International Studies Quarterly

Berenskötter, Felix; Mitrani, Mor

doi: 10.1093/isq/sqac001pmid: N/A

ABSTRACTThis article explores the nature of the contemporary “special relationship” between Germany and Israel. Having emerged out of the ashes of the Second World War and the Holocaust, political relations between these two states are widely seen as having successfully undergone a process of reconciliation. A key feature is German support for Israel, usually understood as a constant attempt to pay off a historical debt in exchange for rehabilitation and recognition of Germany as a “good state.” The article probes another interpretation by asking whether contemporary German–Israeli relations have reached the stage of friendship, a relationship structured by care rather than guilt. To this end, it presents an original conceptual framework of interstate friendship as a bond of shared memories and visions that enable a common orientation toward the past and the future both sides are committed to invest in. Applied to an interpretive analysis of the “sharedness” of the memory of the Holocaust and the vision of a secure Israel, the paper finds strong evidence for the former yet significant gaps in the latter, concluding that relations between the states of Germany and Israel still fall short of friendship.

Rathbun, Brian; Rathbun, Nina Srinivasan; Pomeroy, Caleb

doi: 10.1093/isq/sqac002pmid: N/A

Status-seeking behavior, the pursuit of a higher position on an international social hierarchy as perceived and defined by members of a community, has received considerable attention in recent years. Yet, much of what this recent literature calls status-seeking is difficult to distinguish from something else: the pursuit of fairness. We disentangle status-seeking from fairness-seeking by identifying where a pure status-seeking and a fairness-seeking argument diverge—in the degree to which state actors demand exclusive rights and privileges. Survey experiments of the Russian public concerning the country's membership in the G8 as well as a case study of Germany's behavior in the first Moroccan crisis provide strong support for our “biased fairness” account. Derived from the behavioral economics and psychology literature, it maintains that leaders demand entitlements that match their status and find any such denial as less fair than an equivalent discrepancy for other countries. However, once assured of what they deserve, they do not demonstrate any tendency to exclude others, the hallmark of the status motivation. Convergent evidence at multiple levels of analysis, country contexts, and widely different time periods gives strong indications that fairness concerns are driving much of what is attributed to status-seeking.

Butcher, Charles; Griffiths, Ryan D

doi: 10.1093/isq/sqac004pmid: N/A

It is thought that political order in premodern Europe was characterized by overlapping and crosscutting forms of authority. Scholars have called this heteronomy, arguing that it preceded and may follow the modern sovereign state system and that it has characterized various historical locales around the world. We maintain that this conception has been under-examined, and we identity three different forms of heteronomy that existed historically. These include: (1) interstitial heteronomy, where polities with limited capacity in low-density regions experience zones of informal mixed rule on the frontier; (2) functional heteronomy, where states in thickly populated systems develop complex patterns of functional differentiation; and (3) personalistic heteronomy, where power that is invested in individuals rather than territorially defined polities can produce patterns of dual vassalage. We develop a theory of heteronomy based on the density of the system (low, high) and the nature of political relations (territorial, personal), and using the resulting two-dimensional map we explore the form of heteronomy that existed and may exist in different systems across time and space. We conclude that when scholars envisage heteronomy in the modern system, it is mostly functional, and not interstitial or personalistic heteronomy, which they have in mind.

Balcells, Laia; Chen, Chong; Pischedda, Costantino

doi: 10.1093/isq/sqab095pmid: N/A

Challenging influential perspectives that downplay the role of shared rebel constituencies, we argue that they represent important causes of rebel alliances. Yet, we theorize distinct effects for different types of constituency. While compatible political aspirations push both organizations with a common ideological constituency and those with a common ethnic constituency to ally, for co-ethnic organizations this cooperation-inducing effect is offset by a cooperation-suppressing effect due to their higher risk of inter-rebel war. Leveraging a novel dataset of alliances in multiparty civil wars (1946–2015), we find support for our theoretical expectations. Shared ideological constituencies have a larger and more robust positive effect on the probability of alliances than shared ethnic constituencies. Furthermore, we find that co-ethnic rebel organizations tend to establish informal alliances only, while organizations sharing an ideological constituency are drawn to formal alliances.

Pinckney, Jonathan; Butcher, Charles; Braithwaite, Jessica Maves

doi: 10.1093/isq/sqab094pmid: N/A

When are episodes of resistance likely to lead to democratization? We argue that the participation of durable organizations rooted in quotidian relationships that are not themselves designed to compete for political power (what we call “quotidian civil society organizations,” QCSOs) drives successful democratic transitions. QCSOs are more likely to have stable preferences for democracy and durable mobilization structures that create greater accountability for new elites during political transitions and thus make shifts to democracy more likely compared to movements dominated by other organization types, such as political parties. Quantitative tests using novel data on the composition of resistance movements in Africa from 1990 to 2015 support these arguments. Older QCSOs and those independent from opposition political parties and the state also appear to be the most likely to engender democratization.

Chen, Ling; Hollenbach, Florian M

doi: 10.1093/isq/sqab096pmid: N/A

Do more mobile firms pay lower taxes? Conventional wisdom argues that capital mobility creates downward pressure on corporate taxes, as firms can threaten to exit. Nevertheless, empirical findings are highly mixed and hard to reconcile, partly due to a lack of data at the microlevel. Using two comprehensive panel data sets with more than 780,000 Chinese firms over two decades, we find that firms with higher shares of mobile capital pay higher effective tax rates. We contend that this counterintuitive finding results from the strategic interaction between firms and governments. Knowing their vulnerability and sunk cost, firms with more fixed assets were more active in protecting themselves by bribing and colluding with local officials. Meanwhile, officials were more willing to seek bribes from these firms in exchange for tax cuts. In contrast, mobile firms were disadvantaged. Although capital mobility may provide additional bargaining power, firms with fixed assets can overcome this advantage through state–business collusion. Our quantitative and qualitative evidence show that fixed firms paid lower taxes in cities with cozy government–business relations. However, such advantages decreased after the launch of anti-corruption campaigns and in cities with higher fiscal transparency.

Forester, Summer; Kelly-Thompson, Kaitlin; Lusvardi, Amber; Weldon, S Laurel

doi: 10.1093/isq/sqab093pmid: N/A

Feminist mobilization, crucial for advancing women's human rights, has increased in all world regions since 1975. However, we do not know enough about the global impact of this mobilization because we lack adequate databases to explore the ways that feminist mobilization interacts with other factors that enhance and limit women's rights, such as democracy, intergovernmental processes, and transnational, regional organizing. Our ability to explore these questions is obstructed by a lack of data on the global south and measures that focus on formal organizations. This project remedies these gaps, developing an improved measure of feminist mobilization that encompasses autonomous, domestic feminist mobilization in 126 countries, 1975–2015, enabling us to track global and regional trends. Using regional comparisons and statistical analysis, we use this new measure to reveal new patterns and complexities in feminist mobilization. We discern distinct regional patterns in such organizing that defy facile predictions of global convergence and suggest a central role for UN processes advancing women's rights. Our analysis also points to the importance of transnational feminist networks and democratization as factors enabling and strengthening feminist mobilization. We conclude by suggesting some fruitful avenues for exploring relationships between feminist movements, international institutions, and democracy.