Lost in the gray zone

Gunitsky, Seva

doi:10.1017/cbo9781316161555.006

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

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“…14 Following the Polity guidelines, countries with a score of 6 or higher are categorized as democracies; those with a score of 5 or below are labeled as non-democracies. 15 While Polity is not the only available measure of regime type, it is suitable in this instance given that its conception of democracy is based largely on the extent to which elites are constrained by their political societies (Gunitsky, 2015). This aligns with the proposed causal process through which democracy is hypothesized to shape states’ responses to peacekeeper fatalities.…”

Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Peacekeeper Fatalities and Force Commitments to UN Operations

Levin

2019

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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To what extent do peacekeeper fatalities affect states’ contributions to UN operations? While the deaths of peacekeepers are thought to be a factor in states’ decisions to reduce the magnitude of their participation in a mission, not all states respond similarly to peacekeeper fatalities. I hypothesize that democracies and wealthy countries are likely to be more sensitive to peacekeeper deaths than their non-democratic and poorer counterparts. Analyses of UN peacekeeping operations between 1990 and 2011 confirm that peacekeeper fatalities generally have a negative effect upon the size of countries’ contributions to peacekeeping operations, and that wealthy countries are likely to make larger decreases to their contributions than poorer countries. There is less evidence, however, that democracies are more sensitive to peacekeeper fatalities than non-democracies.

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Section: Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Peacekeeper Fatalities and Force Commitments to UN Operations

Levin

2019

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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“…Another reason is that the FITW ratings tend to code countries that are aligned with the U.S. government more favorably than other countries (Steiner 2016). Examples of this trend that have been cited by previous scholars include relatively negative scores for Russia during the 1990s and 2000s and, during the Cold War, the scores for El Salvador and Nicaragua (Goldstein 1986, 48;Mainwaring, Brinks, and Pérez-Liñán 2001, 54;Gunitsky 2015).…”

Section: National Perspectives In Quantitative Datasets: a Feature Anmentioning

confidence: 83%

“…To understand the conceptual judgments inherent in producing datasets, consider democracy, a concept that has been defined in different ways by the datasets most commonly used by IR scholars (Gunitsky 2015). Democracy can be defined in minimalist ways (which typically emphasize competitive elections) and more maximalist ways (which may incorporate any number of additional political and even social traits).…”

Section: Ideology and Quantitative Datasetsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Within the category of continuous measures, there are also many options, including Freedom House, V-Dem (which itself contains multiple measurement options), Polity IV (Marshall, Gurr, and Jaggers 2010), the Universal Democracy Score (Pemstein, Meserve, and Melton 2010), and the Economist Democracy Index (Kekic 2007). These indicators define democracy differently (Gunitsky 2015 Within the literature on democracy assistance, several studies posit theories that explicitly state that donors care how democratic target countries are, although only some of these studies make reference to how democracy is understood by the relevant set of actors. 9 In a study of USAID democracy assistance, for example, Peterson and Scott (2018, 276) write, "an important cue for aid allocators comes from the regime conditions most relevant to the prospects for democratic progress and consolidation: the regime's democratic condition as reflected by its level of and trend toward democracy."…”

Section: National Perspectives In Quantitative Datasets: a Feature Anmentioning

confidence: 99%

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National Perspectives and Quantitative Datasets: A Silver Lining?

Bush

2019

Journal of Global Security Studies

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As noted by other contributions to this special issue, an American perspective shapes many leading quantitative datasets used by international relations scholars. This tendency can lead to biased inferences, but it can also enhance scholarly accuracy under certain conditions. Precisely because some datasets reflect national perspectives, they are appropriate to use when seeking to test theories in which the actors of interest subscribe to the same national perspective. This argument is illustrated with the case of US democracy assistance. Using an appropriate measure of democracy reveals that—contrary to some claims in the literature—US policy-makers allocate democracy assistance in ways that reflect their perceptions of countries’ regime types, giving less democracy assistance to countries that they perceive as more democratic.

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“…10 Indeed, the category has been described as theoretically incoherent (c.f. Gunitsky, 2015;Przeworski et al, 2000). It includes stable but intermediary regimes, as well as those transitioning to and from democracy.…”

Section: Peacekeeping and The Democratic Peacekeeping Hypothesismentioning

confidence: 99%

A test of the democratic peacekeeping hypothesis: Coups, democracy, and foreign military deployments

Levin

MacKay

Jamison

et al. 2020

Journal of Peace Research

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While peacekeeping’s effects on receiving states have been studied at length, its effects on sending states have only begun to be explored. This article examines the effects of contributing peacekeepers abroad on democracy at home. Recent qualitative research has divergent findings: some find peacekeeping contributes to democratization among sending states, while others find peacekeeping entrenches illiberal or autocratic rule. To adjudicate, we build on recent quantitative work focused specifically on the incidence of coups. We ask whether sending peacekeepers abroad increases the risk of military intervention in politics at home. Drawing on selectorate theory, we expect the effect of peacekeeping on coup risk to vary by regime type. Peacekeeping brings with it new resources which can be distributed as private goods. In autocracies, often developing states where UN peacekeeping remuneration exceeds per-soldier costs, deployment produces a windfall for militaries. Emboldened by new resources, which can be distributed as private goods among the selectorate, and fearing the loss of them in the future, they may act to depose the incumbent regime. In contrast, peacekeeping will have little effect in developed democracies, which have high per-troop costs, comparatively large selectorates, and low ex-ante coup risk. Anocracies, which typically have growing selectorates, and may face distinctive international pressures to democratize, will likely experience reduced coup risk. We test these claims with data covering peacekeeping deployments, regime type, and coup risk since the end of the Cold War. Our findings confirm our theoretical expectations. These findings have implications both for how we understand the impact of participation in peacekeeping – particularly among those countries that contribute troops disproportionately in the post-Cold War era – and for the potential international determinants of domestic autocracy.

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Lost in the gray zone

Cited by 16 publications

References 0 publications

Peacekeeper Fatalities and Force Commitments to UN Operations

Peacekeeper Fatalities and Force Commitments to UN Operations

National Perspectives and Quantitative Datasets: A Silver Lining?

A test of the democratic peacekeeping hypothesis: Coups, democracy, and foreign military deployments

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