Politics and National Security: The Battles for Britain

Lobell, Steven E.

doi:10.1080/07388940490882541

Cited by 10 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…He attributes this to the fact that defense spending requires higher tax rates and has negative effects on the income of wealthier citizens. Lobell (2004) further specifies which businesses should favor alliances: export‐oriented and banking industries. Not only are alliances a relatively cheap way of ensuring security, but they also protect these groups' gains from international trade and investment.…”

Section: Domestic Political Change and Alliance Terminationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interests, Institutions, and the Reliability of International Commitments

Leeds

Mattes

Vogel

2009

American J Political Sci

112

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One feature associated with democratic governance is frequent leadership turnover. While the ease of replacing leaders improves accountability, it may impede the ability of democracies to make credible long-term international commitments. Using newly collected data that identify cases in which leaders who derive their support from different domestic interests come to power, we evaluate the effects of changes in domestic political leadership on one important aspect of foreign policy-decisions to maintain military alliances. An analysis covering bilateral alliances between 1919 and 2001 reveals that changes in societal supporting coalitions in nondemocratic states are associated with decisions to abrogate alliances prior to their scheduled end dates, but changes in societal supporting coalitions in democracies have no effect on the probability of premature alliance termination. We conclude that international cooperation is sensitive to changes in core supporting coalitions, but that this effect is moderated by democratic political institutions.

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Section: Domestic Political Change and Alliance Terminationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interests, Institutions, and the Reliability of International Commitments

Leeds

Mattes

Vogel

2009

American J Political Sci

112

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“…In fact, Schelling (1966: 93) goes even further, arguing that a government itself ‘never knows just how committed it is to action until the occasion when its commitment is challenged’. Existing research shows that the preferences of domestic groups influence their foreign policy choices and that different domestic groups are asymmetrically affected by outcomes at the international level (Snyder, 1991; Lobell, 2004, 2006; Narizny, 2003, 2007; Tarar, 2005; Smith, 2009). Domains in which domestic political turnover affects foreign policy include trade (McGillivray & Smith, 2004, 2005), compliance patterns with International Monetary Fund rules (Grieco, Gelpi & Warren, 2009), rivalry termination (Bennett, 1997), and voting patterns in the United Nations General Assembly (Mattes, Leeds & Carroll, 2015).…”

Section: Domestic Political Change and Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestic uncertainty, third-party resolve, and international conflict

DiLorenzo

Rooney

2018

Journal of Peace Research

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Uncertainty about resolve is a well-established rationalist explanation for war. In addition to estimating the resolve of immediate rivals, leaders choose their actions in a crisis based on expectations about how third parties will respond. We argue that leaders will become more likely to develop inconsistent estimates of rivals’ relative capabilities and resolve – and thus will become more likely to fight – when domestic political changes occur in states that are allied with an opponent. We also consider how the relationship between conflict in rivalries and third-party domestic change depends on domestic political institutions in the third party. We argue that this effect should only hold when a challenger does not also share an alliance with the third party, and that the effect should be strongest when the third party is a non-democratic state. We test our theory using a dataset of changes in leaders’ domestic supporting coalitions and data on militarized interstate disputes from 1920 to 2001. Consistent with our hypotheses, we find that the likelihood of conflict increases in rivalries only when domestic coalition changes occur in states that share an alliance with only one member of a rivalry, and that this effect is strongest and most consistent for non-democratic third parties.

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Domestic Interests, Democracy, and Foreign Policy Change

Leeds

Mattes

2022

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When new leaders come to office, there is often speculation about whether they will take their countries' foreign policies in different directions or stick to their predecessors' policies. We argue that when new leaders come to power who represent different societal interests and preferences than their predecessors, leaders may pursue new foreign policies. At the same time, in democracies, leadership selection processes and policymaking rules blunt leaders' incentives and opportunities for change. Democracies thus tend to pursue more consistent foreign policies than nondemocracies even when new leaders with different supporting coalitions assume office. Statistical analyses of three distinct foreign policy areas – military alliances, UNGA voting, and economic sanctions – provide support for our argument. In a fourth area – trade – we find that both democracies and nondemocracies are more likely to experience foreign policy change when a new leader with a different supporting coalition comes to power. We thus conclude that foreign policy responds to domestic political interests, and that, even as the interests supporting leaders change, democracies' foreign policies are no less stable than those of nondemocracies and often exhibit greater consistency.

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Politics and National Security: The Battles for Britain

Cited by 10 publications

References 50 publications

Interests, Institutions, and the Reliability of International Commitments

Interests, Institutions, and the Reliability of International Commitments

Domestic uncertainty, third-party resolve, and international conflict

Domestic Interests, Democracy, and Foreign Policy Change

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