Centrality in Politics: How Networks Confer Power

A traditional view of power in politics is that it comes from the possession of important resources. The relative possession of resources is thought to provide actors such as people, organizations, and states with means of coercion or influence over others. This traditional view is highly limiting, since power also comes from ties (patterns of association) that link together actors in networks. These ties, whether material (like trade flows) or social (like friendship), determine an actor’s ability to have access to, make connections between, or quickly spread resources to, other actors. An actor’s relative position in a network formed by these ties thus provides another important source of influence over others. In this article, we introduce three classes of network centrality positions (degree, betweenness, and closeness), explain the advantages of each, and demonstrate that network notions of power that derive from centrality can significantly inform the study of politics

Against Secrecy: The Social Cost of International Dispute Settlement

For decades, the scope of international legal commitments has expanded to cover policy areas previously considered to be exclusive sovereign domains of the State. In tandem with expanding scope there has been a decisive shift of authority and decision-making power to legal actors across many domains of public international law-such as in public finance, human rights, investment, and environmental regulation

Surviving elections: election violence, incumbent victory, and post-election repercussions

It is often assumed that government-sponsored election violence increases the probability that incumbent leaders remain in power. Using cross-national data, we show that election violence increases the probability of incumbent victory, but can generate risky post-election dynamics. These differences in the consequences of election violence reflect changes in the strategic setting over the course of the election cycle. In the pre-election period, anti-incumbent collective action tends to be focused on the election itself, either through voter mobilization or opposition-organized election boycotts. In the post-election period, by contrast, when a favorable electoral outcome is no longer a possibility, anti-government collective action more often takes the form of mass political protest, which in turn can lead to costly repercussions for incumbent leaders

From Expert Administration to Accountability Network: A New Paradigm for Comparative Administrative Law

Notwithstanding the radically changed landscape of contemporary administrative governance, the categories that guide comparative administrative law and that determine what will be compared remain similar to those used at the founding of the discipline in the late 1800s. These categories are rooted in confidence in an expert bureaucracy to accomplish public purposes and are mainly twofold - administrative organization and judicial review. This outdated model has limited the ability of comparative law to engage with contemporary debates on the administrative state, which instead display considerable skepticism of public administration and are premised on achieving the public good through a plural accountability network of public and private actors. This Article seeks to correct the anachronism by reframing comparative administrative law as an accountability network of rules and procedures designed to embed public administration and civil servants in their liberal democratic societies: accountability to elected officials, organized interests, the courts, and the general public. Based on this paradigm, the Article compares American and European administrative law in a global context. Among the many differences explored are parliamentary versus presidential political control, pluralist versus neo-corporatist forms of self-regulation and public-private collaboration, judicial review focused on fundamental rights versus policy rationality, and reliance on ombudsmen in lieu of courts. The Article concludes with a number of suggestions for how comparative law can speak to current debates on reforming administrative governance

Precision-Guided or Blunt? The Effects of US Economic Sanctions on Human Rights

We use endogenous treatment-regression models to estimate the causal average treatment effect of US economic sanctions on four types of human rights. In contrast to previous studies, we find no support for adverse effects of sanctions on economic rights, political and civil rights, and basic human rights. With respect to women's rights, our findings even indicate a positive relationship. Emancipatory rights are, on average, strengthened when a country faces sanctions by the US. Our findings are robust when applying various changes to the empirical specification. Most importantly, this study provides strong evidence that the endogeneity of treatment assignment must be modelled when the consequences of sanctions are studied empirically

Torture Approval in Comparative Perspective

Torture is (almost) universally condemned as barbaric and ineffective, yet it persists in the modern world. What factors influence levels of support for torture? Public opinion data from 31 countries in 2006 and 2008 (a total of 44 country-years) are used to test three hypotheses related to the acceptability of torture. The findings, first, show that outright majorities in 31 country-years reject the use of torture. Multiple regression results show that countries with high per capita income and low domestic repression are less likely to support torture. Constraints on the executive have no significant effect on public opinion on torture

Behavioral Traits and Preferences for International Legal Cooperation

The Ohio State University Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEmilie Hafner-Burton is associate professor and director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation at the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California, San Diego. Her research examines ways to improve compliance with international law, protections for human rights, and a wide variety of other topics related to law, economics and regulation. She has published widely on these and other subjects.Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web Page, Event Photo