Week 6: Regime type and conflict Flashcards
Title: Domestic political audiences and the escalation of inteantioanl disputes
a. Author(s)?
Fearon 1994
Title: The Illusion of democratic crediblility
a. Author(s)?
downes and schser
The Illusion of democratic crediblility, downes and scheser
What are the major findings of the paper?
Revisits the “democratic credibility hypothesis” (such as Fearon 1994) which argues that because of ACs democracies make more credible threats
· Looking at the 2 main data sets used to support the DCH, the MID and ICB shows that the coding has major issues and greatly inflates the evidence
o Ex: less than 10% in the MID and 17% in the ICB actually have any type of coercive threat from a democracy at all
· Use new data on conflicts from 1918-2001, (Militarized Compellent Threats: MCT), and find no support for the claim that democracies are more effective at coercive threats
· Replicate 2 studies that advocate DCH- Schultz (2001) and Gelpi & Griesdorf’s (2001) and find no support for the DCH
· Implications: Broader DCH hypothesis should mean that democracies have greater credibility in deterrence threats and compellent threats
o This paper shows that new data does not support the DCH for compellent threats, but maybe doesn’t totally undermine DCH b/c deterrence threats aren’t in data
· Challenges if the causal mechanisms of ACs are actually operating in the way Fearon proposes. Alternatives to explain this inconsistency:
o Maybe democratic leaders can shape ACs in a way Fearon doesn’t allow
o ACs for a democracy backing down in a crisis might be overblown
o DCH assumes the other state understands internal workings of the democracy making a threat, but maybe they don’t
o ACs might not be as unique to democracies as previously assumed (this seems quite likely as at least one source)
Domestic policial audeinces and the escalation of disputes, fearon
What are the major findings of the paper?
Models international crisis as a “war of attrition” of political attrition contests
Audience costs are important because they enable learning since they are a costly signal
Finds that the state that is less sensitive to ACs is always less likely to back down in a crisis, regardless of which state is stronger at the start
Because of higher cost domestically for escalating, which continues to rise as the crisis goes on for longer, the signal of escalating gives even more information
High domestic ACs increase the ability for states to credibly signal true preferences
Predicts that democratic states should have higher ACs and thus less likely to bluff less
Unlike existing models of crisis, for Fearon the horizon is not exogenous
Considers three key variables for how states behave in a crisis: their 1) audience costs; 2) relative miliary strength; and 3) relative military capacity
Title: Strongmen and straw men: Authoritatiran regimes and the initiation of international conflict
a. Author(s)?
Jessica Weeks
Strongmen and Straw Men, Weeks
This reading addresses what main issue?
The influence of variations of authoritarian regimes and state behavior in conflict. Why are some dictatorships more aggressive than others?
Strongmen and Straw Men, Weeks
What makes this paper different from others?
Combines insights from comparative politics to answer an IR question
Unlike lots of scholars, Weeks does not just look at “non-democracy” as an all encompassing category and instead recognizes that there is substantive variance
Strongmen and Straw Men, Weeks
What did the author(s) do to address this issue?
Outlines a framework for categorizing dictatorships on a number of differences:
“Personalist” and “nonpersonalist”
Whether the domestic audience has military or civilian background
Strongmen and Straw Men, Weeks
How did the author(s) address this issue?
Theoretical framework yields 4 types of autocratic states:
1. Machine: nonpersonalist & civilian audience/leader
2. Junta: nonpersonalist & military audience/leader
3. Boss: personalist & civilian audience/leader
4. Strongman: personalist & military audience/leader
Personalist regimes do not have strong domestic ACs that constrain their choices, meanwhile in nonpersonalist the ACs have a big impact
Civilian audiences similarly dislike conflict to those in democracies
Strongmen and Straw Men, Weeks
What are the major findings of the paper?
Nonpersonalist autocracies with civilian audiences/leaders are not more likely to initiate conflicts than democracies. Might even be less likely than democracies
Strongmen and Straw Men, Weeks
What are the implications of this paper and their methodology?
Differences among authoritarian states matter just as much as the difference between democracy and non-democracy
When looking at ACs, we can’t just assume that constraints are universal. Who the audience is matters, and what types of preferences they have that are beyond just how big the audience is
Suggests we need to look more at where these preferences come from
Utility of integrating “first-image” theories with “second-image” theories
Strongmen and Straw Men, Weeks
How does this paper contribute to the broader literature?
Unpacks the typical approach to studying non-democracies
Shows various alternative ways that different levels of analysis can be used together
Strongmen and Straw Men, Weeks
What are my critiques? What does a world without their contribution look like?
Potential critique might be that she doesn’t give enough weight to institutions in autocracies, and how they vary
Title: The deomcratic peace and the new evolution of an old idea
a. Author(s)?
Jarrod Hayes
or
Hayes 2012
The new democratic peace and the new evolution, Hayes 2012
This reading addresses what main issue?
Critical review piece that argues there is a big gap in the democratic peace literature because so much of the focus has been on large-N quantitative studies
The new democratic peace and the new evolution, Hayes 2012
What makes this paper different from others?
Approaches the DPT from a more causal perspective than existing literature which mostly is focused on large-N and not many case studies
The new democratic peace and the new evolution, Hayes 2012
What did the author(s) do to address this issue?
Breaks the democratic peace literature into 3 waves of scholarship, and next argues that there is a gap in focusing on the causal mechanisms underlying the correlation
The new democratic peace and the new evolution, Hayes 2012
How did the author(s) address this issue?
Waves of the literature
Late 1970s-1980s: work demonstrates that the DP exists
1990s: start theorizing potential causes focused on structure & norms
2000-Present: constructivist and psychological approaches gain prominence
Lists a number of things that are missing, some of them are
1. Need a better understanding of how threats are constructed in democracies, communicated to the public/policymakers, and how the threats become policy. Should look at what political processes are at play
2. Does democratization have a role to play in the DP? Maybe in the formation of identities at the mass-public level
3. How important are leaders? Their role in the DP has been largely ignored
