My research lies at the intersection of international and domestic politics---specifically, how domestic politics, leaders, and time horizons affect foreign policy decision-making and coercive statecraft. My research agenda revolves around three broad questions:
First, what are the sources and consequences of time horizons in international politics and foreign policy?
Second, what is the impact of democratic constraint and public opinion on coercive statecraft and grand strategy?
Third, how can we model complex international processes such as international order and conflict?
I approach these questions using various methodologies, including surveys, advanced statistical estimation, and computational methods, as well as historical process tracing and archival records.
First, what are the sources and consequences of time horizons in international politics and foreign policy?
Second, what is the impact of democratic constraint and public opinion on coercive statecraft and grand strategy?
Third, how can we model complex international processes such as international order and conflict?
I approach these questions using various methodologies, including surveys, advanced statistical estimation, and computational methods, as well as historical process tracing and archival records.
Selected Works in Progress and Publications
HIERARCHY AND WAR (CO-AUTHORED, available AT THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE)
Link to article here.
Scholars have written extensively about hierarchical international order, on the one hand, and war on the other, but surprisingly little work systematically explores the connection between the two. This disconnect is all the more striking given that empirical studies have found a strong relationship between the two. We provide a generative computational network model that explains hierarchy and war as two elements of a larger recursive process: The threat of war drives the formation of hierarchy, which in turn shapes states’ incentives for war. Grounded in canonical theories of hierarchy and war, the model explains an array of known regularities about hierarchical order and conflict. Surprisingly, we also find that many traditional results of the IR literature—including institutional persistence, balancing behavior, and systemic self-regulation—emerge from the interplay between hierarchy and war.
Scholars have written extensively about hierarchical international order, on the one hand, and war on the other, but surprisingly little work systematically explores the connection between the two. This disconnect is all the more striking given that empirical studies have found a strong relationship between the two. We provide a generative computational network model that explains hierarchy and war as two elements of a larger recursive process: The threat of war drives the formation of hierarchy, which in turn shapes states’ incentives for war. Grounded in canonical theories of hierarchy and war, the model explains an array of known regularities about hierarchical order and conflict. Surprisingly, we also find that many traditional results of the IR literature—including institutional persistence, balancing behavior, and systemic self-regulation—emerge from the interplay between hierarchy and war.
The Power to Proxy: Great Powers and Democratic Advantage in Proxy Wars (Solo author)
A core assumption of the literature on conflict delegation revolves around the idea that states sponsor proxies because the costs of inter-state war are prohibitive. This could be due to regime type (democratic embargo--democracies are less likely to support proxies that target democratic incumbents) or due to the cost-effectiveness of pursuing proxies (selection theory of war). I argue that regime type does not preclude states from sponsoring proxies as previously theorized nor is proxy sponsorship necessarily the weapon of the weak. I test these assumptions by employing the DICE (dyadic inter-state war cost expectations) dataset to measure the costs of inter-state war for each possible dyad between 1816-2010, along with existing measures of regime type to predict covert and overt state support of non-state armed groups. My findings suggest that the determinants of proxy support are likely different in overt and covert cases and proposes the democratic embargo and selection theory of proxy war are two distinct, yet limited, mechanisms that perform differently depending on the transparency of rebel support.
NO THREATS BEYOND THE HORIZON? GEOGRAPHY AND ALLIANCE FORMATION (SOLO AUthor)
An influential literature in IR addresses the direct and indirect role of political geography on alliance formation. One long-standing claim in IR scholarship holds that “threat” is partially a function of proximity – neighbors pose a greater threat to national security than states further afield, all else equal. Yet canonical proxies for relative capabilities such as CINC score, or other measures of threat, do not account for the geographic distance component. What is the relationship between geographic distance and threat, and how does a spatially informed measure of threat relate with alliance formation? I construct a composite measure of aggregate geopolitical threat that combines dyad-level data on relative capabilities and distance. This approach yields country-year estimates that are more consistent with conceptualizations of threat in capabilities-centric IR theories. I find evidence that the relationship between threat and alliance-seeking propensity holds under many different calculations of aggregate threat, each using distinct assumptions about (1) how best to aggregate material capabilities of other actors in the system and (2) how distance moderates the intensity of capability-based threat. These results suggest that IR scholars can be more confident in findings by testing relationships across a range of theoretically feasible parameter values.
the pretty prudent public? polarization and american grand strategy (lead author)
Two developments over the past decade have animated research on the domestic politics of foreign policy. First, the American public has become increasingly partisan. Second, this polarization threatens the conduct and durability of an extroverted U.S. grand strategy. How does mass political polarization affect preferences for grand strategy? While there is increasing evidence that the public holds coherent attitudes for specific policies, there is relatively little research linking polarization to public opinion toward the grand strategic ideal types that organize scholarly and popular debates. Our study fills this gap by testing the effect of polarization on public support for three grand strategic ideal types: restraint, conservative primacy, and liberal internationalism. Empirically, we go beyond existing research on attitudes toward discrete foreign policy decisions by assessing respondents’ support for a set of policies associated with and the logic underpinning each grand strategy. We focus on two hypotheses: first, the prudent public hypothesis expects respondents will possess coherent preferences over grand strategic ideal types regardless of partisan affiliation. Alternatively, the tribal hypothesis expects respondents will align their preferences with their partisan in-group. We argue that both hypotheses can explain public preferences for grand strategy and conceptualize public opinion as prudent tribalism: in the absence of partisan cues, the public will hold coherent grand strategy preferences. We test these hypotheses using a preregistered survey experiment on 3,000 American respondents. The project has major implications for ongoing policy debates about the domestic sources of support for the U.S.’s Ukraine and China policies, as well as public orientations towards a changing international order. Our study also adds to a growing literature that challenges elite exceptionalism in foreign policy attitudes and decision-making, and related literatures on the role of cues in multidimensional choice.
MEASURING UNCERTAINTY IN INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT (LEAD AUTHOR)
International relations scholars have long emphasized the role of uncertainty in shaping state behavior in international politics, from aggravating conflict to facilitating cooperation. Uncertainty due to private information or about adversary intentions, or fundamental uncertainty about conflict processes generates the bounds of state behavior by influencing how states assess the likelihood they will be successful when engaging with other actors. Information problems are a major determinant of bargaining failures, too. Despite how ubiquitous and theoretically important this concept is in the literature, however, scholars have yet to quantify and include it in empirical analyses. Instead of treating uncertainty as a background condition that cannot be measured, we use a partial observability model of conflict initiation to estimate uncertainty, where values of the unobserved variables are inferred from the relationship of observed variables to outcomes. Toward this end, we leverage structural estimation in two main ways: first, by constructing a statistical model of the bargaining model of war and second, by deriving a measure of dyadic uncertainty over the costs of war. This approach allows us both to extract a measure of uncertainty and to model the heterogeneous causes of war across dyads. By estimating instead of assuming the impact of uncertainty on war—or other outcomes—we encourage scholars to reexamine the effects of existing latent variables on international politics and bargaining behaviors.
