Week 5 - Foreign Policy and International Conflict Flashcards
(18 cards)
What are instruments of foreign policy?
- Peaceful diplomacy/negotiation, Armed conflict, Delegation, Sanctions, Etc. These can be used to resolve disputes and/or further states’ (national) interest.
What do states fight wars over?
- Territory
o More than half of all wars during past 300 years, Natural resources, Strategic importance, Ethnic or historical significance - National Security
o Armament/security, Human rights - Regime type
o Democracy, Communism
Explain the relation of contiguity and war.
- Dyads are contiguous by land or less than 150 miles of water (e.g.Gochman,1991).
Explanation of dyads of google: In the context of international relations and conflict analysis, a dyad refers to a pair of interacting entities, often states or group.
Reasons why contiguity is important:
o Loss of strength gradient (Boulding,1962)
o Opportunity and willingness (MostandStarr,1989)
o Territory
Dangerous dyads according to bremer 1992. (High probability of conflict)
1. Presence of contiguity
2. Absence of alliance
3. Absence of more advance economy
4. Absence of democratic polity
5. Absence of overwhelming preponderance
6. Presence of major power
Initial stages of war
Most conflict have initial stages → steps to war (e.g. Bremer 1995; Senese and Vasquez 2008)
- Escalation is usually theorized between dyads
What are Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) (COW) between dyads?
A set of interactions between or among nations involving
- the threat to use force (e.g. explicit threats to fire upon another state’s armed forces, blockade/occupy territory)
- the display of force (e.g. mobilising forces)
- the actual use of military force(e.g. firing weapons upon another state)
What are the levels of analysis of international conflict according to Waltz 1965?
- Individuals, States, International system (often interconnected)
Explain the relation of leaders and national interests.
- Leaders may have (private) incentives that diverge from the “national interest” (Chiozza & Goemans 2004)
o War and its outcomes hardly affect leader’s tenure
o War is not necessarily ex-post inefficient for leaders - Diversionary theory of war: war instigated by a country’s leader in order to distract its population from their own domestic strife
o Manipulates ‘Rally ’Round the Flag Syndrome’ effect (e.g. Falklands War in 1982)
What is the dyadic democratic peace
Pairs of democracies are less likely to fight than other pairs of states.
- Extremely robust finding
- Levy (1988): “as close as anything we have to an empirical law in international relations.”
- Although democracies rarely fight each other, they regularly fight non-democracies.
- “something in the internal makeup of democratic states that prevents them from fighting despite the fact that they are not less conflict-prone than non-democracies.” (Maoz and Russett 1993, 624)
What are the explanations of the democratic peace?
- Normative explanations
a. Democratic norms promote compromise rather than the elimination of opponents
b. Non-democracies exhibit norms in which political conflicts are more likely to be resolved through violence and coercion
c. To guard against exploitation and to ensure their own survival, democracies employ non-democratic norms in their relations with non-democracies (Maoz and Russett 1993) - Institutional Explanations
a. Basic idea: Democracies are characterised by institutional constraints (checks and balances between executive and legislative)
i. Because war is costly, wars are generally unpopular among publics.
ii. In democracies, leaders are generally more reliant on public support than non-democracies are
iii. Democracies are less able to bluff → information → audience costs
What are audience costs?
- Audience costs are a mechanism by which to overcome information problems (credible signalling)
- Audience costs: The punishment of leaders who fail to:
o fulfil their commitments (e.g., by failing to carry out a threat)
o pursue a policy that audiences want - Fearon (1994) assumed audience costs to be high in democracies (disputed)!
Audience Costs and credible signalling
- Recall: “bluffing” can lead to inefficient war
What is the intuition of audience cost theory?
Leaders can make stronger demands if their public will punish them for backing down (reputation loss).
- Presumably this is the case in democracies (due to potential audience costs → elections)
- Stronger demands (through credible signals) → peaceful concessions (technology of overcoming information problems)
What are the elements of audience cost theory?
- Domestic political audience has the means and incentives to coordinate to punish the leader.
- Domestic actors view backing down after having made a threat as worse than conceding without having made a threat in the first place.
- Outsiders are able to observe the possibility of domestic sanctions for backing down.
What are the empirical expectations of audience cost theory?
- Threats coming from democrats are more likely to be taken seriously than those coming from autocrats
- Democrats are less likely to make idle threats
- Threats from Democrats should increase the likelihood that rivals back down
- Democrats might attack even when chances of victory are low (after a threat)
- Very difficult to test because of complex selection effects (Schultz 2001)
- Usually, scholars assume that democratic states have an advantage in creating audience costs. Recently challenged (e.g. Weeks)
What is delegation (Principal Agent theory)
An act where one person or group, called a principal, relies on another person or group, called an agent, to act on the principal’s behalf. (Lupia, 2003)
Why delegate?
- Delegation allows principals to benefit from expertise and abilities of others
- Cost saving device
- Efficiency gains associated with specialization
- Delegation avoids direct accountability
Perils of delegation
- Perils arise from the fact that power is delegated
- People to whom power is delegated may abuse this power
What is agency loss?
Describes the difference between the ‘perfect’ and ‘actual’ outcome from delegation. Agency loss occurs from conflicting preferences, incomplete information and lack of enforcement mechanisms
What are the two main problems with Principal Agent?
- Adverse selection
a. Problem: information asymmetry between agent and principal
b. Solutions: ex ante mechanisms
i. Screening
ii. Signalling
iii. Contract design - Moral hazard/agency slack
a. Problem: divergent preferences may incentivise the agent to act inappropriately (agency loss)
b. Solution: Ex-post mechanisms
i. Sanctions (withdraw support)
Explain Single or multiple principal(s) and agent(s)
- One principal, several agents
o Can generate competition
o Especially in longer relationships beneficial to principal - Several principals, one agent
o Single agent has contracts with two or more distinct principals, whose preferences and priorities may diverge
What does Weeks 2008 say to the necessary conditions for audience cost?
The necessary conditions in general are:
1. Domestic political audience has the means and incentives to coordinate to punish the leader
2. Domestic actors view backing down after having made a threat as worse than conceding without having made a threat in the first place
3. Outsiders are able to observe the possibility of domestic sanctions for backing down
Weeks says:
-> Idea: Autocratic regimes vary on these dimensions!
- Personalist regimes and new/unstable democracies are less likely to generate audience costs — making their threats less credible.
- Single-party, military, and dynastic monarchies may credibly generate audience costs, especially when elite coordination and regime stability are high.
- Thus, regime type matters, but not in the democracy vs. autocracy binary — it’s about internal structure and elite dynamics.
