Previous research has shown that foreign policy crises can cause a 'rally 'round the flag' effect, boosting citizens' approval of their leaders. While scholars agree on the effect's existence, its magnitude and nature are less readily apparent. This article considers two factors that have been neglected in previous studies: the context in which a conflict occurs and the public's level of trust in government. The theory presented here suggests that trust is not only an effect of a rally, but mediates the magnitude of the rally. It also proposes that the nature of the rally will be unaffected by whether the state is provoked by its opponent prior to crisis initiation. The resulting hypotheses are tested using aggregate US public opinion data around international crises, as well as individual-level data from the 1990-92 ANES panel regarding the Persian Gulf War. The analysis indicates that trust in government has a major influence on the size of a rally effect, especially at the individual level. However, trust matters more for those in the opposition than for those who have supported the government in the past. These results suggest implications for understanding public attitudes toward foreign policy and for the diversionary theory of war.

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The aim of this article is to show how the degree of integration into so‐called global value chains (GVCs) affects World Trade Organization (WTO) members’ decision to initiate a dispute at the WTO. Many potential violations of WTO law remain unchallenged, raising the question under which conditions WTO members complain about particular allegedly‐WTO‐incompatible policies. Controlling for alternative explanations, we demonstrate that decision‐makers are generally more likely to try and eliminate barriers to cross‐border trade by tabling a WTO complaint, when they are facing pressures to do so by firms and sectors highly integrated into such GVCs, especially when these are multinational corporations with sourcing interests in the defendant country. We test our hypothesis by comparing data from trade barrier reports with actual dispute initiation data from the US and find that, all else equal, trade barriers are more likely to be filed as disputes at the WTO in sectors with US MNCs highly integrated into GVCs. In light of the anti‐WTO rhetoric of the current US administration and its attempts to undermine its functioning and legitimacy, this analysis suggests that GVCs activate relevant societal actors that have an interest to uphold existing multilateral trade commitments, even in the efface of reluctance from their own political leaders.

The vast majority of the extant literature on trade and conflict focuses on bilateral trade to determine whether commerce has a pacifying effect upon pairs of states. We argue that this focus neglects a critical role of international trade: creating tension between states that sell similar goods to the global market. We consider this role explicitly and operationalize its effects empirically. Using commodity-level trade data from 1962 to 2000, we show that countries that produce and sell similar goods are generally more likely to fight, even after we take into account their bilateral trade ties and institutional membership in the global economic system. Our findings are robust to numerous alternative specifications and suggest a strong relationship between economic competition in the global market and military conflict between states.