James Meernik

Testing Models of U.S. Foreign Policy: Foreign Aid during and after the Cold War

The end of the Cold War has provided scholars of international relations with a unique opportunity to evaluate the explanatory power of their models in a rapidly changing environment. We provide a preliminary, exploratory test of the system-level, societal-level, and state-level explanations of U. S. foreign policy behavior during and after the Cold War We seek to determine which among the foreign policy goals suggested by these approaches best explains one important aspect of U. S. foreign policy-the provision of foreign assistance The hypotheses are tested on a pooled, cross-sectional, time series of U. S. foreign aid allocation from 1977 through 1994 While we find a great deal of similarity in the relative importance of the three approaches in explaining U. S. behavior in both eras, we also show that the security-driven goals of the systemic approach have become less critical and the ideological goals of the state-centered model more important with the passing of the Cold War.

The Myth of the Diversionary Use of Force by American Presidents

One of the most intriguing claims that has been made about the behavior of American presidents is that they have been motivated by deteriorating political conditions at home to engage in conflict abroad. However, we identify three problems with this literature: (1) the use of increments of time rather than international crises as the unit of analysis; (2) the assump tion that presidents can respond to international crises whenever they wish; and (3) the assumption that there are significant political payoffs for diver sionary uses of force. We argue that few if any relationships are likely to be found between presidential popularity, congressional support, economic conditions and elections and the use of force. We test our hypotheses by looking at the political use of military force by American presidents in the post-World War II era (1953-88). We also test to determine if the causal order is not reversed and if it is domestic conditions which precipitate international crises. Ultimately, we find little evidence of any kind of link between domestic political conditions in the United States and uses of force or international crises.

United States Military Intervention and the Promotion of Democracy

All through history, when United States presidents have sought to explain or defend US military interventions in foreign lands, no goal, with the exception of the national security of the United States, has been advanced with such regularity and frequency as the promotion of democracy. Interestingly, however, this readiness to use force in the name of democracy does not appear to square with some of the emerging findings on the pacific relations among democratic nations. If states do not war on each other because they are democratic, does it make sense that they wage war or use force to compel others to become democratic? In this article the author attempts to answer two central questions related to the use of force by the United States in the ostensible quest to promote democracy. First, why would the United States intervene in the affairs of other nations to promote democracy? And second, is the use of force an effective tool in the promotion of democracy? The article finds that in the majority of cases, regardless of the manner in which democratic change is measured, US military interventions do not appear to lead to increased levels of democracy. Most nations retain their current level of democracy. However, when a comparison is made between nations which have experienced intervention, with those that have not, it is shown that the former group is more likely to experience democratic growth. Probit analyses of the effects of military intervention on democratization generally support the notion that the use of US ground forces does lead to increased democratization. A probit model is also developed to predict which military interventions are most likely to promote democracy. The predictive success of the models is quite high. The author finds that when the president declares democracy is a goal of the intervention, and if the US government is opposed to the targeted regime, democracy is more likely to be promoted.

Justice and Peace? How the International Criminal Tribunal Affects Societal Peace in Bosnia

The reconstruction and maintenance of peaceful communities in the aftermath of conflicts is one of the most critical areas of concern for both policymakers and scholars. This article examines explanations of the level of societal peace - the degree of conflict and/or cooperation in a society - and the extent to which internationally provided justice contributes to the maintenance of peaceful societies. In particular, it investigates the efforts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia to provide justice for the people of Bosnia and Herzegovina by analyzing the impact of the arrests and judgments of war criminals on societal peace in Bosnia. Some research suggests that internationally provided justice is critical to peace and reconciliation; some scholars argue that such attempts can do more harm than good by inflaming ethnic violence; while still other research contends that its effects are limited at best. Using event data from the Kansas Event Data System, it is found that the arrests and judgments of war criminals had only a limited effect on improving relations among Bosnia’s ethnic groups. Mostly, the apprehension and judgments of suspected war criminals had no statistically significant effect.

Presidential Support in Congress: Conflict and Consensus on Foreign and Defense Policy

In a recent article appearing in The Journal of Politics, McCormick and Wittkopf (1990) argue that the Vietnam War did not exercise a significant impact on bipartisan presidential support in the U.S. Congress and that a bipartisan Cold War consensus on foreign policy and defense issues in the House and Senate was not as prominent as many had assumed. I develop a comprehensive model of bipartisan congressional support of presidents from 1947-1988 on foreign policy and defense roll-call votes in the House and Senate that test the impact of many factors, such as presidential influence and legislative processes not accounted for in McCormick and Wittkopfs analysis. Using probit analysis of individual roll-call votes, I show that before the Vietnam War, substantial consensus existed in both the House and Senate and after this conflict, such consensus has become much more infrequent. In addition, I find that forces originating in Congress exercise much more influence over the incidence of bipartisan support than presidential resources.

Modeling International Crises and the Political Use of Military Force by the USA

While the literature on the political use of military force by the USA has undergone tremendous growth in recent years, one crucial feature of this foreign policy activity has not been modeled - the conditions that give rise to the crises that precipitate a use of force. It is possible that many of the findings on the diversionary use of force obtain because of problems with selection effects. More uses of force may occur during certain periods simply because more crises occur during these times. Therefore, I explain how we may model crisis occurrence and the use of force to help us better understand the role of selection effects and the salience of domestic conditions in the decision to use force. I outline several hypotheses regarding the influence of domestic and crisis-specific factors to predict when opportunities to use force will occur and, given some opportunity, when a president will use military force. The results demonstrate that by not accounting for selection effects in the decision to use force by US presidents, we may have erroneously concluded that presidents use force to divert public attention.

Judicial review and coordinate construction of the constitution

Theory: A Congress-centered model of coordinate construction of the Constitution is proposed to predict when legislation, that would reverse a decision of the Supreme Court, is brought to a vote in Congress. Hypotheses: Decision reversal of Supreme Court cases striking down law as unconstitutional are a function of federal power concerns, presidential position, the type of law struck down, public opinion, and interest group pressure. Methods: A two-stage model suggested by Achen (1987) for modeling two interrelated, dichotomous outcomes is used. Results: We find that Congress often does reverse Supreme Court rulings and that public opinion, the position of the president, federal power concerns, and the type of law struck down have the greatest effect on the likelihood that reversal legislation will come to a vote in Congress and will be passed.

The Impact of Human Rights Organizations on Naming and Shaming Campaigns

Given the myriad of human rights abuses that occur globally and daily, why are some nations on the receiving end of a substantial amount of international opprobrium, while others receive far less attention and condemnation? The authors contend that the increasing presence of human rights organizations in such states is the critical link between the local and the international. Increases in the number of such groups contributes significantly to the generation of Amnesty International urgent actions, one of the most-often-utilized tools in naming and shaming campaigns against human rights abusing regimes. The authors find strong support for nearly all their hypotheses.

Explaining Congressional Attempts to Reverse Supreme Court Decisions

This research examines what factors are likely to cause the Congress to attempt to reverse Supreme Court decisions that hold federal laws unconstitutional during the Warren, Burger, and early years of the Rehnquist courts. First, we outline a general theory of congressional motivation to reverse Supreme Court decisions that looks to both electoral considerations and the need to safeguard congressional power as the primary motivating factors. Using a data set consisting of 65 Court decisions that reversed all or part of some federal statute(s), we test our hypotheses using a probit model to predict when the Congress will take counteraction. We find that the electoral considerations of public opinion and interest group pressure are likely to lead to a congressional response, while the institutional considerations of court unanimity and the age of the legislation struck down are also important. The congress, however, is most likely not to take any decision reversal action.

Determinants of Post-Conflict Economic Assistance

Given the importance of violent conflicts and their consequences in global politics, the increasing attention paid to rebuilding conflict-stricken nations by the major powers, and the growing interest in scholarship on these phenomena, theory-building and empirical analysis of post-conflict economic assistance are essential. This article analyzes the determinants of foreign economic assistance given by nations of the OECD, in aggregate, to nations that were involved in international and internal conflicts. The model is designed to address three specific questions. First, in the aftermath of conflict does foreign economic assistance by the OECD increase to conflict-affected nations, or does aid allocation continue as before? Second, does the allocation of foreign economic assistance to conflict actors continue to be influenced by those same factors that determine aid during normal times? Third, to what extent do factors relevant to the conflict itself influence the amount of foreign economic assistance provided by OECD nations? The article contends that both the national attributes of the conflict nations and the characteristics of the conflicts from which they have emerged explain the amount of economic assistance OECD states provide. The findings reveal that such national attributes as humanitarian need, economic openness, and regime transition, as well as conflict characteristics such as military intervention and conflict issues affect aid levels. Aid levels also tend to increase after conflicts, but then begin to level off after several years.