Michael T. Koch

In the Defense of Women: Gender, Office Holding, and National Security Policy in Established Democracies

Do women’s political gains in office translate into substantive differences in foreign policy outcomes? Previous research shows that men and women hold different national security policy preferences and that greater representation by women in the legislature reduces conflict behavior. But are these relationships an artifact of confounding variables? To answer this question, we analyze the defense spending and conflict behavior of 22 established democracies between 1970 and 2000. We argue that the ability of female officeholders to represent women’s interests is context dependent—varying with the level of party control over legislators and the gender stereotypes that officeholders confront. Consistent with the literature on stereotypes, we find that increases in women’s legislative representation decreases conflict behavior and defense spending, while the presence of women executives increases both. However, these effects are conditioned by the gendered balance of power in the legislature and the degree of...

Testing the “Dick Cheney” Hypothesis: Do Governments of the Left Attract More Terrorism than Governments of the Right?

Do governments of the left attract more terrorism than governments of the right? We examine how the political orientation of governments affects the probability of states being the target of terrorist attack. We develop a series of related theoretical linkages between partisan orientation, policy choice, and terrorist behavior to explain why governments of the left should be more likely to see higher numbers of terrorist attacks than governments of the right. We test our expectations using two different datasets; the Database of Political Institutions and the Party Manifesto data against the ITERATE terrorism dataset between the years 1975 and 1997. The results suggest that governments of the left are more likely to be the targets of terrorism than governments of the right and that the causal mechanisms behind this outcome might be context dependent.

Governments, Partisanship, and Foreign Policy: The Case of Dispute Duration

Do variations in partisanship and political outcomes among democratic states affect the duration of militarized interstate disputes? To answer this question, the author develops a model of partisan competition derived from the government failure literature. The author argues factors associated with government failure determine the ability of governments to contend with the domestic political costs of militarized disputes, specifically the duration of those disputes. The author tests his expectations using hazard analysis on a dataset of 20 democratic governments and militarized disputes between 1945 and 1992. The results suggest the outcome of party competition in the form of a government’s sensitivity to the potential political costs of conflict is an important part of the conflict process. The author concludes that differences in domestic political outcomes influence the duration of militarized interstate disputes. Governments that are politically more secure in their tenure engage in longer disputes. Alternatively, governments that are more vulnerable have significantly shorter disputes. In addition, because government partisanship contributes to vulnerability, it also affects dispute duration, with governments of the left engaging in shorter disputes, while governments of the right fight longer disputes.

Casualties and Constituencies : Democratic Accountability, Electoral Institutions, and Costly Conflicts

Electoral institutions influence legislators’ constituency size and makeup and, as a result, affect the lens that representatives look through to assess the costs of military conflict. Given the uneven distribution of casualties during a conflict, the costs of international violence vary between constituencies and thus affect representatives differently. The authors develop a constituency-based theory of legislator accountability and legislature behavior that predicts when democracies are willing to pay human costs in an interstate conflict and their likelihood of being involved in a dispute. The results suggest that the more diffuse political account-ability, the less likely a state is to get involved in a militarized dispute, but that once involved, the more likely a state will sustain casualties. The authors’theory suggests that choices over the mechanisms of political representation have far-reaching effects on political accountability and foreign policy.

Should I Stay or Should I Go Now? Partisanship, Approval, and the Duration of Major Power Democratic Military Interventions

How does the domestic political climate within democratic states affect the duration of their foreign military engagements? To answer this question we combine a rationalist model of war termination with a theory about how partisan politics affects the policy preferences of national leaders to predict the duration of democratic military interventions. Specifically, we examine how changes in a chief executive’s public approval ratings interact with partisanship to affect decisions about the timing of conflict termination. We test our expectations on a set of 47 British, French, and American cases from a new dataset of military interventions by powerful states. Our results suggest that partisanship mediates the effect of public approval on the duration of military operations initiated by powerful democratic countries. As executive approval declines, governments on the right of the political spectrum are inclined to continue to fight, while left-leaning executives become more likely to bring the troops home.

Military Intervention by Powerful States, 1945-2003*

The Military Intervention by Powerful States (MIPS) project develops a rigorous, generalizable measure of the effectiveness of military force as a policy instrument and applies the measure to code the outcomes of all military interventions conducted by five major powers since the termination of World War II. The MIPS dataset provides detailed data on US, British, Chinese, French, and Russian uses of military force against both state and non-state targets between 1946 and 2003. In particular, this project focuses on the political objectives strong states pursue through the use of force, the human and material cost of their military operations, and measures of intervention outcomes relative to the intervening states’ objectives. The dataset also includes extensive data on factors commonly hypothesized to be associated with war outcomes, such as the nature of the target, the type of force used by the intervening state, and military aid and assistance provided to each side.

War Voting Interstate Disputes, the Economy, and Electoral Outcomes

This article explores the interactive effects of the economy and the use of force on incumbent parties’ electoral performance. Research on the diversionary use of force assumes that leaders (especially democratic leaders) use force abroad to bolster their domestic political fortunes during hard economic times. But other research suggests that crises either lead to removal from office or have no effect on incumbents’ political fortunes. Although a good deal of scholarship assesses the role of the economy on electoral outcomes, no research has explicitly examined the interactive effects between dispute involvement and the economy on leaders’ share of the vote. We argue that the salience of the economy conditions voters’ sensitivity to the costs of conflict, which reduces electoral support for incumbent parties engaging in dramatic foreign policy events. Moreover, we expect executives’ efforts to emphasize foreign policy during economic downturns to be met with electoral punishment as voters prefer to see leaders working on a remedial economic policy. To evaluate this argument, we examine incumbent parties’ vote shares in elections among nine advanced democracies from 1960 to 2000. Our results support the hypothesis that during economic downturns voters care more about domestic politics than foreign policy. Furthermore, our results have implications for the diversionary hypothesis, gambling for resurrection argument, the democratic peace, and economic voting research agendas.

Casualties and Incumbents: Do the Casualties from Interstate Conflicts Affect Incumbent Party Vote Share?

Research suggests that the costs of international conflict (e.g. casualties) alter public opinion, executive approval and policy positions of elected officials. However, do casualties affect voting in terms of aggregate outcomes and individual vote choices? This article examines how casualties from interstate conflicts affect voter behaviour, specifically incumbent vote share. Using the investment model of commitment to model individual vote choice, it is argued that increases in the costs of conflict (i.e., more casualties) can increase the probability that voters will support the incumbent, increasing incumbent vote share. This model is tested with both cross-national aggregate data from twenty-three countries and individual-level British survey data. The results support the argument.