Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: States faced with coercive pressure face a difficult choice. Compliance with the desires of the coercing state entails acceptance of a policy that is most likely less attractive than the status quo. Resistance to the pressure entails accepting the possible costs the coercing state will impose in its effort to get its way. Frequently, the response of governments faced with foreign coercive pressure is explained as a function of total actual or potential costs imposed by the coercer. These explanations are curiously apolitical, since both the change in state policy and any costs imposed have distributional implications for interests within the target state. In those analyses where political interests within the target state are taken into account, the outcome is explained as a function of the relative importance of the interests affected. This reduces national leaders to puppets operating in an environment of perfect accountability to society, and misses the impact political institutions have upon the ability of societal actors to express their preferences and obtain desired policies. I argue that we can better understand the decision national governments make when faced with coercion as a function of the domestic interests affected and the political institutions of the target that govern the extent to which these interests can hold the national leadership accountable. I support this argument with a large-N analysis of coercion cases involving both military and economic pressure from 1917 to 2000, as well as summaries of illustrative case studies taken from the data set.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper explores the reactions of the Arab intelligentsia to the latest US proposals for promoting democracy in the Arab World, as embodied in the March 2004 ?Greater Middle East Initiative.? (Hereafter GMEI). To gauge the opinions of Arab intellectuals, the paper employs a simple and qualitative research method that involves a careful reading of all the editorials that have appeared in four Lebanese (al-Nahar, al-Safir, al-Anwar, al-Mustaqbal) and two London-based, Arabic-language (al-Hayat, al-Sharq al-Awsat) dailies, between mid-February and end of August 2004 (when regional interest in the GMEI dwindled). The publication by al-Hayat newspaper (13 Feb. 2004, p. 10) of the leaked text of the GMEI (in Arabic translation) triggered an avalanche of opinion pieces in the Arab Press that criticized the Initiative, casting doubts over the intensions of the George W. Bush Administration that sponsored it. The reactions of most Arab governments to the GMEI were no more favorable. It is this paper?s contention that Arab intellectuals? hostility towards the GMEI is, by and large, the product of a closed and negative image of the US that particularly affects perceptions of US Middle East policy. Through a qualitative analysis of the contents of hundreds of editorials and opinion pieces written by Arab opinion shapers (university professors, heads of research centers, renowned journalists and politicians) on the subject of the GMEI, this paper identifies three broad themes that dominate the negative image of the US: 1) US foreign policy is guided by interests (national security and access to oil) rather than principles or ideals (promotion of democracy and human rights); 2) US rhetoric about democracy is a mere smoke screen to conceal more sinister plans for exerting hegemony over the Arab and Islamic Worlds; and 3) the real interests of the US (as defined by Arab intellectuals) would not be served by a democratic Middle East. The paper is not interested in the accuracy of the image of the US (all images distort reality); but rather in its origins, resistance to change in the face of dissonant information, and implications for the prospects of democracy in the Middle East region and for US-Arab relations. As for the paper?s organization, part one outlines the background and basic elements of the GMEI, while part two summarizes the criticisms leveled against it by Arab intellectuals, highlighting the three aforementioned themes that characterize the negative image of the US. In order not to portray the Arab intelligentsia as a monolithic anti-American group, part three examines the views of the very few Arab intellectuals who wrote in defense of the GMEI. Painting with a broad brush, part four looks at the backgrounds and belief systems of Arab intellectuals, as well as at US policy towards the region since the twentieth century, in an attempt to understand the origins and persistence of this negative image of the US. The conclusion discusses briefly the prospects for democracy in the Arab World in light of such negative elite views about US global and regional intensions and speculates on what the US can do (if anything) to modify elite perceptions of its Middle East policy as a prelude to changing regional public opinion.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Within the literature on external factors/forces which promote democratization, the concept of ?regionalism? or ?contagion? is especially underdeveloped. According to this concept, authoritarian regimes find themselves coming under increasing pressure to liberalize their political systems as governments in their region begin or complete the transition to democracy. This concept has been traditionally explored in terms of the effect of contagion on authoritarian states. Thus far, it has not been considered in the reverse: How do authoritarian regimes attempt to counter democratic trends in their geographic proximity? This paper represents a preliminary examination of this theoretical question through a careful examination of changes in Russian foreign policy after the democratic transitions in Ukraine and Georgia.Since the ascension of Vladimir Putin to the presidency of the Russian Federation, the Russian political system has slid toward authoritarianism. At the same time, some of its neighbors have undergone so-called ?color revolutions? in which popular uprisings overthrew autocratic rulers and brought about democratic transitions. In the aftermath of the ?rose? and ?orange? revolutions in Georgia and Ukraine, respectively, the Kremlin adopted an increasingly antagonistic foreign policy toward these two states. These policies are a change from the growing amity which characterized Russian-Ukrainian and Russian-Georgian relations just before the color revolutions and have included rhetorical attacks on the democratic regimes in Georgia and Ukraine; economic pressure in the form of an interruption of natural gas exports to Ukraine and an embargo of agricultural products from Georgia; and, renewed support for substate ethnic groups in Ukraine (Russians) and Georgia (Abkhazians). This increasingly antagonistic foreign policy toward democratic regimes makes for an excellent expansion of our understanding of the external forces promoting democratization and how some states attempt to insulate themselves from democratic trends.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While most of the existing literature predicts that coups d’etat should depress investment, existing empirical evidence is contradictory and there is remarkable variation in the way that investors appear to respond to different coups. This paper argues that particular characteristics of coups – political orientation, degree of military support, and associated violence - may help to account for this variation. Extant research has overlooked this effect because it treats coups as uniform events.

The paper uses a new, original dataset on coups incorporating detailed information on the attributes of coups in all regions from 1950-2000. The analysis supports the predicted relationship: right-leaning, bloodless coups perpetrated by military leaders are associated with increased investment in the wake of a coup. In contrast, left-leaning coups, coups which install weak or unknown governments, or violent coups (even if they are right-leaning) depress investment. The insight that different types of coups have predictably different effects on investment has implications for a large number of studies which incorporate assumptions about the effects of political instability, and the regional clustering of particular types of coups stands to shed light on the puzzlingly diverse ramifications of political instability in different regions.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Abstract