Building on recent studies that focus on institutional variation among authoritarian regimes, this paper asks whether this variation leads to meaningful differences in the tendencies to reach and comply with international agreements. The results suggest that previous evidence regarding the democratic credibility advantage over autocracies may have been driven by a lack of a more refined authoritarian regime typology. Employing such a typology, I find that the institutional constraints that generate credibility and compliance may not be unique to democracies. In fact, the only authoritarian regime that seems to lack such features is bossism, a personalist party-based regime. Bosses are more likely than democracies to enter into international agreements, but are less likely than democracies to comply with the agreements they sign. This result is remarkably robust. Results associated with other types of autocracies suggest minor or no differences between autocracies and democracies, relating to reaching and complying with international treaties. Finally, I find evidence of strategic behavior, as all regime types are more likely to sign agreements and less likely to comply when the other negotiating party is a boss, compared with a democracy.

The study of international relations (IR), and political science more broadly, has derived great benefits from the recent growth of conceptualizing and modeling political phenomena within their broader network contexts. More than just a novel approach to evaluating the old puzzles, network analysis provides a whole new way of theoretical thinking. Challenging the traditional dyad-driven approach to the study of IR, networks highlight actor interdependence that goes beyond dyads and emphasizes that many traditional IR variables, such as conflict, trade, alliances, or international organization memberships must be treated and studied as networks. Properties of these networks (e.g., polarization, density), and of actor positions within them (e.g., similarity, centrality), will then reveal important insights about international events. Network analysis, however, is not yet fully adapted to account for important methodological issues common to IR research, specifically the issue of endogeneity or possible nonindependence between actors' position within international networks and the outcomes of interest: e.g. alliance network may be nonindependent from the conflict or trade network. We adopt an instrumental variables approach to explore and address the issue of endogeneity in network context. We illustrate the issue and the advantages of our approach with Monte Carlo analysis, as well as with several empirical examples from IR literature. AbstractThe study of international relations (IR), and political science more broadly, has derived great benefits from the recent growth of conceptualizing and modeling political phenomena within their broader network contexts. More than just a novel approach to evaluating the old puzzles, network analysis provides a whole new way of theoretical thinking. Challenging the traditional dyad-driven approach to the study of IR, networks highlight actor interdependence that goes beyond dyads and emphasizes that many traditional IR variables, such as conflict, trade, alliances, or international organization memberships must be treated and studied as networks. Properties of these networks (e.g., polarization, density), and of actor positions within them (e.g., similarity, centrality), will then reveal important insights about international events. Network analysis, however, is not yet fully adapted to account for important methodological issues common to IR research, specifically the issue of endogeneity or possible nonindependence between actors' position within international networks and the outcomes of interest: e.g. alliance network may be nonindependent from the conflict or trade network. We adopt an instrumental variables approach to explore and address the issue of endogeneity in network context. We illustrate the issue and the advantages of our approach with Monte Carlo analysis, as well as with several empirical examples from IR literature.

I develop a theory of spatial policy diffusion, where "space" is conceptualized as shared memberships in economic international organizations (IOs). I argue diffusion is driven by two complementary causal mechanisms: 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 are 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 by the umbrella term "domestic rule of law." Socialization operates through norm entrepreneurs, who use the reference groups for both evaluation and access to their target audiences. Economic IOs provide particularly useful channels for socialization by maintaining permanent headquarters or hosting regular meetings among members. Likewise, norm entrepreneurs tend to target states with similar levels of economic development. I capture the theorized spatial processes using a multi-parametric spatio-temporal autoregressive model (m-STAR) and find support for the predictions.

Ukraine's anti‐government protests in 2013–2014, and the ensuing removal of President Yanukovich, raised much speculation about Russia's role in the outcome of the crisis, as well as more general questions related to third‐party influence on domestic protests and repression. Does third‐party assistance to the government increase the level of government repression or deter protesters? Does the leader removal indicate that foreign involvement was a failure? Or can a third party gain from involvement, even if its protégé leader is removed from power? We model external influence on the onset of protests and repression as a game between the government, the protesters, and a third party that supports the government. The main finding is that a third party may “bankroll” repression against the protesters, even at the risk of the removal of their protégé leader, with the goal of deterring future protests within its sphere of interest.

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.