Paul Poast

The Political Resource Curse: An Empirical Re-evaluation

Extant theoretical work on the political resource curse implies that dependence on resource revenues should decrease autocracies’ likelihood of democratizing but not necessarily affect democracies’ chances of survival. Yet most previous empirical studies estimate models that are ill-suited to address this claim. We improve upon previous studies, estimating a dynamic logit model using data from 166 countries, covering the period from 1816 to 2006. We find that an increase in resource dependence decreases an autocracy’s likelihood of being democratic over both the short term and long term but has no appreciable effect on democracies’ likelihood of persisting.

How international organizations support democratization: : preventing authoritarian reversals or promoting consolidation?

International organizations can promote democratization, but how exactly do they achieve this goal? The authors argue that to evaluate the effect of international organizations on democratization, one must distinguish between the prevention of autocratic reversals and the promotion of democratic consolidation. While international organizations cannot directly prevent autocratic reversals in nonconsolidated democracies, they can, through capacity building, increase the likelihood that a transitional democracy consolidates. An empirical analysis of democratic transitions from 1965 to 2001 supports the hypothesis that international organizations promote democratic consolidation without deterring authoritarian reversals in nonconsolidated democracies. Moreover, the authors find that international organizations are most important for consolidating transitional democracies in the difficult circumstances created by a history of military dictatorship.

Can Issue Linkage Improve Treaty Credibility? Buffer State Alliances as a “Hard Case”

Can issue linkage, the combining of multiple issues into a single agreement, enhance the credibility of an agreement? I use the alliance relations of buffer states (states located between two recently or currently warring rivals) to test the claim that issue linkage enhances compliance with treaty obligations. The alliance relations of buffer states create a “hard case” for treaty compliance because, by being prone to invasion and occupation, buffer states have difficulties inducing states to remain committed to an alliance agreement. Hence, if linkage provisions can enhance the credibility of alliance commitments for buffer states, then linkage provisions should improve treaty compliance in nearly any context. I find that buffer states in alliances with trade provisions experience fewer opportunistic violations of the alliance terms, avoid occupation and invasion at a higher rate, and experience fewer third-party attacks than buffer states in other alliance arrangements.

All Alliances Are Multilateral

Alliance formation is a multilateral process. The vast majority of alliance relations are created via multilateral alliances. Moreover, leaders assess the alliance as a whole, not just each prospective partner. Any alliance could have three or more members, so one must understand not just why third parties were included in multilateral alliances, but why they were excluded from bilateral alliances. Unfortunately, current research treats alliance formation as a bilateral process: it theorizes about bilateral alliances and tests hypotheses using dyadic research designs. Reconceptualizing all alliances as originating from a multilateral process reveals that a long-neglected theory, William Riker’s size principle, illuminates the role of power in alliance formation. Using k-adic data to analyze multilateral processes, we find strong support for Riker’s claim about minimum winning coalitions in world politics. Our argument and findings, by highlighting how a fundamental state behavior like alliance formation follows a multilateral process, suggest rethinking much of international relations research.

Winning the Bid: Analyzing the International Olympic Committee's Host City Selections

Previous scholarship has relied on case study analysis and anecdotal evidence to explain the International Olympic Committee (IOC) Olympic host city selection process. This has resulted in several provocative claims regarding why the IOC selects particular cities to host the Olympics. Large-n analysis can dispel some of these assertions by identifying the systematic tendencies in the IOCs host city choices. After reviewing the selection process and the different influences on the IOCs choice of a host city, rank-ordered conditional logit estimation is applied to data proxies of bid candidate characteristics from 1959 through 2005. The IOC shows a statistical tendency to base its decision on the economic vitality of a bid citys home country and on the need to maintain continental diversity.

Why Do States Build Walls? Political Economy, Security, and Border Stability

Borders constitute the international system of states. Accordingly, states will, from time to time, take assertive measures to secure the border, with among the most aggressive strategies being the construction of physical barriers, which we refer to as “border walls.” Using original data on man-made border wall construction from 1800 to 2014, we theorize and find that in many cases, wall construction is about economic security. Significant economic disparities between the states will create incentives to illegally transport people or move goods readily available in the poorer country but highly regulated in the richer country. We find that economic disparities have a substantial and significant impact on the presence of a physical wall that is independent of formal border disputes and concerns over instability from civil wars in neighbors. In other words, “prominent examples such as the Maginot Line”, constructed largely out of fear of attack, is an exception, not the exemplar, of the reasons states construct border walls.

Team of former rivals

Why do states form non-aggression pacts? Non-aggression pacts are different from typical alliances because the latter tend to be focused on relationships between members of the alliance and other states, such as by deterring external threats or mediating the resolution of conflicts between an alliance member and a third-party challenger. We offer two contributions that build on existing work. First, we provide a theory that explains why leaders use non-aggression pacts as information mechanisms. Leaders of states that have recently emerged from a rivalry seek to overcome an important information asymmetry: they know the probability of future conflict among the former rivals has decreased, but other actors may fear a resumption of hostilities. Such leaders use non-aggression pacts to signal that the rivalry has truly ended and that future relations are likely to remain peaceful. Second, our analysis recognizes the often multilateral nature of the non-aggression pact formation process. We use the ‘k’-adic statistical procedure to model non-aggression pact formation as a multilateral process. To operationalize recent rivalry cessation within a group, we use a network analytic density measure. Consistent with our theory, we find that groups of states with greater densities of recently ended rivalries are significantly more likely to form non-aggression pacts. These results hold across a series of model specifications.

War and Default

Sovereign borrowing is often used to cover the costs of war. This borrowing, coupled with war’s economic disruptions, strains states’ ability to honor debt promises. Contrary to conventional expectations, however, we find that default is not common after wars. To explain the relationship between war and sovereign default, this article lays out a selection effect argument: war participants are unlikely to default in the first place, while states likely to default are unable to acquire the financing necessary to fight a war. In sum, states that lack the financial means to adequately borrow avoid paths to war. After offering some examples of the selection mechanism at work, we present evidence that states unlikely to default will avoid entering the war sample. Our findings have implications for the inferences researchers make about war finance and war onset.

Domestic Signaling of Commitment Credibility

We provide a new perspective on how domestic factors shape the prospects for international cooperation. Internal arms, specifically conscription, signal a willingness and suitability to be a dependable ally. Possessing ineffective military forces inhibits a state’s ability to assist prospective allies and renders a state less able to deter threats on its own. This exemplifies an instance where the trade-off between arms and allies does not apply. Using new data on the military recruitment policies of states since 1816, we find that adopting a conscription-based recruitment system in the previous five years makes a state more likely to form an alliance in the current year, even when accounting for a heightened threat environment.

Issue linkage and international cooperation: An empirical investigation

Issue linkage—the simultaneous discussion of two or more issues for joint settlement—is a bargaining tactic that (1) increases the probability of states reaching a negotiated agreement and (2) motivates states to remain committed to an agreement. Unfortunately, beyond some suggestive case studies and a few indirect statistical tests, there exists no direct and systematic evidence to support either claim. To empirically identify the effect of issue linkage, one must overcome five difficulties: properly evaluating multilateral processes, identifying issue linkage, identifying failed negotiations, identifying enforcement problems, and accounting for missing linkage data. I address these limitations through a variety of new approaches, most notably a new unit of analysis (the k-ad) for analyzing multilateral events, new data on failed military alliance negotiations, and using “buffer states” to test the credibility of alliance commitments. I find that, for military alliance negotiations from 1860 to 1945, offers of trade cooperation provisions increase the probability of states reaching agreement and improve the credibility of those agreements. However, I also find that offers of trade cooperation do not have a positive effect on alliance negotiations from 1815 to 1859.