Does the intervention of an international organization in domestic politics render policy change more popular? While voters may ultimately care only about policy outcomes, the involvement of international actors often seems to lead to resentment. Still, citizens may have greater faith in the wisdom of international actors than in their own government. As others have argued, a well-respected international

Materially powerful states tend to dominate both the creation of international organizations (IOs) as well as subsequent IO policymaking. Materially weak states are nevertheless expected to participate in IOs since it is generally assumed that they will still profit from cooperation and prefer power to be exercised through institutions. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how exactly institutional

How does rebel news affect the way civilians perceive the balance of power during conflict? While media campaigns are a common tactic during conflict for both insurgents and governments, there is very little empirical research that explores their effect on civilians. I argue that these campaigns play an important role in the construction of a rebel group’s reputation during conflict and the perception

As a rising India has sought both standing and recognition in the international system, observers have debated whether revisionist or status quo tendencies have characterized the country’s engagement with the outside world since the end of the Cold War. One way to gain insight into such issues is to study the behavior of its apex leaders. Face-to-face diplomacy and high-level visits are an increasingly

Do International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending programs increase repression in borrowing countries? We argue that repression worsens when autocratic governments enter conditional lending arrangements with the IMF. Autocracies are likelier than democracies to harshly crackdown during episodes of heightened protest and unrest triggered by IMF-mandated adjustment and structural reform programs. But harsh

This research note introduces new global data on self-coups—rapid moves by sitting executive leaders to “overthrow” their own governments and illegitimately maintain or extend power. Self-coups are distinct from ordinary coups (sudden illegal attempts by other elites to topple the sitting executive) and overlap with incumbent takeovers (incremental quasi-legal steps by the sitting executive to amass

What are the causal pathways through which natural resources are linked to civil conflict? Ross evaluates ten causal pathways across thirteen conflicts to offer the most comprehensive answer to date. However, nearly 20 years later, all thirteen conflicts have ended, and more sources are available, motivating the question: Would the findings hold if replicated today? We employ a new explicit standards

Generalized trust has attracted attention as a non-material disposition that affects risk perception in political and economic international cooperation. However, its effect on public support for free trade or trade agreements has been debated. This debate centers on whether the economic impacts of trade are evident or uncertain to ordinary citizens because generalized trust operates only when trade

This paper seeks to explain why some investor-state dispute cases are settled before reaching the ruling stage in democracies, focusing on disputes triggered by regulatory changes made by host government. Our argument is grounded in the domestic politics of the respondent country, specifically the partisan orientation of the incumbent government. When faced with regulatory investor claims, respondent

The making of international law through multilateral conventions and adjudication often leads to periods of legal uncertainty, times in which there are alternative rules and divergent views on how they ought to be applied to particular cases. I argue that legal uncertainty gives states opportunities and incentives to formulate excessive unilateral claims, thus making disputes more likely to arise.

This study presents new theory and evidence on the repertoire of electoral intimidation, suggesting that threats can be used to deter rival party supporters from voting but also to mobilize citizens to vote for a particular party. We expect these strategies to unfold in the same electoral context, but differ in targeting and incidence; while threats to demobilize are concentrated in closely contested

The Paris Agreement on climate change is built around a pledge-and-review system, wherein countries submit nationally determined pledges of mitigation commitments. While the agreement’s flexible design has attracted broad participation, its lenient informational requirements for pledges have also engendered considerable ambiguity in countries’ commitments. What are the implications of commitment ambiguity

Why are some autocratic regimes more prone to mass uprisings than others? This article argues that autocratic leaders can mitigate opposition mobilization by strategically appointing opposition leaders to cabinet positions. Drawing on yearly data from autocracies between 1966 and 2020, the article exploits temporal variations in the composition of cabinets and the onset of mass uprisings within autocratic

This paper presents a game-theoretic model where dissidents with heterogeneous abilities and motivations contribute to collective action. A regime demotivates dissidents by preemptively increasing their costs of contributing, using a budget that can be spread across them in any way desired. The regime’s optimal targeting strategy is shown to depend on the (technological) degree of complementarity between

How does a state’s marginalization of borderland communities influence their sense of belonging? We argue that, in unstable regions in the Global South, such marginalization reinforces people’s sense of belonging to a transnational community. As we demonstrate, two causal mechanisms account for this process: the marginalization enhances (i) the border’s “disguising” quality that muddies diverse forms

Does environmental displacement provoke political instability? Though migration has long been considered an intermediary in the causal path between environmental change and political upheaval, the relationship remains theoretically underdeveloped and evidence has been limited. This article examines the impact of displacement caused by sudden-onset natural hazards on disruptive antigovernment events

Every year since 1946, the General Debate has taken place at the beginning of the United Nations (UN) General Assembly session. Representatives from all UN member states deliver an address, discussing the issues that they consider most important in global politics, revealing their governments’ positions, and seeking to persuade other states of their perspectives. The annual UN General Debate statements

What are the conditions under which governments form more ethnically inclusive coalitions? Previous contributions highlight strategic incentives as well as colonial and precolonial legacies as determinants of ethnically inclusive government coalitions but overlook the impact of political mobilization during the decolonization period. We argue that ideological exposure and commitment to the Pan-African

There is ample evidence that the political exclusion of minorities from state power increases the risk of conflict. Nevertheless, do these same results apply to local representation? I explore this question using the success in mayoral elections of the Chilean Mapuche, a deprived indigenous minority in a longstanding conflict against the Chilean state. Combining a novel database on conflict and a surname

Under what conditions do sponsors directly intervene in the target state’s civil conflicts? While previous research on state sponsorship for the rebels tends to focus on how ties between the two can influence their interactions, this article argues that the sponsor is more willing to provide combat support when the target state is under the rule of a personalist regime. Due to a lack of internal constraints

Human rights are a fundamental principle and purpose of the United Nations (UN). Yet, UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) exhibit substantial variation in their ability to engage in human rights activities. While existing research has investigated deployment and mandates, we explain what peacekeepers can actually do on the ground. We argue that the UN Security Council’s permanent member states (the P5)

The notion of affinity among countries is central in studies of international relations: it plays an important role in research as scholars use measures of affinity to study conflict and cooperation in a variety of contexts. To more effectively measure affinity, I argue that it is necessary to utilize multidimensional data and take into account the network context of international relations. In this

Why do protests emerge and endure in some localities but not others? This study focuses on urban protests in the city of Tehran, Iran’s capital and largest city, during the 2022 uprising to explain why protests emerged and endured in some neighbourhoods but not others. Using an original geocoded dataset of 339 protest events at the neighbourhood level, I test two competing sets of demographic and spatial

What effect does the institutional design of international organizations (IOs) have on their domestic support? In this article, we focus on interactions between citizens’ social identity and institutional characteristics that may have the potential to polarize citizens’ IO attitudes. We argue that citizens’ cosmopolitan identity makes them react in diametrically opposed ways to IO settings on the authority

This study explores how race impacts the legitimacy of international organizations (IOs). Specifically, we examine whether the representation of Black people in IO leadership positions influences perceptions of IO legitimacy among Black and white individuals. To do so, we fielded seven survey experiments in two racially diverse countries, South Africa and the United States, and three experiments in

In 2014, Russia denied that its military was assisting separatists in eastern Ukraine, despite overwhelming evidence. Why do countries bother to deny hostile actions like this even when they are obvious? Scholars have argued that making hostile actions covert can reduce pressure on the target state to escalate. Yet it is not clear whether this claim applies when evidence of responsibility for the action

Powersharing institutions are often prescribed to enhance civil peace, democratic survival, and the equitable provision of public services, and these institutions have become more prevalent over time. Nonetheless, the past decade has seen a rise in democratic backsliding and competitive authoritarianism, raising questions about how the relationship between powersharing, democracy, and civil peace may

Processes that occasionally, but not always, produce extreme values are notoriously difficult to model, as a small number of extreme observations may have a large impact on the results. Existing methods for handling extreme values are often arbitrary and leave researchers without guidance regarding this problem. In this paper, we propose an extreme value and zero-inflated negative binomial (EVZINB)

Does economic deprivation fuel terrorist recruitment? A large empirical literature has explored this question, but the findings remain contradictory and inconclusive. We argue that this is due to inconsistencies in the way deprivation has been defined and measured. This article identifies these deficiencies and provides a roadmap toward more precise measurement of deprivation and consequently toward

There is a scarcity of systematic data regarding the military equipment of rebel groups engaged in intrastate conflicts. This empirical gap has impeded the rigorous evaluation of (formal) theories concerning militarized interactions between governments and rebel groups. To address this deficiency, we have developed the Rebels' Armament Dataset (RAD). This dataset provides detailed information on the

Why do countries mutually agree to constraints on their behavior? Why do they comply with such constraints in the absence of enforcement mechanisms? More specifically, why did NATO allies, with disparate geography and perceptions of the international security environment, agree to ‘aim to move towards’ increased defense spending (2% of GDP on defense and 20% of defense budgets on equipment modernization)

OpenAI’s ChatGPT language model has gained popularity as a powerful tool for problem-solving and information retrieval. However, concerns arise about the reproduction of biases present in the language-specific training data. In this study, we address this issue in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian and Turkish–Kurdish conflicts. Using GPT-3.5, we employed an automated query procedure to inquire

This article introduces the Issue Correlates of War Identity Claims Dataset. An identity claim occurs when two states diplomatically contest the treatment of an ethnic group that both states share. A state that advances such a claim (i.e. the challenger) demands that the other state (i.e. the target) either: (i) change its domestic treatment of the group, (ii) grant the group independence, or (iii)

Transnational surveillance is a powerful tool in the arsenal of autocrats the world over. Despite its pervasive use in extraterritorial coercion, the systematic study of surveillance of regime opponents beyond national borders remains underdeveloped in political science, primarily due to limited data availability. To help fill this gap, we constructed the Latin American Transnational Surveillance dataset

Studies of migration-related security concerns have focused on the emergence of these concerns through securitization or their potential dissolution through desecuritization. This paper challenges the conventional view of these processes—securitization and desecuritization—as oppositional and mutually exclusive. Instead, it argues that they are imbricated in complex ways in an arena of contestation

Why do contemporary states fortify their borders? Modern military advancements have made such fortifications obsolete for security, yet scholars have offered no satisfactory alternative theory. I propose a theory of fortifications with economic motivations using a game-theoretic model where states compete to extract wealth over a shared population around a border. Such competition generates inefficiency

This article explores who is likely to benefit from Internet propaganda in civil wars. It argues that the global reach of the Internet, its lack of regulation and its filtering tools are more likely to help transnational rebel groups with external support and radical aims than local groups with home-grown support and moderate aims. The paper then introduces a new dataset on rebel propaganda that includes

Transitional justice practices frequently involve public apologies where former combatants confess their wrongdoings and ask for forgiveness, with the underlying assumption that such displays facilitate the reintegration of ex-combatants into society. However, little is known about the public response to ex-combatant apologies. In this article, we investigate the causal effect of an armed group apology

This paper analyses how pre-pandemic levels of inequality across US counties have shaped the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the incidence of protests. The results from difference-in-differences and instrumental variable models using high-frequency weekly data show that more stringent measures to contain the pandemic increased the incidence of protests, but only in US counties with high levels of

New political issues and opportunities lead new actors into contentious politics. This article studies one such case: transnational migrants making claims and engaging in collective action when traversing state borders. As global migration flows and accompanying political backlash has grown since the mid-2010s, borders have increasingly become sites of contention between groups of migrants seeking

The COVID-19 crisis created, and continues to produce, unprecedented challenges globally. Marginalized and racialized families, communities, and nations are experiencing their worst impacts, and in particular, women and girls are the hardest hit. The most pressing concerns raised by COVID-19 include a surge in gender-based violence, a rise in care burden, the feminization of poverty, and growing unemployment

Can armed conflict amplify the societal impacts and humanitarian consequences of natural hazards? Given that these hazards affect millions of people worldwide and that climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, it is paramount that we advance our understanding of what makes societies vulnerable to these hazards. Existing research has focused mainly

The article argues that International Relations, and especially those approaches that are informed by the epistemological and methodological premises of reflexivity, would benefit from a more diversified range of comparative methodologies other than those deriving from the work of J.S. Mill and more recent developments within the neopositivist canon. While discussions of methodology in International

Are civil wars shaped by how they start? While existing literature points to the path-dependent nature of conflict, the link between the type of onset and wartime dynamics have been largely overlooked. Building on a recent typology capturing the dynamics of civil war onset (1944–2020), I analyze conflict trajectories, focusing on three macro-level wartime dynamics: warfare, intensity, and duration

Conflicts involving pastoralists have been on the rise in the past two decades in West, Central and East Africa. This article argues that land alienation is a major source of this type of violence. We employ a narrow identification strategy of relevant pastoral conflicts based on the Armed Conflict Location Event Dataset and create a unique indicator of land alienation comprised of three types of land

Relational scholarship is burgeoning across the social sciences and gaining ground in peace and conflict studies. But relationalism is prone to misunderstanding. This article demonstrates that the ‘relational’ is an ontological orientation, with foundational implications for how social scientists know the world, rather than a methodological stance oriented to relationships. It offers a threefold framework

In a world of accelerated movements, this article examines how infrastructures matter in international relations. We first show that the International Relations (IR) discipline has relegated infrastructures to the background of their studies and treated them as passive tools despite their forcible role in the establishment of the modern state system. By adopting a sociological definition of “the international

This paper is concerned with state capacity and autocrat survival. We argue that state strength in autocracies increases leader tenure but reduces the stability of the regime itself; stronger autocracies run a higher risk of transitioning to democracy. This trade-off arises as a result of how state capacity affects the behavior of elite challengers. A stronger state reduces the likelihood of the ruler

For years, scholars in international relations have addressed questions related to regime complexity and its effects. However, there is a lack of understanding of how individuals react to clashes of international law obligations when assessing domestic policies. In this article, we study the extent to which citizens are concerned with compliance and noncompliance with international law when their governments

The category of the nomad has gained a newfound salience in recent decades, ranging from public interest in “digital nomadism” to academic debates about “nomadic theory.” Faced with this upsurge of interest in nomadism, this collective discussion brings together five scholars of diverse theoretical and academic backgrounds to investigate the pasts, presents, and possible futures of the nomad category

This paper draws on fieldwork interviews with migrants who fled their home countries (Somalia, Eritrea, and Sudan) and irregularly traveled through Sudan, Sahara, Libya, and the Mediterranean Sea, eventually reaching Europe. It demonstrates how, throughout their journeys, migrants were targeted by various armed groups (particularly non-state) for purposes including recruitment, extortion, ransom, immobilization

This article explores the importance of what we call “decolonial deconstruction” for contemporary global politics and policy discourses and develops a critique of this approach. “Decolonial deconstruction” seeks to keep open policy processes, deconstructing liberal policy goals of peace, democracy, or justice as always “to come”. It emerged through a nexus of postmodern and decolonial framings, well

This article theorizes smartphone detoxing as a practice of sovereignty. The article begins by arguing that the smartphone enables the exercise of psychopolitical control, a new mode of neoliberal governmentality under which individuals are governed through the algorithmic modification of behavior. Against this background, smartphone detoxing can be seen as a practice of sovereignty in the sense that

s How does military experience change individual foreign policy preferences? Prior research on military service focuses on the effects of combat experience on political participation and policy preferences, but combat is not the only military experience that influences attitudes. Living overseas is a common military experience with the potential to shape foreign policy preferences. Using observational

Between 2017 and 2021, Vietnam saw the fastest annual proportional increase in renewables ever seen across the world. This was financially supported by the state-owned energy company, Vietnam Elect...

In this study, we experimentally test the theoretical results of a contest game between groups when the value of the prize is fixed and when it is endogenously determined. It can decrease with contest efforts of all groups as in the case of an armed conflict or a lawsuit. The value of the prize can also increase with contest efforts as in the case of a patent race. We also analyze the impact of different