237
Abstract:
Empirical investigation by dynamic panel data models of the determinants of democracy shows a strong positive neighbor effect. Foreign aid is stabilizing but not inducing democratic development, while there is no significant relationship to openness to trade and income.
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Do Natural Resources Fuel Authoritarianism? A Reappraisal of the Resource Curse
Stephen Haber & Victor Menaldo
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
A large body of scholarship finds a negative relationship between natural resources and democracy. Extant cross-country regressions, however, assume random effects and are run on panel datasets with relatively short time dimensions. Because natural resource reliance is not an exogenous variable, this is not an effective strategy for uncovering causal relationships. Numerous sources of bias may be driving the results, the most serious of which is omitted variable bias induced by unobserved country-specific and time-invariant heterogeneity. To address these problems, we develop unique historical datasets, employ time-series centric techniques, and operationalize explicitly specified counterfactuals. We test to see if there is a long-run relationship between resource reliance and regime type within countries over time, both on a country-by-country basis and across several different panels. We find that increases in resource reliance are not associated with authoritarianism. In fact, in many specifications we generate results that suggest a resource blessing.
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The Economic Cost of Civil Conflict in Turkey
Servet Mutlu
Middle Eastern Studies, January 2011, Pages 63-80
Abstract:
The article seeks to estimate the economic costs that Turkey has incurred in the low-level warfare with the Kurdish separatists since 1984. These costs can be divided into direct costs, which are those that are immediately attributable to the conflict, and indirect costs which are its by-products such as forgone investment, the loss of human capital, capital flight and migration. It is estimated that, until the end of 2005, the total cost was $88.1 billion of which $54.2 billion was direct and $33.9 billion indirect cost. These are not unsubstantial sums for a developing economy. Just with the resources expended directly, Turkey could have finished its historically most ambitious development project, the Southeastern Anatolia project, or it could have built 6,000km of motorways which could criss-cross the country more than twice.
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Unfulfilled Promises: The Impact of Accession on Military Expenditure Trends for New NATO Members
Jomana Amara & Martins Paskevics
Comparative Strategy, November 2010, Pages 432-449
Abstract:
We examine the impact of NATO membership on military expenditures among countries that are closely linked by the timing of their accession to the alliance. The nations analyzed are the Visegrad, the Baltic, and the Adriatic countries. We conclude that a commitment to join NATO has an impact on a country's military expenditure level-it increases up to the membership point, and then starts to decline. However, on average, none of the country groups that joined NATO reached the informal guideline of military expenditures at 2 percent of GDP.
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Estimating the Operational Impact of Container Inspections at International Ports
Nitin Bakshi, Stephen Flynn & Noah Gans
Management Science, January 2011, Pages 1-20
Abstract:
A U.S. law mandating nonintrusive imaging and radiation detection for 100% of U.S.-bound containers at international ports has provoked widespread concern that the resulting congestion would hinder trade significantly. Using detailed data on container movements, gathered from two large international terminals, we simulate the impact of the two most important inspection policies that are being considered. We find that the current inspection regime being advanced by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security can only handle a small percentage of the total load. An alternate inspection protocol that emphasizes screening - a rapid primary scan of all containers, followed by a more careful secondary scan of only a few containers that fail the primary test - holds promise as a feasible solution for meeting the 100% scanning requirement.
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The Effect of 9/11 on U.S. Exports and Imports of Tourism
Alan King
Defence and Peace Economics, October 2010, Pages 535-546
Abstract:
Several studies have investigated whether the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have had an ongoing or merely transitory effect on US trade in tourism. All conclude in favor of the latter. However, limitations in either the data and/or methodology employed by these studies give cause to query their findings. The present study avoids these limitations and finds strong evidence that, once other factors are held constant, real US exports and imports of tourism have both remained significantly below their pre-2001 level.
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Exploring Reductions in London Underground Passenger Journeys Following the July 2005 Bombings
Fynnwin Prager et al.
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the reduction in London Underground passenger journeys in response to the July 2005 bombings. Using entrance data for London Underground stations between 2001 and 2007, we incorporate demand and supply factors in a multivariate time-series regression model to estimate changes in passenger journeys between different Underground lines. We find that passenger journeys fell by an average of 8.3% for the 4 months following the attacks. This amounts to an overall reduction of 22.5 million passenger journeys for that period. Passenger journeys returned to predicted levels during September 2005, yet we find evidence of reduced travel until June 2006. Our estimates controlled for other factors, including reduced Underground service provision due to damage from the attacks, economic conditions, and weather, yet substantial reductions in passenger journeys remained. Around 82% of passenger journey reductions following the 2005 attacks cannot be attributed to supply-side factors or demand-side factors such as economic conditions, weather, or the summer school-break alone. We suggest that this reduction may partially be due to an increased perception of the risk of Underground travel after the attacks.
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When Distance Mattered: Geographic Scale and the Development of European Representative Assemblies
David Stasavage
American Political Science Review, November 2010, Pages 625-643
Abstract:
Scholars investigating European state development have long placed a heavy emphasis on the role played by representative institutions. The presence of an active representative assembly, it is argued, allowed citizens and rulers to contract over raising revenue and accessing credit. It may also have had implications for economic growth. These arguments have in turn been used to draw broad implications about the causal effect of analogous institutions in other places and during other time periods. But if assemblies had such clear efficiency benefits, why did they not become a universal phenomenon in Europe prior to the nineteenth century? I argue that in an era of costly communications and transport, an intensive form of political representative was much easier to sustain in geographically compact polities. This simple fact had important implications for the pattern of European state formation, and it may provide one reason why small states were able to survive despite threats from much larger neighbors. I test several relevant hypotheses using an original data set that provides the first broad view of European representative institutions in the medieval and early modern eras. I combine this with a geographic information system data set of state boundaries and populations in Europe between 1250 and 1750. The results suggest a strong effect of geographic scale on the format of political representation. The broader implication of this result is to provide a reminder that if institutions help solve contracting problems, ultimately, the maintenance of institutions may itself depend on ongoing transactions costs.
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International Trade and Domestic Legal Systems: Examining the Impact of Islamic Law
Emilia Justyna Powell & Stephanie Rickard
International Interactions, October 2010, Pages 335-362
Abstract:
What factors determine countries' international trade relations? Recent theories point to the potential importance of domestic legal traditions. Countries' legal systems influence the enforcement of contracts. This has been shown to affect trade flows in common law and civil law countries. However, these two legal systems do not constitute the universe of legal traditions. Islamic law is an important and fundamentally distinct legal system that has been largely overlooked. In this article, we offer the first direct test of the effect of Islamic law on countries' trade relations. We find that, on average, levels of bilateral trade are lowest among Islamic law states, holding all else constant. This finding suggests that, contrary to conventional wisdom, shared institutions alone are insufficient to enhance trade flows. Instead, levels of bilateral trade depend critically on the quality of shared institutions. The importance of countries' legal systems for trade declines over time, possibly due to the increased role of international arbitration bodies and/or the standardization of international sales contracts.
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‘It's complicated': European media discourse on the USA from Reagan to Obama
Kristina Riegert & Lucas Pettersson
International Journal of Cultural Studies, January 2011, Pages 3-14
Abstract:
Media debates after the invasion of Iraq suggested that there was a growing anti-Americanism in Europe and that this contributed to an increasing sense of European identity as representing values that differed from that of the USA. But what if this anti-Americanism was really anti-Bushism, and how shared are the shared values on the European side when it comes to representation of the USA as Other? The articles in this Special Issue focus on the discursive image of the USA in the elite media of five European countries at points in time from a particularly frosty Cold War period under President Reagan until six months after the installation of President Obama. Taken together, there are broad similarities in the paradigms and characteristics used to depict the USA from the post-Cold War period, especially in French, Finnish, Swedish and German media. Below the surface, however, the narratives reveal that each country's commentators are mainly interested in the USA in relation to domestic concerns or as a prism for its relationships with other countries on the world stage. There is a stark focus on the US presidents as symbols through which the USA as a whole is seen. Both Democratic and Republican presidents are likened to Rambo, the ‘space cowboy', the ‘trade and cultural warrior', or Hollywood ‘stars', which could be interpreted as a measure of cultural disdain towards American popular culture and militarism.
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William McKinley's Values and the Origins of the Spanish-American War: A Reinterpretation
Nick Kapur
Presidential Studies Quarterly, March 2011, Pages 18-38
Abstract:
Prevailing interpretations of the causes of the Spanish-American War emphasize the role of yellow journalism, business interests, or congressional politics in forcing President William McKinley into a war that he neither sought nor wanted. This article reexamines McKinley's decision making in the months leading up to the Spanish-American War in the context of "Victorian" values, such as arbitrationism, pacifism, humanitarianism, and manly self-restraint, and argues that McKinley's actions were based more on these values than on external pressures. A closer look at the evidence suggests that McKinley's speech before Congress on April 11, 1898, may have been more a moment of unprecedented presidential power than a showing of personal weakness.
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Learning the Wealth of Nations
Francisco Buera, Alexander Monge-Naranjo & Giorgio Primiceri
Econometrica, January 2011, Pages 1-45
Abstract:
We study the evolution of market-oriented policies over time and across countries. We consider a model in which own and neighbors' past experiences influence policy choices through their effect on policymakers' beliefs. We estimate the model using a large panel of countries and find that it fits a large fraction of the policy choices observed in the postwar data, including the slow adoption of liberal policies. Our model also predicts that there would be reversals to state intervention if nowadays the world was hit by a shock of the size of the Great Depression.
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Soviet Growth & American Textbooks: An Endogenous Past
David Levy & Sandra Peart
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Between 1960 and 1980 American economics textbooks overestimated Soviet growth. They held that the Soviet economy was growing faster than the US economy and yet they kept the ratio of Soviet-US output constant over two decades. The textbooks downplayed any uncertainty associated with such growth estimates. We offer evidence that the optimistic portrait of the Soviet economy in the textbooks was in part driven by an assumption of efficiency and abstraction from institutional concerns.
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British Suffragettes and the Russian Method of Hunger Strike
Kevin Grant
Comparative Studies in Society and History, January 2011, Pages 113-143
Abstract:
In the spring of 1878 male political prisoners in the Peter and Paul Fortress of St. Petersburg went on hunger strike to protest against the oppressive conditions in which they were held by the tsarist regime. After three days, news of the strike reached the prisoners' families, who appealed for relief to the director of military police, General N. V. Mezentsev. The director dismissed their pleas and reportedly declared of the hunger strikers, "Let them die; I have already ordered coffins for them all." It was a volatile period of repression and reprisal in the Russian revolutionary movement. The tsarist regime had cracked down on the revolutionary populists, the narodniki, and the era of terrorism had just begun in St. Petersburg that January, when Vera Zasulich shot and seriously wounded the city's governor. The hunger strikers were among a group of 193 revolutionaries who had been recently tried for treason and sentenced to various forms of punishment, including hard labor and imprisonment in Siberia. In these circumstances the news of Mezentsev's response spread quickly beyond the strikers' families, soon reaching a would-be terrorist and former artillery officer, Sergius Kravchinskii. Kravchinskii killed Mezentsev with a dagger on a city street, then fled Russia and made his way to Great Britain, a haven for Russian revolutionaries since Alexander Herzen had arrived in 1852 and established the first Russian revolutionary press abroad. Kravchinskii likewise wrote against the tsarist regime, under the pen name Sergius Stepniak, and in 1890 he became the editor of a new, London-based periodical, Free Russia. Its first number chronicled a dramatic series of hunger strikes led by female revolutionaries imprisoned at Kara in the Trans-Baikál of eastern Siberia. These strikes had culminated in the death of one woman after she was flogged and in five suicides by female and male political prisoners who, after the death of their comrade, had ended their hunger strikes to eat poison. Having been inspired to terror by his sympathy for revolutionary hunger strikers, Stepniak, like other Russian exiles, believed that the hunger strike would win sympathy and support for Russian revolutionaries in Britain.
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Shutting down Dimona: Israel's nuclear programme, arsenal and environmental threat
Mounzer Sleiman
Contemporary Arab Affairs, October 2010, Pages 437-479
Abstract:
Israel is considering constructing its 'first' officially declared nuclear power plant, raising fears over the potential development of its nuclear arsenal. While international efforts are increasingly focusing on nuclear non-proliferation, one of the world's oldest nuclear reactors - Dimona - which by all indications is not only obsolete, but also structurally compromised - is still operating in Israel, posing enormous environmental and security threats to the entire Middle East. On the grounds that whatever reasons Israel may have had for acquiring a nuclear arsenal, implicit or explicit, these no longer hold, and given the environmental danger posed, this article argues that Israel should shut down Dimona as a first step toward establishing a nuclear-free region. The article highlights the different types of weapons in Israel's current nuclear arsenal as well as the attendant hazards of pollution, radiation and wastes, in addition to serious questions about adequate failsafe measures. The case presented is informed by hitherto unpublished material from a series of telephone interviews and consultations with Dr Samuel Cohen, 'father of the neutron bomb', and Dr Frank Barnaby, nuclear physicist and weapons expert who debriefed Mordechai Vanunu. Finally, the article suggests certain measures Israel could take to gradually eliminate its arsenal and avoid a cataclysmic scenario evocative of Chernobyl, without detracting from its overall 'security' claim. This article reflects the views of the author and does not necessarily reflect the views of Drs Cohen or Barnaby, who were both consulted strictly in a technical capacity, nor does it necessarily reflect the views of either the Centre for Arab Unity Studies (CAUS) or the publisher Routledge (Taylor & Francis, UK).