Seung-Whan Choi

Fighting Terrorism through the Rule of Law

The question of whether democratic institutions facilitate terrorist activities is a controversial one in current scientific studies of terrorism. Although the ‘‘rule of law’’ is an essential institutional pillar of any mature democracy, its direct effect on domestic and international terrorism remains unexplored. Conceiving democratic rule of law as the coexistence of effective and impartial judicial systems and citizens’ recognition of the law as legitimate, the author presents a causal explanation in which a high-quality rule of law is considered to dampen ordinary citizens’ opportunity and willingness to engage in political violence, protecting democracies from becoming victims of terrorism. Built on a cross-sectional, time-series data analysis of 131 countries during the period from 1984 to 2004, the author finds that, ceteris paribus, maintaining a sound rule of law notably reduces the likelihood of any type of terrorist events. In short, the rule of law instantiated in democratic institutions provides a formidable bulwark against terrorism.

The Effect of Outliers on Regression Analysis: Regime Type and Foreign Direct Investment

The presence of outliers and influential cases can dramatically change the magnitude of regression coefficients and even the direction of coefficient signs (i.e., from positive to negative or vice versa). When researchers ignore abnormal observations, especially with respect to dependent variables, their empirical results can be misleading. Unfortunately, the fact remains underappreciated in studies of political science. To expound upon the outlier issue, I reexamine an empirical study that reports on two opposing effects of democratic institutions on inflows of foreign direct investment (FDI). In doing so, I illustrate the way influential outliers can drastically affect the substantive results of regression analysis. After properly reanalyzing outlying countries, I conclude that democratic countries attract more FDI than authoritarian countries.

Media Openness, Democracy and Militarized Interstate Disputes

Mass media play a central role in political life. Media not only transfer information; they also facilitate communication. These functions may ameliorate conflict, crisis and war in world politics. Accordingly, this study looks into the impact of media openness on international conflict. Based on a cross-sectional, time-series dataset for interstate dyads from 1950 to 1992, logistic regression analysis shows that an indicator of media openness has a strong dampening effect on Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) and fatal MIDs. Moreover, this connection is significant even in the presence of a composite indicator of democracy (that measures its institutional attributes using the Polity data), economic interdependence and joint membership in international organizations. The results suggest that the successful neo-Kantian triad is complemented effectively by the presence of media openness.

No Professional Soldiers, No Militarized Interstate Disputes?

In Perpetual Peace, Immanuel Kant presents six preliminary articles for perpetual peace beforethe three well-known definitive articles about republic constitutions, commercial relations, and international organizations. In his third preliminary article, Kant argues that “Standing Armies (miles perpetuus) Shall in Time be Totally Abolished” because they are themselves “a cause of offensive war.” Empirical results based on state-of-the-art data analysis that refers to both peace-years correction and distributed-lags logistic regression showthat the most obvious among the neglected preliminary articles by Kant—military manpower system—is indeed connected to involvement in militarized interstate disputes during the period from 1886 to 1992. For neo-Kantian peace theory and research, this means that a military manpower system with conscripted, notstanding (i.e., professional or voluntary), soldiers is associated with disputes.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Refugees, Humanitarian Aid, and Terrorism:

We examine the consequences of hosting refugees for domestic and international terrorism. In line with the old saying, “no good deed goes unpunished”, we argue that the infusion of aid resources provides militant groups with opportunities for looting and for attacking foreign targets. A cross-national, time-series data analysis of 154 countries for the years 1970–2007 shows evidence that countries with many refugees are more likely to experience both domestic and international terrorism. This finding implies that while the international community should strive to reduce the number of refugees by preventing the eruption of major conflict events, individual countries should find a way of maintaining the balance between humanitarianism toward refugees and providing safe, secure environments for refugees and those that assist them.

Legislative Constraints: A Path to Peace?

Tsebelis’ veto players theory predicts that legislative veto players constrain the executive’s political decisions because their approval is needed to implement policy change. This study extends the veto players argument into international conflict literature, specifically in regard to legislative constraints emanating from the number of legislative veto players, their policy preferences, and their internal cohesion. A cross-sectional, time-series dyadic data analysis shows that, in general, an increase of legislative constraints notably reduces the likelihood of the onset of militarized interstate disputes. However, while legislative constraints in democratic and mixed dyads are likely to discourage democratic executives’ use of force, those in autocratic dyads do not produce effective pacifying effects.

Beyond Kantian Liberalism

Although globalization has become one of the most salient issues in the study of international relations during the past few decades, its net effect on international conflict remains unexplored. I argue that although the manifold phenomena of globalization may conflict (i.e. produce both positive and negative influences), its overall consequences help foster a common peaceful disposition among national leaders who are then less likely to resort to arms in times of crisis. Based on a cross-sectional, time-series dyadic data analysis for 114 countries during the period from 1970 to 2001, this study reports that socio-economic and political globalization in its entirety generates a dampening effect on militarized interstate disputes. Even when common conflict-related control variables such as democracy, economic interdependence, joint membership in international organizations, and others are incorporated into the analysis, globalization emerges as the most powerful explanatory variable. Consequently, globalization when taken in its entirety represents an unambiguous force for interstate peace.

Civil-Military Relations in a Neo-Kantian World, 1886-1992

International conflict, crisis, and war, along with civil-military relations, stand together as sustained interests among scholars and policy-makers. But how often are these important subjects considered in relation to each other? It would seem that the nexus of international conflict and civil-military relations is in need of sustained and systematic research, if events such as militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) are to be more fully explained and understood. In this article, we attempt to introduce civil-military relations, from the perspective granted by comparative politics, into the neo-Kantian world of international relations. Based on a statistical analysis, which relies upon a logistic regression of crossnational, time-series data, we find that military influence in civil-military relations significantly increases MID involvement. This result indicates that building a bridge between the fields of civil-military relations and international relations is essential to account for MIDs and other commonly studied forms of conflict.

Civil—Military Structure, Political Communication, and the Democratic Peace

Looking beyond the democratic/Kantian peace argument that highlights the pacifying effect of regime type on international conflict, this study explores additional, potentially important domestic factors that may influence conflict — most notably, civil—military structure, such as degree of civil versus military control and military manpower system. It also looks into the effects of political communication in terms of diplomatic channels and open media. On the basis of logistic regression analysis for 120 countries during the period from 1950 to 1992, the authors report that strong military influence is more likely to lead to the onset of militarized interstate disputes, wars, and international crises while the presence of conscripted soldiers, diplomatic activities, and open media makes that less likely. These results hold up in the presence of the three Kantian peace variables (i.e. democracy, economic interdependence, and joint membership in international organizations) and other control variables that are standards within contemporary research designs. Thus, the authors conclude that the four factors are important complements to understanding the impact of domestic traits on interstate conflict beyond the conventional regime-type explanation of the democratic/Kantian peace.

Does transnational terrorism reduce foreign direct investment? Business-related versus non-business-related terrorism

Although several existing studies examine the economic impact of transnational terrorism by referring to its potential to reduce foreign direct investment (FDI), they overlook possible differences in the effects of business-related and non-business-related terrorism. We argue that the former type of terror negatively affects FDI since it damages multinationals’ buildings, destroys their products, kills their employees, and causes a rise in insurance premiums. The latter type of terror, however, does not induce the same ramifications and should thus have little or less influence on a country’s FDI. In order to examine the effects of these two different types of transnational terrorism, we employ three different statistical techniques using data gleaned from the International Terrorism: Attributes of Terrorist Events (ITERATE) dataset. A cross-sectional, time-series data analysis of 123 developing countries during the period from 1980 to 2008 reveals that transnational terrorism that harms multinational businesses contributes to a decrease of foreign investment but transnational terrorism that afflicts non-business-related targets is statistically irrelevant. This implies that when countries implement counterterrorism measures that are directly intended to mitigate the impact of business-related terrorist activities, they are likely to attract more foreign capital and should therefore realize a greater degree of economic development.