Does the public in a rising authoritarian power overestimate their country’s reputation, power, and influence? This research uses three studies conducted around and after the COVID-19 pandemic to document whether Chinese citizens overestimate China’s global reputation and soft power, and whether simple information about actual international opinion can correct those perceptions and influence related evaluations.
This study asks whether citizens in a target country perceive audience costs in a threatening challenger state and whether the challenger’s regime type (democracy vs. dictatorship) affects that perception. Using a pre-registered survey experiment conducted in the United States, the authors test whether audiences abroad recognize that a leader who would suffer domestic backlash for backing down can send a more credible threat.
This paper asks whether and how Chinese nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) site their international development projects in ways that mirror state-led initiatives. Using a unique panel dataset, the authors present the first empirical investigation of location choices by NGOs from an authoritarian state and evaluate whether NGOs follow government-financed projects and political ties when choosing where to operate. The study’s contribution is a descriptive, time-sensitive account of alignment between Chinese government projects and Chinese NGO activity rather than a causal claim beyond the evidence reported.
The authors ask which states condemned Russia at the UN and which imposed sanctions after the 2022 invasion, and whether regime type or trade relationships better predict those behaviors. Using an “opportunity and willingness” framing, the study compares democratic versus nondemocratic states’ propensity to issue substantive or symbolic condemnation and examines whether countries’ positions in international trade networks — including trade in fuels and dual‑use goods — predict who imposed sanctions. The paper reports results from multinomial logit models that use commodity trade data to distinguish fuels, dual‑use goods, and aggregate trade and evaluates whether close preexisting trade ties to Russia explain condemnation or sanctions.
This paper asks how great powers compete for influence by comparing the goods they offer: the United States, it argues, sustains hierarchical patronage with multiple forms of inducement, while China challenges those relationships primarily through development finance. The authors reframe donor competition to consider whether recipients face costs when switching allegiances—costs that reduce the appeal of Beijing’s financing—and test whether existing American hierarchies make recipients less likely to receive Chinese funds.
This paper asks whether recent findings that debt-financed fiscal policy raises consumption, yields cumulative multipliers above one, and is fully self-financing continue to hold in small open economies. Using a model that incorporates realistic intertemporal marginal propensities to consume and departs from Ricardian equivalence, the author examines how external borrowing and subsequent repayment interact with domestic consumption responses. The central contribution is to identify conditions under which the textbook results fail in a small open-economy setting, and to describe when those failures can be overturned.
This article asks how two types of large-scale conflict—major interstate wars and major civil wars—relate to children’s health, measured by infant mortality rates. Using country-year analysis across 1950–2007, the author examines both immediate and cumulative associations between time spent at war and infant mortality, and emphasizes what this evidence says about violations of children’s right to health without making causal claims beyond the study’s design.
This study asks which individual parliamentarians take an interest in foreign and defense policy and what predicts that attention, using parliamentary questions as a window into elected officials’ priorities. It introduces an original dataset of 10,180 questions on foreign and defense matters in India’s Lok Sabha and uses analysis of those questions to show which aspects of foreign security politicians emphasise and which politician-level characteristics are associated with greater attention.
This replication package accompanies an article that asks whether recent across-the-board and country- and sector-specific tariffs introduced in the second Trump administration spell the end of the liberal international trading system. The authors argue against the view that the regime is collapsing, characterizing US trade policy historically as "eclectic"—a mix of protectionist and liberal impulses—and framing the system as resilient and adaptable despite unprecedented recent actions. The replication materials support the article’s historical and comparative claims about continuity and change in US trade policy.
This article asks whether variation across human rights treaties in the scope and demandingness of obligations influences states’ decisions to ratify. The authors argue that treaties differ in the number and severity of obligations they impose, that this variation can be measured, and that it affects ratification choices. Using newly compiled data on obligations and commitments across the 10 core global human rights treaties, the article tests whether treaties with more demanding obligations are less likely to be ratified by states that would face higher compliance costs.
Key Insight: Elections vary significantly in quality across regions.
This article asks whether Western democracies still possess the domestic political support needed to sustain liberal internationalism. Using cross‑national data on 24 industrialized democracies and hundreds of parties, the authors trace trends since the end of the Cold War and document a widening gap between governments' international ambitions and domestic party-level capacity to back them. They argue mainstream pro‑integration parties have lost ground to both radical-left and anti‑globalist radical‑right parties, and they consider what this means for the liberal international order.
This article asks whether the presence of a country's nationals in major IMF shareholder states affects the terms that the International Monetary Fund offers that country. The authors propose that large diasporas in powerful creditor countries create migration pressures that lead those shareholders to push the IMF toward loan packages that reduce short-term adjustment costs for borrowers. The paper analyzes IMF programs from 1978 to 2014 to evaluate whether borrowers with larger diasporas in major shareholder states receive different disbursement sizes or conditionality.
This article asks whether the International Criminal Court (ICC) deters atrocity crimes during civil wars, and whether its effects differ for government and rebel forces. Using what the author describes as the most extended look yet at the ICC’s record in African civil wars, the study compares competing views that the Court is ineffective, escalatory, or differentially influential across actors. The contribution is a qualified, evidence‑based assessment that the ICC appears to have different effects on rebels than on state forces in the conflicts examined.
The study of individuals is experiencing a renaissance within international relations (IR) theory.
This article explores how students deepen their understanding of international relations by designing political games. The innovative "International Relations and Games" course required students to create original game rules, scenarios, and mechanics based on IR concepts, theories, and topics.
The Silk Roads connected Eurasia for centuries. This historical network transported high-value goods between China and the Muslim East, fostering trade hubs like Chang'an and Aleppo. How did political fragmentation along these routes affect city growth?
Many studies claim that Regime Type (democracy vs. nondemocracy) influences states' decisions to pursue nuclear weapons.
In an increasingly digital world, how does a religious leader navigate political turbulence? This analysis reveals that Pope Francis strategically uses social media during international crises—particularly those involving threatened religious minorities—to amplify the Catholic Church's influence. His tweets become more politically explicit when geopolitical tensions escalate or civilians face targeted risks.
New research challenges previous studies on citation gender gaps. The article demonstrates how different statistical specifications affect observed results regarding women's citations in international relations.
This paper examines why democratic states tend to win international crises. It tests multiple theories about democratic political systems against a dataset of 422 conflicts from 1918-1994.