Sara McLaughlin Mitchell

Bargaining in the Shadow of International Courts: The Intersection of Domestic and International Law

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:16:31 PDT

Fragmented Governance of International Rivers: Negotiating Bilateral versus Multilateral Treaties

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:14:30 PDT

What Did They Leave Behind? Legal Systems, Colonial Legacies, and Human Rights Practices

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:12:24 PDT

Contentious Issues as Opportunities for Diversionary Behavior

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:09:41 PDT

Foreign Direct Investment and Territorial Disputes

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:06:55 PDT

Putting the Cart Before the Horse? How Civil Wars and Economic Development Influence the Management of Natural Resources

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:04:50 PDT

Issue Rivalries

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 09:02:19 PDT

Contentious Issues and the Evolution of Interstate Rivalry

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:59:59 PDT

The Evolution and Duration of Issue Rivalries

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:57:41 PDT

Resource Curse in Reverse: How Civil Wars Influence Natural Resource Production

Sara Mitchell — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:46:46 PDT

Domestic Law Goes Global: How Domestic Legal Traditions Influence International Courts

Sara Mitchell et al. — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:44:54 PDT

Norms Still Matter: What the Systemic Democratic Peace Can Teach us about Conflict Processes

Sara Mitchell — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:42:12 PDT

Constructing Theoretical Indices: The ICOW Project.

Sara Mitchell — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:39:30 PDT

Time Series Analysis: Method and Substance: Introductory Workshop on Time Series Analysis

Sara Mitchell — Thu, 29 Sep 2011 08:36:54 PDT

Contentious Issues as Opportunities for Diversionary Behavior

Sara Mitchell et al. — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 11:58:16 PDT

Scholars have long been fascinated by the potential for leaders to engage in diversionary behavior, where leaders use militarized force abroad to distract their publics from various forms of domestic economic and political turmoil. While there is some evidence that diversionary behavior depends on contextual factors such as regime type, opportunities to use force, and interstate rivalry, we do not know whether and how diversionary strategies are used by states to resolve contentious issues. In fact, most diversionary studies compare the initiation of militarized disputes or crises to non-initiation cases, without considering the slew of interstate interactions in between these extremes, where states have an ongoing contested issue that gets managed with both peaceful and militarized conflict management tools. In this article, we extend theories of diversionary behavior to the context of issue claims, including competing claims to territory, maritime areas, and cross-border rivers as coded by the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) project. Thinking about an ongoing issue claim as a potential diversionary opportunity, we examine the empirical effect of domestic turmoil on the militarization of issue claims. We consider whether issue diversionary behavior is conditioned by the salience level of the issue, previous wars over the issue in question, and whether the disputing states are involved in a broader rivalry. In a broad sample of directed dyad-years, we find that states are more likely to initiate militarized disputes if they are involved in contentious issues claims. We also find that states involved in issue claims are more likely to initiate a militarized dispute if they have high levels of inflation and if they are contesting over highly salient and previously militarized issues.

Might Makes Right or Right Makes Might? Two Systemic Democratic Peace Tales

Ewan Harrison et al. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:40:56 PST

In a path-breaking article, Wade Huntley (1996) reinterpreted Immanuel Kant’s pacific union as a systemic phenomenon. Huntley’s argument spawned a new wave of inquiry into the evolutionary expansion of the democratic peace, with several empirical studies finding a positive relationship between global democracy and systemic peace (e.g. Crescenzi and Enterline 1999; Gleditsch and Hegre 1997; Kadera, Crescenzi, and Shannon 2003; Mitchell, Gates, and Hegre 1999). Yet, there are many possible theoretical explanations of this aggregate relationship. In this paper, we compare two broad theoretical tales of the systemic democratic peace. The first approach, “might makes right”, emphasizes the importance of authority for creating liberal peace, especially the role played by a democratic hegemon and liberal major powers. The second approach, “right makes might”, traces the evolution of the systemic democratic peace to shifts in morality and liberal norms, drawing from work by Rawls (1999) and Wendt (1999). We compare and contrast these two broad theoretical tales, and argue that both “might” and “right” are important to the dynamic spread of the democratic peace. We then consider possible tensions between “might” and “right” based arguments highlighted by the recent Iraq War. We argue that it is grossly over-simplistic to equate the theoretical arguments being put forward by systemic democratic peace theory with the policy prescriptions put forward by the current US administration. As an alternative to both the assertion of a general right to coercive intervention by liberal states and blanket opposition to democracy as a universal project, we present the case for a middle ground, advocating the prudent use of material levers of power by liberal states to promote democracy overseas.

How Democracies Keep the Peace: Contextual Factors That Influence Conflict Management Strategies

Glynn Ellis et al. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:40:51 PST

Some studies find that democratic states are more amenable to third party forms of conflict management, while other studies indicate that democracies are able to resolve contentious issues on their own through bilateral negotiations. Using data from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) Project, the authors investigate peaceful and militarized conflict management strategies that democratic states employ to resolve contentious issues. Theoretically, the authors focus on how militarized conflict history, relative capabilities, and issue salience influence the tools of conflict management that democratic states employ. Empirical analyses suggest that democratic dyads employ bilateral negotiations more often to resolve contentious issues when the issue has been militarized previously, when the issue is more salient, and when they are facing an equal adversary. Democratic dyads seek out non-binding third party settlement more frequently in situations of power preponderance than non-democratic dyads, although binding forms of third party settlement occur most often in relatively equal democratic dyads. Pairs of democracies are more likely to employ militarized conflict management strategies when they have resorted to force over the issue previously, when the issue is highly salient, and when they are evenly matched.

Cooperation in World Politics: The Constraining and Constitutive Effects of International Organizations

Sara Mitchell — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:40:46 PST

Many scholars accept the important role international organizations (IOs) play in facilitating cooperation among states in world politics, yet there is disagreement about the theoretical mechanisms that best account for the positive correlation between shared IO memberships and cooperation. Institutionalists and Rationalists treat state preferences as fixed and emphasize the influence of IO memberships on interstate bargaining. In this view, IOs act as constraints, because while they help states negotiate more efficiently (with fewer costs & greater information), they do not significantly alter states’ preferences. Constructivists, on the other hand, recognize that organizations can alter member states’ identities and interests, and that long and deep commitments to international organizations can have constitutive effects on member states’ preferences and behavior. In this paper, I derive several hypotheses about the constraining and constitutive effects of IOs on member state behavior from existing theoretical arguments in the IR literature and evaluate these claims empirically using data on contentious issues from the Issue Correlates of War Project. Empirical analyses show that while shared IO memberships (frequency and duration) neither prevent the onset of new contentious issues nor promote more frequent peaceful settlement attempts, they do decrease the use of militarized force and produce more successful negotiation attempts. Disputants are much more likely to reach and comply with agreements to end contentious issue claims when they share more frequent and durable memberships in international organizations.

Ruling the Sea: Institutionalization and Privatization of the Global Ocean Commons

Sara Mitchell et al. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:40:40 PST

Maritime issues have gained international prominence in recent decades, fueled by the decline in global fishing catches, the scramble for oil and mineral resources, and states’ desire to lay sovereign claims to their maritime spaces. States are willing to use militarized force to defend their maritime claims, as the UK-Iceland "Cod Wars" and militarized confrontations between Greece and Turkey in the Aegean Sea demonstrate. This paper evaluates two primary mechanisms for resolving maritime conflicts: 1) the creation of private ownership of maritime zones in the form of Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), and 2) the creation of an institution, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to establish standards for maritime claims and the resolution of disputes. We evaluate the effects of UNCLOS and EEZs on the peaceful and militarized management of maritime claims in the Western Hemisphere and Europe (1900-2001) and the long-run effects of privatization and institutionalization on marine fishing stocks (1950-2003). Our analyses suggest that declared EEZs work efficiently for helping states to reach agreements over maritime claims in bilateral negotiations, while membership in UNCLOS prevents the outbreak of new claims and promotes more frequent third party management efforts. We also find a U-shaped relationship between marine catches and the duration of UNCLOS/EEZ commitments, indicating that fish stocks initially decline and then recover positively after the implementation of conservation policies.

A Supply Side Theory of Mediation

Mark J.C. Crescenzi et al. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 12:40:34 PST

We develop and test a theory of the supply side of third party conflict management. Building on an existing formal model of mediation (Kydd 2003), we consider several factors that increase the pool of potential neutral mediators and the frequency of mediators’ efforts to manage interstate conflicts. First, we argue that democratic mediators face greater audience costs for deception in the conflict management process because the media in democratic states is more likely to uncover attempts by democratic mediators to provide false information. Second, we argue that information in the global mediation marketplace becomes more accurate as the international system becomes more democratic because there is a wider network of vigilant free presses, which increases the costs of deception for potential mediators. Third, as disputants’ ties to international organizations increase, this also raises the costs that mediators incur for dishonesty in the conflict management process because these institutions provide more frequent and accurate information about the disputants’ capabilities and resolve. Empirical analyses of data on contentious issues (1816-2001) provide support for our theory, with third party conflict management occurring more frequently if a potential mediator is a democracy, and as the average global democracy level and the number of shared IO memberships between disputants rises. We also find that powerful states serve as mediators more often, and that trade ties, alliances, issue salience, and distance influence third party decisions to mediate.