Suchergebnisse

How do domestic politics in the donor country affect foreign aid policy? Scholars have analyzed the impact that political parties and domestic institutions play in shaping aid effort. Building on this previous work, we examine the impact of domestic politics on the channels chosen for aid distribution. In this paper, we explore whether and how the ideological composition of donor governments affects the method of delivering aid to recipient states. Specifically, we argue that more liberal governments are more inclined to provide aid via nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), while more conservative governments prefer to give aid through direct bilateral government-to-government channels. These choices, we argue, reflect the different goals that right and left parties pursue through their allocation of foreign aid. Our results indicate that left governments are more inclined to channel aid through NGOs in an attempt to directly implement poverty alleviation strategies. Alternatively, right wing governments place a greater emphasis on channeling aid through recipient state governments to promote the economic interests of their constituents and the geopolitical interests of the state.

With a lower risk of casualties and a high degree of precision, air power is an attractive foreign policy tool to powerful states that have increasingly relied upon it in recent years. This paper presents newly collected data on uses and effectiveness of air power in interstate wars from 1914 to 2003. The dataset provides more complete and comparable cases that can be useful in answering questions of not only the coercive effectiveness of air power, but also of the decision to use air power in conflict, of ethical concerns arising from the use of air power, and of the interaction of air power with other military and foreign policy tools. In addition to introducing the dataset and discussing trends in the data, a preliminary empirical application is provided, re-examining the relationship between strategy and air power effectiveness.

Few systematic studies of US uses of force treat the inherent attributes of presidents as the key causal factors; nonetheless, the fact that individual leaders matter is evident to the public, the media, and foreign policymakers in other countries. This study advances the development of First Image explanations of conflict by empirically investigating the relationship between presidential personality and the variation surrounding foreign policy decision making. The importance of this type of variance has been understudied in international relations, and the consistency of leaders' policy decisions has important strategic implications for interstate conflict. Relying on Big Five measures of US presidents' personality traits, we find that leaders who have a high tendency toward Excitement Seeking are more likely to use force to carry out their foreign policy objectives, while those who are more Open to Action exhibit a greater variance around their foreign policy decision making. In sum, the personality traits of individual leaders influence not only the choices they make, but the consistency of their choices, which has important consequences for US foreign policy. Adapted from the source document.

Why are some peacekeeping mandates broad and expansive while others are narrow and well defined? Does variation in mandate flexibility reflect the needs inherent in resolving the conflict or the political interests of powerful states? The modern thread of debate surrounding UN action focuses on whether the political interests of the Permanent Five (P5) members in the Security Council or the stated goals of the institution as a whole drive UN behavior. While most analyses focus on where the UN intervenes to assess the political 'pull' that member states exert on the institution, we examine variation in operational latitude across UN peacekeeping in war-torn states. Our analysis offers three main results. Powerful states do constrain international bureaucracies; however, bureaucratic independence varies with the intrinsic interests of the P5. Further, heterogeneity across powerful state preferences systematically affects bureaucratic flexibility in peacekeeping. Adapted from the source document.

Economic sanctions have been referred to as a blunt instrument that the international community has often wielded without full consideration of the impact that these measures will have on the population of the targeted countries, particularly the weakest elements of society. Case studies of sanctions against Cuba, Iraq, and Yugoslavia have demonstrated the impact that sanctions can have on the availability of food, clean water, and medicine, causing many to conclude that all sanctions have extensive public health consequences. In this article, we examine the generalizability of these conclusions in a quantitative cross-national study of sanctions and their public health effects. Additionally, we compare these effects to those associated with both civil and interstate conflicts as critics have recently suggested that sanctions are not a humane alternative to armed warfare. We find that when sanctions have a large economic effect on the target they can have severe public health consequences. These consequences are substantively similar to those associated with major military conflicts. However, when sanctions have little or no economic effect on the target, they also have no substantive effect on public health. Building on recent work to explore the human consequences of war, this work also helps to demonstrate the importance of smart sanctions and humanitarian exemptions in sanctions policy.

According to skew selection theory, working citizens who build wealth and, at the same time, share portions of their wealth with those in need are more likely to survive economic downturns than citizens who hoard wealth. In this article, skew selection is employed as a theoretical framework to support governmental efforts to develop social policies that protect the income of working citizens and, at the same time, provide for vulnerable, non-working children and elders. To illustrate its applicability, the social policies of Japan, Sweden and the United States—all of which are challenged by decaying ratios of working to non-working citizens—are compared through the lens of skew selection. Policy recommendations are discussed.

According to skew selection theory, working citizens who build wealth and, at the same time, share portions of their wealth with those in need are more likely to survive economic downturns than citizens who hoard wealth. In this article, skew selection is employed as a theoretical framework to support governmental efforts to develop social policies that protect the income of working citizens and, at the same time, provide for vulnerable, non-working children and elders. To illustrate its applicability, the social policies of Japan, Sweden and the United States—all of which are challenged by decaying ratios of working to non-working citizens—are compared through the lens of skew selection. Policy recommendations are discussed.

According to skew selection theory, working citizens who build wealth and, at the same time, share portions of their wealth with those in need are more likely to survive economic downturns than citizens who hoard wealth. In this article, skew selection is employed as a theoretical framework to support governmental efforts to develop social policies that protect the income of working citizens and, at the same time, provide for vulnerable, non-working children and elders. To illustrate its applicability, the social policies of Japan, Sweden and the United States—all of which are challenged by decaying ratios of working to non-working citizens—are compared through the lens of skew selection. Policy recommendations are discussed.