A Paradox of Success? Determinants of Political Support for President FujimoriWeyland, Kurt
doi: 10.1111/0020-8833.00168pmid: N/A
To what extent does a government's success in resolving a deep political and economic crisis strengthen its popular support? The Fujimori administration in Peru, which tackled both profound economic problems and a powerful guerrilla threat, constitutes a useful test case for this important question. Most observers of Peru assume that both Fujimori's success in improving the economy and in combating insurrectionary forces contributed substantially to his high popularity and his reelection victory. Regression analyses of survey and electoral data suggest, however, that the successful counterinsurgency campaign had no significant medium or long-term impact on presidential approval and electoral support. These surprising findings seem to reflect a paradox of success: when a government effectively combats a severe threat, such as rampant guerrilla violence, the salience of the issue diminishes subsequently and people's high appreciation for the president's accomplishment has an ever lower impact on their political attitudes and behavior.
Foreign Policy Gaps between Citizens and LeadersPage, Benjamin I.; Barabas, Jason
doi: 10.1111/0020-8833.00163pmid: N/A
Persistent gaps between the policy preferences of leaders and those of citizens are problematic from the point of view of democratic theory. Examination of the foreign policy preferences of samples of citizens and leaders from seven Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR) surveys between 1974 and 1998 reveals many differences of 30, 40, and even 50 percentage points. Often a majority of the public has disagreed with a majority of leaders. Some of the same gaps have persisted over the full 24-year period of these surveys.The pattern of gaps is considerably more complicated than a simple difference in degree of commitment to internationalism. Citizens have generally put a higher priority than leaders on expanding domestic programs like Social Security, crime fighting, and health care, and have been more eager to cut foreign economic aid. But there have not been substantial gaps with respect to defense spending or military aid. More members of the public than leaders emphasize foreign policy goals related to protecting Americans' jobs and ensuring Americans' health and physical security (e.g., from terrorism, drugs, and epidemic diseases). Citizens have been more reluctant than leaders to use U.S. troops in most circumstances, but the opposite is true of situations involving Latin America. Citizens have been more willing to bomb than to commit troops, though not indiscriminately so, and many more citizens than leaders oppose selling weapons abroad. Fewer members of the public than leaders have favored most kinds of cooperative relationships with adversary countries. But more members of the public than leaders generally support the United Nations, and more favor multilateralism in general. About the same number of citizens as leaders have supported NATO.Some of these gaps may reflect lower levels of attention to foreign affairs and lower levels of information among the public than among leaders, but many of the gaps may instead reflect different values and interests. In cases where the public is ill-informed, persistent gaps suggest a failure of leaders to educate and persuade. Where public opinion is well-informed and deliberative, democratic theory would seem to call for responsiveness by policymakers.
A Universal Test of an Expected Utility Theory of WarBennett, D. Scott; Stam, Allan C.
doi: 10.1111/0020-8833.00167pmid: N/A
Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman's version of an expected utility theory of war has become one of the most widely cited theories of international conflict. However, the testing of the theory has lagged behind its theoretical development. In its most sophisticated formulation, the theory has been tested on only 707 dyad-years, all drawn from Europe between 1816 and 1970. We present a test of the expected utility theory of war (as developed in War and Reason) on the international system from 1816 to 1984. Specifically, we examine the relationship between the main equilibrium variables derived under the “domestic variant” of the international interaction game and behavioral outcomes using multinomial logit. We find that the equilibria correlate with actual behavior in both the set of all dyads and a subset of politically relevant dyads, even after including a set of control variables. The relationship is somewhat less clear among the population of all interstate-directed dyads, however, with key equilibrium variables having smaller effects at increasing the odds of interstate conflict among all dyads. We also present a new software program, EUGene, which generates expected utility data and can serve as an important data management tool for international relations researchers.
Two‐Level Security Management and the Prospects for New Democracies: A Simulation AnalysisSimon, Marc V.; Starr, Harvey
doi: 10.1111/0020-8833.00165pmid: N/A
Most new democracies face serious internal, ethnic/separatist conflicts; in addition, some face international threats. The literature on the growth of democracy in the global system and its impact on world politics does not fully account for the dual threats all states must address in managing their security. Based on theoretical work by Starr (1994) which describes the “common logic” of conflict processes in war and revolution, we outline a model of how states respond to security threats from both external and internal sources. Using computer simulation, we analyze the model and evaluate the relative importance for state security of factors such as system size, numbers of democracies in the system, extraction/allocation strategy pursued by new democracies, and government legitimacy level. Our results show that new democracies thrive in systems that are predominantly democratic. Also, ally support can provide crucial resources for new democracies facing internal threats. Finally, “endangered” democracies can recover security by attempting to buy off domestic threats rather than deter them, and by improving legitimacy.
Religious Causes of Discrimination against Ethno-Religious MinoritiesFox, Jonathan
doi: 10.1111/0020-8833.00166pmid: N/A
Most existing large-n cross-sectional analyses of ethnic conflict focus on the behavior of the ethnic minority rather than the behavior of the state. That is, they tend to attempt to predict or explain the level of protest or rebellion in which ethnic minorities engage at the expense of determining the causes for the behavior of the government of the state in which these minorities live. Previous studies have determined that discrimination against minority groups is one of the major causes of ethnic protest and rebellion. In addition, much of the literature on ethnic conflict does not sufficiently deal with the religious causes of that conflict. Accordingly this study focuses on the causes of discrimination with a particular emphasis on the religious causes. This study analyzes two populations from the Minorities at Risk dataset: the 105 religiously differentiated minorities and the 163 minorities that are not religiously differentiated. The results show that religious factors influence the process that leads to discrimination and that the causes of religious discrimination are distinct from the causes of other types of discrimination. In addition, the dynamics of this process are markedly different between the two populations analyzed here. All of this, along with other factors, implies that religion is not merely a reflection of general cultural differences, but rather has a distinct and separate influence on ethnic conflict.
Nationalist Sources of International Economic IntegrationShulman, Stephen
doi: 10.1111/0020-8833.00164pmid: N/A
Most scholars of international relations and nationalism presume that nationalist ideology acts uniformly to hinder international economic integration, globalization, and free trade. This article challenges the conventional wisdom by developing an analytical framework of the incentives majority and minority nationalists face in the realm of foreign economic relations. Defining nationalism as the promotion of the autonomy, unity, and identity of the nation, it argues that nationalists have strong possible motivations both for and against close economic ties with foreign nations and states. As a result, oftentimes nationalists must make trade-offs among their goals of autonomy, unity, and identity when developing foreign economic policy preferences. Case studies of nationalist organizations in Quebec, India, and Ukraine that favor a high degree of international economic integration are presented to show the usefulness of the analytical framework.
Explaining Rivalry Escalation to War: Space, Position, and Contiguity in the Major Power SubsystemRasler, Karen; Thompson, William R.
doi: 10.1111/0020-8833.00169pmid: N/A
Vasquez's (1996) rivalry escalation theory stressed territorial disputes as the principal focus for a two-path explanation of war. Neighbors fight over adjacent space and non-neighbors sometimes join ongoing wars between neighbors. But major powers are also much concerned with positional issues. Expanding the war motivation focus to encompass both spatial and positional issues facilitates the development of a new, more elaborate theory from which several new hypotheses can be derived, in addition to the older ones. Testing of the new theory can also proceed with rivalry data not based on dispute density measures, different types of contiguity can be assessed, and the presence of spatial-positional issues can be measured directly, as opposed to relying on a proximity proxy. The empirical outcome strongly supports the two-path, two-issue theory. In the major power subsystem, noncontiguous rivals outnumber contiguous rivals, dyadic wars are scarce, and war joining has been the norm. Spatial issues alone would have a hard time accounting for this pattern. Variable mixes of spatial and positional issues are able to account for it and a number of derived hypotheses reasonably well. This is not the last word on rivalry escalation to war but it appears to be an additional step in the right direction.
Two-Level Security Management and the Prospects for New Democracies: A Simulation AnalysisSimon, Marc V.; Starr, Harvey
doi: 10.1111/0020-8833.00165pmid: N/A
Most new democracies face serious internal, ethnic/separatist conflicts; in addition, some face international threats. The literature on the growth of democracy in the global system and its impact on world politics does not fully account for the dual threats all states must address in managing their security. Based on theoretical work by Starr (1994) which describes the “common logic” of conflict processes in war and revolution, we outline a model of how states respond to security threats from both external and internal sources. Using computer simulation, we analyze the model and evaluate the relative importance for state security of factors such as system size, numbers of democracies in the system, extraction/allocation strategy pursued by new democracies, and government legitimacy level. Our results show that new democracies thrive in systems that are predominantly democratic. Also, ally support can provide crucial resources for new democracies facing internal threats. Finally, “endangered” democracies can recover security by attempting to buy off domestic threats rather than deter them, and by improving legitimacy.