Biding time versus timely retreat: Asymmetric dependence, issue salience, and conflict duration

Journal of Peace Research ◽

10.1177/0022343320918917 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 002234332091891

Author(s):

Yuleng Zeng

Keyword(s):

Strong Support ◽

Issue Salience ◽

Economic Costs ◽

Economic Dependence ◽

International Crisis ◽

Asymmetric Dependence ◽

Conflict Duration ◽

Conflict Initiation ◽

Militarized Interstate Dispute ◽

Informational Effect

Trade-conflict studies focus on whether and how economic interdependence suppresses interstate conflict initiation. Meanwhile, formal theories of war show that conflict initiation is inherently tied to its termination. In this article, I seek to bridge the two literature by utilizing a war of attrition model to formalize the relationship between economic dependence and conflict duration. I theorize that the strategic calculation ultimately comes down to a trade-off between biding one’s time and retreating in a timely manner. In the context of economic attrition, states weigh the relative costs of suffering an additional round of economic disruption against the potential benefits of winning the disputed good. As such, economic dependence can have both coercive and informational effects and these effects are contingent upon issue salience. When the issue salience is low, the coercive effect dominates; states are more likely to quit conflicts as they suffer proportionally larger economic costs. When the issue salience is high enough, the informational effect can kick in; states are less likely to quit conflicts with increasing economic costs. I test these implications on the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) and the Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) data, finding strong support for the informational effect and suggestive evidence for the coercive one.

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Advancing agenda building

The Agenda Setting Journal ◽

10.1075/asj.17008.moh ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 84-102

Author(s):

Tiffany L. Mohr ◽

Lauren D. Furey

Keyword(s):

Experimental Design ◽

Public Relations ◽

Strong Support ◽

Agenda Building ◽

Causal Relationships ◽

Issue Salience ◽

Public Relations Practitioners ◽

The Public ◽

Attribute Salience ◽

Political Public Relations

Abstract This study tested the three levels of agenda building using an experimental design to identify possible causal relationships. This research contributes to the study and practice of political public relations by examining the process by which an issue is created and transferred to the public. Results indicate various support for agenda building including overall issue salience and issue attribute salience. The study also tested the compelling arguments hypothesis and found strong support for attribute salience contributing to overall issue salience. These findings are important for political public relations practitioners as it demonstrates that contextual issue attributes increase issue salience for the public.

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Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail

International Organization ◽

10.1017/s0020818312000392 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 67 (1) ◽

pp. 173-195 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

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.

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Autocracies and the international sources of cooperation

Journal of Peace Research ◽

10.1177/0022343316687018 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 54 (3) ◽

pp. 412-426 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Soumyajit Mazumder

Keyword(s):

International Institutions ◽

Dispute Settlement ◽

International System ◽

Empirical Support ◽

Trade Agreements ◽

Preferential Trade Agreements ◽

Domestic Institutions ◽

Structural Position ◽

Conflict Initiation ◽

Militarized Interstate Dispute

Under what conditions do autocracies peacefully settle disputes? Existing studies tend to focus on the domestic factors that shape conflict initiation. In this article, I show how domestic institutions interact with international institutions to produce more cooperative outcomes. Particularly, this study argues that as autocracies become more central in the network of liberal institutions such as preferential trade agreements (PTAs), they are less likely to initiate a militarized interstate dispute (MID). As a state becomes more democratic, the effect of centrality within the PTA network on the peaceful dispute settlement dissipates. This is because greater embeddedness in the PTA regime is associated with enhanced transparency for autocracies, which allows autocracies to mitigate ex ante informational problems in dispute resolution. Using a dataset of MID initiation from 1965 to 1999, this study finds robust empirical support for the aforementioned hypothesis. Moreover, the results are substantively significant. Further analysis into the causal mechanisms at work provides evidence in favor of the information mechanism. Autocrats who are more embedded in the PTA network tend to have higher levels of economic transparency and economic transparency itself is associated with lower rates of conflict initiation. The results suggest that an autocrat’s structural position within the international system can help to peacefully settle its disputes.

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A Crisis-Based Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition

Canadian Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s000842390001979x ◽

1998 ◽

Vol 31 (2) ◽

pp. 263-283 ◽

Cited By ~ 20

Author(s):

Jean-Sébastien Rioux

Keyword(s):

Quantitative Analysis ◽

International Relations ◽

Strong Support ◽

Democratic Peace ◽

International Crisis ◽

Audience Costs ◽

Empirical Law ◽

Crisis Behavior ◽

Project Data

AbstractIt has often been said that the closest thing we have to an empirical law in international relations is that democracies do not fight against each other. This study adds to the literature on democratic peace by focusing on the crisis behaviour of democracies and nondemocracies. International Crisis Behavior (ICB) Project data are used to conduct a quantitative analysis of states' crisis activity from 1918 to 1988. Strong support emerges for the three hypotheses of the study. First, it is clear that democracies initiate fewer crises than nondemocracies. However, democracies tend to escalate crises to higher levels of severity. Finally, democracies eventually win the crises in which they become involved. The conclusion is that democratic leaders face strong incentives to “select” winnable crises against nondemocratic states because of the audience costs they face, but when the opponent is another democracy, the domestic audience expects leaders to compromise.

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Amyloid β-peptide and Alzheimer's disease

Essays in Biochemistry ◽

10.1042/bse0560099 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 56 ◽

pp. 99-110 ◽

Cited By ~ 15

Author(s):

David Allsop ◽

Jennifer Mayes

Keyword(s):

Alzheimer’S Disease ◽

Alzheimer's Disease ◽

Senile Plaques ◽

Strong Support ◽

Amyloid Β ◽

Amyloid Β Peptide ◽

Amyloid Cascade Hypothesis ◽

Sequence Of Events ◽

Aβ Amyloid ◽

Amyloid Cascade

One of the hallmarks of AD (Alzheimer's disease) is the formation of senile plaques in the brain, which contain fibrils composed of Aβ (amyloid β-peptide). According to the ‘amyloid cascade’ hypothesis, the aggregation of Aβ initiates a sequence of events leading to the formation of neurofibrillary tangles, neurodegeneration, and on to the main symptom of dementia. However, emphasis has now shifted away from fibrillar forms of Aβ and towards smaller and more soluble ‘oligomers’ as the main culprit in AD. The present chapter commences with a brief introduction to the disease and its current treatment, and then focuses on the formation of Aβ from the APP (amyloid precursor protein), the genetics of early-onset AD, which has provided strong support for the amyloid cascade hypothesis, and then on the development of new drugs aimed at reducing the load of cerebral Aβ, which is still the main hope for providing a more effective treatment for AD in the future.

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Instrumental and Ideological Union Commitment: Longitudinal Assessment of Construct Validity

European Journal of Psychological Assessment ◽

10.1027//1015-5759.17.2.98 ◽

2001 ◽

Vol 17 (2) ◽

pp. 98-111 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Anders Sjöberg ◽

Magnus Sverke

Keyword(s):

Construct Validity ◽

Temporal Stability ◽

Strong Support ◽

Internal Consistency Reliability ◽

Measurement Model ◽

Two Dimensions ◽

Model Parameters ◽

Longitudinal Assessment ◽

Union Commitment ◽

Union Participation

Summary: Previous research has identified instrumentality and ideology as important aspects of member attachment to labor unions. The present study evaluated the construct validity of a scale designed to reflect the two dimensions of instrumental and ideological union commitment using a sample of 1170 Swedish blue-collar union members. Longitudinal data were used to test seven propositions referring to the dimensionality, internal consistency reliability, and temporal stability of the scale as well as postulated group differences in union participation to which the scale should be sensitive. Support for the hypothesized factor structure of the scale and for adequate reliabilities of the dimensions was obtained and was also replicated 18 months later. Tests for equality of measurement model parameters and test-retest correlations indicated support for the temporal stability of the scale. In addition, the results were consistent with most of the predicted differences between groups characterized by different patterns of change/stability in union participation status. The study provides strong support for the construct validity of the scale and indicates that it can be used in future theory testing on instrumental and ideological union commitment.

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The Time Course of the Aversive Conflict Signal

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027/1618-3169/a000271 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 62 (1) ◽

pp. 30-39 ◽

Cited By ~ 34

Author(s):

Julia Fritz ◽

Gesine Dreisbach

Keyword(s):

Time Course ◽

Strong Support ◽

Short Soas ◽

Priming Effects ◽

Presentation Time ◽

Psychological Evidence ◽

Study Participants ◽

Direct Investigation

The idea that conflicts are aversive signals recently has gained strong support by both physiological as well as psychological evidence. However, the time course of the aversive signal has not been subject to direct investigation. In the present study, participants had to judge the valence of neutral German words after being primed with conflict or non-conflict Stroop stimuli in three experiments with varying SOA (200 ms, 400 ms, 800 ms) and varying prime presentation time. Conflict priming effects (i.e., increased frequencies of negative judgments after conflict as compared to non-conflict primes) were found for SOAs of 200 ms and 400 ms, but absent (or even reversed) with a SOA of 800 ms. These results imply that the aversiveness of conflicts is evaluated automatically with short SOAs, but is actively counteracted with prolonged prime presentation.

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