Suchergebnisse

Research on the `democratic peace' has received considerable attention in the last few years. Democracies, though, are often thrown together when examining the propensity of different regime types to become engaged in international conflict. Yet, democratic governments vary dramatically across nation-states. Whether it be presidential versus parliamentary, or multi-party versus single-party, democratic states clearly differ in the structure of their governing institutions. This article examines the relationship between government type, domestic political opposition, and the threat, show or use of military force. The analysis finds that Western parliamentary governments are rarely involved in militarized interstate disputes, but when they are they tend to be the targets of aggression by non-democratic states. Furthermore, the evidence suggests that these democratic governments are much more likely to reciprocate disputes when their opponent is a non-democracy. Reciprocation, though, also tends to be influenced by the type of government in power during a dispute. Coalition democratic governments, rather than single-party governments, are much more likely to reciprocate militarized disputes. In fact, the findings suggest that coalition governments are more likely to reciprocate disputes in general, and particularly more likely to reciprocate with the actual use of military force. The results also suggest that the level of polarization of a parliamentary government tends to decrease the probability of dispute reciprocation.

Maritime piracy - like civil war, terrorism, and organized crime - is a problem of weak states. Surprisingly, though, pirates do not operate in the least-governed areas of weak states. 'Pirate Lands' addresses this puzzle by explaining why some coastal communities experience more pirate attacks in their vicinity than others.

Existing studies of piracy focus attention on the institutional determinants of maritime piracy, but neglect variation in governments' reach over territory. We argue that the effect of state capacity on piracy is a function of states' ability to extend authority over the country's entire territory. We expect that government reach—a function of geographic factors such as the distance between a country's capital and its coastline—mediates the effect of state capacity on piracy. Weak governments allow for the planning and implementation of attacks and reduce the risk of capture, but particularly so if sufficient distance separates pirates from political authority. An empirical analysis of country-year data on maritime piracy collected by the International Maritime Bureau for the 1995–2013 period shows that capital–coastline distance mediates the effect of institutional fragility on piracy as hypothesized. These results remain robust for alternative operationalizations of state capacity and reach. In addition, the models perform well in terms of predictive power, forecasting piracy quite accurately for 2013. The expectations and evidence presented in this paper help explain why states with intermediate levels of state capacity but low levels of reach—such as Indonesia, Tanzania or Venezuela—struggle with substantial incidence of piracy.

There is an inherent connection between the party cover and policy availability theories that has been largely overlooked by the presidential use of force literature. Party cover views the president's party strength in Congress as the prominent structural source shaping presidential incentives by diffusing responsibility in foreign policy. But policy availability adds to this view by explaining how such domestic conditions shape the variety of choices (or tools) presidents have for demonstrating political leadership. Policy availability anticipates that presidential incentives to use the Constitution's Article II authority across foreign policy operations will vary depending on the president's relationship with Congress. This analysis provides insight into claims made by policy availability arguments regarding the role of Congress in explaining presidential decisions to initiate military interventions. The findings point to important differences in the effects of Congress on presidential decisions for low‐risk versus high‐risk military missions. We find that the president's ability to legislate decreases the likelihood of humanitarian interventions. In addition, we find that as the president's relationship with Congress becomes more legislatively productive, presidents seem significantly more drawn toward high‐ risk military interventions. We infer from these findings that policy availability represents a powerful motivation in the president's calculation to engage in foreign policy interventions.