At the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, CA.
I am interested in the top-down and bottom-up determinants of coercion---specifically, how domestic politics, leaders, and time horizons affect foreign policy, and how structural conditions such as hierarchy and uncertainty affect the likelihood of war. 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
For all of Our Posterity: Time Horizons and Grand Strategy
Time horizons underpin most conceptualizations of grand strategy. This project explores empirical evidence in support of this theoretical claim. How does this patience and farsightedness manifest in grand strategic plans, principles, and behaviors? Which configuration of the international system is most conducive to the development of long-term goals that exemplify grand strategy? I probe the role of time horizons on grand strategy through an inductive analysis of moments of continuity and change in American grand strategy: Wilson’s Fourteen Points in the aftermath of World War I, Eisenhower and Johnson’s interpretation of the Soviet threat during US interventions in Korea and Vietnam, respectively; and George W. Bush’s “War on Terror” in the post-9/11 era. I pair this qualitative analysis with a text-as-data approach of presidential statements and the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series to identify the centrality of time horizons in grand strategic discourse. I argue that long time horizons are sufficient, but not necessary, conditions for the establishment and implementation of grand strategy. This work speaks to how the literature conceptualizes grand strategy and explores the observable implications of grand strategy on leader decision-making and behavior across multipolar, bipolar, and unipolar international systems.
The Power to Proxy: Great Powers and Democratic Advantage in Proxy Wars
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: Reexamining the political geography of alliance formation
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.
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.
Refining the known unknowns? Modeling and 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.
Hierarchy and War, available at The American Journal of Political Science (coauthored)
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 international relations literature—including institutional persistence, balancing behavior, and systemic self-regulation—emerge from the interplay between hierarchy and war.
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, a prevailing bipartisan rhetoric characterizes partisan polarization as a threat to national security. Polarization prevents consistency in US grand strategy as administrations and policies swing back and forth every administration. This has major consequences for US power projection, credibility, and deterrence. While there is increasing evidence that the public holds consistent 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. Does the public hold coherent grand strategic beliefs? How does polarization affect those beliefs? We contend that individuals can and do hold grand strategy preferences and identify two main drivers of these preferences: publics can be intuitive grand strategists or contingent grand strategists. Intuitive grand strategists hold firm core beliefs about human behavior and the role of the US in world politics; on the other hand, contingent grand strategists are eager and willing to abandon these core beliefs if they are supported by out-partisans (and vice-versa for co-partisans). We test these claims using several rounds of survey experiments on US-based samples. 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.
As a member of the Modeling Emergent Social Order (MESO) Lab---founded by Bear F. Braumoeller and funded by the National Science Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation---I work with a substantively and methodologically diverse team to answer questions related to international order and conflict.
