Preying on the Misfortune of Others: When Do States Exploit Their Opponents’ Domestic Troubles?

Clark, David H.; Fordham, Benjamin O.; Nordstrom, Timothy

doi:10.1017/s002238161000099x

Cited by 19 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…This largely supports expectations about the influence of power according to realists and the expectation that power provides a greater opportunity to engage in conflict beyond its effect on the mean probability of conflict (Clark et al. ). A state's exposure to territorial neighbors significantly increases the probability of conflict initiation.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 71%

“…Therefore, I include a binary variable indicating if a state is a major power in the model to control for the influence of power. Others have suggested that power influences the variance of foreign policy behavior because it provides opportunities to engage the outside world that states with less power lack the resources to achieve (Clark, Fordham, and Nordstrom ). As such, I include the major power variable in estimation of both the mean and variance to capture the possible nonconstant variance introduced by power.…”

Section: Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Fiscal Autonomy of Deciders: Creditworthiness and Conflict Initiation

DiGiuseppe

2014

Foreign Policy Anal

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Liberal theory claims that the constraint taxpayers impose on military expenditure is an important mechanism through which democracy and international commerce help prevent conflict. However, leaders with affordable access to sovereign credit have often overcome this constraint by raising revenue on credit markets. By minimizing or deferring the economic burden imposed on taxpayers and the macroeconomic stress associated with alternative financing strategies, I argue that these leaders have greater autonomy to pursue an aggressive foreign policy if they so desire. Leaders that lack creditor confidence risk increased political opposition and removal from office if hostilities generate macroeconomic stress or disturb the domestic fiscal balance. They also face a higher likelihood of defeat or retreat, and the subsequent political consequences, if they pursue conflict without sufficient resources. Estimates of a heteroskedastic probit model support this hypothesis and indicate that creditworthy states initiate conflict with a greater mean probability and greater variance than their noncreditworthy counterparts.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 71%

Section: Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fiscal Autonomy of Deciders: Creditworthiness and Conflict Initiation

DiGiuseppe

2014

Foreign Policy Anal

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“…As such, we code US rivals based on the information contained in Thompson and Dreyer (2012). 11 Second, given concerns during the Cold War about the containment of Communism, as well as the continued tension between the US and communist states and organizations in the post-Cold War era, we also collect information on the locations of leftist rebellions, based on data from the Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP) Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) Armed Conflict Dataset (N. P. and the PRIO Conflict Site data (Hallberg 2012), as well as the locations of Marxist governments based on Clark, Fordham, and Nordstrom (2011). Finally, locations near conflicts in which the US is involved are also clearly strategically important to the US.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of US Troop Deployments on Human Rights

Bell

Clay

Machain

2016

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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US noninvasion troops deployed abroad often try to promote greater respect for human rights in the host country. The host country, having an incentive to retain the troop presence, may choose to comply with these requests. We argue that this effect will not be at play in states with high security salience for the United States (US) (for which the US may not be able to credibly threaten to remove the troops). In these cases, US deployments will provide the leader with security from both internal and external threats that is independent of the local population's support for the leader. Host state leaders thus become less reliant on (and potentially less responsive to) their local populations, which in turn may lead to increased human rights violations. In this article, we use data on both US troop deployments abroad and on human rights violations to test these arguments from 1982 to 2005.

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“…If the net benefits of provoking conflict with foreign adversaries are greater than the net costs, political elites have incentive to pursue political survival with international conflict rather than altering the status quo domestic policy (Gagnon, 1995; Gelpi, 1997). But, leaders with incentives to divert are sine qua non for use of force abroad (Clark, 2003; Clark et al, 2011; Fordham, 2005; Leeds and Davis, 1997; Meernik, 2000; Smith, 1996); the benefits also motivate domestic political use of force (Tir and Jasinski, 2008).…”

Section: Political Use Of Forcementioning

confidence: 99%

Domestic diversion: Selective targeting of minority out-groups

Klein

Tokdemir

2016

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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Domestic political use of force is a strategy for political leaders to divert the public’s attention away from economic instability and rebuild political capital. But, diversionary incentives are not the only motivation; the targeted vulnerable minority’s capabilities are important. We analyze how the combination of diversionary incentive and out-group mobilization capabilities influences leaders’ decision-calculus. Embattled leaders make strategic decisions about both the target and the adequate severity of force to accomplish diversion without risking conflict escalation. We empirically test the resulting hypotheses using the Minorities at Risk dataset from 1998 to 2003 and find support for our expectations. Incentive alone does not determine domestic political use of force; the same incentive produces variance in the severity of force dependent on the targeted out-group’s mobilization capability. Governments match the severity of domestic force to political survival goals and the costs and risks of political use of force.

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Preying on the Misfortune of Others: When Do States Exploit Their Opponents’ Domestic Troubles?

Cited by 19 publications

References 27 publications

The Fiscal Autonomy of Deciders: Creditworthiness and Conflict Initiation

The Fiscal Autonomy of Deciders: Creditworthiness and Conflict Initiation

The Effect of US Troop Deployments on Human Rights

Domestic diversion: Selective targeting of minority out-groups

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