Jeffrey D. Berejikian

RECONSTRUCTIVE DEMOCRATIC THEORY

While the idea of democracy has never been more universal or more popular, both democratic theory and the empirical study of democratic possibilities are in some disarray. We seek a productive reconnection of these two endeavors with democratic discourse through close attention to the language of democracy as used by ordinary people and political actors. Reconstructive inquiry determines how the individuals who are the potential constituents of any democratic order themselves conceptualize democracy and their own political roles and competences. We deploy an intensive method—Q methodology—for the study of individual characteristics, capabilities, and dispositions in combination with political discourse analysis. Four discourses are discovered in an analysis of selected U.S. subjects: contented republicanism, deferential conservatism, disaffected populism, and private liberalism. These results can be used to relate democratic theory to live possibilities in democratic discourse.

Revolutionary Collective Action and the Agent-Structure Problem.

Unraveling the nexus between agents and structures is fundamental to an understanding of political and social change. The two most prominent methodological approaches to explain revolutionary collective action involve either individual reductionism or structural reductionism. Both approaches result in theoretical inconsistencies and/or explanatory anomalies. An alternative proposed here utilizes the concept of framing developed in behavioral decision theory primarily by Quatrone and Tversky. It directly addresses the agent-structure problem by developing the proposition that individuals evoke alternative decision rules in different structural contexts. The result is greater theoretical coherence and resolution of anomalous cases. Additionally, this model begins to define a new role for ideology in explanations of revolutionary collective action.

A Cognitive Theory of Deterrence

Prospect theory is an empirical model of choice that stands as the leading alternative to rationality for explaining decisions under conditions of risk. While many still defend the assumption of rationality as an appropriate starting point for the construction of international relations theory - deterrence theory especially - there is growing support for models of international politics grounded in the actual capacities of real-world decisionmakers. This article accepts that standard depictions of deterrence incentives capture much of the essential character of deterrent relationships. However, it substitutes cognitive assumptions in place of traditional rational choice. Using prospect theory, the article reconsiders three typical deterrence games. The new model of military deterrence put forth unearths a set of conditions that are required for successful deterrence and uncovers a set of causes for deterrence failures that run counter to conventional understanding.

Model Building With Prospect Theory: A Cognitive Approach to International Relations

Despite the growing call for new models of politics grounded in the capacities of real–world decision–makers, much international relations theory still incorporates rationalist assumptions. Scholars defend such assumptions as the best way to produce parsimonious theoretical structures. Recent attempts to deploy prospect theory in the study of international politics are consistent with the call for empirically grounded models of political behavior. However, past attempts have often emphasized individualized comparisons of prospect theory with rational choice at the expense of building deductive theory. The analysis here demonstrates that prospect theory can produce deductive models for empirical comparison with those already manufactured under rational choice. The result is a new set of propositions concerning international politics securely anchored to the actual capacities of human actors.

Reflexive Action in International Politics

Realist and liberal theories of international politics both assume that the essential parameters of international politics are fixed, though they differ as to the character of these parameters. We deploy decision psychology and discourse analysis to show how the seemingly limited choices of actors can and do affect these parameters. Thus realism and liberalism are poor guides to action, for they rest on empirical misconception and faulty logic. Intelligent international action is reflexive in that it attends to the world that actions help constitute, as well as take effect within. We show how actors can and do engage in reflexive action, and how they might do so more consciously and effectively. There are substantial implications for how states and other actors ought to behave in the post-Cold War world.

Deploying Sanctions while Protecting Human Rights: Are Humanitarian "Smart" Sanctions Effective?

Human rights advocates suggest that traditional trade sanctions do the most damage to innocent populations, while leaving political and economic elites largely unscathed. The result is an ineffective policy that, at its worst, rises to the level of human rights violations. In response, human rights advocates have offered smart sanctions that target elites rather than the general population. However, if smart sanctions are to offer a practical humanitarian alternative for governments, then policymakers must have demonstrated evidence that such sanctions are also more effective. Otherwise, governments are left with an unattractive trade-off between effective sanctions policy and the protection of human rights, and this will likely limit the degree to which smart sanctions become adopted. This article systematically examines the effectiveness of smart sanctions across a large number of varied cases. The statistical results confirm that smart sanctions are more effective than traditional sanctions, undercutting the notion of a humanitarian versus effectiveness trade-off.

Disaggregating Noncompliance: Abstention versus Predation in the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty

Why do states make disingenuous treaty commitments? Under what conditions will countries refrain from entering cooperative agreements with which they do not expect to comply? This article addresses these questions by analyzing how states that are pursuing nuclear weapons treat the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). The authors develop a distinction between two types of noncooperative behavior. The first is cheating while part of the NPT (predation) and the second is pursuing nuclear weapons outside of the treaty (abstention). The authors’ argument is that democratic proliferators are more likely to abstain because executives in democracies are domestically constrained to a greater degree than authoritarian leaders. Statistical tests in a sample of all countries with active nuclear weapons programs from 1968 to 2004 provide evidence in favor of our argument. Controlling for confounding variables and the factors that motivate states to pursue nuclear weapons, the results show that states with greater constraints on executive authority are less likely to choose predation. Yet, electoral mandates do not appear to dissuade governments from making disingenuous treaty commitments. These findings have important implications for nuclear proliferation, the credibility of international commitments, and efforts to link domestic political institutions with international outcomes.

Measuring social trust and trusting the measure

Abstract Decades of rigorous quantitative scholarship have generated a wealth of knowledge regarding the causes and consequences of crossnational variations in social trust. However, while some social science disciplines have made significant contributions to this conversation, others have largely failed to do so. The field of international relations, for example, has lagged behind in producing aggregate-level scholarship on social trust. This is surprising given that (1) trust influences public opinion and thereby the incentive structure for political leaders and (2) many peacebuilding efforts directly target the levels of trust in post-conflict settings. Country-level trust scholarship in international relations and the social sciences more generally is hampered by data scarcity. The main purpose of this article is to present a new publicly available data set on aggregate levels of social trust. Relying on a set of 19 widely accepted correlates, we construct a new cross-sectional measure of the concept that covers all countries from 1946 to 2010. We then perform a series of empirical tests establishing the validity of our measure. Finally, we offer a number of bivariate analyses to demonstrate the broad utility of our new variable for scholars in the social sciences.

Hierarchy Amidst Anarchy: Transaction Costs and Institutional Choice. By Katja Weber. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000. 195p.

While there are numerous examples of transaction cost analysis in the literature on international cooperation, little of this scholarship concentrates on military collaboration. Indeed, studies like Webers that explain the varying density of military agreements are rare under any rubric. Webers offering thus begins to fill an important void in the scholarship on military cooperation.