Still Looking for Audience Costs

A pair of recent studies, motivated largely by limitations in the research designs of previous projects, offers evidence the authors interpret as contradicting audience cost theory. Although we share the authors’ ambivalence about audience costs, we are not convinced by their evidence. What one seeks in looking for audience costs is evidence of a causal mechanism, not just of a causal effect. Historical case studies can be better suited to detecting causal mechanisms than quantitative methods, and these two studies claim to be examining causal mechanisms. Yet process tracing is much less effective in assessing audience costs than Trachtenberg and others believe. After outlining relevant problems, we encourage scholars to theorize about and test more carefully key micro-foundations of audience cost theory

Ties that Bias in International Conflict A Spatial Approach to Dyadic Dependence from Alliance Ties and Inbetweenness

Much of international behavior is linked spatially and temporally. Yet, analyses of interstate interactions generally either assume independence among units or resort to technical solutions to dependence that “throw away” relevant information. We detail a more informative and satisfying approach to modeling spatial dependence from extradyadic linkages in alliance ties and geographical proximity as specific pathways of conflict contagion. Beyond deterrence, the purpose of alliances is to draw other parties into dyadic contests, but most existing research on conflict onset generally only considers alliance ties within an individual dyad or external intervention in the same dispute. We develop new measures on third- and fourth-party alliance ties, demonstrating direct and indirect spatial effects of alliances on conflict onset. Similarly, ongoing contests can spread geographically, but dyads in some locations are much more at risk for conflict onset than others. We provide a new theory of geographic “inbetweenness” in conflict, and show that dyads involving specific locations and ties to ongoing conflict are much more likely to see dispute onset, even accounting for other purely dyadic factors. Beyond the intrinsic interest in the impacts of extra-dyadic position and alliances on conflict, our spatial approach can be applied more broadly to other extra-dyadic ties

ICBeLLM: High Quality International Events Data with Open Source Large Language Models on Consumer Hardware

The International Crises Behavior Events (ICBe) ontology provides high coverage over the thoughts, communications, and actions that constitute international relations. A major disadvantage of that level of detail is that it requires large human capital costs to apply it manually to new texts. Whether such an ontolgy is practical for international relations research given limited human and financial resources is a pressing concern. We introduce a working proof of concept showing that ICBe codings can be reliably extracted from new texts using the current generation of open source large language models (LLM) running on consumer grade computer hardware. Our solution requires no finetuning and only limited prompt engineering. We detail our solution and present benchmarks against the original ICBe codings. We conclude by discussing the implications of very high quality event coding of any text being within reach of individual researchers with limited resources

Multilateralism and Democracy: A Dissent Regarding Keohane, Macedo, and Moravcsik

In an article printed last year in International Organization, Keohane, Macedo, and Moravcsik argued that multilateral organizations (MLO) could actually be good for democracy. We argue that KMM discount the prospect that MLO influence can be detrimental to democracies not because MLOs are “distant, elitist, and technocratic” but precisely because MLOs are highly political. International organizations have much to offer in improving the welfare of citizens and facilitating coordinations among states. They are not likely to improve procedural functions of democracies without a cost that itself is problematic for democracy

Trading on Preconceptions: Why World War I Was Not a Failure of Economic Interdependence

World War I is generally viewed by both advocates and critics of commercial liberal theory as the quintessential example of a failure of economic integration to maintain peace. Yet this consensus relies on both methodologically flawed inference and an incomplete accounting of the antecedents to the war. Crucially, World War I began in a weakly integrated portion of Europe with which highly integrated powers were entangled through the alliance system. Crises among the highly interdependent European powers in the decades leading up to the war were generally resolved without bloodshed. Among the less interdependent powers in Eastern Europe, however, crises regularly escalated to militarized violence. Moreover, the crises leading to the war created increased incentives for the integrated powers to strengthen commitments to their less interdependent partners. In attempting to make these alliances more credible, Western powers shifted foreign policy discretion to the very states that lacked strong economic disincentives to fight. Had globalization pervaded Eastern Europe, or if the rest of Europe had been less locked into events in the east, Europe might have avoided a “Great War.” </jats:p

The Myth of Cyberwar: Bringing War in Cyberspace Back Down to Earth

Cyberwar has been described as a revolution in military affairs, a transformation of technology and doctrine capable of overturning the prevailing world order. This characterization of the threat from cyberwar, however, reflects a common tendency to conflate means and ends; studying what could happen in cyberspace (or anywhere else) makes little sense without considering how conflict over the internet is going to realize objectives commonly addressed by terrestrial warfare. To supplant established modes of conflict, cyberwar must be capable of furthering the political ends to which force or threats of force are commonly applied, something that in major respects cyberwar fails to do. As such, conflict over the internet is much more likely to serve as an adjunct to, rather than a substitute for, existing modes of terrestrial force. Indeed, rather than threatening existing political hierarchies, cyberwar is much more likely to simply augment the advantages of status quo powers. </jats:p

Networked international politics

Network theory and methods are becoming increasingly used to study the causes and consequences of conflict. Network analysis allows researchers to develop a better understanding of the causal dynamics and structural geometry of the complex web of interdependencies at work in the onset, incidence, and diffusion of conflict and peace. This issue features new theoretical and empirical research demonstrating how properly accounting for networked interdependencies has profound implications for our understanding of the processes thought to be responsible for the conflict behavior of state and non-state actors. The contributors examine the variation in networks of states and transnational actors to explain outcomes related to international conflict and peace. They highlight how networked interdependencies affect conflict and cooperation in a broad range of areas at the center of international relations scholarship. It is helpful to distinguish between three uses of networks, namely: (1) as theoretical tools, (2) as measurement tools, and (3) as inferential tools. The introduction discusses each of these uses and shows how the contributions rely on one or several of them. Next, Monte Carlo simulations are used to illustrate one of the strengths of network analysis, namely that it helps researchers avoid biased inferences when the data generating process underlying the observed data contains extradyadic interdependencies. </jats:p

State Control and the Effects of Foreign Relations on Bilateral Trade

Do states use trade to reward and punish partners? WTO rules and the pressures of globalization restrict states’ capacity to manipulate trade policies, but we argue that governments can link political goals with economic outcomes using less direct avenues of influence over firm behavior. Where governments intervene in markets, politicization of trade is likely to occur. In this paper, we examine one important form of government control: state ownership of firms. Taking China and India as examples, we use bilateral trade data by firm ownership type, as well as measures of bilateral political relations based on diplomatic events and UN voting to estimate the effect of political relations on import and export flows. Our results support the hypothesis that imports controlled by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) exhibit stronger responsiveness to political relations than imports controlled by private enterprises. A more nuanced picture emerges for exports; while India’s exports through SOEs are more responsive to political tensions than its flows through private entities, the opposite is true for China. This research holds broader implications for how we should think about the relationship between political and economic relations going forward, especially as a number of countries with partially state-controlled economies gain strength in the global economy

Regime Type and Bilateral Treaty Formalization

How does domestic regime type affect bilateral cooperation, and one of its most visible manifestations, bilateral treaties? This article explains how domestic political regime affects bilateral cooperation and, contrary to the expectations of some scholars, why autocracies should be expected to be more likely than democracies to enter into bilateral treaties. If the preferences of a pair of states are not identical, the sets of agreements that each party would consent to (win-sets) need to overlap for a bilateral treaty to be acceptable. Because additional domestic constraints reduce the size of a country’s win-set, autocracies should have broader win-sets than democracies. Therefore, autocratic dyads should be more likely to formalize bilateral treaties than other pairs of states. Based on an original data set, I present empirical evidence showing that pairs of autocracies are more likely than other pairs of states to enter into agreements formalizing bilateral cooperation