Brandon C. Prins

Rivalry and Diversionary Uses of Force

Scholars have argued for some time that the rally ’round the flag phenomenon creates incentives for political leaders to use military force to divert attention away from domestic turmoil. It is hypothesized that a state’s strategic or historical context conditions its use of military force abroad, and that the probability of diversionary uses of force is higher in opportunity-rich environments of enduring rivalry. Empirical analyses lend support to this hypothesis, showing that high levels of inflation increase the probability of militarized dispute initiation in settings of rivalry but actually decrease it in nonrival settings. However, the results are contingent on the regime type of the potential initiator. Consistent with recent strategic models of diversion, the analyses demonstrate that although democratic leaders have the greatest incentives to divert, they have fewer opportunities to do so due to the transparency of their regimes.

The Liberal Peace Revisited: The Role of Democracy, Dependence, and Development in Militarized Interstate Dispute Initiation, 1950–1999

We test a model of the liberal peace by examining the initiation of militarized interstate disputes at the monadic level of analysis from 1950–1999. Liberal peace theory contends that both economic dependence and democratic political systems reduce conflict propensities. Extant empirical analyses of the monadic liberal peace, however, are under-specified. First, the concept of economic dependence not only includes trade, but also foreign investment. Second, existing models do not control for the influence of economic development. Previous research on the monadic liberal peace has also failed to distinguish between the initiation of conflict and participation in conflict. We find evidence for a liberal peace: trade dependence, foreign investment, and democracy reduce a state’s propensity to initiate militarized disputes.

Institutional Instability and the Credibility of Audience Costs: Political Participation and Interstate Crisis Bargaining, 1816-1992*

While considerable empirical evidence shows democratic dyads to be less prone to violence than other types of regime pairs, disagreement still exists on the causal factors inhibiting conflict among democratic states. Some scholars have concluded that increased attention needs to be given to identifying specific characteristics of democratic states that might mitigate or incite coercive foreign policy actions. This article begins to pull apart the Polity IIId regime index by assessing the role of political participation in crisis bargaining. If the ability of opposition groups to challenge government policies enables state leaders to communicate credibly their intentions and thus avoid conflict, increased attention needs to be given to the permanence of such structural features of the domestic political environment. What may facilitate efficient signaling is not only competitive political participation, but also the enduring nature of such participation. Regimes that oscillate between severe restrictions on political participation and regulated competition engage in more escalatory behavior because they fail to signal their preferences effectively. The results indicate that while democracy has little effect on MID reciprocation, factionalism among domestic political groups tends to be strongly associated with such a dispute response. Contiguity, military balance, and years at peace also appear to influence dispute reciprocation.

Insurgents of the Sea: Institutional and Economic Opportunities for Maritime Piracy

While piracy may evoke romanticized visions of swashbuckling, rum swigging, and skirt chasing pirates hoisting the Jolly Roger, maritime piracy has changed substantially by taking advantage of modernization and substantial upgrading of the weapons, vessels, and weapons it employs. In addition, as documented by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), the frequency of pirate attacks has increased significantly, with more than 2,600 piracy incidents occurring since 2004. The authors argue that piracy is a result of permissive institutional environments and the lack of legal forms of employment in states’ fishing sectors. The authors investigate these arguments empirically using data for all countries with coastlines in the 1995–2007 period. The empirical analyses show that state weakness and reductions in fisheries production values affect piracy as expected. These findings suggest that international efforts in combating piracy should center on improving the institutional environments and labor opportunities driving maritime piracy.

Opportunities and Presidential Uses of Force A Selection Model of Crisis Decision-Making

Political vulnerability is thought to influence the opportunities available to the US president to engage in uses of force abroad. Conventional theories linking economic misfortune and partisan opposition to presidential uses of force detail the incentives and constraints facing the president in decisions to use force. In contrast, these theories’ strategic counterparts focus on the ability of US adversaries to respond to the president’s vulnerability through either avoidance or exploitation. The behavior of US adversaries is thought to critically affect the president’s opportunities to use force. Conventional and strategic accounts of the linkage between domestic political vulnerability and the use of force provide contradictory expectations. To assess these theories we identify hypotheses related to four dependent and selection variables corresponding to dispute initiation and reciprocation involving the US. These hypotheses are tested with a two-stage Heckman Probit model to account for selection effects due to strategic interaction. The results are most supportive of orthodox diversionary theory. Our findings challenge the other perspectives evaluated—the strategic conflict avoidance (SCA) perspective, Howell and Pevehouse’s party cover approach, and Schultz’s signaling model.

Taming the Leviathan: Examining the Impact of External Threat on State Capacity

This article argues that the systemic security environment influences the structure of domestic political and economic institutions. If states have been primarily created to protect one group from predation by another, then the state may visibly change as external threats rise and fall. The authors argue that political elites respond to threatening environments by enhancing the ability of the state to extract resources from society in order to protect itself. Using data from the Armed Conflict Dataset, Bankss Cross National Data Archive, and COW data from 1975 to 1995, the authors find evidence that supports the conjectured relationship between threat and state strength. As a response to a more threatening environment, the authors find that states significantly increase their capacity in terms of revenue, government spending, and military spending, but they do not easily relinquish these gains. The authors also observe that nation-state security is heavily influenced by regional regime-type patterns. State capacity increases as the regional neighborhood becomes increasingly autocratic. This suggests political elites not only regard violent conflict in the region as a serious concern to national security, but also appear to consider political change a threat as well.

Strategic Position Taking and Presidential Influence in Congress

The rise and fall of presidential success in Congress remains a central puzzle in the literature. We model success as two interrelated processes: presidential position taking and Congress’s decision to support or oppose the president. The analysis emphasizes the importance of strategic position taking in determining presidential success. We show that presidential approval significantly influences success, not only because it affects congressional behavior, but also because it shapes presidential decisions to take positions. Moreover, we explain that legislative success during the honeymoon period is driven by presidential position taking. Our findings highlight the role of a president’s strategic decisions for theories explaining congressionalexecutive relations. The framers of the U.S. Constitution envisioned an executive who would be limited in legislative affairs. Since the founders’ time, Congress and the president have sought to redefine their respective legislative roles (Wayne 2002), clashing over judgeships, budgets, war, and nearly all other matters of public policy. Presidential power is, more often times than not, a zero-sum struggle for policymaking influence fueled by both interinstitutional and partisan considerations. Scholars have made significant strides in explaining the conditions that have an effect on changes in the relative influence of these institutions on public policy. Still, the role and effects of strategic behavior on congressional-executive relations constitute a critically important yet relatively unexplored topic in the literature (Andres and Griffin 2002; Lindsay and Steger 1993). To date, most empirical studies have assessed the effects of executive power on outcome measures, such as congressional support scores or presidential success as defined by rollcall votes. The scholarly focus of “who wins” on such outcome measures can be quite misleading, not only because these measures tend to capture only one stage of congressional-executive bargaining,

Committed To Peace: Liberal Institutions and the Termination of Rivalry

Rivalry is characterized by mutual mistrust, anger and fear, and becomes increasingly intractable as confrontations between rivals militarize. The empirical record confirms that rivalries account for the vast number of militarized interstate disputes and wars in the international system. Although considerable attention has been spent on the initiation, duration or termination of rivalries, to date no comprehensive theoretical framework for their persistence or failure exists. Following Fearon, a rationalist explanation of rivalry termination is developed. It is argued here that the adoption of liberal institutions helps alleviate the commitment problems arising in rivalry. Free-market reform, democratic institutions and membership in international organizations all build trust and increase defection costs among rival states, and therefore help to shorten the duration of rivalry. Using a Cox proportional hazard model and Thompson’s data on rivalries, itisshownthatchangetowardsdemocracy,aswellasthejointeffectofdemocracyandeconomicdevelopment increase the likelihood of rivalry termination. Also, joint membership in international organizations with mechanismsfordisputesettlementreducesthedurationofrivalry.ArobustnesscheckusingDiehlandGoertz’s list of rivalries produces similar results.

Senate Influence or Presidential Unilateralism

Treaty-making involves the constitutional struggle for policy control. Both the Executive and Senate are defined as official actors in establishing international commitments and both closely guard their constitutionally defined roles.Yet most research concludes that Congress rarely matters when defining US commitments abroad.We explore the Senates role in treaty-making during the administrations of Theodore Roosevelt (1901—1909) and the first term of George W. Bush (2001— 2005). Our evidence confirms that even recent studies showing greater Senate influence on treaty-making significantly underestimate the upper chambers role in defining US commitments abroad. Rather than killing treaties with a formal floor vote, the Senate exerts influence at the committee stage by refusing to act on controversial agreements negotiated by presidential administrations. President Bush has responded to such congressional oversight by establishing more international commitments through executive agreements rather than treaties, particularly when it comes to issues of security.

Domestic Veto Institutions, Divided Government, and the Status Quo: A Spatial Model of Two-Level Games with Complete Information

The role of domestic institutions and politics has long been of interest to students of international politics and foreign policy formulation (Corwin 1917). Of course, some theories of international politics—especially the various strands of Realism (Layne 1993, 1994; Mearsheimer 2001; Morgenthau 1949; Waltz 1979)—assert that domestic politics has no impact at all on the politics among nations; instead, what matters almost exclusively are national power, especially the nation’s economic and military capabilities. Other schools of thought, however, do allow some room for domestic politics to play a role. For example, arguments have long been made (see Lippman 1922, 1925), and empirical studies appear to demonstrate (Baum 2002; Graham 1989; Holsti 1996; Mueller 1973; Nincic 1992a; Page and Barabas 2000) that public opinion influences foreign policy decisions. More recently, some scholars have suggested that domestic economic conditions can affect a nation’s propensity to use military force abroad (Davies 2002; James and Oneal 1991; Morgan and Bickers 1992; Ostrom and Job 1986; Russett 1990a) as well as its propensity to engage in cooperative international ventures (Lindsay, Sayrs, and Steger 1992). Some studies have even inverted this “diversionary” theory of conflict, suggesting that domestic political vulnerability may increase the probability of becoming a target of aggression (Chiozza and Goemans 2004; Gelpi 1997; Huth and Allee 2003; Leeds and Davis 1997).