Suchergebnisse

The peace through trade hypothesis receives extensive support from a large empirical literature. However, extant research does not isolate whether this relationship holds for states that have fought in the past, or whether its influence following armed disputes isdependent upon the ways in which states settle their conflicts. Additionally, although recent research finds that imposed settlements are more pacifying than other forms of political settlement, these studies tend not to isolate factors associated with variation inthe stability of imposed settlements. In this article, we examine how settlements condition the influence of trade on conflict recurrence, both to overcome a limitation in extant studies of trade and conflict, which tend to ignore the way states settle prior disputes, andto further an understanding of how post-conflict state interaction varies by (and within) settlement type. Looking at dyadic trade and recurrent conflict from 1885 to 2000, we find that imposed settlements foster a pacifying effect of trade, while negotiated settlementsand failures to reach settlement lead to relationships in which trade has crosscutting effects on the stability of peace, resulting in an overall null effect of trade on conflict recurrence. (International Interactions/ FUB 2011)

Citizens hold opinions about what kinds of foreign policy their government should pursue. Because foreign policy often has geographically specific domestic consequences, we expect opinions to vary with the locality of its impact. In this article, we examine whether individual support for US foreign policy to promote democracy abroad depends on exactly where the policy's domestic impact will occur. We expect individuals to favor policies that bestow local benefits while opposing those that impose local costs. Accordingly, we argue that support for proposed democracy aid grants will be higher when such aid benefits local firms and organizations. Conversely, we expect that opposition to proposed economic sanctions in the form of development aid cuts will be higher when the associated domestic costs stemming from lost jobs fall locally. Using the results from an original survey experiment, we find evidence that a positive local impact of aid increases support for and reduces opposition to democracy promotion, while a negative local impact of sanctions reduces indifference and increases opposition to punitive policy in the case of democratic backsliding.

Does the attention of human rights organizations limit exports from rights-abusing states? This article examines how naming and shaming by human rights organizations (HROs) conditions the influence of human rights abuse on exports, and argues that human rights abuse alone is insufficient to damage a state's exports. However, as attention to abuse via HRO shaming increases, abuse has an increasingly negative impact on exports. Importantly, this relationship is also conditional on the respect for human rights among importing states; human rights abuse, even if it is shamed, has no effect when importers are similarly abusive. Empirical tests utilizing gravity models of trade incorporating data on physical integrity rights abuse and HRO shaming in 1990–2008 yield strong support for our expectations.

Despite significant research on the role that media coverage of human suffering has on foreign policymaking, no study to date has examined the news media's impact on the use of economic sanctions, a widely used policy tool to address humanitarian problems. This study explores whether news media coverage of human rights abuses in Newsweek and the New York Times increases the likelihood of US economic sanctions. Synthesizing insights from agenda-setting theory with recent work on the domestic origins of sanction policy, we argue that press attention to human rights violations increases the threat and imposition of sanctions by mobilizing the public to pressure leaders to take action against abusive regimes. We find support for this argument in statistical tests of US sanction cases between the 1976 and 2000 period. The results also indicate that the media's effect is conditioned by US strategic ties to potential targets: the effect of critical press coverage is stronger for US non-allies than allies. Further, this conditional effect occurs even though abusive allies receive more media attention than abusive non-allies. Overall, this manuscript shows that nonstate actors can have an important role on foreign policy decision making generally, and specifically that news media influence the US decision to use economic sanctions. Our analyses also suggest that leaders balance the public's demand for action with the security imperative to maintain good relations with allies. Adapted from the source document.

In this article, we argue that the composition of trade is an important determinant of vulnerability to sanctions. Trade composition has changed considerably over the years since World War II, with growth in intra-industry trade: the exchange of similar, often branded, commodities that follows from varied consumer preferences and economies of scale. Conversely, we see relatively less of the traditional inter-industry trade: exchange of distinct and often homogeneous commodities that follows from comparative advantage. We demonstrate that targets maintaining higher proportions of intra-industry trade with senders benefit from greater resilience against economic coercion and thus are less likely to acquiesce to sanction threats. Importantly, however, we contend that bilateral intra-industry trade does not necessarily prevent the onset of sanction threats. Statistical tests of sanction threat cases and directed dyad-years spanning 1962–2005 support our expectations.