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| 1 |
ID:
134455
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| Summary/Abstract |
Studies of public support for war highlight the importance of context. Most people do not simply support or oppose the use of force but instead assess its merits depending on various aspects of the situation. One such aspect is the extent of international backing – whether from individual states or supranational organizations – for military action. This backing may be active, notably through the contribution of troops, or more a passive matter of endorsement or authorization of action. In this article, a survey experiment embedded in a major internet survey of British foreign policy attitudes (N = 2,205) is used to explore how international backing affects public support for military action. Britain’s military potential and recent history make it an obvious case study here. Both active and endorsement backing prove to have separate and significant positive effects on support. Importantly, the absolute number of troops involved matters far less than the proportion of total troop numbers to be contributed. And the perceived strength of the enemy predicts support only when the British are to contribute a large proportion of total forces. Predispositional variables are used to investigate the sources of the experimental effects but with little success: the impact of international backing proves remarkably consistent across the sample.
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| 2 |
ID:
134451
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| Summary/Abstract |
Structural adjustment programs of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) are often blamed for disrupting social relations by forcing austerity on vulnerable people and introducing unpopular liberalization policies. Some suggest that such interventions harm ethnic relations in developing countries because they are insensitive to the tenuous social bargains that often preserve ethnic peace. Moreover, during crises, dominant groups may seek to displace the pain of reform on others, the ethnic division of labour may be affected differentially by reform policies, and ethnic entrepreneurs could use moments of crisis to their advantage. We test the propositions by using unique data measuring the level of ethnic tensions in a country. The results show that IMF interventions reduce conditions of ethnic enmity. These results are robust to fixed effects estimation, endogeneity and selection effects. Moreover, IMF interventions lower ethnic tension in countries that are highly fractionalized, but they are more problematic where larger groups face each other and when larger groups are excluded from state power. These results suggest too that IMF interventions may lead to greater empowerment of excluded groups who might agitate for change during periods of economic crisis. On balance, IMF interventions, relative to continued economic woe, pacify ethnic relations in crisis-ridden countries. We find no evidence to suggest that IMF programs increase ethnic tensions, which is good news for poor countries requiring cheap loans and assistance with reforms.
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| 3 |
ID:
134449
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| Summary/Abstract |
While both academics and politicians have long acknowledged the connection between food price shocks and so-called ‘food riots’, this article asks whether rising domestic consumer food prices are a contributing cause of sociopolitical unrest, more broadly defined, in urban areas of Africa. In order to unravel the complex and circular relationship between rising food prices and unrest, an instrumental approach with country fixed effects is used to isolate causality at the country-month unit of analysis for the period 1990 through 2012. Two instrumental variables, changes in international grain commodity prices and local rainfall scarcity, are evaluated and used individually and jointly as instruments for changes in domestic food prices. The main finding is that a sudden increase in domestic food prices in a given month significantly increases the probability of urban unrest, especially spontaneous events and riots, in that month. Undeniably, more fundamental economic and political grievances are also drivers of such events and are likely to determine how the unrest ultimately manifests, even when triggered by rising food prices. Although more research is necessary to determine why people choose particular protest methods and targets, the findings of this research provide evidence that sociopolitical unrest of different types is driven, or at least triggered, by a consumer response to economic pressure from increasing food prices regardless of the cause of the increase.
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| 4 |
ID:
134452
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This article examines the effectiveness of public statements of resolve in international conflict. Several prominent theories, including domestic audience cost theory and theories regarding international reputation, suggest that issuing resolved statements can help a leader achieve a more favorable outcome in conflict bargaining. Because they entail costs for backing down, these statements are believed to credibly convey resolve to an adversary. This can help to alleviate the uncertainty created by private information about resolve and persuade the adversary to back down. Despite the prevalence of this theoretical logic, the effectiveness of statements of resolve at influencing conflict outcomes has rarely been subjected to direct tests, and some recent empirical work has raised doubts about statements’ effectiveness. This article is the first to directly examine the effect of resolved statements on conflict outcomes using large-N analysis. It introduces original data, created using content analysis, which directly measure the level of resolved statements made by US presidents during militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). Analysis of these data demonstrates that a higher level of resolved statements is indeed associated with a greater chance of prevailing in disputes. This finding is substantively significant and robust, providing support for the argument that public statements play an important role in international conflict.
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| 5 |
ID:
134456
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| Summary/Abstract |
This analysis uses survey data representing three of the world’s most populous Muslim majority countries to challenge conventional wisdom on what shapes Muslim public opinion on political violence against the United States. It improves previous analysis by clearly distinguishing support for violence against civilians from support for violence against military targets and by featuring independent variables that clearly separate views on US foreign policies from views on US culture. Logistic regression shows that, among Egyptian, Pakistani and Indonesian Muslims, perceptions of controversial US policies toward Israel, Middle Eastern oil, or the perceived attempt to weaken and divide the Muslim world are not related to support for attacks on civilians in the United States, but only to support for attacks on US military targets. Approval of attacks on US civilians is shaped, instead, by negative views of US freedom of expression, culture, and people, disapproval of the domestic political status quo and the notion of general US hostility toward democracy in the Middle East. This last finding has important implications for US and Western policies toward the post-Arab Spring Middle East in particular and the broader relationship with the Muslim World in general.
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| 6 |
ID:
134450
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| Summary/Abstract |
Existing research on the causes of violent ethnic conflict is characterized by an enduring debate on whether these conflicts are the result of deeply felt grievances or the product of an opportunity structure in which rebellion is an attractive and/or viable option. This article argues that the question of whether incentive- or opportunity-based explanations of conflict have more explanatory power is fundamentally misguided, as conflict is more likely the result of a complex interaction of both. The fact is, however, that there is little generalized knowledge about these interactions. This study aims to fill this gap and applies crisp-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) in order to identify constellations of risk factors that are conducive to ethnic conflict. The results demonstrate the explanatory leverage gained by taking causal complexity in the form of risk patterns into account. It takes no more than four different configurations of a total of eight conditions to reliably explain almost two-thirds of all ethnic conflict onsets between 1990 and 2009. Moreover, these four configurations are quasi-sufficient for onset, leading to conflict in 88% of all cases covered. The QCA model generated in this article also fares well in predicting conflicts in-sample and out-of-sample, with the in-sample predictions being more precise than those generated by a simple binary logistic regression.
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| 7 |
ID:
134454
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| Summary/Abstract |
Faced with the possibility of losing their position due to domestic opposition, political leaders may sometimes consider initiating a foreign conflict as a means to redirect attention away from domestic issues. In such instances, which states are most likely to become diversionary targets? This study assumes that unpopular leaders prefer small-scale conflicts that can create rally-round-the-flag effects without triggering substantial domestic opposition to the use of military force abroad. Based on this assumption, hypotheses are developed which predict that states under constraint (i.e. states with democratic institutions or showing high trade openness) tend to attract diversionary-motivated actions, while states likely to reciprocate harshly (i.e. states experiencing their own domestic troubles or in relative decline) are less likely to become diversionary targets. Logit analyses of directed dyad-years from 1960 to 2001 and illustrations of marginal effects provide strong support for three of the four hypotheses – namely, that democracies and trading states are more likely, and that declining powers are less likely to be targets of diversionary actions. This study’s findings show that not all potential targets are equally attractive for diversionary actions, and that a state’s democratization, economic openness, and power growth can worsen, rather than improve, its security.
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| 8 |
ID:
134453
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| Summary/Abstract |
A common strategy pursued by states targeted by international terrorism is to provide economic and military assistance to the states that host this activity. This is thought to increase their willingness and capacity to crack down on terrorism, but very little work to date has looked at whether this strategy actually leads to desirable outcomes. This article offers an explanation for why a strategy of foreign aid-for-counterterrorism can be successful in some contexts, but counterproductive in situations in which recipients have more pressing strategic priorities. Specifically, I argue that host states receiving US foreign aid that are involved in an ongoing interstate rivalry will use the aid to arm against their rival, rather than to undertake counterterrorism. These states thus have an incentive not to disarm terrorist groups, but rather to play-up the threat from terrorism in order to continue receiving aid concessions. Using data on US foreign aid and terrorist activity in recipient countries, I employ a series of duration and count models to demonstrate that, while US foreign aid can help to decrease terrorist activity in non-rivalrous states, the opposite is true in states with at least one rival.
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