Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Interstate conflict is a constant in international affairs, yet rarely does it get resolved through warfare. Instead, state leaders frequently choose coercion as a strategy for achieving their foreign policy goals. To date we have a limited understanding of why some targets comply with coercer desires after facing pressure and why other targets resist, sometimes for decades. I argue that the decision of the target of coercive pressure to resist that pressure or comply with the desires of the coercer is a function of target state political institutions and interests. Target decision-makers are making a political decision affecting their political survival when they are responding to coercion, not simply weighing courses of action with regard to serving their nation's interests as a whole. Through probit analysis of 119 cases of economic coercion from 1914-1991 as well as a case study of the NATO pressure on Serbia over Kosovo, I show that the key variables which explain the pattern of outcomes - high degrees of political accountability, salience of the policy at issue for regime survival, and pressure on important domestic political constituencies - are virtually all related to domestic political institutions and interests in the target.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: If one strips away the imagery of burning buildings and screaming bystanders, the rhetoric about “hating freedom” or “promoting injustice,” and the debates over whether it is morally equivalent to purposely target civilians or kill them as “collateral damage,” many nonstate groups that employ violence for political ends can profitably be analyzed as strategic, Clausewitzian actors that operate to a considerable degree from means-ends chains and find themselves involved in coercive bargaining relationships that possess much in common with those between states. There are differences to be sure: nonstate groups are generally weaker (conventionally measured, at least), organized differently than states, and their survival as a unit is often much more precarious. Although these differences may lead to shifting objectives and strategies, they do not drastically alter the basic game in which many nonstate groups and their state counterparts operate, in part because states play a large role in defining the nature of their relationships with other states and nonstate actors alike, who must work with or coerce states to achieve a number of their objectives.

Political scientists have ways of analyzing these sorts of coercive relationships, where one side, or more often both sides, manipulate costs, benefits, probabilities, and perceptions to alter the other’s behavior and achieve political ends. Fortunately, some scholars in the terrorism subfield have begun to address the question of how politically effective terrorism is in the first place, which bears directly on the importance of the subfield itself and nearly every significant question within it. Unfortunately, a failure to adequately apply the lessons of the coercion literature has limited the conclusions of recent scholarship. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the coercion literature, explain terrorism’s place within it, and then demonstrate how its relevant concepts, models, and hypotheses can be used as a basis to help address the larger questions of whether, how, and why terrorism is or is not politically effective.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper I argue that international monetary coordination schemes tend towards asymmetry, reflecting the underlying characteristics of mutual monetary dependence. Coordination among states takes place, but it is not usually a balanced and reciprocal process: instead, followers tend to adapt (more or less completely, depending on a variety of factors) to essentially impassive policy leaders. The policy leader's initial relative autonomy tends to be reinforced by this process, as the transitional costs of adjustment are disproportionately borne by its partners. These observations are consistent with Keohane and Nye's (1977) work on power and interdependence, but at odds with Keohane's later (1984) work on the politics of international policy cooperation. In After Hegemony, Keohane introduced a typology of harmony, cooperation and discord that relies on a close identification (indeed, a near identity) between the concepts of coordination and cooperation. But this typology-and its widespread acceptance among scholars of IPE-undermines a proper understanding of the role of power in international coordination efforts. Coordination often and even typically takes place not because of cooperation but because of coercion and, in the extreme, domination. And coercion, again like cooperation, can be associated with a variety of outcomes, including either policy coordination or policy discord. Certainly there is no a priori reason to associate coordination with cooperation. States may well coordinate their policies not because they wish to but because they feel obliged to do so. In short, the argument here, though grounded in the study of international monetary relations, has broader implications. To get at these questions, the paper examines the distinction between policy coordination and policy convergence; the relationship between policy preferences and policy behavior; and why monetary coordination is typically associated with highly asymmetrical adaptation of domestic policies rather than mutual and reciprocal accommodation.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, I model the effectiveness of ultimatums and threats issued by superpowers attempting to mediate international crises and disputes. Though a body of scholarly research on international mediation has maintained that mediators need not be impartial to facilitate successful dispute resolution, none of it has defined whether varying degrees of bias can bring about distinct bargaining outcomes. Using a game theoretic model of crisis bargaining, I examine the relationship between the degree of mediator bias and the success or failure of mediation. Two conclusions can be drawn from the model's results. First, the mediator's bias can have an impact on the outcome of mediation because it reveals information that allows other players to infer whether or not the mediator is resolute to enforce a settlement through the use of arms. The model additionally demonstrates that when highly biased mediators intervene in a crisis, a peaceful settlement is more likely because there is little uncertainty regarding the mediator's resolve to enforce an agreement by military means. When a mediator favors one side over the other, but to a lesser degree, negotiations are more inclined to fail because the disfavored disputant may doubt the mediator's will to deliver consequences for a failure to settle.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Previous scholarship has shown that a president's beliefs influence decisions to coerce other countries. However, the decisions studied are limited to militarized coercion. In this paper I will assess the impact a president's operational code has on the decision to employ economic coercion. I begin by developing a theory that places the use of economic sanctions within the broader spectrum of coercive diplomacy. I argue that sanctions can be perceived as both a less severe and more severe form of coercion, depending on whether military force is a legitimate alternative. These perceptions of contexts within which economic coercion is initiated condition how the president's operational code influences the decision. The results will reveal how Realist explanations of state behavior extend to non-military forms of coercion.