International Studies Quarterly

Early, Bryan R.

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12102pmid: N/A

While space capabilities were once concentrated among a handful of leading powers, an increasingly large number of states have gained access to them. As of 2007, 58 countries possessed dedicated civil space programs, 44 countries had placed nationally owned satellites into orbit, and 9 countries had achieved domestic space launch capabilities. To date, however, no systematic inquiries have ever been conducted into which countries acquire space capabilities and why. Within this paper, I develop an explanatory account that explores the capacity‐based factors and political motivations that influence countries' acquisition of space capabilities. I test my hypotheses via a quantitative analysis of the factors affecting 143 countries' acquisition of civil space programs, satellite capabilities, and space launch capabilities from 1950 to 2002. My findings shed new light on the primary causes of the proliferation of civil space capabilities and yield a number of important policy implications.

Poloni‐Staudinger, Lori; Ortbals, Candice

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12074pmid: N/A

We examine the degree to which national political setting, namely domestic political opportunity structures, influences the transnational activities of women's groups in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The literature suggests that social groups are more likely to choose international activity when national institutions provide fewer opportunities for domestic activity (Keck and Sikkink 1998; della Porta and Tarrow 2005). Using data about women's groups’ activity from a content analysis of news wires from 1980 to 2008, we conclude that women's groups act in the domestic sphere significantly more than they act in the international arena—even when acting on transnational issues—and that groups choose international action when domestic opportunities are less hospitable to group action. Thus, we argue that the domestic sphere continues to be a major influence on social movement activity even as globalization and transnationalism increase.

Manger, Mark S.; Shadlen, Kenneth C.

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12048pmid: N/A

Why do developing countries negotiate North–South trade agreements, when they already enjoy preferential market access to developed‐country markets? Most developing countries benefit from the generalized system of preferences (GSP) and related schemes when they export to the United States, the EU, and other developed economies. And yet, many pursue fully reciprocal agreements that require major concessions to the developed partner. We argue that this is due to the nature of the GSP as a unilateral concession that can be (and often is) taken away. High dependence on unilateral, removable preferences generates “political trade dependence” (PTD). We distinguish PTD from standard measures of trade dependence, and we explain why PTD motivates developing countries to seek North–South Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). We show the effects of PTD with a selection of illustrative cases and test our hypothesis on a data set of EU and US trade agreements with developing countries. We find robust statistical support for our hypothesis that high and rising levels of PTD make the negotiation of a North–South RTA more likely.

Wolford, Scott

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12036pmid: N/A

Wolford, Scott. (2012) Power, Preferences, and Balancing: The Durability of Coalitions and the Expansion of Conflict. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12036 © 2012 International Studies Association Conflicts can expand when third parties perceive future threats from attackers, but how do they evaluate threats from coalitions rather than single states? Multilateral aggregations of power can generate fear in observers that coalitions may soon turn against them. Yet only some provoke opposition from observers, reducing their chances of success and expanding the conflict, while others do not. What accounts for this difference? I analyze a game‐theoretic model of a third party’s decision to intervene in an ongoing conflict and a coalition’s decision to disband afterward, which is most likely when its preferences are diverse. When coalitions are powerful, an increasing diversity of foreign policy preferences reduces the probability that observer states balance against them, but when coalitions are weak, increasing diversity increases the probability of balancing. I find support for this conditional relationship between power, preferences, and balancing in a sample of 180 interstate crises from 1946 to 2000.

Baccini, Leonardo; Urpelainen, Johannes

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12080pmid: N/A

When do international treaties cause domestic policy adjustments? While previous research emphasizes the consequences of treaty ratification, we argue that the need to secure entry into force can induce states to change their policies already before ratification. If a state expects benefits from a treaty, it can increase the probability of foreign ratification by implementing policies that benefit pivotal domestic players within its partner country. Accordingly, studies that focus on policy change after ratification underestimate the importance of treaties and partly misconstrue the causal connection between treaties and policies. We test the theory against data on the relationship between North–South preferential trading agreements (PTAs) and automobile emission standards, finding that developing countries adopt automobile emission standards between the signature and ratification of North–South PTAs.

Gartzke, Erik; Weisiger, Alex

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12113pmid: N/A

The widely documented dyadic democratic peace observation has led to optimism that the spread of democracy might prove pacifying even outside of democratic dyads. Yet, tensions between the logic of liberal peace in dyads and systems suggest that economic development may be better suited than democracy as a determinant of systemic liberal peace. In particular, regime type heterogeneity (difference) stands to increase conflict at the system level. We argue that there exists a systemic developmental peace, in which increased wealth encourages powerful developed nations to discourage other countries from fighting, even as these same developed states continue to use force in service of their own private objectives. We also separate out the effects of aggregate democracy from regime type difference in our analysis. Systemic and cross‐level statistical tests support the following propositions: greater systemic development encourages peace, difference propagates war, and increased systemic democracy has no consistent impact on interstate conflict.

Murphy, Craig N.

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12109pmid: N/A

Kisangani, Emizet F.; Pickering, Jeffrey

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12042pmid: N/A

Kisangani, Emizet F. and Jeffrey Pickering. (2013) Rebels, Rivals, and Postcolonial State‐Building: Identifying Bellicist Influences on State Extractive Capability. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12042 © 2013 International Studies Association A recent, notable strain of empirical research argues that postcolonial state‐building follows a pattern similar to the European state‐building experience. It acknowledges that war is less common today, but contends that interstate rivalry now drives state‐building. We argue that postcolonial state‐managers have little reason to build state capacity in response to rival states. There is only a slight chance that these rivalries will escalate into an existential threat for the government. Attention should instead be focused on the more tangible threat posed by transnational rebels and postcolonial governments’ use of low‐scale military force to combat such non‐state actors. Using interrupted time series methodology on a sample of 72 countries from 1972 to 2002, we find that postcolonial state military intervention against transnational rebels increases direct taxes (a measure of state penetration) and non‐tax revenue (state autonomy) collected by governments, while intervention against rival states reduces direct taxation.

Skovgaard Poulsen, Lauge N.

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12051pmid: N/A

Given the considerable sovereignty costs involved, the adoption of modern investment treaties by practically all developing countries presents somewhat of a puzzle. Based on a review of leading explanations of investment treaty diffusion, the article advances a new theory using behavioral economics insights on cognitive heuristics. In line with recent work on policy diffusion, it suggests that a bounded rationality framework has considerable potential to explain why, and how, developing countries have adopted modern investment treaties. To illustrate the potential of this approach, the case of South Africa is studied in depth.

Park, Johann; Colaresi, Michael

doi: 10.1111/isqu.12114pmid: N/A

We investigate the research findings reported in Gibler (2007) that suggest the democratic peace is in fact a spurious artifact of stable borders. If corroborated, this set of findings would mark an important reorientation for the field. However, we show that the research design used in Gibler (2007) suffers from several problems, including omitting the lower order terms of interaction variables and inappropriately assuming cross-dyad independence of artificially created dyadic democracy scores. Our replication and extension shows that even when controlling for stable border variables, democracy continues to be a consistently useful predictor of international conflict. Further, the stable border variables themselves prove to be less consistent predictors of both peace and democracy as compared to previous research. These results suggest that both territorial issues and democracy can coexist as explanations for interstate bellicosity.