25 research outputs found
Taking It to the Extreme:The Effect of Coalition Cabinets on Foreign Policy
Institutional constraints have been offered by some scholars as an explanation for why multiparty coalitions should be more peaceful than single-party cabinets. Yet others see the same institutional setting as a prescription for more aggressive behavior. Recent research has investigated these conflicting expectations, but with mixed results. We examine the theoretical bases for these alternative expectations about the effects of coalition politics on foreign policy. We find that previous research is limited theoretically by confounding institutional effects with policy positions, and empirically by analyzing only international conflict data. We address these limitations by examining cases of foreign policy behavior using the World Event/Interaction Survey (WEIS) dataset. Consistent with our observation that institutional constraints have been confounded with policy positions, we find that coalitions are neither more aggressive nor more peaceful, but do engage in more extreme foreign policy behaviors. These findings are discussed with regard to various perspectives on the role of institutions in shaping foreign policy behavior.</p
The Real and the Ideal: Essays on International Relations in Honor of Richard H. Ullman. Edited by Anthony Lake and David Ochmanek. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2001. 320p. $45.00.
Emergent Actors in World Politics: How States and Nations Develop and Dissolve. By Lars-Erik Cederman. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. 258p. 19.95 paper.
Progress in international relations theory : appraising the field/ Edit.: Colin Elman
xiv, p. 503; 21 c
Not So Radical Historicism
Mark Bevir raises the question of how genealogy, understood as a technique-based radical historicism, and the notion of the contingency of ideas, ground âcritique.â His problem is to avoid the relativism of radical historicism in a way that allows for âcritiqueâ without appealing to non-radical historicist absolutisms of the kind that ground the notion of false consciousness. He does so by appealing to the notion of motivated irrationality, which he claims avoids the problem of relativism and the problems of âfalse consciousness.â The genealogies of Nietzsche and Foucault, however, do not ground âcritique.â The relevant normative judgments, of nobility in Nietzsche, for example, are presupposed
A Quality of Government Peace? Explaining the Onset of Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1985â2001
First published online: 14 September 2015That democracies do not wage wars against each other is one of the most widely accepted claims within the study of international relations, although challenged lately by the capitalist peace argument. In addition to confirming both the democratic and capitalist peace effects, this article finds that the impact of quality of governmentâthat is, having an impartial, nonpoliticized, and noncorrupt bureaucracyâon the risk of interstate conflict is at least on par with the influence of democracy. This result draws on dyadic Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) data in 1985â2001 and holds even under control for incomplete democratization and economic development, as well as for fatal MIDs, the Cold War era, and within politically relevant dyads. I argue that the causal mechanism underlying this finding is that quality of government reduces information uncertainty among potentially warring parties and improves their ability to credibly commit to keeping their promises. Both democratic and capitalist peace theory needs to be complemented by theories âbringing the state back inâ to the study of interstate armed conflict