It’s not the size, it’s the relationship: from ‘small states’ to asymmetry

Debate about the definition of “small state” has produced more fragmentation than consensus, even as the literature has demonstrated its subjects’ roles in joining international organizations propagating norms, executing creative diplomacy, influencing allies, avoiding and joining conflicts, and building peace. However, work on small states has struggled to identify commonalities in these states’ international relations, to cumulate knowledge, or to impact broader IR theory. This paper advocates a changed conceptual and definitional framework. Analysis of “small states” should pivot to examine the dynamics of the asymmetrical relationships in which these states are engaged. Instead of seeking an overall metric for size as the relevant variable—falling victim in a different way Dahl’s “lump-of-power fallacy,” we can recognize the multifaceted, variegated nature of power, whether in war or peacetime

Covert operations, wars, detainee destinations, and the psychology of democratic peace

We explore US covert forcible actions against democratic governments and their citizens and show that inter-democratic use of covert force is common and can be accommodated within the theory of democratic peace. Grounded in the Perceptual Theory of Legitimacy, we argue that democracies are constrained by public perceptions of their legitimacy from overtly aggressing against other democratic states. When democracies desire to aggress against their democratic counterparts they will do so covertly. We test the assumptions of the theory and its implication with (1) laboratory studies of the conflation of democracy with ally status, and (2) historical analyses of covert militarized actions and prisoner detention, which show that US forcible actions, when carried out against democracies and their citizens, are carried out clandestinely