Border Orientation in a Globalizing World

Border politics are a salient component of high international politics. States are increasingly building infrastructure to ‘secure’ their borders. We introduce the concept of border orientation to describe the extent to which the State is committed to the spatial display of capacities to control the terms of penetration of its national borders. Border orientation provides a lens through which to analyze resistance to globalization, growing populism, and the consequences of intensified border politics. We measure border orientation using novel, geo-spatial data on the built environment along the world’s borders and theorize that real and perceived pressures of globalization have resulted in more controlling forms of border governance. Empirical evidence supports this claim: states build more along their borders when faced with economic, cultural, and security-based anxieties. Border orientation enhances the study of border politics, complementing the politics of territorial division with a richer politics of liminal securitization and its consequences

Pandemic Response as Border Politics

Pandemics are imbued with the politics of bordering. For centuries, border closures and restrictions on foreign travelers have been the most persistent and pervasive means by which states have responded to global health crises. The ubiquity of these policies is not driven by any clear scientific consensus about their utility in the face of myriad pandemic threats. Instead, we show they are influenced by public opinion and preexisting commitments to invest in the symbols and structures of state efforts to control their borders, a concept we call border orientation. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, border orientation was already generally on the rise world-wide. This trend has made it convenient for governments to “contain” the virus by externalizing it, rather than taking costly but ultimately more effective domestic mitigation measures. We argue that the pervasive use of external border controls in the face of the coronavirus reflects growing anxieties about border control and border security in the modern international system. To a great extent, fears relating to border security have become a resource in domestic politics – a finding that does not bode well for designing and implementing effective public health policy

What matters most? Stakeholders’ perceptions of river water quality

The need to integrate stakeholders’ views into environmental policy is increasingly gaining attention because this offers the opportunity to design sustainable and synergistic environmental strategies. Understanding and integrating the views of resource users into policy design and implementation could help address the most important challenges, gain community support, enhance project ownership, and avoid policies being rejected by local people. As a result, research in environmental management has focussed on stakeholders’ perceptions of river water quality and how to integrate such views into policy. While existing studies offer insights into the different ways in which stakeholders evaluate river water quality and potential factors influencing judgements, they appear to be limited in a number of ways. First, most of these studies focus on developed countries and may have limited contextual relevance to the developing world. Moreover, past studies focus on segments of society such as farmers and mainly on wastewater for agriculture. These shortcomings may limit our understanding of the topic and our ability to design effective policies to address water quality problems. Drawing on survey data from the Wenchi municipality in Ghana, we examine public perceptions of what constitute important measures of river water quality as well as factors influencing such judgements. Results suggest that while variables such as taste, colour, smell and litter are important, the presence of faecal matter in and/or around the river was rated the most important measure of river water quality while depth of river was the least important. Results further suggest that education, age, number of years a person had lived in a community, depth of river and the presence of aquatic vegetation influence water quality judgements. The findings of this research provide insights into what policymakers and regulators need to consider when attempting to influence behaviours in relation to water resources. We note, however, that while public perceptions of river water quality could guide water management policies, scientific measurements of water quality must not be replaced with stakeholder perceptions. This is because aspects such as ecological integrity may not be important to segments of the public but are an important aspect of water management. This is reinforced in the present study as there seems to be a lack of concern among the participants regarding river depth – an important factor for habitat provision and pollution dilution

Border Orientation in a Globalizing World

Border politics are a salient component of high international politics. States are increasingly building infrastructure to ‘secure’ their borders. We introduce the concept of border orientation to describe the extent to which the State is committed to the spatial display of capacities to control the terms of penetration of its national borders. Border orientation provides a lens through which to analyze resistance to globalization, growing populism, and the consequences of intensified border politics. We measure border orientation using novel, geo-spatial data on the built environment along the world’s borders and theorize that real and perceived pressures of globalization have resulted in more controlling forms of border governance. Empirical evidence supports this claim: states build more along their borders when faced with economic, cultural, and security-based anxieties. Border orientation enhances the study of border politics, complementing the politics of territorial division with a richer politics of liminal securitization and its consequences

Pandemic Response as Border Politics

Pandemics are imbued with the politics of bordering. For centuries, border closures and restrictions on foreign travelers have been the most persistent and pervasive means by which states have responded to global health crises. The ubiquity of these policies is not driven by any clear scientific consensus about their utility in the face of myriad pandemic threats. Instead, we show they are influenced by public opinion and preexisting commitments to invest in the symbols and structures of state efforts to control their borders, a concept we call border orientation. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, border orientation was already generally on the rise world-wide. This trend has made it convenient for governments to “contain” the virus by externalizing it, rather than taking costly but ultimately more effective domestic mitigation measures. We argue that the pervasive use of external border controls in the face of the coronavirus reflects growing anxieties about border control and border security in the modern international system. To a great extent, fears relating to border security have become a resource in domestic politics – a finding that does not bode well for designing and implementing effective public health policy

Do Alliances Really Deter

These files replicate the analysis performed in Kenwick, Vasquez, and Powers' "Do Alliances Really Deter." Data sets consist of 10 year observations and record whether an alliance was formed in year five of a given observation and the frequency of interstate conflict before and after this time. Please see the README file and online appendix for additional details

Infrastructure and authority at the state’s edge: The Border Crossings of the World dataset

The Border Crossings of the World (BCW) dataset explores state authority spatially by collecting information about infrastructure built where highways cross internationally recognized borders. This geolocated information is recorded using high-altitude imagery from 1993 to 2020. We describe how the data were collected, demonstrate the dataset’s utility, and offer advice and best practices regarding use of the data. These data present clear evidence of visible and long-term state investments in authoritative displays of states’ intention to ‘filter’ entry into and exit out of their national jurisdiction. Researchers can use these data to test theories on the causes and consequences of border hardening for security outcomes, border management cooperation, political violence, terrorism, trade and migration flows, transnational crime patterns, and human rights conditions. Because the data are precisely geolocated, they are easy to combine with existing spatial datasets

Preferences for Riparian Buffers

Intensive management of riparian zones in the Mid-western United States has long involved clearing vegetation, straightening meandering streams, and lining earthen banks with stone or concrete. Recently, however, scholars have begun to document the ecological costs of such practices. Replacing barren stream edges with more natural alternatives such as vegetated buffers can improve the visual appeal, environmental services, and ecological health of these ecosystems. Despite their potential benefits, these alternatives are rarely employed. Is it because individual landowners dislike these management strategies or is it that professional planners disapprove of such options? This paper examines the approval of various riparian buffer types by landowners and planners in Illinois using a photo-questionnaire. Participants rated their preferences for tree buffers, grass buffers, and a ‘no buffer’ condition along waterways in rural and suburban landscapes. They also rated their preferences for meandering streams in rural areas and earthen banks in the suburbs. The results show substantial support for tree buffers by both residents and planners. Participants also demonstrated considerable approval for meandering streams in rural areas. These findings add to the growing body of literature on preferences for buffers in different landscape settings and provide ample evidence for planners and policy-makers to take necessary steps to preserve or restore vegetated riparian buffers and meandering channels along Mid-western waterways. These natural alternatives to existing strategies are not only visually attractive and ecologically beneficial, they are also positive steps towards more sustainable riparian management practices

Crowdsourcing the Measurement of Interstate Conflict.

Much of the data used to measure conflict is extracted from news reports. This is typically accomplished using either expert coders to quantify the relevant information or machine coders to automatically extract data from documents. Although expert coding is costly, it produces quality data. Machine coding is fast and inexpensive, but the data are noisy. To diminish the severity of this tradeoff, we introduce a method for analyzing news documents that uses crowdsourcing, supplemented with computational approaches. The new method is tested on documents about Militarized Interstate Disputes, and its accuracy ranges between about 68 and 76 percent. This is shown to be a considerable improvement over automated coding, and to cost less and be much faster than expert coding