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In this article, I synthesize a number of recent studies exploring how exports affect human rights, highlighting a common implication that this relationship is conditional on how exports are associated with leaders' relative costs of repression and accommodation. Beginning with this synthesis, I develop a theory demonstrating how the composition of exports affects human rights via its impact on leader expectations. More diverse exports promote continued growth and prosperity, provide leaders with greater resources, and suggest conditions less conducive to severe dissent, all of which reduce the relative costs of accommodation. Repression is likely to threaten the benefits otherwise associated with greater export diversity; thus its relative cost increases amid greater export diversity. I test this theory using commodity-level data from the United Nations Comtrade database to create a country-year-level measure of export diversity. Statistical analyses spanning 1981 to 2009 support my expectation. My results are robust to sample restrictions and the use of instrumental variables.

A growing literature examines the link between preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and peace among member states. However, despite the potentially competitive nature of these agreements, there has been little research examining whether and how PTAs could induce hostilities between members and nonmembers. In this article, I argue that dyadic conflict is more likely when one dyad member's exclusive PTA with a third party results in lower exports for the dyad member that is excluded from the agreement. Importantly, I contend that trade creating as well as trade diverting PTAs can have this effect. I use a triadic extension of the gravity model of trade to estimate how an exclusive PTA influences the exports of nonmembers relative to PTA members. Using these estimates in statistical tests of dyadic militarized interstate dispute onset spanning 1961 to 2000, I find that PTA-induced trade distortions are associated with a higher likelihood of conflict between members and nonmembers.

Most studies of the link between dyadic trade and militarized conflict examine the extent of trade interaction. However, interaction measures do not account for the impact of cutting off trade (i.e., exit costs). In this article, I highlight the link between exit costs, the cost of conflict, and 'the spoils of conquest,' arguing that one state's exit costs are associated with higher incidence of dyadic conflict when its trade partner's exit costs are low. However, its exit costs become less aggravating-and eventually pacifying-as its trade partner's exit costs increase. I test this argument by estimating import demand and export supply elasticities, developing yearly exit cost measures for directed dyads, 1984-2000. Statistical tests confirm that unilaterally high exit costs are aggravating, but that jointly high exit costs are pacifying, a pattern most prominent for trade in strategic commodities. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

Although scholars have suggested that sanctions could have an international symbolic effect in which they inform third parties of sender preferences and resolve, studies have not examined whether and when sanctions against one state lead other states to change similar proscribed behavior. In this paper, I examine whether abusive regimes change their respect for physical integrity rights when they witness US human rights sanctions against third parties. Synthesizing contributions from the literatures on sanction effectiveness, reputation and human rights promotion, I develop a new theory asserting that human rights sanctions can motivate leaders in non-sanctioned states to improve their human rights practices proactively - or at least to prevent worsened abuse - when they perceive themselves as sufficiently similar to the sanction target. I find support for my expectations in stratified Cox proportional hazards models using data spanning 1976-2000. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Ltd.]

Although scholars have suggested that sanctions could have an international symbolic effect in which they inform third parties of sender preferences and resolve, studies have not examined whether and when sanctions against one state lead other states to change similar proscribed behavior. In this paper, I examine whether abusive regimes change their respect for physical integrity rights when they witness US human rights sanctions against third parties. Synthesizing contributions from the literatures on sanction effectiveness, reputation and human rights promotion, I develop a new theory asserting that human rights sanctions can motivate leaders in non-sanctioned states to improve their human rights practices proactively—or at least to prevent worsened abuse—when they perceive themselves as sufficiently similar to the sanction target. I find support for my expectations in stratified Cox proportional hazards models using data spanning 1976–2000.

Most studies of the link between dyadic trade and militarized conflict examine the extent of trade interaction. However, interaction measures do not account for the impact of cutting off trade (i.e., exit costs). In this article, I highlight the link between exit costs, the cost of conflict, and "the spoils of conquest," arguing that one state's exit costs are associated with higher incidence of dyadic conflict when its trade partner's exit costs are low. However, its exit costs become less aggravating—and eventually pacifying—as its trade partner's exit costs increase. I test this argument by estimating import demand and export supply elasticities, developing yearly exit cost measures for directed dyads, 1984–2000. Statistical tests confirm that unilaterally high exit costs are aggravating, but that jointly high exit costs are pacifying, a pattern most prominent for trade in strategic commodities.

A growing literature maintains that trade is pacifying to interstate relations, and recent work on trade networks suggests that this pacifying effect extends to indirect trade ties. In this article, it is argued that third-party trade can also have an aggravating effect within dyads, by threatening to alter the dyadic balance of capabilities. For the state trading outside the dyad, trade gains from third parties provide incentives to demand change in the dyadic status quo and finance violent conflict when dyadic disputes arise. For the state whose dyadic partner trades with third parties, potential for the trading state to grow increasingly more powerful encourages action to prevent erosion of the non-trading state's relative power. These aggravating effects are conditional, however, on dyadic political similarity, as concerns for relative capability shifts decrease when states do not view their dyadic partners as threats. Hypotheses derived from this argument are tested on data spanning 1885 to 2000. Results support these hypotheses, suggesting important implications for the literature on trade and conflict. When extending the relative gains arguments associated with realism beyond the dyad, a clear, yet conditional, aggravating effect of third-party trade emerges.