Keeping Up With Which Joneses: Spatial Diffusion of Rule of Law Through Economic International Organizations

I develop a theory of spatial diffusion of the rule of law, where “space” is conceptualized as shared memberships in economic international organizations (IOs). I argue that the rule of law diffuses as a result of economic competition and socialization. Outside evaluators, such as international leaders, activists, and most importantly, international firms and investors, often assess states’ attractiveness as a business venue by comparing them to similar states. The natural reference group for such comparisons is not just geographical neighbors, but also states with shared memberships in economic IOs. Responding to this evaluation, states identify members of their own reference groups and view them as competition for investment. As a result, states within the same reference groups converge on issues related to lowering domestic economic risks, which are referred to by the umbrella term “domestic rule of law.” The resulting process of policy convergence is further aided by socialization. Socialization may involve emulation of policies of similar states or “active” learning through norm entrepreneurs, who use the reference groups for both evaluation and access to their target audiences. I capture the theorized spatial processes using a multiparametric spatiotemporal autoregressive model (m-STAR) and find support for the prediction

Bean Counters: The Effect of Soy Tariffs on Change in Republican Vote Share Between the 2016 and 2018 Elections.

How do trade wars affect presidential support? President Trump\u27s aggressive tariffs on China despite his largely rural electoral support base provide a unique opportunity to analyze the relationship between international trade policy and domestic support. If trade-related considerations were ever decisive to American voters, the stark decrease in soy prices, a direct effect of Trump-initiated tariffs immediately preceding the 2018 midterm election, serves as a critical test for studying their effect. This letter shows a robust inverse relationship between county-level soybean production and the change in Republican vote share between the 2016 and 2018 congressional elections

The Effects of Dog-Whistle Politics on Political Violence

The election of President Trump marked significant changes in the content, outlets, and the level of civility of political rhetoric. The traditional left/right policy disagreements took on a more populist tone, activating extremist elements within society. We explore the consequences of political appeals to nationalist identity within the context of modern-day America. We argue that employed by elected officials, nationalist political rhetoric legitimizes extremist views and their expression. This effect is exacerbated by the social media, which provides an unmoderated channel for communication between elected officials and their extremist supporters. We test the link between nationalist rhetoric and hate crimes using data collected from Twitter, as well as an original dataset on daily hate incidents in the US, between February 2017–April 2018, and find strong evidence for our theory. Our results have important implications for the study of political communication and political violence

Modeling Structural Selection in Disaggregated Event Data

Growing availability of disaggregated data, such as data on activity of subnational groups (e.g. protest campaigns, insurgents, terrorist groups, political parties or movements), has raised new types of theoretical and statistical challenges. In particular, rather than random, the observability and availability of disaggregated data are often a function of specific structural processes—an issue we refer to as structural selection. For example, domestic terrorist attacks or protester violence are conditional on the formation of domestic terrorist groups or protester movements in the first place. As a result, analytical inferences derived from subnational or other types of disaggregated data may suffer from structural selection bias, which is a type of sample selection bias. We propose a simple and elegant statistical approach to ameliorate such bias and demonstrate the advantages of this approach using a Monte Carlo example. We further illustrate the importance of accounting for structural processes by replicating three prominent empirical studies of government–opposition behavior and find that structural selection affects many of the inferences drawn from the observable data

The Spatial Dimensions of State Fiscal Capacity The Mechanisms of International Influence on Domestic Extractive Efforts

This paper expands traditional predatory theory approaches to state fiscal capacity by adopting spatial analytical reasoning and methods. While previous work in the predatory theory tradition has often incorporated interdependent external influences, such as war and trade, it has often done so in a way that maintains a theoretical and empirical autonomy of the state. Theoretically, we suggest four mechanisms (coercion, competition, learning, and emulation) that operate to channel information through interstate rivalry and territorial contiguity, trade networks, and the political space associated with regime type and intergovernmental organization membership. We test our predictions using a multi-parametric spatio-temporal autoregressive model with four spatial lags capturing the four mechanisms. Our empirical results provide support for the coercion and learning mechanisms

Фізична чи природнича географія України?

Розглянуто необхідність та можливості заміни у вищих навчальних закладах України курсу «Фізична географія України» на курс «Природнича географія України». Зазначено, що курс «Фізична географія України» не відповідає сучасним вимогам підготовки студентів-географів рівня «бакалавр», оскільки розглядає лише натуральну природу України без її корінних антропогенних змін. Запропоновано в курсі «Природнича географія України» виокремити три розділи, присвячені фізичній, історичній та антропогенній географії. Кожний із названих розділів слід вивчати упродовж одного семестру, а по закінченні приступити до вивчення курсу «Ландшафтна географія України», що теж включає у себе три частини: натуральне (класичне), історичне та антропогенне ландшафтознавство. Фундаментальні бакалаврські курси: «Антропогенна географія України» і «Ландшафтна географія України» будуть основою магістерських курсів «Конструктивна географія України» і «Конструктивне ландшафтознавство України»

Keeping Up With Which Joneses: Spatial Diffusion of Rule of Law Through Economic International Organizations

I develop a theory of spatial diffusion of the rule of law, where “space” is conceptualized as shared memberships in economic international organizations (IOs). I argue that the rule of law diffuses as a result of economic competition and socialization. Outside evaluators, such as international leaders, activists, and most importantly, international firms and investors, often assess states’ attractiveness as a business venue by comparing them to similar states. The natural reference group for such comparisons is not just geographical neighbors, but also states with shared memberships in economic IOs. Responding to this evaluation, states identify members of their own reference groups and view them as competition for investment. As a result, states within the same reference groups converge on issues related to lowering domestic economic risks, which are referred to by the umbrella term “domestic rule of law.” The resulting process of policy convergence is further aided by socialization. Socialization may involve emulation of policies of similar states or “active” learning through norm entrepreneurs, who use the reference groups for both evaluation and access to their target audiences. I capture the theorized spatial processes using a multiparametric spatiotemporal autoregressive model (m-STAR) and find support for the prediction.This article has been accepted for publication in Foreign Policy Analysis. Published by Oxford University Press.</p

Dangerous liaisons An endogenous model of international trade and human rights

This article applies recent advances in network analysis to highlight a central tension faced by policymakers – balancing the benefits of engaging with the international system and the associated domestic policy costs. International trade rewards certain domestic practices, such as respect for human rights. Enforcing such practices, however, is politically costly and sometimes prohibitive to state leaders who rely on political repression to stay in power. In such cases, domestic elites often resort to an alternative strategy of securing the benefits of international trade – setting up indirect trade channels through intermediary states. These competing incentives are modeled within a single framework using a formal network game in which states form trade-links (direct or indirect) with other states, while simultaneously choosing their optimal level of domestic human rights protections. The model suggests that there may be an inverse relationship between a state’s embeddedness within a network of indirect trade and respect for human rights: indirect trade channels serve as loopholes that allow domestically troubled states to enjoy the benefits of trade without pressure for domestic improvement. The predictions are supported by the results of the empirical analyses of the international trade and repression data (1987–2000), conducted using a coevolutionary actor-oriented longitudinal-network model – a statistical estimator that closely mimics the theoretical model.This is a manuscript of an article from Journal of Peace Research 53 (2016): 409, doi:10.1177/0022343316629605. Posted with permission.</p

Dangerous liaisons An endogenous model of international trade and human rights

This article applies recent advances in network analysis to highlight a central tension faced by policymakers – balancing the benefits of engaging with the international system and the associated domestic policy costs. International trade rewards certain domestic practices, such as respect for human rights. Enforcing such practices, however, is politically costly and sometimes prohibitive to state leaders who rely on political repression to stay in power. In such cases, domestic elites often resort to an alternative strategy of securing the benefits of international trade – setting up indirect trade channels through intermediary states. These competing incentives are modeled within a single framework using a formal network game in which states form trade-links (direct or indirect) with other states, while simultaneously choosing their optimal level of domestic human rights protections. The model suggests that there may be an inverse relationship between a state’s embeddedness within a network of indirect trade and respect for human rights: indirect trade channels serve as loopholes that allow domestically troubled states to enjoy the benefits of trade without pressure for domestic improvement. The predictions are supported by the results of the empirical analyses of the international trade and repression data (1987–2000), conducted using a coevolutionary actor-oriented longitudinal-network model – a statistical estimator that closely mimics the theoretical model

Bean Counters: The Effect of Soy Tariffs on Change in Republican Vote Share Between the 2016 and 2018 Elections.

How do trade wars affect presidential support? President Trump's aggressive tariffs on China despite his largely rural electoral support base provide a unique opportunity to analyze the relationship between international trade policy and domestic support. If trade-related considerations were ever decisive to American voters, the stark decrease in soy prices, a direct effect of Trump-initiated tariffs immediately preceding the 2018 midterm election, serves as a critical test for studying their effect. This letter shows a robust inverse relationship between county-level soybean production and the change in Republican vote share between the 2016 and 2018 congressional elections.This unpublished article is cited as Chyzh,O.V., Urbatsch, R. Bean Counters: The effects of soy tariffs on change in Republican vote share between the 2016 and 2018 election. March 11, 2019. Posted with permission. </p