Goliath's Curse: Coercive Threats and Asymmetric Power

2010 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 627-660 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd S. Sechser
Keyword(s):  
Military Power ◽  
International Crisis ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Crisis Bargaining ◽  
Side Payments ◽  
Asymmetric Power ◽  
Target States ◽  
Compellent Threats ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Reputation Building

AbstractStates typically issue compellent threats against considerably weaker adversaries, yet their threats often fail. Why? Expanding on a standard model of international crisis bargaining, I argue that a theory of reputation-building can help shed light on this puzzle. The model casts reputation as a strategic problem, showing that challengers issuing compellent threats have incentives to anticipate the reputation costs that target states incur when appeasing aggressors. If challengers can recognize these costs and offset them with side payments or smaller demands, then even reputation-conscious targets will acquiesce. I argue, however, that military strength contributes to information problems that make challengers more likely to underestimate their targets' reputation costs and insufficiently compensate them. In this way, military power can undermine the effectiveness of compellent threats. The logic is illustrated by the 1939 Russo-Finnish crisis, and the argument's implications for the study of coercive diplomacy are explored.

Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail

2013 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd S. Sechser ◽  
Matthew Fuhrmann
Keyword(s):  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Strong Support ◽  
Nuclear Deterrence ◽  
Selection Effects ◽  
International Crisis ◽  
Crisis Bargaining ◽  
Nuclear Age ◽  
Compellent Threats ◽  
Significant Attention

AbstractDo nuclear weapons offer coercive advantages in international crisis bargaining? Almost seventy years into the nuclear age, we still lack a complete answer to this question. While scholars have devoted significant attention to questions about nuclear deterrence, we know comparatively little about whether nuclear weapons can help compel states to change their behavior. This study argues that, despite their extraordinary power, nuclear weapons are uniquely poor instruments of compellence. Compellent threats are more likely to be effective under two conditions: first, if a challenger can credibly threaten to seize the item in dispute; and second, if enacting the threat would entail few costs to the challenger. Nuclear weapons, however, meet neither of these conditions. They are neither useful tools of conquest nor low-cost tools of punishment. Using a new dataset of more than 200 militarized compellent threats from 1918 to 2001, we find strong support for our theory: compellent threats from nuclear states are no more likely to succeed, even after accounting for possible selection effects in the data. While nuclear weapons may carry coercive weight as instruments of deterrence, it appears that these effects do not extend to compellence.

Reputations and Signaling in Coercive Bargaining

2016 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 318-345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Todd S. Sechser
Keyword(s):  
Status Quo ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
The Status ◽  
Building Behavior ◽  
Empirical Tests ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Reputation Building

When do states defend their reputations? States sometimes pay high costs to protect their reputations, but other times willingly tarnish them. What accounts for the difference? This article investigates reputation building in the context of coercive diplomacy. In coercive bargaining, giving in to a challenge can harm one’s reputation. I argue, however, that states value their reputations less—and therefore are more willing to capitulate to coercive threats—when they do not expect future challenges. Using a data set of more than 200 coercive threats, empirical tests find support for this logic. Coercers that are constrained in their ability to initiate future challenges exhibit higher rates of coercive success in the status quo. The results shed light on the causes of reputation-building behavior and add an important element to our understanding of the dynamics of coercive diplomacy.

Humanitarian Intervention and Non-Ideal Theory

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ramon Das
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Humanitarian Intervention ◽  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Military Power ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Human Rights Abuses ◽  
Target State ◽  
Target States

This chapter argues that the philosophical debate around humanitarian intervention would be improved if it were less ‘ideal-theoretic’. It identifies two ideal-theoretic assumptions. One, in target states where humanitarian intervention is being considered, there are two distinct and easily identified groups: ‘bad guys’ committing serious human rights abuses, and innocent civilians against whom the abuses are being committed. Two, external to the target state in question, there are suitably qualified ‘good guys’—prospective interveners who possess both the requisite military power and moral integrity. If the assumptions hold, the prospects for successful humanitarian intervention are much greater. As a contrast, some possible non-ideal assumptions are that (i) there are many bad guys in a civil war, and (ii) the good guy intervener is itself supporting some of the bad guys. If these non-ideal assumptions hold, prospects for successful humanitarian intervention are small.

scholarly journals Audience costs, domestic economy and coercive diplomacy

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 205316801878711
Author(s):  
Akisato Suzuki
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
The State ◽  
Domestic Economy ◽  
Public Opinion Research ◽  
International Crisis ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Audience Costs ◽  
Economy Change

Does the state of the domestic economy change the size of the effect of audience costs? As public opinion research has shown, citizens assess the performance of their leaders based not only on foreign policy, but also on the domestic economy. Thus, if leaders are subject to audience costs, they should be even less able to afford failure in an international crisis when the economy is performing badly than when the economy is doing well. As a result, such leaders should be even more able to make their threats credible and, therefore, are more likely to be successful in coercive diplomacy. This novel prediction finds no empirical support in a replication study using Moon and Souva (2016). I discuss possible reasons for this result and avenues for further research.

scholarly journals THE DETERMINANTS OF TRANSNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS REPORTING IN ASIA

2018 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-227
Author(s):  
Dongwook Kim
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Regime Type ◽  
Information Collection ◽  
Military Power ◽  
International Solidarity ◽  
Human Rights Regime ◽  
East And Southeast Asia ◽  
Local Actors ◽  
Target States ◽  
National Governments

AbstractWhy do some national governments in East and Southeast Asia receive more transnational scrutiny and pressure on their domestic human rights practices than others? This article argues that transnational human rights reporting is more likely to target states where domestic activists and victims are densely connected with human rights international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) through a local membership base. Human rights INGOs increase social demands and opportunities for transnational human rights reporting by strengthening local actors’ capabilities to leverage human rights and international solidarity as an advocacy strategy, and by mobilizing them for monitoring and information collection on the ground. Event count analyses of 25 Asian states from 1977 to 2008 find robust support for the theory, using new data on Amnesty International's human rights reporting and human rights INGOs’ local membership base, and controlling for government respect for human rights, regime type, military power, and other factors.

Sanctions and the insurance industry: challenges, risks and opportunities

2014 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 429-451
Author(s):  
Matthew Moran ◽  
Daniel Salisbury
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Insurance Industry ◽  
State Level ◽  
Coercive Diplomacy ◽  
Industrial Sectors ◽  
Target States ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Restrictive Measures ◽  
The Impact

Scholars and policymakers tend to see economic sanctions as an important tool of coercive diplomacy, even if the effectiveness of sanctions in changing the policies of target states remains highly contested. Though much of the research on sanctions focuses on their effects at the state level, this article argues that analyzing their effectiveness must begin with the industrial sectors they are meant to affect. Through analysis of restrictive measures currently in place against Iran, this article explores the impact of sanctions at the working level within the insurance industry, drawing on qualitative data gathered as part of a recent workshop funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and industry partners.

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