Shocks and Political Change: A Comparative Perspective on Foreign Policy Analysis 9819914973, 9789819914975

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Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11

William R. Thompson Thomas J. Volgy   Editors

Shocks and Political Change A Comparative Perspective on Foreign Policy Analysis

Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies Volume 11

Series Editors Takashi Inoguchi, J. F. Oberlin University, Tokyo, Japan Jean-Marie Guéhenno, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, NY, USA G. John Ikenberry, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA Lien Thi Quynh Le, Hue University, Hue City, Vietnam Etel Solingen, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA William R. Thompson, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA Stein Tønnesson , Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Norway Editorial Board Chiyuki Aoi, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan Bertrand Badie, SciencesPo, Paris, France Miguel Basanez, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA Titli Basu, Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi, India Kerry Brown, King’s College London, London, UK Alexander Bukh, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand Pongphisoot Busbarat, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand Timur Dadabaev, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan Richard Estes, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA Ofer Feldman, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan Kristian Skrede Gleditsch, University of Essex, Colchester, UK Peshan R. Gunaratne, University of Colombo, Colombo, Sri Lanka Purnendra Jain, University of Adelaide, SA, Australia Koji Kagotani, Osaka University of Economics, Osaka, Japan Ken Kotani, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan Yuichi Kubota, Nihon University, Tokyo, Japan Meron Medzini, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel Paul Midford, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway Satoru Miyamoto, Seigakuin University, Ageo, Japan Mehdi Mozaffari, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark Maung Aung Myoe, International University of Japan, Niigata, Japan Takako Nabeshima, Hokkaido University, Hokkaido, Japan Edward Newman, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Aparna Pande, Hudson Institute, Washington DC, USA Uddhab Pyakurel, Kathmandu University, Kathmandu, Nepal Frances Rosenbluth, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Motoshi Suzuki, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan Shinichi Takeuchi, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo, Japan Motohiro Tsuchiya, Keio University, Kanagawa, Japan Chikako Ueki, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan Ayse Zarakol, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK

This series aims to publish books on peace and conflict with evidence-based approaches, befitting an era best characterized by uncertainty and complexity. Even if occurrence of major wars among sovereign states has dramatically decreased, from 5 million soldiers killed between 1938 and 1945 per annum; through 100,000 soldiers killed between 1945 and 1989 per annum; to 10,000 soldiers killed between 1989 and 2019 per annum; many kinds of peace and conflict keep arising in the world, with extraordinary technological progress and unprecedented spatial coverage. All parts of the world now are so well connected and interdependent. At the same time, they easily and suddenly become sources of immense vulnerability and fragility, bringing one or another of them to the verge of collapse and destruction. The causes are diverse: climate change, migration, pandemic and epidemic disease, civil strife, religious dissonance, economic competition, arms races, terrorism, corruption—a virtual plethora of sources. Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General, calls these and many others “problems without passports.” The basic methodological orientation sought in this series is broadly that of modern social and behavioral science. Of importance is that verifiable evidence (quantitative and qualitative, graphs and photos) be solidly attached to whatever arguments are advanced. Overseen by a panel of renowned scholars led by Editor-in-Chief Takashi Inoguchi, this book series employs a single-blind review process in which the Editor-in-Chief, the series editors, editorial board members, and specialized scholars designated by the Editor-in-Chief or series editors rigorously review each proposal and manuscript to ensure that every submission makes a valuable contribution that will appeal to a global scholarly readership.

William R. Thompson · Thomas J. Volgy Editors

Shocks and Political Change A Comparative Perspective on Foreign Policy Analysis

Editors William R. Thompson Indiana University Bloomington, IN, USA

Thomas J. Volgy School of Government and Public Policy University of Arizona Tucson, AZ, USA

ISSN 2730-5651 ISSN 2730-566X (electronic) Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies ISBN 978-981-99-1497-5 ISBN 978-981-99-1498-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Contents

Shocks, Windows of Opportunity, and Outcomes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . William R. Thompson and Thomas J. Volgy

1

The State of the Field on Political Shocks: A Review of (Mostly) Quantitative Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Kelly Marie Gordell

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Political Shocks and the Punctuated Equilibrium Model: Applications to the Evolution of Norms in the Americas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Andrew Owsiak, Paul F. Diehl, Luis Schenoni, and Gary Goertz

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A Framework for Analyzing Political Shocks and Their Effects . . . . . . . . Thomas J. Volgy and Kelly Marie Gordell

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Role Theory and Political Shocks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Cameron G. Thies and Leslie Wehner

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Populist Leadership, Economic Shocks, and Foreign Policy Change . . . . 101 Stephan Fouquet and Klaus Brummer Tie-Capacity Shocks and the Resilience of International Trade and Alliance Networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 Zeev Maoz and Kyle A. Joyce Domestic Shocks and Prospect Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 163 Richard Saunders Political Elite Structures in Arab Uprisings (2011 And On) and Foreign Policy Ramifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183 Imad Mansour and William R. Thompson Chinese Strategic Thinking and the Idea of Shocks: Old Literature, New Application? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211 Steve Chan

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Contents

Globalization Shocks and Foreign Military Intervention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227 Jeffrey Pickering Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249

Contributors

Klaus Brummer Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany Steve Chan University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA Paul F. Diehl Independent Scholar, Champaign, IL, USA Stephan Fouquet Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany Gary Goertz University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA Kelly Marie Gordell Social Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Kyle A. Joyce Governmental Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, USA Imad Mansour Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar Zeev Maoz Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis, CA, USA Andrew Owsiak University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA Jeffrey Pickering Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA Richard Saunders Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA Luis Schenoni University College of London, London, UK Cameron G. Thies James Madison College at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA William R. Thompson Indiana University Emeritus, Bloomington, IN, USA Thomas J. Volgy School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA Leslie Wehner Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath, Bath, UK

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Shocks, Windows of Opportunity, and Outcomes William R. Thompson and Thomas J. Volgy

Abstract This chapter is a brief introductory overview of the contents of the book. Eleven chapters define, review, and apply the concept of political shock to a variety of phenomena in national/international politics. The argument is that we are all well aware of shocks and their impacts but we have not yet developed their full analytical utility. We need to be more explicit about shocks and their magnitudes and impacts to improve our explanations of political change. Keywords Political shock · Impact · Windows of opportunity Political shocks have come to be considered highly salient for explaining major changes to international politics and to the foreign policies of states. Such shocks can occur at all levels of analysis: domestically, dyadically, regionally, or globally. They range from political phenomena such as coups and wars to ecological catastrophes. These shocks are sufficiently disruptive to cause foreign policy makers to reconsider their foreign policy orientations and to contemplate major changes to their policies. In fact, some have argued that it is mostly through political shocks that fundamental policy change occurs in most states. No wonder then that political shocks are now increasingly part of the toolbox of considerations used by foreign policy and international relations scholars as they focus on understanding patterns of conflict and cooperation between states. Yet, the analysis of political shocks, as its own topic of study, remains underdeveloped, and especially so when compared to analyses of other key concepts in the field. No overarching study of political shocks currently exists, and with very few exceptions, what we do know primarily comes from academic works where the primary W. R. Thompson (B) Indiana University Emeritus, Bloomington, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] T. J. Volgy School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_1

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Table 1 Goertz and Diehl findings on shock and interstate rivalries Shocks

Rivalry beginning 0–10 years after shock (%)

Rivalry ending 0–10 years after shock (%)

World Wars

28.9

17.8

Major Changes in Territorial Sovereignty

24.4

13.3

Changes in Power Distributions

22.2

6.7

Independence

45.5

–

Civil War

28.9

28.9

4.4

8.9

87.7

92.3

Civil War (with regime change) All Shocks

Source Based on information reported in Goertz and Diehl (1995: 43, 45–46)

focus is on other phenomena driving the inquiry. Overall, the topic is theoretically underdeveloped, the concept of political shock is often ambiguous, and the empirical identification of what is and what is not a political shock is virtually non-existent in the literature. Politics, despite all of the short-term turbulence, possess remarkable tendencies towards inertia, stability, and the absence of change. These tendencies are interesting in their own right but they appear to thwart the analysis of political change. Given all of this evident equilibrium, what might it take for things to change? Shocks are one answer. Shocks have variable effects in overcoming inertia. Shocks are neither necessary nor sufficient to bring about change. But they do seem to be important. We need to work on that explanatory potential by taking their role(s) more seriously and more explicitly. This book is meant to be a contribution to that effort. While underdeveloped it may be, the study of shocks in foreign policy and international politics has already made some headway in the study of rivalries. Goertz and Diehl (1995; Diehl & Goertz, 2001) introduced the idea that shocks were critical to the beginning and ending of enduring rivalries. As delineated in Table 1, they found empirical evidence that 5 or 6 types of shocks (world wars, major changes in territorial sovereignty, shifts in power balances, state independence, and civil wars with and without regime change) could be linked to rivalry emergence and termination. The strong linkages (nearly 88% for initiation and 92% for termination) reinforced their assertion that some type of shock was necessary if not sufficient for changes in rivalry relationships. A subsequent analysis (Colaresi, 2001) found support for a relationship between concentration/deconcentration in systemic power and strategic rivalry termination. Great power rivalry terminations were more likely in periods of low global power concentration and high conflict and less likely in periods of high concentration and less conflict. Goertz and Diehl (1995) and Colaresi (2001) find that rivalry endings are correlated with various types of shocks. Rasler et al. (2013) argue that shocks are fundamental to rivalry termination processes that do not involve one side being defeated so

Shocks, Windows of Opportunity, and Outcomes

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Third Party Pressure

Expectancy Revision

Shock

Reciprocity

Reinforcement

Entrepreneurial Consolidation

Fig. 1 How strategic rivalries are terminated

severely that it no longer is able to remain competitive as a source of threat. Figure 1 sketches the main flow of the termination process. A shock or multiple shocks are necessary to change decision-makers’ expectations about the rival and the rivalry. The shocks that are most impactful are ones that alter perceptions about the rival’s threat or the ability of one’s own side to cope with the rival’s threat. If expectations are altered sufficiently to lead to an opening to terminate the rivalry, negotiations will hinge on reciprocal signals. Given enough reciprocity in the negotiations to terminate, the rivals also need to continue reinforcing the altered expectations that led to termination willingness in the first place. Two other variables, third party pressures and entrepreneurial consolidation (if leadership is new) can also facilitate rivalry termination. In an examination of ten selected rivalries, the four main variables were found to be critical to a successful termination.1 Another area in which shocks appear to play an important role is democratization or, more specifically, the process by which autocracies become democracies.2 Miller (2021) argues that what he calls the autocratic equilibrium (elites remaining loyal to the autocratic regime leadership) is difficult to challenge. Challenges are unlikely to succeed unless a major shock disrupts the equilibrium in some fashion. Regime supporters need to be neutralized/weakened via defections or a reduction in the ability of the regime leader to reward loyalty by his or her followers. Coups, assassinations, civil war, defeat in war and/or hegemonic support withdrawal supplied the shock in 72% of the cases examined (139 cases of democratic transition between 1800 and 2014). In another twenty-seven cases (19%), autocratic rulers conceded to the democratic opposition because they perceived that they had less to lose by democratizing than by attempting to defend their autocratic regime. A rather impressive 91% of the transitions took one path or the other, as sketched in Fig. 2. 1

For more on shocks and rivalries of various kinds, see Thompson (2018), Mansour and Thompson (2020), and Lee et al.(2022). 2 See, as well, Grunitsky (2017).

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W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy Democratic Transitions 139

Shocks

Electoral Continuity

Other 12

27

Domestic Shocks

Inernational Shocks

75

25

Coup

Civil War

55

18

Defeat in War

Hegemonic Withdrawal

16

Assassination 2

Fig. 2 Two paths to democratic transitions (Source Based on Miller [2021: 37])

Rivalries and democratic transitions are hardly the only phenomena in which we are interested in the study of foreign policy and international politics. Nor are they the only topics in which shocks have appeared as explanatory variables. Yet these arguments and findings do seem to illustrate that we have a decent foundation for anticipating that paying more attention to shocks should prove profitable in accounting for change. What do we need to do to make shock a more prominent feature of International Relations analysis? We need to develop some sense of consensus about what constitutes a shock in international politics. How do we know one when we see one? That does not mean that we all need to agree on one definition—an elusive goal in our field which never quite seems attainable. But if every author writing on shocks must spend time at the beginning of his or her analysis defining the term anew, we will

Shocks, Windows of Opportunity, and Outcomes

5

not be “there” yet. Therefore, we need to establish some industry standards that most professionals understand or at least tolerate. Similarly, we need to establish some industry standards for operationalizing shocks. Can anything qualify as a shock? Or, is it possible to narrow it down to a select group of events that are the most likely culprits? This may prove to be an iterative process—that is narrowing the field of events that have the most impact potential. Assassinations of leading figures, for example, are normally unexpected and startling but, with perhaps a few exceptions that support the rule, they are unlikely to have the same impact as an interstate or civil war. We could imagine the construction of a pyramid of events with declining impact potential and greater frequency as one way to begin. Yet such an approach assumes that events have a categorical potential for encouraging change and that may not be the case. Second, we need to continue developing models and theories in which shocks play some causal role. Bivariate hypotheses in which shocks are one of the variables— either as independent or dependent variable—are welcome but will not take us very far. The shock variable is destined to play roles in more complex analyses. It is not the kind of variable that dictates outcomes. Shocks may open up opportunities for actors to do things they might not otherwise have been able to accomplish. They may remove some barriers to certain kinds of behavior. Shocks may sometimes even encourage actors to rethink their failing strategies and contemplate different course of action. So much of international political life is static. Structures and processes remain in force. Something must come along and jar their inertia before any deviation from the norm can occur. Nonetheless, shocks do not change the world by themselves, they only facilitate behavioral changes that can move in a variety of ways or not at all. Relatedly, one of the outstanding problems with the study of shocks is that their impacts are not necessarily commensurate with their perceived magnitude. Big shocks are unlikely to go un-noticed but they do not necessarily lead to big impacts. Small shocks, in contrast, sometimes have major impacts. We do not know why this is the case and, therefore, this question should be a paramount one greatly worth addressing. It is not a question that is likely to be answered easily or quickly. Yet it may prove to be critical to successfully employing shock as an explanatory variable. Third, at some point, we will need to complicate our study of shocks. One off events even if generalized, tend to get the lion’s share of attention. What about serial or compound shocks? Do they work differently? Are their impacts linearly greater than single events or do they lose some of their influence because people become numbed to their occurrence? If they cluster, how do we separate their impact? Are shock effects lagged over time? Can they be perceived as chained in time or is each new shock precisely that—a new shock with no or little linkage to previous events? Finally, and perhaps needless to say, the fourth necessity is more empirical assessment of the role shocks play in bringing about change. It is one thing to accept the idea that shocks can be important, it is still another to identify unequivocally that something happened as a consequence of a shock (or series of shocks). When change is underway, it is not always easy to specify what did and did not contribute to the outcome. We may not always to be able to nail down some linkage with unchallengeable precision, but we do need to proceed beyond mere assertion of

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linkages. The stronger the case that can be made, presumably, the more likely the explanation will prove compelling. Whatever the merits of this battle plan, the rest of this book does not pursue its recommendations explicitly. At the same time, what the authors do is certainly relevant to the goal of achieving a heightened awareness of the significance of shocks. What the rest of this book does do should persuade others to contemplate and contribute to giving more explicit prominence to the role of shocks in bringing about shocks. In the ten chapters to follow, attention is given to how shocks have been treated, how they might be viewed, and what sort of applications are appropriate for “shock treatments.” It will become clear that we do not agree on every facet of how shocks might best be viewed. That is the norm in our profession. But like painters approaching an unmarked canvas, it is important that we apply paint to the canvas by airing our preferences and interpretations. Otherwise, the painting process never moves forward. In Chap. 2, Kelly Gordell introduces readers to the recent literature on political shocks and their relevance for foreign policy and international relations. The literature on the topic has been extensive and growing. Based on a sample of over 1,500 journal articles and with some bias for the large-N, quantitative literature how political shocks have been approached is reviewed. What we know thus far regarding their dynamics is also discussed. Areas of consensus, disagreement, and omission are highlighted. The review suggests that while political shocks have become highly salient to scholars, it is also apparent that to better understand how such phenomena can come to impact key areas of scholarly concern, there is a need for further conceptual, theoretical, and empirical work in order to achieve a better understanding of conditions under which political shocks can lead to major foreign policy change. Andrew Owsiak, Paul Diehl, Luis Schenoni and Gary Goertz extend political shock research in Chap. 3 by discussing how scholars might better use the punctuated equilibrium (PE) model in international relations research. They first summarize the PE model, noting its origins in evolutionary biology and its applications to policy research. Then, they review explicit uses of the PE model in research on rivalries, norms, international law, and other issue areas. The main goal is not to provide a comprehensive review of this research, but rather to articulate the model and the different stages of the policy process with which it corresponds—specifically, agenda setting, policy formulation, crystallization, and consolidation. Finally, they illustrate the expanded PE model by applying it to the development of certain norms in the Latin America throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thomas Volgy and Kelly Gordell propose a theoretical framework in Chap. 4 with which to approach the concept of political shocks. They also offer an empirical approach for identifying how political shocks impact state policy makers. They then apply the method to policy change across the global community of states revolving around human rights protections as an illustration of how political shocks create the opportunity for policy changes. The authors conclude with suggestions for future research and empirical analysis within a framework that builds on previous work on public policy approaches (and its adoption by IR scholars) to policy restructuring that use a punctuated equilibrium model—not unlike the preceding chapter.

Shocks, Windows of Opportunity, and Outcomes

7

Cameron Thies and Leslie Wehner explore political shocks from a role theory perspective in Chap. 5. Role theory, like most approaches to political shocks, views a shock as providing a potential window for policy change away from the status quo. For example, the end of a war may induce a longstanding rivalry to end as well. The exact process in which this occurs may not always be investigated. Their view is that political shocks often work through a change in a state’s role—either the adoption of a new role in place of an existing one or a revision of how an existing role is enacted. Role theory has an extensive conceptual repertoire to help us explore the dynamics between a shock and policy change, including intrarole and interrole conflict, role dissensus, and the like. They choose to demonstrate the utility of considering the ideational dimensions of political shocks through roles with several cases from Latin America—not unlike the preceding chapter. Stephen Fouquet and Klaus Brummer approach shocks from a vantage point that is different from the one commonly found in the foreign policy analysis (FPA) literature on foreign policy change. This literature typically conceptualizes shocks as providing opportunities or drivers for policy change. Contrary to this predominant approach in the FPA literature, Chap. 6 analyzes shocks not as drivers of and opportunities for external reorientations (hence as independent variable) but as consequences of— and potential constraints for the success of—attempted policy change (hence as intervening variable). In so doing, Chap. 6 also contributes to the exploration of inhibitors of foreign policy modifications, which have received considerably less attention in the literature than the examination of possible drivers of change. Zeev Maoz and Kyle Joyce analyze the effects of shocks on international networks in Chap. 7. They develop an agent- based model (ABM) that allows them to: (1) examine two network formation processes that characterize international networks— preferential attachment and homophily; (2) study the properties of such networks at equilibrium; (3) induce shocks that reduce the capacity of nodes to form ties; (4) analyze how the networks react to these shocks by regenerating themselves in the post-shock period; and (5) estimate network resilience—the extent to which networks retain their structural characteristics following shocks. They do this by comparing the pre- and post-shock structures of these networks at equilibrium and derive propositions about the relationship between shock type and network structure. Maoz and Joyce then test the propositions deduced from the ABM by comparing simulated networks to real-world alliance and trade networks. The results suggest several things. First, shocks have a negative impact on nodal resilience in the ABM as well as on states’ alliance resilience, but not on trade resilience. Second, shocks have also indirect positive effects. Specifically, non-shocked actors whose alliance partners are dropped, increase their own resilience as well as the resilience of other nodes by forming new ties with other non-shocked actors, which increases the overall resilience of the network as a whole. This result matches the insights derived from the ABM. Third, at the network level, shock magnitude increases the modularity resilience of random networks, but reduces polarization and clustering resilience. This holds true for alliance modularity resilience but not for alliance polarization, which tends to increase following high-magnitude shocks. On the whole, economic shocks do not appear to have a significant effect on the resilience of trade networks.

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The chapter concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for theory and practice. Chap. 8 explores the influence of domestic shocks on foreign policy decisions through the lens of Prospect Theory. As a theory of decision-making under risk, Prospect Theory explains how decision-makers’ perceptions and cognitive biases significantly influence their willingness to take or avoid risks when responding to an event. Richard Saunders believes that an understanding of these cognitive influences on decision-making is critical to understanding foreign policy responses to a changing environment. The insights of Prospect Theory are especially salient in the study of domestic shocks. Domestic shocks in one state place the leaders of that state and others into a situation where each must respond rapidly to a changing environment while relying on imperfect information about the ultimate outcome of the shock and how it will impact their own individual interests as well as the national interest. In this environment leaders must contemplate foreign policy decisions that carry significant risks if they wish to avert impending losses or take advantage of events for gain. Thus, Prospect Theory, it is argued, can shed much light on how domestic shocks should be expected to influence foreign policy by explaining how decision-makers’ risk attitudes change in light of common cognitive influences that they might experience due to domestic shocks. Imad Mansour and William Thompson, in Chap. 9, view the Arab Spring phenomena as a case of the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in one place that sends vibrations that expand into cyclonic turmoil elsewhere. Ordinarily, the self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, no matter how regrettable, would not have been expected to lead to mass protests throughout the Middle East and North Africa, the overthrow of regimes in several states and civil wars in Syria, Yemen, and Libya. But it did in a chain-like process in which the initial shock begat further shocks. Obviously, the region was primed to express great dissatisfaction with the performance of incumbent regimes. Less obvious, though, the societal and governmental reactions depended to a considerable extent on how unified elite structures were in 2010–2011. They also hinged on short-term vulnerabilities in each state’s dominant patron-client political structure and interventions by third parties. In these cases, shocks were filtered through cracks and weaknesses in a number of political systems with variable results. In Chap. 10, Steve Chan notes that although scholars often invoke the concept of political shock, they do not always offer a clear and thorough analysis of it. His chapter seeks to make two contributions. First, it reflects on some pertinent and often overlooked aspects of political shocks. Just as one cannot assume that any given shock will have the same impact on all actors, Chan expands on this caveat to argue that one also cannot take for granted that all actors will perceive a particular disturbance or shock in the same way or that they are equally capable of coping with it. Moreover, this disturbance or shock does not always “come out of the blue.” Even though, by definition, a shock is a surprise unanticipated by some actors, its source can also be traced to the conscious action undertaken by some others (for example, the 9/11 terrorist attack).Thus, a comprehensive understanding of shocks needs to include studies of how these disturbances may be deliberately introduced as part of

Shocks, Windows of Opportunity, and Outcomes

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the policy toolkit of some actors, and not to be taken necessarily as a “given” or an act of nature. Second, Chan discusses Chinese strategic culture in this context, suggesting that what is or is not a shock is endogenous to the actor in question. Sometimes, an actor may not perceive or even be aware of the occurrence of a shock or the implications of this occurrence. It may not appear to be a shock to it at all, or at least not in the same way that it is to some other actors. Jefferey Pickering investigates the various ways that shifts in globalization patterns impact intrastate and interstate dynamics in Chap. 11. The focus of his chapter is placed on the relationship between such precipitous changes, termed globalization shocks, and the propensity to use interstate military force. Globalization shocks weaken governments and mobilize dissent. A well-worn argument in the interstate conflict literature claims that governments that face significant domestic challenges may turn to the international arena to bolster their domestic political standing. Such struggling governments may use interstate military force both to divert elite and popular attention from domestic problems and to rally the population around their leadership. Given such possible diversionary incentives, it seems reasonable to expect that globalization shocks may at times be associated with the use of interstate military force. Substantial globalization shocks may not only increase the probability that intrastate force is used, but they may increase as well the probability that interstate force is employed. The results of a test of these propositions suggest that globalization shocks are related to an increased probability of initiating foreign military intervention, but only for well-established democracies that are highly enmeshed in the global community. Advanced western democracies have a propensity to launch supportive military interventions when they experience globalization shocks, but not hostile military interventions. A similar relationship between shock and intervention is not found for other states. Although more research is needed on the subject, these findings suggest that concerns about the potential ramifications of rapid deglobalization may be well founded. Stark increases or decreases in globalization levels may not only have wide-ranging domestic consequences, but they may also affect interstate relations.

References Colaresi, M. (2001). Shocks to the system: Great power rivalry and the leadership long cycle. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 45(5), 569–593. Diehl, P. F., & Goertz, G. (2001). War and peace in international rivalry. University of Michigan Press. Goertz, G., & Diehl, P. F. (1995). The initiation and termination of enduring rivalries: The impact of political shocks. American Journal of Political Science, 39(1), 30–52. Grunitsky, S. (2017). Aftershocks: Great power and domestic reforms in the twentieth century. Princeton University Press. Lee, B. K., McLaughlin Mitchell, S., Schmidt, C. J., & Yang, Y. (2022). Disasters and the dynamics of interstate rivalry. Journal of Peace Research, 59(1), 12–27. Mansour, I., & Thompson, W. R. (Eds.). (2020). Shocks and rivalries in the Middle East and North Africa. Georgetown University Press.

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Miller, M. K. (2021). Shock to the system: Coups, elections, and war on the road to democratization. Princeton University Press. Rasler, K. A., Thompson, W. R., & Ganguly, S. (2013). How rivalries end. University of Pennsylvania Press. Thompson, W. R. (2018). Constructing a general model accounting for interstate rivalry termination. In W. R. Thompson (Ed.), Oxford encyclopedia of empirical international relations theory. Oxford University Press.

The State of the Field on Political Shocks: A Review of (Mostly) Quantitative Literature Kelly Marie Gordell

Abstract This chapter introduces readers to recent literature on political shocks and their relevance for foreign policy and international relations. The literature on the topic has been extensive and growing. I review the state of the literature on political shocks, and especially the large-N, quantitative literature (including a sample of over 1500 journal articles), addressing how political shocks have been approached and what we know thus far regarding their dynamics. In discussing the extant research, areas of consensus are highlighted as well as where discrepancies remain. The review suggests that while political shocks have become highly salient to scholars, it is also apparent that to better understand how such phenomena can come to impact key areas of scholarly concern, there is a need for further conceptual, theoretical, and empirical work in order to achieve a better understanding of conditions under which political shocks can lead to major foreign policy change. Keywords Political shock · Foreign policy change

1 Introduction Political shocks are deemed to be highly significant phenomena for a wide range of substantive topics involving both foreign policies and the interactions between states in international politics. Shocks are considered to have a salient role in impacting a broad variety of arenas, including economic, political, and sociological processes. Yet, what exactly constitutes a political shock? And why would political shocks critically impact foreign policy and international politics? Political shocks are typically characterized as sudden, transitional, and unpredictable changes that are believed to occur at all levels of analysis within international politics. Their disruptive nature is deemed highly influential for impacting patterns of conflict and cooperation for actors within the international political system. This K. M. Gordell (B) Social Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_2

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chapter reviews the extant literature on political shocks, focused primarily on quantitative, large-N research articles appearing in prominent journals in the field (international relations) and the discipline (political science). While it does not detail each and every contribution on the topic, the literature review is designed to highlight key contributions regarding conceptualization, identification, and the integration of the phenomenon into research on foreign policy and international politics. In terms of what follows, I first briefly overview the literature relevant for conceptualizing political shocks. After highlighting the common characteristics of political shocks, I then discuss the diversity of approaches to identifying political shocks. In particular, I demonstrate that events-driven approaches have been dominant within the literature as shocks and effects of shocks are typically combined in discussion and evaluation with such events of interest. Also, I illustrate prominent events typically characterized as shocks. Next, given the extant research, I discuss a series of points that warrant further clarity when it comes to the overall state of political shocks as a focus of research, and conclude with a brief discussion on where we are going (and should be going) forward on this topic.

2 Conceptual Approaches in the Literature on Political Shocks The extant literature incorporating shocks in some manner is quite extensive. Previously (Gordell, 2021), I conducted a review of the literature across fourteen academic journals between 1990 and 2020, where the term “shock” was used. This review resulted in just over 1500 potentially relevant articles.1 ,2 While over half of the articles either casually referred to shocks (brief mentions in initial discussions or closing remarks), or accounted for political shocks methodologically (capturing shocks via yearly fixed effects in quantitative modeling), the remainder more explicitly discussed and/or identified the concept. This included more extensive discussions, efforts at operationalization, process tracing, as well as the identification and incorporation of events, or the use of an events-driven approach which tends to occur frequently among these studies.

1

This review included the following journals, which are consistent with TRIP’s evaluation of primary IR research sources: American Journal of Political Science, American Political Science Review, British Journal of Political Science, Conflict Management and Peace Science, International Interactions, International Organization, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, International Studies Review, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Journal of Politics, Security Studies, and World Politics. 2 The timeframe covers the years 1990 through 2020; 30 years should be long enough to provide a thorough evaluation of the literature while also ensuring a more contemporary understanding of the topic. The use of “shock” rather than “political shock” was intentional, as numerous relevant studies used only the generic term in their discussions. This broader phrasing did result in several substantively irrelevant articles, which are not factored into this discussion.

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Fig. 1 Google N-Gram, Books on Political Shocks, 1900–20193

In addition to research articles there are also large numbers of scholarly books devoted totally or partially to political shocks. I did not review those materials systematically, although several key, book-length studies are also included in the discussion below. What appears to be clear is that a focus on political shocks through books shows a period of accelerated interest in the topic since the end of the Cold War (Fig. 1), which itself is considered in most research as a major shock to the international system.

3 The Concept of Political Shock in the Literature There is considerable conceptual overlap across studies focused on political shocks both among scholars of international relations, and as well across multiple disciplines interested in the phenomenon. Scholars within and across fields tend to distinguish between what are viewed as “normal” times versus “abnormal” times, with the latter sometimes deemed to be shocks or other similar phenomena such as crises, critical junctures, and punctuated equilibria (Legro, 2000).4 Broadly, shocks are phenomena defined by significant change. The extant literature emphasizes that shocks represent a particular type of change to the status quo: shocks specifically disrupt the current state of conditions in a markedly different way from other non-shock phenomena. Shocks are often understood to effectively erode the conditions and processes that are currently in place for actors and their environment (Mahoney, 2000; Pierson, 2000; Thelen, 1999). While change within 3

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Political+Shocks&year_start=1900& year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3. 4 Different disciplines have similar concepts such as critical junctures, large crises, and punctuations. Historical institutionalism incorporates critical junctures, arguing that continuity and path dependence can experience substantial change via critical junctures. Critical junctures have been described as a “period of significant change, which typically occurs in distinct ways in different countries (or in other units of analysis)” (Collier & Collier, 1991, p. 29). Large crises, critical junctures, and punctuations have similar conceptualizations and processes associated with the disruption of path dependence (Kahl, 1998).

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international politics is nothing new, change in the form of shocks stands distinctly apart from typical change that takes place as there is an emphasis on both the rapid or sudden nature of change and its magnitude when it comes to the occurrence of shocks. Essentially, shocks do not reflect evolving or slow-moving processes. Distinguishing the speed of change is one key across fields. When it comes to reshaping existing dynamics for example, critical junctures, also referred to as punctuated equilibria, essentially represent windows of possibility where major change can occur (Kingdon, 1984, 1995). According to Kingdon’s (1984, p. 210) policy making model, the speed at which policy making occurs is uneven, with items coming on and off the agenda much more quickly than the incremental processes that are in place to address them. As such, policy solutions are viewed as changing incrementally, while the windows of opportunity to set the agenda open and close relatively quickly by comparison. Furthermore, not only are punctuations and shocks rapidly occurring, but they are also considered to be highly transitional. Thus, shocks are far more likely to be observed for a shorter time period, representing a temporary phenomenon rather than a long-term process (Arbatli & Arbatli, 2014; Colgan & Lucas, 2017; Enns et al., 2014; Frye & Borisova, 2019; Houle & Bodea, 2017; Iversen & Soskice, 2010; Little, 2015; Pfutze, 2014; Rasler & Thompson, 2011; Zakharov, 2016). Additionally, the occurrence of shocks is also characterized as unanticipated or unexpected by involved actors and observers alike (Allee & Peinhardt, 2014; Barbera et al., 2019; Benton & Philips, 2019; Hafner-Burton et al., 2017; Haim, 2016; Imerman, 2018; Johnson & Tierney, 2018, 2019; Jones et al., 2017; Lyall, 2019; Wood & Wright, 2016). Not only are shocks unexpected in terms of when they occur, but also in their very design. While researchers have found common characteristics, it should also be stressed that shocks do not necessarily take on any particular default of design. Shocks do not necessarily follow any consistent pattern, described by scholars as episodic and nonlinear. Such irregular change can be observed as a single occurrence, a clustered pattern, or even a series of incidents taking place (Goertz & Diel, 1995; Knight, 1998; Meierding, 2013).5 The range of different descriptors used when referring to political shocks is outlined in Table 1. It is worth noting that while the characteristics listed in the table are used to describe and define shocks themselves, they are also typically used in reference to the perception of such shocks and the perception of their effects as well. It is not uncommon within the literature to utilize a combination of more observable or measurable characteristics with commentary regarding how they are perceived when determining political shocks. However, while much of the scholarship recognizes a perceptual dimension to the concept, the literature remains substantially bifurcated in integrating a perceptual dimension into the empirical assessment of political shocks. Several scholars identified in Table 1 focus on the unanticipated or unexpected nature of shocks. The unexpected nature is also suggested via reference to events taking place and the dynamics surrounding such events deemed to be “shocking.” 5

There are numerous additional authors who have characterized the phenomena in terms of anticipation, structure, transition, and so on, as reflected in Table 1.

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Table 1 Characteristics of political shocks within the literature6 Discussed as

Sample citations

A matter of size: large; small

van der Maat (2018), Thurner et al. (2018), Philips et al. (2016), Bausch et al. (2013), Serneels and Verpoorten (2013), Aksoy et al. (2015), Dancygier and Donnelly (2012), Callander (2011), Bendor and Swistak (1997), and Bercovitch and Diehl (1997)

Being negative or positive

Tollefsen (2020), Beber et al. (2019), Braithwaite and Licht (2020), Lundgren (2018), Rooney (2018), Bagozzi et al. (2017), Knutsen et al. (2017), Betz and Kerner (2016), Weintraub (2016), Zakharov (2016), Brooks (2014), Pfutze (2014), Bausch et al. (2013), Hall and Shepsle (2013), Koubi and Bohmelt (2013), Bateson (2012), Blomberg et al. (2011), Bohmelt (2011), Nielsen et al. (2011), Murshed and Mamoon (2010), Pop-Eleches (2007), Rasler (2000), and Tussie (1998)

Critical; catalytic; major; massive

Demirel-Pegg (2017), Hall and Ross (2015), Parkinson (2013), Akturk (2011), Morey (2011), Beardsley and McQuinn (2009), Cohen (2009), Iversen and Soskice (2009), Paul (2006), DeRouen Jr. (2000), Hampton (2000), Lieberman (2002), and Hudson and Vore (1995)

Catastrophic; traumatic

Whitlark (2017), Renshon (2008), and Farrell (2005)

Crises7

Fettweis (2004), Haas (1992) (referring to crisis and shock interchangeably)

Dramatic

Renshon (2008)/Tetlock (2005), and Nincic and Nincic (2002)

Extreme; radical

Linebarger (2016), Broz and Plouffe (2010), and Bozzoli and Bruck (2009) (continued)

6

Table 1 is drawn from information compiled in Gordell (2021). This table is not intended to be exhaustive, but instead to provide an overview of the broader descriptors used among the literature. These descriptors are used to (1) convey significance, and (2) distinguish shocks from other concepts. The specification of external/internal or exogenous/endogenous is also used among the literature but is not included in this discussion, since the focus here is not on the origins of the shock itself. 7 While crises may be viewed as similar to shocks, their conceptualization has changed over the years resulting in a significant divergence between the two concepts. See Hermann (1969a, 1969b, p. 414) and Brecher and Wilkenfeld (2001) for differences in definitions and approaches.

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Table 1 (continued) Discussed as

Sample citations

Momentous

Meernik and Poe (1996)

Occurring repeatedly; successive occurrence; clustered; discrete; discontinuous; discontinuities

Ahmad (2019), Drezner (2019), Grieg et al. (2018), Byman and Kroenig (2016), Miller et al. (2016), Menaldo (2012), Bozzoli and Bruck (2009), Paul (2008), Duffy Toft (2007), Reuveny and Thompson (2007), Creswell (2002), and Nincic and Nincic (2002)

Profound; significant

Imerman (2018), Lavelle (2011), Murshed and Mamoon (2010), Hampton (2000), and Meernik and Poe (1996)

Rapidly occurring; sudden

Salehyan (2018), Koren and Bagozzi (2017), Haim (2016), Mansfield et al. (2016), Jenkins et al. (2014) (rapid change), McDoom (2013), Grigorescu (2010), Carment et al. (2008), Dewan and Shepsle (2008), Voeten and Brewer (2006), Collins (2004), and Yang (1996)

Temporary; transitory; transitional; short run; short-term

Frye and Borisova (2019), Colgan and Lucas (2017) (finite-duration events), Houle and Bodea (2017), Zakharov (2016), Little (2015), Arbatli and Arbatli (2014), Enns et al. (2014), Pfutze (2014), Rasler and Thompson (2011), Iversen and Soskice (2010), Busby (2008), Ehrlich (2007), Fearon (2004), Krause (2003), Nicholson et al. (2002), Rasler (2000), Wallerstein (1999), Green et al. (1998), Segura and Nicholson (1995), and Meernik and Poe (1996)

Unanticipated; unexpected; unpredictable

Barbera et al. (2019), Birkland (1998), Benton and Philips (2019), Lyall (2019), Imerman (2018), Johnson and Tierney (2018/2019); Hafner-Burton et al. (2017), Jones et al. (2017), Haim (2016), Wood and Wright (2016), Allee and Peinhardt (2014), Renshon (2008), Duffy Toft (2007), Elhefnawy (2004), and Levy and Gochal (2001)

While the reference to political shocks may not be intentional, simply referring to incidents as shocking are arguably discussed as a way of providing sufficient evidence that those events are actually political shocks. The end of the Cold War is an illustration of this approach; it has been overwhelmingly identified across the literature as a political shock. Not only was this a massive change with a nearly infinite series of consequences, but it is also referred to as shocking in its actual occurrence.8 Similarly, we can observe the same type 8

In 1989 the Berlin Wall was dismantled. A few months later the Soviet Empire in Eastern Europe dissolved. By 1991 the Soviet Union itself had disintegrated. Amidst the euphoria and surprise that

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of language when referring to terrorist events, both broadly, as well as in reference to specific instances, such as with the 9/11 terror attacks within the United States in 2001.9 So while the attributes defined by researchers are intended to describe and define political shocks themselves, it is important to reiterate that the way in which certain phenomena are perceived will also influence how political shocks are approached and understood within the literature. Shocks are also thought to be relevant across different levels within the international political system, with respect to both the occurrence and the effects of political shocks, with the international/systemic levels most often specified within literature. However, additional levels and more generic reference to areas inside and outside of the state are also found across research projects that focus on or incorporate consideration of political shocks. Table 2 provides a sample of the different levels at which shocks have been addressed. The information contained in Tables 1 and 2 suggests a substantial degree of passive consensus in the literature that the concept of a political shock entails the following four characteristics: it is unanticipated/unexpected by the actors involved (ergo the focus on the surprising nature of the event); it occurs suddenly and thus differs from long-term or slow-moving processes; actors experiencing the event perceive it as unique (“shocking”) and thus it is different from previous problems with which they have familiarity; and perhaps of greatest import, the event creates a dramatic and major disruption to current political or economic conditions. At least implicitly, there is also some agreement that shocks may occur across multiple levels of analysis. A word of caution, however, regarding the degree of consensus in the literature; it is certainly not the case that all (or even a majority) of the works reviewed identify all four characteristics as necessary to label an event as a political shock. Typically, the literature includes two or three such components. However, there is a fair degree of consensus in the sense that virtually none of the reviewed works would reject any one of these components as part of the conceptualization of the shock phenomenon, even when it doesn’t appear explicitly in their work. Thus, the literature is best described as containing a passive consensus regarding the concept.

surrounded these shocking events, many observers were sure that this new new world order, even as it evolved, would be inordinately stable (Zagare, 1996, p. 366). 9 All things equal, terrorism is advantaged… because it is dramatic and shocking and often poses a challenge to the established order (Asal & Hoffman, 2015, p. 386). The 9/11 attacks might well have been needed to shock the government and the public into a drastic change of policy, as many Bush administration officials argued (Coe, 2018, p. 1209; Jervis, 2003). Some cognitive or ideational tendencies may have affected the comparison between invading with a light footprint or staying out, especially after the shock of 9/11 (Saunders, 2017, p. S233).

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Table 2 Political shocks across different levels of analysis10 Discussed as:

Sample citations:

Global/International/Systemic

Mironova and Whitt (2020), Petrova (2019), LeVeck and Narang (2017), Linebarger (2016), McDonald (2015), Weinberg and Bakker (2014), Arriola (2013), Florea (2012), Akturk (2011), Morey (2011), Bawn and Rosenbluth (2006), Fettweis (2004), Scruggs and Lange (2002), Herd (2001), DeRouen Jr. (2000) (worldwide), Diehl and Goertz (2000), Arfi (2000), Bennett (1998), Cronin (1998), Bennett (1997), and Goertz and Diehl (1995)

Domestic/Individual/Local/Subnational

Tollefsen (2020), Koren (2019), Koren (2018), Kosmidis (2018), McGuirk and Burke (2017), Costalli et al. (2017), Harding and Stasavage (2013), Serneels and Verpoorten (2013), and Epstein and O’Halloran (1996)

Neighborhood/Regional

Narang and LeVeck (2019), Zhukov and Stewart (2013), Desai and Vreeland (2011) (extra-regional shocks), Bozzoli and Bruck (2009), Richter (2006), and Bennett (1998)

Additional/Broader Reference

Bartusevicius and Gleditsch (2019) (transnational), Gray (2009) (Europe-level), Kaempfer and Lowenberg (1999) (outside of the domestic polity), and Broz (1998) (outside the national borders)

4 Moving from Conceptualization to Identifying Shocks Empirically Approximately 35 percent of the reviewed literature that empirically identifies the existence of a political shock as part of statistical models of foreign policy and interstate interactions barely mention the conceptual foundation for such identification. Therefore, it should come as little surprise that the actual operationalization of what constitutes a political shock in the literature demonstrates far less consensus than the approaches towards its conceptualization. The literature’s various attempts to identifying political shocks is reflected in Table 3. It demonstrates that (a) the overwhelming percentage of the quantitative literature is event based, and (b) the relevant scholarship over the past 30 years reflects a wide and very rich variety of event types that appear to qualify as political shocks. While these events are quite diverse, there is also a fair degree of overlap, showing that partial consensus has been reached among scholars, albeit not nearly as much as with the phenomenon’s conceptualization. 10

Table 2 is drawn from information compiled in Gordell (2021). This table is not intended to be exhaustive, but instead provides a glimpse at the different levels at which political shocks have been considered. While the international/global/systemic level is arguably the most frequent level utilized within the literature, it is far from being the only level of focus.

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Table 3 Shocks events within international relations research11 General topics

Sample citations

Conflict and Violence General reference

Horowitz (2006) (disrupting social momentum), Lazarev (2019) (disrupting social control), Reuveny and Li (2003) (conflict as a social shock)

Battle dynamics Military defeat Unexpected losses/wins

Lavelle (2011) (end of Vietnam War), and Maoz (2009), Verdier (1998)

Interstate/Intrastate War

Bruck et al. (2012), Carson et al. (2011), Collins (2007), Finkel (2015), Fordham and Kleinberg (2012), Goertz and Diehl (1995), Hegre et al. (2017), Holmes and Traven (2015), Iversen and Soskice (2009), Kang and Meernik (2005), King and Lieberman (2009), Krebs (2015), Maoz and Siverson (2008) (wars and their effects), Morey (2011), Sears and Funk (1999), Sinha (2018), Streeck and Thelen (2005), Thies (2004), and White (2017)

Civil War Wars (in general) World War I/II

Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs)

Arbatli and Arbatli (2014), Crescenzi and Enterline (2001), Crescenzi et al. (2008), and Rooney (2018)

Terrorism

Byman and Kroenig (2016), Koch (2009), Larsen et al. (2019), and Snyder et al. (2009)

General reference Specific events; 9/11 attacks Coup d’états

Mattli (2000), Thyne (2017) (coups within a civil war)

Economic and Resource Related Depressions General reference

Carson et al. (2011), Iversen and Soskice (2009), and Morin and Orsini (2013)

1930s Great Depression Economic Reform Economic liberalization Liberalism Shock Therapy

Arbatov (1998), Barnett (2006), Barnett et al. (2014), Betts (1992), Bunce (2003), Chandra and Rudra (2013), Chwieroth (2008), Fang and Stone (2012), Horowitz (2004), Paris (1997) (rapid economic and political liberalization), Schimmelfenning (2005), and Solingen (1994) (shock economic programs) (continued)

11

Table 3 is drawn from information compiled in Gordell (2021). This table is not intended to be an exhaustive list of authors or types, rather it is meant to provide a view of both the diversity and agreement among researchers.

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Table 3 (continued) General topics

Sample citations

Financial Crises and Recessions

Brooks and Kurtz (2012), Broz (1998), Drezner (2009), Florea (2012), Hafner-Burton et al. (2017), Koga (2018), Krebs (2015), Nelson and Katzenstein (2014), Verdier (1998), Welch Larson (2018), and Zhang (2020)

General reference to financial crises; recessions; debt crisis; economic crises; global economic recession Specific events: 1997 Asian financial crisis; 2008 financial crisis; US collapse of housing prices Foreign Aid “Aid shocks” Aid provision and termination

Alexander and Rooney (2019), Karell and Schutte (2018), Narang (2015), and Sobek and Payne (2010)

Bilateral aid dynamics Price/Supply Changes General reference Oil Shocks (1970s; 1980s)

Bennett et al. (1994), Betz and Kerner (2016), Clark et al. (1998), Colgan (2010), Crisp and Kelly (1999), Darnton (2014), Fordham (2007), Garrett (1992), Goodman et al. (1996), Kang (1997), Kaufman (1997), Lavelle (2011), Nayar (1995), Talmadge (2008) (supply shocks), Tilton (1994), Verdier (1998), and Wigley (2018)

Natural Disasters General reference Extreme weather events “Shocks of nature” Natural catastrophes Climatic shocks

Bagozzi et al. (2017), Bhavanani and Lacina (2015), Beardsley and McQuinn (2009), Busby (2008), Carson et al. (2011), Hafner-Burton et al. (2017), Krebs (2015), Lazarev et al. (2014), Meierding (2013), Raleigh and Kniveton (2012), and Reuveny and Thompson (2007)

Climate related shocks Specific events Cyclones; drought based/water shortages; excessive heat; floods; rainfall; rising sea levels; storms; tsunamis; wildfires Policy Related and Miscellaneous Policy failures (e.g., Iraq) Controversial, Negative, Unexpected Electoral outcomes Brexit victory; Trump victory Immigration flight; refugee influx; Demographic shocks Interventions Invasions

Allen (2010), Anievas and Saull (2019), Byman and Kroenig (2016), Duffy Toft (2007), Hafner-Burton et al. (2017) (unexpected policy/political events), Hagen (2001), Johansson and Sarwari (2017), Kahler (2018), Knutsen et al. (2017), Koch (2009), Linke et al. (2015), Parkinson (2013), Peters (2019), Reus-Smit (2011), Sambanis and Shavo (2013), and Sobek and Payne (2010)

General reference Napoleon taking of Spain; Falklands Invasion; Israeli Defenses in Lebanon 1982 (continued)

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Table 3 (continued) General topics

Sample citations

Power/State/System General power distribution changes

Carlin and Love (2016), Christensen (2006), Fettweis (2004), Florea (2012), Goddard (2006), Goertz and Diehl (1995), Hudson and Vore State collapse/formation; independence (1995), Iqbal and Zorn (2008), Kalyvas and Milosevic regime; Soviet collapse; territorial Balcells (2010), Licht and Allen (2018), Maoz (2009), Maoz and Somer-Topcu (2010), Sinha changes (2018), and Streeck and Thelen (2005) Regime Change End of the Cold War

Dramatic political and leadership change Death of leaders (incl. assassinations) Executive turnover

The events listed in Table 3 share a key, overarching commonality: their potential to be highly disruptive to whatever outcome or process being researched. In taking an events-based approach, researchers identify categories of observed events as political shocks within the context of their existing studies. Unfortunately, in much of the literature it has also become somewhat of a norm to simply equate certain events as shocks, even when such events may not meet all the conceptual criteria needed to create a political shock. Without criteria or a process specified as to what would qualify and why, justification has mostly leaned on prior precedent created by prior work. For example, given prior work on conflicts, it is assumed that the sudden outbreak of war between two states qualifies as a political shock. That may be the case in some instances; however, if two states engage in a series of wars over a relatively short period of time, some of these “events” would no longer qualify as being unique or unanticipated for the parties involved. Similarly, sudden regime changes in the form of coups are often treated as political shock events, but for states that are coup-prone, coups may no longer meet the conceptual criteria for political shocks. This objection to using classes of events in not a trivial one. Unless the event meets all the criteria conceptually associated with a political shock, it becomes very difficult to assess whether the research is finding political shock effects, or effects associated with other dynamics,12 such as war outcomes or policy changes due to regime change. In this sense the range of events listed in Table 2 constitute a good sample of potential political shocks, but unless they meet all four criteria noted above, it is difficult to accept the validity of those events as actual political shocks. It also appears to be the case that the initiation of some events, in and of themselves, may not constitute a shock although how they unfold may create a shock to the actors involved. Take again the case of wars. The Vietnam war’s initiation, from the standpoint of the United States did not constitute a political shock to U.S. policymakers. What is much more likely is that the Tet Offensive, an event three years 12

See Maoz and Joyce (2016) for an elaboration on this critique.

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following America’s military escalation is what constituted a political shock to American policymakers: unanticipated, occurring suddenly, perceived by decision makers as unique/shocking, and constituting a major and dramatic disruption to the ongoing policy process (see Chap. 4). Similarly, the 2022 invasion of Ukraine cannot be a political shock to those who had planned and executed it. However, the complete failure of Russian military forces to execute a decapitation strategy against Kyiv (along with the surprisingly stiff resistance of Ukrainian forces) likely constituted a political shock to leaders in the Kremlin.13 Simply assuming that the occurrence of an event (war) equals a political shock misses the larger context in which such events unfold. Both the Tet offensive and the stall around Kyiv are versions of dramatic policy failure during an unfolding event that originally was not a political shock to either the U.S. or the Russian Federation.

5 Theoretical Approaches Regarding the Effects of Political Shocks Across the sampled literature, I find very few attempts to develop a general theory of political shocks and their effects, or even broad frameworks for generating such a theoretical development. Much of the theoretical dynamics involved within the literature is implicit and insufficiently developed. Nevertheless, a few such strands have been elaborated and may be critical for the eventual development of a theory of political shocks. Perhaps the most promising is the theoretical approach, borrowed from public policy and decision-making studies, focused on punctuated equilibria in the policy making process. This perspective owes much to Kingdon’s work (1984). As Kingdon has argued, policy solutions are typically changed incrementally until a punctuated equilibrium occurs, opening a window of opportunity to reset the policy agenda. Baumgartner and Jones (1993) in their evaluation of policy change, along with Diehl and Goertz’ work on the initiation and termination of rivalries (Diehl & Goertz, 2000; Goertz & Diehl, 1995) argue that punctations to the equilibrium via political shocks constitute a necessary, albeit insufficient condition to break the continuity in policy lifespans and rivalry relationships. Rasler’s (2000) work on rivalry termination also flows from this theoretical framework, albeit her case study of political shocks between rivals in the Middle East elaborates further on the range of other conditions besides political shocks that are needed to move from shock to policy

13

The Economist (2022) reports that Russian officers in the invading army were carrying dress uniforms for the victory parade they expected within a few days of the invasion.

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change, including the role of policy entrepreneurs,14 and the magnitude of shock needed to punctuate the equilibrium between rivals.15 Parenthetically, while there is some consensus that political shocks must involve a high magnitude impact on the policymaking process, there is very little discussion within most explanations about what magnitude of shock is sufficient. Rasler (2000) notes that the magnitude problem may depend on the policy being impacted; some rivalries may require much greater shocks than others to open a policy window. Porter (2018) argues that to create a major change to American grand strategy requires a large enough shock to material conditions to become obvious for policymakers that the status quo is no longer viable in order for actors to be willing to accept the cost of changing strategies. While these arguments are well taken, we are still left with substantial ambiguity regarding the factors that determine what magnitude of shock is needed to lead policymakers to entertain major changes to their policies.16 Part of the difficulty in utilizing the punctuated equilibrium approach to explaining political shock effects is the oft implicit but rarely explicit recognition of how the larger environment may mitigate against such shocks impacting on ongoing policy processes. Numerous authors point to a variety of intervening variables than may facilitate or mitigate political shock effects. The following constitute a few examples. Crescenzi and colleagues (Crescenzi & Enterline, 2001; Crescenzi et al., 2008) focus on the salience of information and learning in the relationships between states (and especially states in rivalries). They argue for and then test the proposition that the impact of political shocks within dyads is conditioned by both the degree of interaction and the temporal distance between events within the dyad, and further conditioned by a “decay” function, requiring new events (e.g., political shocks) to stimulate or alter ongoing relationships. In this context—as information decays within the dyad—political shocks may become highly salient for enhancing rivalry relationships, or, for facilitating their decline. Power shocks (quick, dramatic changes in the relative capabilities between states) are broadly identified in the literature as generating substantial interstate and intrasystem conflicts. However, Bas and Schub (2017) demonstrate that the relationship between power shocks and major conflicts is conditional as “uncertainty about the future distribution of capabilities mitigates commitment problems and promotes peace.” According to this approach, it is the extent to which a political shock, by altering the strategic environment (and perceptions about that environment) predicts to higher levels of conflict.17 14

Complementing the role of policy entrepreneurs are other domestic political actors who may be willing to entertain policy entrepreneurs when shocks occur. Avant (2000, pp. 50–51) notes that policymakers’ reactions to shocks may be conditioned by a fear that changing policy will threaten their interests but as party leaders begin to split, new ideas and actions become more possible. 15 For an in-depth discussion of the pertinent literature on the punctuated equilibrium approach and its application to political shocks, see Chap. 3. 16 Several of the following chapters use alternative approaches to the magnitude of shock issue; see especially the contrast between Chaps. 4 and 11. 17 Bas and Schub (2017, p. 857) also note that the probability for interstate wars is also conditioned by actors’ pessimism about their strategic environment as they estimate the degree to which the

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Regarding the relationship between political shocks and the strategic environment in which states operate, Maoz and Joyce (2016) differentiate between direct and indirect effects: direct effects are changes to the strategic environment of the primary state while indirect effects are essentially neighborhood effects. Neighborhood effects stemming from political shocks can alter the range of enemies shared among allied states, can carry consequences for continued alliance relations and contain additional conflict implications for the region. Thus, this line of inquiry also raises the larger issue of needing to place the effects of political shocks around processes of diffusion within regions and perhaps globally. Finally, there is a significant divergence in theoretical approaches (and unsurprisingly divided between large-N versus qualitative and case studies) over the salience of policymakers’ perceptions involving what constitutes a political shock. An implicit assumption in most large-N studies of political shocks is that they are of sufficiently high magnitude that perceptual issues need not take center stage in the analysis: what the researcher has identified as appropriate criteria and as an empirical threshold for a political shock is very likely to be what policymakers perceive to be shocks. Other scholars are more emphatic about needing a perceptual dimension, both theoretically and empirically. Bourbeau (2015, p. 375) notes for example that shocks constitute “interpretive moments” as state actors come to perceive the stimulus to have so dramatically altered the status quo as to require new types of actions to be taken.

6 Political Shocks…Where Do We Go From Here? This brief review of the literature, focused on conceptualization, identification, and the utilization of event types to grapple with the concept of political shocks, suggests a number of issues that need to be addressed if we are to advance further the study of political shocks and their effects on a variety of phenomena of interest. First, the literature needs a more thorough linkage between the conceptualization and operationalization of political shocks. We are far from having established a standard process to determine which potential shock events qualify as actual political shocks. Scholars have reached some consensus over a few standout events, such as largescale wars (e.g., World War I and II) and the end of the Cold War, both of which have been consistently identified as substantive examples of political shocks across

“window of opportunity” will be closing. Mattes (2008) suggests that commitment problems stemming from shocks do not always have detrimental effects as states under certain conditions are able to absorb shocks without increasing conflicts with adversaries.

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studies.18 In general, there has also been some general agreement and overlap when it comes to other events and event types, but wide variation very clearly remains. However, the actual process behind defining and identifying political shocks in a consistent and replicable manner has not. Establishing a set of explicit criteria or detailing a more straightforward process of identification is a necessary part of differentiating and evaluating this phenomenon but is still mostly absent in works pursuing larger-scale analysis.19 To get there, we will need a more explicit consensus regarding the conceptual foundation for what is meant by a political shock, rather than the halting, implicit consensus noted earlier regarding the four key attributes of events being unique, unanticipated, occurring suddenly, and creating a dramatic and major disruption to current political or economic conditions. Second, even if such linkages are clear, there are still substantial challenges awaiting operationalization: especially, how do we identify events that do and do not disrupt current political and economic conditions? Since large scale studies (compared to studies of individual cases of political shocks) have danced around this problem, there are few suggestions in the literature. Chap. 4 suggests one set of plausible empirical approaches for separating potential from actual shock events. This problem is far from trivial. Large-N studies that assume political disruption from an event type use these events to predict to changes in foreign policy and interstate behavior. When the predictions go awry, it becomes difficult to assess whether the failed predictions are due to inadequate theoretical development, or, due to problems with valid measures of political shock events, co-mingling potential20 and actual political shocks. Additionally, as noted earlier, event types may conceal dynamics occurring within ongoing events. For example, it may not be the initiation of a war that creates a political shock but certain events once the war is underway—disrupting economic or political conditions—that actually constitute a political shock, as the Ukrainian and Vietnam wars would suggest. Thus, researchers focusing on war initiation (or war termination) as a political shock may be incorrectly specifying their independent variable of interest. Such conceptual development is highly unlikely without stronger theoretical approaches to the phenomenon than what has so far unfolded in the extant literature. Part of the justification for this volume of work on political shocks is to expand the 18

There is a wide range of studies that have considered major war, including the world wars, and the end of the Cold War as shocks, including but not limited to Carson et al. (2011), Collins (2007), Fettweis (2004), Finkel (2015), Florea (2012), Fordham and Kleinberg (2012), Goertz and Diehl (1995), Holmes and Traven (2015), Hudson and Vore (1995), Iversen and Soskice (2009), Kalyvas and Balcells (2010), King and Lieberman (2009), Krebs (2015), Maoz and Siverson (2008), Sinha (2018), Streeck and Thelen (2005), Thies (2004), White (2017). 19 I explicitly mention large scale analysis as smaller scale studies can pursue more in-depth analysis of specific events while large-n studies simply cannot. The assessment by smaller scale or more qualitative studies has provided information from which we have generally built upon, however, large-n endeavors also require an alternative approach. 20 Again, by potential political shocks I am referring to events that may be unique, occur rapidly, and were unanticipated but failed to disrupt ongoing economic or political processes.

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range of theoretical perspectives that may help generate (ultimately) a more comprehensive theory of political shocks and their effects. That is the third issue here: we need a clearer and more comprehensive analysis of the mechanisms/causal drivers that translate a potential political shock event into changes in the foreign policies of states. Without a stronger theoretical base not only is the linkage between concept develop and operationalization difficult to validate, but as Maoz and Joyce have noted (2016), the lack of clear casual drivers also makes it difficult to differentiate whether it is the political shock or other dynamics that are at work such as the effects created by wars or state collapse, or other phenomena associated with foreign policy restructuring.21 Fourth, without more extensive theoretical development, it is also unclear whether political shock effects “are generalizable across different types of shocks (e.g., wars versus economic crises, empire collapse versus revolutions)” (Maoz & Joyce, 2016, p. 294). In this context a better understanding of political shock effects would also differentiate between “positive” (e.g., a dramatic change that increases state capacity) versus “negative” shocks (a dramatic change that decreases state capacity), an issue addressed using prospect theory in Chap. 8. Additionally, it is particularly surprising that in large-N studies of conflict and cooperation processes that include a political shock variable, there is a general absence of theoretical attention to how political shocks interact with other phenomena that predict to changes in policy direction or to the relationships between states. It would not be farfetched to assume that a political shock may have different policy consequences when (a) states are operating in high-threat versus low threat environments, or (b) for states with substantial versus limited capabilities, or (c) for states that are conducting their affairs under weak versus strong internal partisan divisions. These considerations are but a small sub-set of a large series of variables that appear to interact with and condition policy makers’ responses to political shocks22 yet we lack theoretical formulations to help explain these interactions. Further work is needed to pay both theoretical and empirical attention to these types of conditioning relationships. Fifth, more extensive theoretical development and empirical testing should also address an issue that has had little attention in the extant scholarship: conditions under which states may anticipate and seek to successfully resist political shocks, thereby avoiding the need for major policy changes. There is some evidence, for instance, suggesting that both the Russian Federation and China23 have reoriented their economic and trade policies, trying to reduce their dependence on international trade in order to protect their political systems from both interference and possible 21

Our explanations of political shocks may also need to embrace conditions of multiple shocks occurring within a state or region (e.g., the simultaneous shock of the Iranian revolution and the oil shock of 1979), rather than solely focusing on individual shocks (Kaufman, 1997). 22 See for example the discussion of variable that may mediate between political shock and role change in Chap. 5. 23 Between 2001 and 2020, Russian trade as a percent of its GDP declined by 26 percent. China’s trade as a percent of its GDP nearly doubled between 2001 and 2006, followed by an equally dramatic decrease between 2006 and 2020 (Source: World Bank).

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economic and political shocks.24 It is also plausible that some states are able to successfully erect a variety of “firewalls” to shield them against the diffusion of political shocks in their regions (see for instance the chapter in this volume on the Arab Spring). Finally, it would be useful for further research to come to some reckoning between the objective indicators of political shocks utilized in large-N research versus the subjective approach contained in most case studies of the phenomenon. It is plausible that some of the false negatives generated by large-N studies are plausibly due to the possibility that policy makers did not perceive a shock as being one, even when it had meet all four of the criteria specified earlier. Alternatively, some events may not have met all these criteria, yet they were nevertheless perceived as a political shock by policy makers. Process tracing across a variety of cases where political shocks did not lead to substantial policy change and cases where substantial policy change occurred even when the stimulating event did not meet the threshold criteria for a political shock could be highly useful in ascertaining conditions when the perceptual dimension and the objective scholarly assessment are not in synch. This problem would of course raise a host of additional research concerns both about the state of our theories and the validity of our empirical measures. Ultimately, there is no denying the importance and continued relevance of political shocks for major foreign policy change and for changes to the relationships between states. To date, no overarching study of political shocks currently exists, and what we do know primary comes from studies which have incorporated the concept into a researcher’s existing topic of study. Yet, if the crystal ball is correct, climate change, pandemics, increasing polarization between (and within) states, the rise of cyber politics, possible further nuclear proliferation, and a whole host of other destabilizing aspects of the international political system suggest that political shocks will likely continue and grow in volume. If that bet is correct, then we will need to expand further our understanding of political shocks and their effects on policy makers.

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Political Shocks and the Punctuated Equilibrium Model: Applications to the Evolution of Norms in the Americas Andrew Owsiak, Paul F. Diehl , Luis Schenoni, and Gary Goertz

Abstract In this chapter, we extend political shock research by discussing how scholars might better use the PE model in international relations research. We first summarize the PE model, noting its origins in evolutionary biology and its applications to policy research. Then, we review explicit uses of the PE model in research on rivalries, norms, international law, and other issue areas. Our main goal is not to provide a comprehensive review of this research, but rather to articulate the model and the different stages of the policy process with which it corresponds—specifically, agenda setting, policy formulation, crystallization, and consolidation. Finally, we illustrate the expanded PE model by applying it to the development of certain norms in the Latin America throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Keywords Political shock · Punctuated equilibrium · Rivalry · Norms · International law · Latin America

1 Introduction The punctuated equilibrium (PE) model has become a central part of policy and political science research over the past three decades (Baumgartner & Jones, 2009). It is designed to account for rapid policy change and is most often applied to agenda

A. Owsiak University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA P. F. Diehl (B) Independent Scholar, Champaign, IL, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. Schenoni University College of London, London, UK G. Goertz University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_3

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setting—that is, how policy issues or problems become so salient that decisionmakers feel compelled to act. These applications usually occur in the context of United States (US) domestic policymaking, although occasionally in other contexts as well (Baumgartner et al., 2011, 2019). Some international relations research, for example, has explicitly adopted the model to study various topics (see overview below). Despite its centrality in theories of policy change, the PE model remains underused and underdeveloped in international relations research. Scholars most often incorporate the model’s focus on shocks in their work; a large-scale alteration in the policy environment precipitates new policy agendas and opportunities for major policy change (see the review of studies in Chap. 2).1 Yet these treatments of shocks are somewhat idiosyncratic (e.g., do not conceptualize what type of phenomena constitutes a shock), unsystematic (e.g., do not address shock magnitude or successive/repeated shocks), and tends to ignore or underspecify the model’s other components (e.g., the underlying cycle of policy stasis—change–stasis). As an illustration, scholars often intuit that a particular shock (e.g., the end of the Cold War) affects their outcome of interest in some way without theorizing that effect in significant detail (e.g., the theoretical logic that explains the effect, how long the shock exerts the effect, whether and how the shock’s effect decays, etc.). Other parts of the PE model never appear in the argument or analysis. In this chapter, we extend political shock research by discussing how scholars might better use the PE model in international relations research. We first summarize the PE model, noting its origins in evolutionary biology and its applications to policy research. Then, we review explicit uses of the PE model in research on rivalries, norms, international law, and other issue areas. Our main goal is not to provide a comprehensive review of this research, but rather to articulate the model and the different stages of the policy process with which it corresponds—specifically, agenda setting, policy formulation, crystallization, and consolidation. Finally, we illustrate the expanded PE model by applying it to the development of certain norms in the Latin America throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

2 The Punctuated Equilibrium Model The punctuated equilibrium (PE) model has its origins in evolutionary biology (Eldredge, 1985, 1995; Gould & Eldredge, 1993). It is predicated on change that occurs suddenly and dramatically, rather than incrementally over time. Significant environmental changes (e.g., climatic shifts) or “shocks” often trigger these changes. The canonical historical example of such a shock is when a large asteroid hit the earth, thereby resulting in the extinction of a large percentage of existing species at 1

In our perspective, and consistent with the conceptualization in this collection, we define a political shock as a substantively significant and rapid change in the level or value of a given factor, here typically as an independent variable.

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the time (e.g., dinosaurs, which are perhaps the most famous and frequently cited ones). The organisms that survived then adapted to their new environment—developing new, more useful capabilities or shedding old, less useful ones. Before and after this period of rapid change, however, long periods of stasis existed. Thus, it is the absence of change—rather than change itself—that is the most common characteristic of evolutionary systems. Things remain stable; a shock causes relatively quick, drastic change; and then things stabilize once again. During periods of relative stability, policy-makers only adjust a given policy at the margins. More moderate policy changes lie between the two extremes—the abundance of smaller changes and the rare extreme changes—but almost never occur. As a result, were one to create a histogram of the magnitude of policy or behavioral changes that typically occur under the PE model (i.e., the typical dependent variable in an analysis of shock effects, such as the onset of war, the signing of an alliance pact, and so on), that stylized histogram would have thick and long tails (for another graphical representation, see Jones et al., 2003). It is no mistake that we use the US tax code as an example above. The PE model features prominently in the scholarly literature on American public policy making. Kingdon (1984) was among the early and most influential scholars in this area; he argued that there were three independent streams—problem, policy (i.e., solutions), and politics—that must converge for policy to change (see also the “garbage can model” of Cohen et al., 1972). Because this occurred infrequently, long periods of policy continuity dominated, akin to the stasis periods in the biology-based PE model. Kingdon’s (1984) model differs from the PE model in three noteworthy ways. First, whereas the PE model often requires decision-makers to craft a new solution from scratch (e.g., a shock raises a problem that they had not yet encountered or enhances its salience), Kingdon takes the existence of policy solutions as given in some sense. Decision-makers must find (and agree upon) a policy solution, but the set of solutions already exists for them in the policy stream. Second, whereas the PE model argues that a moment of sudden, drastic change will occur, policy develops incrementally in Kingdon’s model. Finally, the PE model—through shocks and their magnitude—accounts for both the salience of the problem and the political environment within which the problem and policy response occur; Kingdon’s model, in contrast, tends to downplay (i.e., salience) or minimize (i.e., political environment) them. To account for solution design, large and abrupt change, issue salience, and the broader political environment, the PE model might offer advantages over other models of policy change and political shocks alone. Baumgartner and Jones (1993, 2009), for example, explicitly apply the PE model in their examination of American policymaking. Instead of the incremental policy adoption that Kingdon expects, they find processes of rapid change, which include positive feedback loops from “escalatory bandwagons,” “slippery slopes,” and “waves.” They also note that these processes, though never fully in equilibrium, displayed notable periods of stability. Dramatic events—or shocks—supplied the mechanism that catalyzed periods of rapid change. These events identified a problem that needed a solution; encouraged the relevant actors to prioritize that problem, as well as search for and converge

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upon a solution; and modified the political environment so that decision-makers could dramatically shift policy. A mine disaster with significant deaths, for example, might prompt a government to enact new mine safety legislation. The same dynamic unfolds internationally. A state’s foreign policy is particularly vulnerable to the shock of international events (Durant & Diehl, 1989). A war, for example, might prompt an alliance to expand quickly, as when the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 caused Sweden and Finland to apply for—and the organization to extend an invitation to—membership in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Shocks, in other words, play a significant role in the PE model. The scholars that adapted the PE model from biology to explain the public policy process, however, tended to deemphasize or omit the role of these shocks. Incorporating them requires more than merely accepting that dramatic political events influence policy outcomes. Scholars must theorize the type of shocks that are relevant for their outcome of interest—a task that is domain specific. Wars may be important shocks that alter alliance patterns, but irrelevant for the adoption of new climate change standards. Similarly, decolonization (i.e., the quick appearance of many new states in a short period of time) might shock the development of international organizations, forcing many new actors and policy problems upon them; nevertheless, such a shock might be irrelevant to the development of human rights norms. Scholars also often oversimplify the systematic features of shocks in five main ways. First, they forget about the long periods of stability—or the absence of change—that precede and follow the shock. The PE model is designed to explain this policy stability, as well as the infrequent and abrupt policy modifications. Numerous factors explain the policy inertia we observe: the adoption of standard operating procedures (SOPs), bureaucratic policy planning (e.g., this year’s budget serves as the starting point for planning next year’s budget), institutional entrenchment (e.g., US foreign policy toward the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which viewed the Soviet Union as a threat even in more cooperative periods), and the adoption of norms and attitudes (e.g., using economic sanctions against human rights violators, even though these are often not effective at changing human rights behavior). To the extent that scholars focus on shocks alone, they fail to account for these mechanisms of policy reproduction. Because policy is stable far more often than not, they also miss the overwhelming majority of the policy change cycle. Second, scholars tend to interpret a shock as something that occurs at a single, fixed point—with an impact on policy or behavior shortly thereafter. The origins of the PE model in evolutionary biology, however, belie such a position. A shock might occur over many years. The Napoleonic Wars, the collapse of a colonial empire (which we discuss later), and climate change all supply illustrations. Similarly, the policy response to a shock may not occur immediately, but rather many years later. As an illustration, the horrors of the war crimes committed in Bosnia (1992–1995) and Kosovo (1998–1999), inter alia, contributed to the United Nations

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General Assembly’s creation of the Responsibility to Protect norm at the 2005 World Summit.2 Major policy changes, quite simply, could need time to mature. Third, the response to a shock might be delayed because not all relevant actors experience the shock similarly, although scholars often assume the opposite. Conventional wisdom, for example, asserts that the collapse of the Soviet Union reverberated throughout the world, affecting all states’ foreign policies. Although perhaps true, Trinidad and Tobago would have experienced the Cold War’s end as a shock of smaller magnitude than the United States (US); changes to the former’s foreign policy would not need to be as drastic. In some cases, moreover, key actors might not experience the shock at all. US interventions in the Western Hemisphere led Latin American states to prioritize the development of a non-intervention norm (see our discussion later in this chapter). These interventions did not shock the US, however, and it would take the region many decades to convince the US that its behavior was a problem, that a non-intervention norm was the solution, and that it should curb its behavior significantly. Fourth, scholars often incorporate shocks into their work as isolated events: a war, a change in the international system, a violation of a norm, a state gaining independence. Shocks can, however, also occur repeatedly or in quick succession; if similar enough, this sequence affects how actors respond. Decolonization offers an illustration. Rather than one state gaining independence, a whole series of states gained independence—some simultaneously, and others in quick succession (e.g., see Latin America and Africa). How to determine a new state’s boundaries is a policy problem. That problem becomes far more urgent when it affects many more actors (i.e., the spatial scope expands) in a short period (i.e., the temporal scope shrinks). Simultaneous or successive shocks magnify a policy problem’s urgency (i.e., create a cumulative shock of greater magnitude), encouraging actors to prioritize the search for and adoption of a solution.3 Finally, scholars—and the PE model itself—emphasize the agenda setting function of shocks. When a shock occurs, it creates a situation that demands a response, thereby encouraging further discussion about the situation among the relevant actors. As we argue below, however, such an application is too narrow. Political shocks influence other parts of the policy change process as well: the selection, refinement, codification, and consolidation of a policy solution (set) that addresses the given policy problem. Moreover, shocks are only necessary—but not sufficient—conditions for policy change in applications of the PE model. Scholars need to identify these other factors with respect to their outcome of interest.

2

United Nations General Assembly. (2005, September 16) 2005 World Summit Outcome. A/RES/60/1, 138–140. Available online at: https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/ N05/487/60/PDF/N0548760.pdf. Last accessed 20 August 2022. 3 One can conceptualize a shock as a wave (e.g., of water). A big wave might result from a single factor (i.e., a large stone) or the summation of many factors (i.e., a series of small stones in quick succession).

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3 Shocks and the PE Model Within International Relations Research Political shocks appear frequently in international relations research—most often with respect to the agenda setting element of the policy change process. Quantitative researchers incorporate these shocks into their models via a variable that indicates whether a political shock occurs in a given year (e.g., the Cold War ends).4 The underlying logic is straightforward: the shock alters an actor’s political environment significantly, thereby influencing its opportunity or willingness to change its behavior (i.e., creates a permissive environment to take a desired action or alters its preferences; Most & Starr, 1989). Despite the use of shock variables, scholars generally do not integrate shocks into their broader theoretical argument; instead, they consider shocks to be one of several factors that might influence the primary outcome under investigation. This implicit theoretical narrative de facto appropriately recognizes shocks as necessary—but not sufficient—conditions. The empirical tests, however, do not necessarily reflect such a position; a regression (or similar) equation assumes that the independent variables (e.g., shocks) are both necessary and sufficient for the outcome. This not only creates a mismatch between theoretical arguments and their evaluation, but also may cause shock variables to perform poorly in some statistical models (e.g., see Rider & Owsiak, 2021; Stinnett & Diehl, 2001). A small number of studies explicitly employ the PE model, such that their theoretical arguments and accompanying analyses incorporate more of the model than a single shock variable alone. Diehl and Goertz (2000), for example, apply the PE model to interstate rivalries—that is, serious (often, long-term) militarized competitions between two states over a particular (set of) issue(s). Rivals view one another as a serious threat and competitor that will not dissipate in the near future. As a result, they each reorient their foreign policy to confront the other. Because interactions, attitudes, and policymaking become regularized and entrenched toward this goal, rivals experience long(er) periods of threat, hostility, and competition that coincide with the PE model’s notion of stasis. It takes a dramatic environmental change (i.e., political shock) before rivals reevaluate their relationship. Indeed, the authors posit— and confirm empirically—that political shocks at the international (e.g., world wars) or domestic level (e.g., regime change or civil war in one or both states) are necessary conditions for the onset and termination of rivalries (see also Schenoni 2018). Goertz (2003) uses the PE model to offer insight into a vastly different context: international norms. Norms guide the decision-making processes of actors. In effect, they become equilibria around which actors coordinate their expectations 4

To operationalize a shock variable, one must ideally theorize somewhat about how fast the shock’s effect decays—a shortcoming we discuss above. The end of the Cold War, for example, might encourage immediate changes in behavior (e.g., in 1991–1992), as well as some delayed changes (e.g., 1995–1996). Both types of change can be rapid and abrupt, when they occur. Moreover, the effect of the shock may decline over time, being strongest in immediate proximity to the shock and declining as time moves on.

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and behavior. Actors embed these explanations in standard operating procedures (e.g., within state bureaucracies or international organizations), which fosters policy stability (or stasis). Large shifts in these procedures then occur in response to dramatic political changes. United Nations peacekeeping operations, for example, developed standard operating procedures. Historically, the minimal use of force (i.e., using force only in self-defense) was one principle underlying these procedures. After a few political shocks, in which peacekeepers’ actions failed to obstruct genocide campaigns (e.g., in Rwanda, 1994; Bosnia, 1995), actors rewrote the procedures. Peacekeepers could now use minimal force in defense of themselves and the mandate; on occasion, the Security Council has also authorized “robust” missions, in which peacekeepers can “use all necessary means” (i.e., force) to accomplish certain peacekeeping tasks (e.g., protecting civilians). This cycle—a long period of stable procedures, followed by a rapid shift in procedures, followed by a return to stable (new) procedures—coincides with the PE model’s predictions. Diehl and Ku (2010) recognize that international law changes slowly; even new treaties merely codify existing and long-standing customary law. In their conceptualization, two subsystems compose international law: an operating subsystem (i.e., the courts, actors, and so on) and a normative subsystem (i.e., the issue specific prescriptions and proscriptions). These two subsystems ideally align; procedures and mechanisms for prosecuting violators of human rights, for example, would accompany the rules that govern respect for human rights. In practice, however, a disconnect often exists between the two systems, as they change (or not) somewhat independently of one another. Long periods of stasis characterize both subsystems, and it again takes some type of shock to facilitate the development of new international law (e.g., the Holocaust gives rise to the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention), even as the operating system might require decades to catch up (e.g., the creation of the International Criminal Court). The PE model accounts for both the continuity and the abrupt changes within the two subsystems of the international legal system. Lundgren et al. (2018) examine the policymaking agendas of international organizations through the lens of the PE model. Their simplest model descriptively hypothesizes that the policy agendas of international organizations will display long periods of stasis and short periods of radical change. This hypothesis aligns with the core expectations of the PE model. Their second hypothesis then extends the PE model to account for variation in stasis and change, but within the PE framework’s guardrails. It predicts—and finds—that organizations with more “institutional friction” (e.g., demanding decision-making rules, larger memberships, or more heterogeneous preferences) will have higher degrees of policy punctuation. When an institution contains more friction that reinforces policy stability, policy change proceeds less incrementally than it otherwise might; when policy changes, it then changes more drastically than in more friction-free contexts. Colgan et al. (2012) go beyond a single or set of organizations. They apply the PE model to the international energy “regime” at large—that is, the collection of norms, laws, regularized behaviors, and expectations within a given issue area. Once again, rather than refer to it as a theory, the authors use the PE model as an analytical framework to understand continuity and change in energy markets. Similar to Diehl

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and Ku (2010), the role of major states in driving or resisting change is important. Comparable to preference divergence in Lundgren et al. (2018), interest homogeneity among key players affects aspects of change, including its timing. Miller (2021) applies the PE model to the democratization process, arguing that democratization follows one of two pathways. In the first, shifts to democratization come on the heels of domestic (e.g., coups) or international (e.g., defeat in war) political shocks. In the second, labeled “electoral continuity,” the ruling party acquiesces to democratization because it expects to win subsequent elections. These two pathways capture a stasis/rapid change/stasis cycle, and according to Miller, procession along one pathway is a necessary condition of democratization. All of this aligns with the PE model’s core expectations. Finally, Schenoni (2021) applies the PE model’s insights to analyze the link between warfare and state capacity. Unlike in the traditional “bellicist” account—in which wars make the state through an extraction of societal resources (e.g., taxes) in order to finance a larger military—Schenoni focuses on the continuities before and after the shock of war, as well as the long-term effects of war outcomes. Past victories entrench the state-building project by consolidating wartime coalitions and institutions. Defeat sets states onto a path that weakens the state-building enterprise, at least until the shock of the next war. In line with the PE model, Schenoni paints an overall picture of marginal changes in state capacity during periods of peace (i.e., stasis), punctuated by wars that can produce rapid change in state capacity—either in a positive or negative direction, depending on the wars’ outcomes. Although the above discussion does not supply an exhaustive list of the studies that apply the PE model—and not merely a shock variable—in international relations research, it illustrates that the model has broad applicability to a wide variety of topics (e.g., rivalries/interstate relationships, international organizations/regimes, norms, energy markets, democratization, state-building). Even the more developed of these applications, however, commonly contains three main limitations. First, most scholars use the PE model by way of analogy, rather than as part of a fully developed theoretical model. Second, beyond the foundational elements of stasis and rapid change, scholars draw little else from the PE model. Finally, the applications emphasize the agenda setting aspect of the policy change process; they then move outside the PE model to account for the adoption of that policy change, because shocks are a necessary—but not sufficient—condition for that change. Partly, this results from a lack of clarity about what the PE model is, and what it can illuminate vis-à-vis other approaches interested in change and stasis (e.g., the historical institutionalist focus on critical junctures and path dependence; see Mahoney & Thelen, 2012). In the next section, we attempt to redress some of these limitations, by laying out the PE model and its prospective application to international relations more extensively.

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4 The Process of Political Shocks in the Punctuated Equilibrium Model To understand how to integrate political shocks into the punctuated equilibrium (PE) model, we must first contrast the PE model’s formulation with an incremental model. Figure 1 presents this contrast. The slanted, dashed line captures the primary, defining features of incrementalism: minor, slow changes in a given variable of interest over time. The solid, S-shaped curve, in contrast, represents the PE model: periods of stasis (i.e., the left and right ends of the S-curve), punctuated by infrequent major, rapid changes—most clearly manifest in the middle of the S-curve. As we note earlier, when scholars adopt the PE model to explain the policy change process, they nearly always focus on the initial, “agenda setting” stage of this process. Although important, it is not the only stage in which political shocks have an impact. We therefore extend the PE model—and the impact of political shocks—to four stages of the policy process: agenda setting, formulation, crystallization, and consolidation. These stages constitute the different segments of the S-curve in Fig. 1, and we discuss each in turn below.

4.1 Agenda Setting Policy makers face a plethora of problems—both broad (e.g., climate change, human rights abuses, COVID-19, or territorial disputes) and specific (e.g., a refugee crisis that originates in Ukraine, how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, or the multifaceted dispute over the South China Sea). Yet, they have limited attention, incentives, and resources to address these various problems. To the extent that they deal with Fig. 1 An incremental vs. punctuated equilibrium model of policy change Acceptance of policy change

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multiple problems at a time, policy change will therefore be incremental, if it occurs at all; policy makers allocate a small amount of attention and a few resources to multiple problems simultaneously, thereby advancing policy slowly along numerous fronts. This approach produces the initial, flat portion of the S-curve in Fig. 1. Policy makers will not always find the myriad problems they face equally salient; some problems will be more pressing at a given time than others. Which problems receive priority, moving to the top of the policy agenda? Political shocks play a significant role in answering this question. Major events or changes (i.e., shocks; see the other chapters in this collection for a wide range of examples) often bring a problem to leaders’ attention, thereby producing a demand for action. The Holocaust, for example, incentivized the international community to prioritize human rights and to create various human rights conventions (e.g., the UN Genocide Convention or the Universal Declaration of Human Rights). A similar effect results from longer-term shocks—that is, those not confined to a single event. As an illustration, the effects of climate change have unfolded over many years and involve multiple adverse weather events, all of which have raised consciousness about the problem. A shock’s magnitude may also influence a problem’s prioritization. States have clashed repeatedly over time, for example, but only the World Wars incentivized them to create major global institutions (e.g., League of Nations or the United Nations) to constrain such behavior. The consequences of these wars (e.g., the number of deaths, as well as the wars’ spatial scope and destruction) demonstrated the severity of the problem of interstate war, thereby increasing the salience of the problem and moving it up the policy agenda. Finally, shocks can influence policy makers indirectly. When a shock affects the public in one or more states (e.g., a refugee crisis), it heightens public awareness of a problem. Depending on domestic political institutions, the public may then pressure decision makers to prioritize that problem. There are several caveats to the role of political shocks in the agenda setting stage. First, the impact of shocks is sectoral with respect to problems and policy domains. Shocks have a large effect on policy agendas within a dominant domain, but a narrower effect on policy agendas in related domains; for example, climate change will not likely influence alliance patterns, whereas a major war could. Second, and consistent with public policy research, shocks are only necessary conditions for policy change. Other factors come into play too, with the exact factors depending on the problem at hand.

4.2 Policy Formulation As depicted in the American politics and agenda setting literature, the PE model considers policy solutions to the problem at hand primarily as given. That is, the “solution stream” already exists and consists of well-formulated policies—often, the standard operating procedures that decision makers have applied to other problems in the past and that are consistent with existing bureaucratic routines. If such a solution stream exists, then political shocks play only an indirect role in the policy formulation

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stage; they affect agenda-setting, which stimulates the search for a solution among the existing options. In our conceptualization, however, political shocks play a greater role. They not only open a window of opportunity for policy change (i.e., serve as necessary conditions), but also could give impetus to some solutions over others. A political shock actuates certain policy entrepreneurs, whether specific individuals, nongovernmental organizations, or other actors. Entrepreneurs’ clout will give the solution they advocate weight, but their advocacy will be further enhanced if the political shock privileges their preferred solution over others. A shock of large magnitude, for example, could favor a policy response that is both rapid and designed to have an immediate effect, rather than one whose effect unfolds over a longer time horizon. Such advocacy, if successful, causes one solution (set) to become a focal point—the preferred solution among the available options. Shocks also prod policy formulation. When a new problem emerges, actors need time to formulate a detailed solution. In such situations, shock incentives key actors to set some foundational premises for a solution, even if a detailed solution remains elusive in the short-term. States might agree, for example, to renounce violence against civilians during war, even as they debate how precisely to define the term “civilian” or to craft detailed expectations for war-time behavior. When such foundational premises emerge, they create positive feedback. The next problem-related shock brings the problem to the attention of additional actors, softens reluctant actors to the solution’s foundational premises, and encourages leading actors to take the next step in the solution’s development—a type of path dependence (Pierson, 2004). In the example above, the “next war” encourages more states to renounce violence against civilians and solidifies the definitions and expectations somewhat. The processes described above correspond to the “emergence” phase of Finnemore and Sikkink’s (1998) model of norm dynamics, as well as the initial upward trajectory of the S-curve in Fig. 1. At some point, individual decisions to favor a specific solution hit a critical mass, and policy makers cross a “tipping point.” A “cascade” then follows, in which an increasing number of actors both recognize the problem at hand, prioritize it, and favor the emerging dominant solution. In other words, consensus about the problem and how to handle it increasingly build, as previously reluctant or unaware actors bandwagon with the group. The context (i.e., setting and issue area) determines the actors involved in the cascade process, along with what form their solution takes. In foreign policy, the actors are typically state leaders, government representatives, and relevant bureaucracies, who must coalesce around a given policy solution. Internationally, the actors are often disparate state governments, who must adopt a common policy to address a transnational problem (e.g., a minimum 15% corporate tax). Within international organizations, the actors might be the member states, who either negotiate a new treaty or, in conjunction with organization representatives, adopt successive policies that push members toward a preferred policy solution (i.e., a positive feedback mechanism). The European Union’s move to a common currency, as well as its ongoing work to lift financial barriers in response to trade problems, offer some illustrations.

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Finally, political shocks can determine how fast the cascade stage accelerates. As we note earlier, a shock’s magnitude can affect the urgency of adopting a new policy—and therefore the speed with which the cascade occurs (i.e., the steepest slope of the S-curve in Fig. 1). Repeated shocks, whether of the same (e.g., repeated wars) or a different kind (e.g., climate-related weather events), can also persuade more actors to adopt a new policy. The timing of these serial shocks could, in theory, function as a magnifier of the problem, especially if they cluster in time or space. Because most research in international relations confines itself to analysis of a single shock, it misses the effect of multiple or successive shocks on the policy change process.

4.3 Crystallization The third stage of the policy change process is what we have elsewhere labelled “crystallization.” It is the segment in time during which the major policy change reaches fruition. When this stage ends, there are no lingering debates about what the new policy will be. Moreover, all necessary actors have signed off on the new policy, so few such actors remain to convince of the solution’s value and terms. Crystallization signifies a transition from the cascade stage—defined by accelerating coalescence around a new policy outcome—to a stage in which that acceleration slows markedly. In Fig. 1, this occurs at the top-right of the S-curve, where the slope declines precipitously toward zero. The end of the crystallization stage manifests empirically with an observable policy output, such as adopting a treaty (e.g., a border delimitation agreement), reaching an agreement (e.g., on trade), recognizing a new state, or extending organizational membership to a new actor. Because of these observable behavioral outputs, scholars typically make the crystallization stage the outcome variable in their models. When such a behavioral output does not occur, an analyst might be tempted to conclude that a given shock had no effect. This inference is misguided in at least two ways. First, political shocks are only necessary conditions; they open windows of opportunity. The absence of other important factors may better account for the failure of policy to change—or why actors did or could not seize the opportunity that a shock created. Second, political shocks can significantly affect the agenda setting and policy formulation stages, even if actors never create (or abort) the cascade stage. Much international relations research on shocks misses these elements because it considers only two points—the shock and a prospective outcome in response—rather than the entire underlying policy change process. Full consideration of the PE model and its stages allows analysts to detect these overlooked effects. It also raises a different set of questions about political shocks and policy change in general.

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4.4 Consolidation The policy change process does not end here, so it is also misleading to stop the analysis with the behavior outputs associated with crystallization (i.e., before the process completes). The PE model predicts stasis after abrupt change. Accordingly, there is a consolidation stage after crystallization, during which behavior adheres routinely to the new policy because actors internalize and reinforce it (e.g., states and organizations build the new policy into standard operating procedures). Various actions amend, strengthen, and extend the new policy, but do not fundamentally change it. The consolidation stage, in other words, contains some policy adjustments at the margins, but a new period of stasis predominantly characterizes it. This new stasis appears at the far right of the S-curve in Fig. 1, and offers the foundation for a new future S-curve in which policy changes again (i.e., the process in Fig. 1 repeats). What does consolidation look like in practice? Consider an alliance agreement that results from a war. Signing the alliance—and making a public commitment to defend allies—signifies crystallization. In the consolidation stage, the allies adjust their defense policies (e.g., arms sales, deployment locations, or battle plans), coordinate action (e.g., build consultative arrangements, or routinize joint military exercises), and reiterate their commitment as needed (e.g., to reassure one another and signal their commitment’s strength to those outside the alliance). Similarly, a new treaty on international humanitarian law might emerge from the crystallization stage. During the consolidation stage, actors then modify training protocols for soldiers, alter military justice procedures, reproduce the law’s requirements in other documents (e.g., additional treaties), enforce the law (e.g., through courts or collective action), and so on. Each of these actions reinforces the new policy, contributing to the stasis that permeates the consolidation stage. Political shocks do not necessarily play a central role in this stage of the policy change process. Their absence or minimization here, however, may be important. First, an abrupt and significant change in policy will not occur without a shock (i.e., a necessary condition), so their less significant role in this stage perhaps buttresses stasis. Second, a shock that reinitiates the policy change process (e.g., raises a problem that needs attention) likely heralds a shift from the consolidation stage back to the agenda setting stage. It is not a feature of the consolidation stage itself. Finally, shocks cannot reinitiate the policy change process on their own. Because they are a necessary condition, other factors must also be present. This suggests that shocks may occur during the consolidation stage but have no effect on policy. Analysts who look only for political shocks will therefore produce many “false positives” when predicting policy change.

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5 The Punctuated Equilibrium Model, Shocks, and Norm Development in the Americas As our earlier discussion indicates, the PE model applies to myriad international political processes. We demonstrate one such application in this section, with an eye toward the role of shocks. In particular, we discuss how shocks affected different moments in the development of a norm complex that virtually eliminated war from the Americas after the early 1930s. A norm complex is a set of mutually reinforcing rules and principles (Finnemore, 2003) that interrelate logically and historically (Kacowicz, 2005). The norm complex that interests us here emerged from a unique normative system in the Americas (see Kacowicz, 2005; Sikkink, 2017). It contains three behavioral expectations. First, once set, interstate borders cannot be changed unilaterally (i.e., via force). Second, major states cannot overtly (i.e., militarily) intervene in the region’s member states. Third, states will manage disagreements over issues that fall under the first two norms (i.e., issues that would historically result in violations of the first two expectations) via peaceful conflict management tools, particularly arbitration. Actors in the Americas viewed these three norms—territorial integrity, non-intervention, and peaceful dispute resolution, respectively—as interrelated and consequently bundled them together, thereby fostering the development not of disparate individual norms but rather as a norm complex. Figure 2 presents a stylized depiction of this norm complex’s development— from the earliest independence movement in Latin American states (circa 1810) to the present. The development cycle adheres well to the theoretical S-curve-shaped that the PE model postulates: relative stasis (i.e., a flat slope to the curve; 1810–1888), then abrupt change (i.e., the curve’s slope becomes more vertical; 1889–1933), then a return to stasis (i.e., the curve goes flat again; 1933 onward). Two additional features of Fig. 2 merit special mention. First, new periods of stasis are not a return to the status quo ante. The PE model could accommodate such a prediction, but it would rarely occur in a policy change cycle. Stasis, in such a cycle, involves adherence to a particular policy. The policy change process shifts this adherence from an old policy (i.e., stasis) to a new one. Thus, the new stasis occurs after—and is supported by—the adoption of a new policy. Figure 2 also maps the PE model’s four stages onto the S-shaped curve that these stages produce for our norm complex’s development cycle (see the arrows at the bottom of the figure). In the remainder of this section, we discuss some events within each stage of that policy change process—to highlight the repeated, significant role that shocks played during the norm cycle’s development in the Americas. Given this goal (and limited space), we neither comprehensively catalog the role of shocks in this case nor fully explain the norm complex’s development. Our goal is simply to highlight the importance of shocks at various junctures in the norm complex’s life cycle.

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5.1 Agenda Setting After Napoleon invaded both Spain and Portugal—and captured King Ferdinand VII—the Iberian colonies in the Americas began declaring independence. The resulting states’ leaders recognized two immediate problems. First, the newly born states needed boundaries set between themselves—ones that they agreed upon and respected. Territory is, after all, a defining feature of what it means to be a state (Shaw, 2021). Second, no former colonial lands could remain unclaimed by a new state, as this would create terra nullius that major powers could perhaps reclaim (i.e., recolonize). These two policy problems—the potential proliferation of territorial conflict and the threat of major-power intervention—were intertwined. Underlying each lies questions of state sovereignty. States gaining independence are a major shock: a new actor joins the club of nations. The collapse of the Spanish colonial empire created a series of these shocks—first as colonial holdings declared independence from Spain, then as those larger holdings fragmented into additional states (e.g., Venezuela, Colombia, and Ecuador emerge from Gran Colombia). That succession of shocks catalyzed norm entrepreneurs to search for a solution to the policy problems. Their answer initially came in the form of the uti possidetis doctrine, which proposed that new states inherit the administrative boundaries of the parent state. Venezuela offers a historical regional illustration; when it separated from Gran Colombia, it purported to take the territory administratively called the Captain-Generalship of Venezuela under the Spanish crown (Ratner, 1996).

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Uti possidetis itself was a partial solution to the identified policy problems for multiple reasons. First, as Latin American states recognized, territorial disagreements can still arise if neighboring states want the same land; borders in the future could perhaps differ from the borders at independence. Second, the Spanish crown’s administrative boundaries often lacked clear delimitation. This meant actors could agree in principle to uti possidetis, but lack the tools needed to implement it in practice. Territorial disagreements arose as a result. Third, actors disagreed about what uti possidetis exactly meant. Did the administrative boundaries that would become interstate borders derive entirely from Spanish legal documents, or could a state claim land that it held at independence, even if legal documents suggested that land belonged to another administrative unit (Ratner, 1996)? Such debates are common early in the agenda setting and policy formulation stages, as actors flesh out the details of a solution to the problem at hand. Fourth, major states could intervene militarily in the new states without explicitly claiming their land. Preventing major-power intervention would therefore require adding to uti possidetis. Finally, entrepreneurs needed to convince all relevant actors—in this case, all states in the region, as well as the major-powers—to accept their solution. This last point raises a second way that shocks affected the agenda setting stage: they demonstrated the urgency of the policy problem. In an established region, the birth of a new state is a shock, but does not require actors to develop a broad policy about how to handle the delimitation of new states’ borders. Kosovo’s independence, for example, did not motivate Europe to rethink how it would recognize interstate borders. When, however, a number of states all gain independence around the same time (e.g., a shock of higher magnitude), the policy problem of what to do about interstate borders becomes more acute. This occurred in the Americas in the early to mid-1800s, and in response, entrepreneurs formulated doctrines that offered potential solutions to the policy problem. Uti possidetis was one such doctrine, but not the only one. The Monroe Doctrine (1823), for example, prohibited European states from intervening in the Americas; the Bello Doctrine (1837) discussed the legal validity of Inter-American norms; the Juarez Doctrine (1867) proposed a general policy of non-intervention in states’ domestic affairs. Various doctrines, in turn, set the agenda for regional conferences, at which actors discussed the policy problem and developed the solution further. The 1826 Panama Conference, for example, convened only three years after U.S. President Monroe publicized the Monroe Doctrine in his annual message to Congress. The conference discussed how the region would collectively defend itself against European intervention—that is, enforce the Monroe Doctrine if European states violated it. The 1847 Lima Conference codified uti possidetis and discussed non-intervention again (Frazier, 1949). In these ways, shocks began the policy change process. They demonstrated a need to address interstate borders and the intervention of major states (i.e., problems that current policy inadequately managed), motivated entrepreneurs to propose solutions to those problems, convinced other key actors (i.e., states) of the need to adopt a regional solution, and set the agenda for regional conferences, at which these actors developed the proposed solutions further.

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5.2 Policy Formulation Once actors have a solution “focal point”, they next flesh out that solution (i.e., formulate the precise policy solution). Two aspects of the Latin American norm complex’s development demonstrate this process well, and both relate to shocks. The first involves the non-intervention norm. The Monroe Doctrine proposed that European states could not intervene militarily in the region. Two follow-up questions arose in the years that followed. First, could the United States (US) intervene at will throughout the region? Various shocks quickly brought this question to light— including the Mexican–American War (1846–1848) and a US citizen’s private (i.e., non-government sanctioned) attempt to invade and govern Central America.5 In response, Latin American states campaigned to extend the non-intervention principle to US behavior. Second, does the reason for intervention matter? European states eventually abandoned their desire to recolonize the Americas—the form of intervention that initially caused concern in the early 1800s; yet these same states continued to intervene in the region to collect debt or protect citizens. In 1902, for example, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Italy blockaded Venezuela to collect unpaid debt via force. Interventions such as these constituted shocks to which policy formulation responded. The Venezuelan blockade again supplies an illustration. After it occurred, Luis María Drago, Argentina’s Minister of Foreign Relations, argued that foreign powers could not admissibly use force to collect debt. The Rio Conference (1906) subsequently supported this Drago Doctrine, thereby unifying the region’s position on the matter. The process underlying the above events offers two additional insights into the PE model that we discussed earlier in the chapter. First, the actors involved in a policy change process need not experience a given shock similarly. The United States—and perhaps even Mexico—may not have experienced the Mexican–American War as a shock. Third-party states observing the war, however, did. The latter wanted to refine the region’s non-intervention norm in response, but still needed to convince those that did not experience the shock to sign off on the revisions. That proved difficult to accomplish; without a shock, an actor often assigns a given policy problem (and the need for its solution) less priority. Indeed, it took Latin America until 1907 to convince the US to support a broader non-intervention norm. The US did this “with fingers crossed” and hoping to find “a major loophole” (Friedman, 2018, 212). It would take another twenty-five years after that before the US would fully embrace the norm and its behavioral prescriptions. Second, the policy formulation stage follows a path dependent trajectory. Latin American states entered this stage with a roughly sketched solution—the need for a specific norm complex. Additional shocks (e.g., interventions) underscored the urgency of the problem, as well as the need for adopting the proposed solution. 5

This is William Walker’s expedition into Central America. He put together a private army and tried to take pieces of Mexico and Central America to establish slave-holding US colonies there. The US government did not authorize or support this, but the attempt shocked and threated Latin American states.

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In response to each shock, the involved actors did not “start from scratch.” They did not, in other words, debate whether the region needed a non-intervention or territorial integrity norm. Instead, they refined the proposed solution on the table, developing what precise form the norm complex should take. The Drago Doctrine, for example, followed and expanded the 1868 Calvo Doctrine, which argued that foreign powers should exhaust local dispute resolution mechanisms before resorting to force for debt collection or civilian protection. In this way, the solution moved forward through successive doctrines, conferences, and treaties in a path dependent fashion—a path on which the (original) shocks in the agenda setting stage put the actors. A similar process is evident with respect to a second trend: the rise of a norm to arbitrate disputes. The initial policy problem was how to delimit the borders between newly independent states (i.e., “divide up” colonial lands). Uti possidetis offered a solution, but only a partial one. Colonial maps often lacked clarity. Moreover, with the development of cartography, railways, and other technologies, states sought to expand their territorial control. As multiple states engaged in this behavior, they collided with one another’s expansionist campaigns, creating new territorial disputes that required management—and which uti possidetis could not address. A small cadre of states—Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Peru, and Venezuela—discussed a solution at the 1864 Lima Conference (Frazier, 1949). In the Pact for the Preservation of Peace that resulted from this conference, the signatory states pledged to resolve their disputes through good offices and arbitration. After two additional shocks—the Paraguayan War (1864–1870) and the War of the Pacific (1879–1884)—the formulation of a solution gained wider, regional import. To facilitate better communication and economic progress under the umbrella of a burgeoning Pan-American Union, territorial disputes could not escalate to war (Simmons 2005). The region needed an alternative mechanism for settling these disputes. During the Pan-American conferences that began in 1889, states discussed peaceful dispute resolution mechanisms repeatedly, with arbitration emerging as a preferred mechanism (e.g., see the 1902 Treaty on Compulsory Arbitration; PanAmerican Union, 1954, 1–4). At their 1889 conference, for example, states reached initial agreement on the compulsory arbitration of disputes that might lead to militarized conflict. They also proposed a Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), a proposal that crossed the Atlantic and that the Hague Convention (1899) later adopted. It is therefore no surprise that Latin American states quickly accepted the PCA’s jurisdiction. By 1902, states in the Americas moved beyond merely advocating that disputants “use peaceful means” of dispute resolution, or even that they “use arbitration” specifically. Instead, they began to sketch out the details of arbitration processes (see, for examples, the 1902 Treaty on Compulsory Arbitration [Pan-American Union, 1954]). States intended this detailed process to apply definitively to issues concerning “diplomatic privileges, boundaries, rights of navigation [i.e., inland river boundaries], and validity, construction, and enforcement of treaties” (emphasis added; Article 2). The

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process, in other words, was a solution to the problem they identified earlier: delimiting interstate borders. Iterations of arbitration as a solution would continue through the early 1900s.

5.3 Crystallization Policy formulation eventually matures. At this point—what we label crystallization— all critical actors support (or do not obstruct) the policy change and few (if any) policy details remain left to work out. For a norm complex, this occurs when actors have fully developed, integrated, and formally codified the various norms involved. A series of treaties (1923–1932) related to the norm complex constitute this stage, but 1933 proved to be a critical juncture due to the convergence of two big shocks. First, the Great Depression led to a decline in the United States’ regional clout (Grandin, 2012). This decline bolstered the bargaining position of Latin American states, who still wanted to constrain US behavior via a norm of absolute nonintervention. Second, the two major Latin American wars of the twentieth century— the Leticia and Chaco Wars—began in 1932, capturing the region’s attention and demanding a regional response. These two shocks may have been causally related (Butt, 2013), but regardless, they exerted distinct effects on the norm complex’s development. A weaker US allowed Latin American states to push for their preferred formulation of “non-intervention,” while the wars pressed the region to consolidate the norms of territorial integrity and the peaceful resolution of disputes. Of the shocks mentioned above, the Chaco War deserves pride of place in the crystallization stage. By June 1932, when the Chaco War began, the norm complex’s constituent parts had intertwined and strengthened for decades. The war, however, created a pressing policy problem—related to the norm complex—that required a solution. One solution emerged in 1933: a US-led Commission of Neutrals threatened to withdraw diplomatic representation from the belligerent states unless they accepted arbitration of their dispute. Saavedra Lamas, the Argentine Foreign Minister, believed this solution approached an intervention; he therefore declared that “…the Argentine Chancellery will not go along with the Commission of Neutrals in any act which … might approximate an intervention …. [T]he adoption of coercive measures can be based only on a Treaty accepted beforehand by the countries to which it is to apply” (cited in Rout, 1970, 77–78). The US withdrew its diplomatic initiative in response, and a second solution emerged: a decentralized, regional diplomatic effort that bundled territorial integrity and non-intervention under the auspices of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Peru. On the fourth day of the 1933 Montevideo Conference, the regional efforts yielded a cease-fire that ended the first, deadliest phase of the last Latin American war. The region’s response to the Chaco War invoked all components of the norm complex: territorial integrity, non-intervention, and arbitration (i.e., peaceful dispute resolution mechanisms). The war also, however, motivated Saavedra Lamas to complete the norm complex’s crystallization. Only three months after the war began,

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he submitted a draft of the Anti-War Treaty of Non-Aggression and Conciliation (also known as the Saavedra Lamas Treaty) to Washington on 21 September 1932. As Jessup (1933, 109) notes: …the immediate inspiration of the Saavedra Lamas plan was the Chaco dispute …. The aims of the plan are … ‘to vest with permanency the generous movement of joint purpose which has lined up all the peoples of the Americas behind a great solidary action.’ Dr. Saavedra Lamas draws upon the long line of treaties for pacific settlement [dating back to the 1800s].

The norm complex started crystallizing before the Chaco War began (e.g., the treaties between 1923–1932). Indeed, actors used all the norm complex’s pieces to inform their response to the war. A multilateral, regional group of states repeatedly mediated the conflict (e.g., in 1933 and 1935); advocated military non-intervention; achieved a Protocol in 1935 that ended the war; inserted an arbitration clause into the 1935 Protocol; effectively arbitrated the dispute’s underlying border disagreement (in 1938); deployed military observers to the disputed region; and successfully encouraged the belligerents to renounce any territory obtained via conquest (Woolsey, 1939). Despite this, no legal document had yet fully developed, integrated, and formally codified all the various norms involved. Saavedra Lamas saw that the Chaco War created a moment of opportunity to do just that. His actions completed the crystallization process.

5.4 Consolidation Once a policy crystallizes, the consolidation stage begins. During this stage, actors might adjust the new policy (e.g., as implementation creates the need for adaption), but they do not change its content significantly. It is therefore best seen as a return to stasis. The 1933 Montevideo Conference crystallized the norm complex, primarily via the Saavedra Lamas Treaty. The next regional conference—the 1936 Buenos Aires Conference—then reinforced the norm complex further. There, states signed a Convention to Coordinate, Extend, and Assure the Fulfillment of the Existing Treaties between the American States (1936; US Department of State, 1969). The convention’s goal, as the name suggests, was to reiterate earlier commitments. Towards this end, it individually mentions the treaties that states signed during the crystallization stage by name (e.g., the 1923 Gondra Treaty, the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact, 1929 Conventions on Conciliation and Arbitration, and the 1933 Saavedra Lamas Treaty; see Article 1). It also repeatedly reaffirmed the commitments found within these earlier treaties. At the same Conference, states bolstered the norm complex with two additional, complementary treaties (US Department of State, 1969). Through the Treaty on the Prevention of Controversies (1936), each state-party agreed to establish a bilateral commission (separately) with every other state-party. These commissions would identify likely issues of future controversy in each state-state pair—and then help

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the involved states work proactively to address them. In the Treaty of Good Offices and Mediation (1936), the states-parties reiterated that good offices and mediation were available to disputing states, established a pool of available mediators, and clarified that—should good offices and mediation fail—the disputants would enter the conciliation process outlined in the earlier (crystallization) treaties. Good offices and mediation, in other words, complemented the existing processes, as opposed to replacing them. The Second World War provided a shock that took the norm complex global (Legler, 2013). Nevertheless, that shock affected the norm complex in the Americas only marginally. We observe this in the 1948 Bogotá Conference. At this conference, the Organization of American states (OAS) replaced the Pan-American Union, thereby creating a novel Inter-American system. The Pact of Bogotá superseded the norm complex’s major earlier treaties of the 1920s and 1930s; yet in doing so, it simply integrated and clarified prioritization among the provisions of those treaties, rather than changing the provisions significantly (Infante Caffi, 2017). The situation has hardly changed since.

6 Conclusion Although shocks feature prominently—either explicitly or implicitly—in many models of international phenomena, the punctuated equilibrium (PE) model does not. The research that incorporates shocks, moreover, often oversimplifies their systematic features. Mindful of the opportunities this creates for future research, our chapter explicated the PE model, elaborated its relationship to shocks, and positioned both the model and shocks within a larger policy change process. It then illustrated these insights in a particular case: the development of a norm complex in the Americas during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Our broader discussion, as well as our application of its insights, suggest five fruitful avenues for future research. First, researchers might incorporate not only shocks but also the long periods of stability that precede and follow shocks into their arguments and analyses. A focus on shocks alone tends to miss these stable periods, and the PE model brings them back to the fore. Because stability is far more common than abrupt change, this can be a significant oversight. Second, scholars might theorize further about the relationship between shocks and the behavioral indicators that interest them. Most interpret a shock as something that occurs at a single, fixed point—with an impact on policy or behavior shortly thereafter. Policy and behavior, however, can require time to change. Third, scholars might theorize more about the spatial scope of their shocks. A PE model of policy change suggests that a shock, inter alia, incentivizes actors to prioritize a particular policy problem. If not all actors experience that shock, then some actors will assign the problem less priority. If these latter actors are important in the policy change process (e.g., their endorsement is critical), this could impede policy change. Fourth, studies often incorporate shocks as isolated events: a war or a violation of a norm. Shocks can,

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however, also occur repeatedly or in quick succession; multiple shocks, moreover, can reinforce one another (i.e., raise the same problem), complement one another (i.e., create a wider “window of opportunity” for policy change), or even work at cross purposes (i.e., suggest different priorities or solutions). Finally, scholars—and the PE model itself—emphasize the agenda setting function of shocks. As we show, however, shocks can influence all stages of the policy change process, from agenda setting to policy formulation to crystallization to consolidation. The role of shocks in these latter three stages deserves far more attention.

References Baumgartner, F., & Jones, B. (1993). Agendas and instability in American politics. University of Chicago Press. Baumgartner, F., & Jones, B. (2009). Agendas and instability in American politics (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Baumgartner, F., Jones, B., & Wilkerson, J. (2011). Comparative studies of policy dynamics.Comparative Political Studies, 44(8), 947–942. Baumgartner, F., Breunig, C., & Grossman, E. (2019). Comparative policy agendas: Theory, tools, data. Oxford Scholarship Online. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198835332.001.0001/oso9780198835332 Butt, A. (2013). Anarchy and hierarchy in international relations: Examining South America’s war-prone decade, 1932–41. International Organization, 67(3), 575–607. Cohen, M., March, J., & Olsen, J. (1972). A garbage can theory of organizational choice. Administrative Science Quarterly, 17(1), 1–25. Colgan, J., Keohane, R., & Van de Graaf, T. (2012). Punctuated equilibrium in the energy regime complex. Review of International Organizations, 7(1), 117–143. Diehl, P., & Goertz, G. (2000). War and peace in international rivalry. University of Michigan Press. Diehl, P., & Ku, C. (2010). The dynamics of international law. Cambridge University Press. Durant, R., & Diehl, P. (1989). Agendas, alternatives, and public policy: Lessons from the U.S. foreign policy arena. Journal of Public Policy, 9(2), 179–205. Eldredge, N. (1995). Reinventing Darwin: The great evolutionary debate. John Wiley and Sons. Eldredge, N. (1985). Time frames: The evolution of punctuated equilibria. Princeton University Press. Finnemore, M. (2003). The purpose of intervention. Cornell University Press. Finnemore, M., & Sikkink, K. (1998). International norm dynamics and political change. International Organization, 52(4), 887–917. Frazier, R. (1949). The role of the Lima Congress, 1864–1865, in the development of PanAmericanism. Hispanic American Historical Review, 29(3), 319–348. Friedman, M. (2018). Latin American strategies against US intervention. In S. Castro Marino & M. Crahan (Eds.), Donald J. Trump y las relaciones Cuba-Estados Unidos en la encrucijada (pp. 211–226). Grupo Editor Orfila Valentini, Havana, Cuba. Goertz, G. (2003). International norms and decision making: A punctuated equilibrium model. Rowman and Littlefield. Gould, S., & Eldredge, N. (1993). Punctuated equilibrium comes of age. Nature, 366, 223–227. Grandin, G. (2012). The liberal traditions in the Americas: Rights, sovereignty, and the origins of liberal multilateralism. American Historical Review, 117(1), 68–91. Infante Caffi, M. (2017). The pact of Bogotá: Cases and practice. Anuario Colombiano De Derecho Internacional, 10, 85–116.

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Jessup, P. (1933). The Saavedra Lamas anti-war draft treaty. American Journal of International Law, 27(1), 109–114. Jones, B., Sulkin, T., & Larsen, H. (2003). Policy punctuations in American political institutions. American Political Science Review, 97(1), 151–169. Kacowicz, A. (2005). The impact of norms in international society. University of Notre Dame Press. Kingdon, J. (1984). Agendas, alternatives, and public policies. Little, Brown. Legler, T. (2013). Post-hegemonic regionalism and sovereignty in Latin America: Optimists, skeptics, and an emerging research agenda. Contexto Internacional, 35(2), 181–208. Lundgren, M., Squatrito, T., & Tallberg, J. (2018). Stability and change in international policymaking: A punctuated equilibrium approach. Review of International Organizations, 13(4), 547–572. Mahoney, J., & Thelen, K. (2012). Explaining institutional change: Ambiguity, agency, and power. Cambridge University Press. Miller, M. (2021). Shocks to the system: Coups, elections, and war on the road to democratization. Princeton University Press. Most, B., & Starr, H. (1989). Inquiry, logic, and international politics. University of South Carolina Press. Pierson, P. (2004). Politics in time. Princeton University Press. Ratner, S. (1996). Drawing a better line: Uti possidetis and the borders of new states. American Journal of International Law, 90(4), 590–624. Rider, T., & Owsiak, A. (2021). On dangerous ground: A theory of bargaining, border settlement, and rivalry. Cambridge University Press. Rout, L. (1970). Politics of the Chaco Peace Conference, 1935–1939. University of Texas Press. Schenoni, L. (2018). The Argentina-Brazil regional power transition. Foreign Policy Analysis, 14(4), 469–489. Schenoni, L. (2021). Bringing war back in: Victory and state formation in Latin America. American Journal of Political Science, 65(2), 405–421. Sikkink, K. (2017). Evidence for hope. Princeton University Press. Shaw, M. (2021). International law (8th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Stinnett, D., & Diehl, P. (2001). The path(s) to rivalry: Behavioral and structural explanations of rivalry development. Journal of Politics, 63(3), 717–740. Union, P.-A. (1954). Inter-American peace treaties and convention. Pan-American Union. US Department of State. (1969). Treaties and other international agreements of the United States of America, 1776–1949 (Vol. 3). US Department of State. Woolsey, L. (1939). The settlement of the Chaco dispute. American Journal of International Law, 33(1), 126–129.

A Framework for Analyzing Political Shocks and Their Effects Thomas J. Volgy and Kelly Marie Gordell

Abstract This chapter proposes a theoretical framework with which to approach the concept of political shocks; then offers an empirical approach for identifying political shocks impact state policy makers; and finally applies the method to policy change across the global community of states revolving around human rights protections as an illustration of how political shocks create the opportunity for policy changes. It concludes with suggestions for future research and empirical analysis. The framework builds on previous work on public policy approaches (and its adoption by IR scholars) to policy restructuring that use a punctuated equilibrium model. Keywords Political shock · Impacts · Policy change · Punctuated equilibrium

1 Introduction On February 24, 2022, the Russian Federation launched a major invasion of Ukraine, an action characterized by many as the largest single war initiated in Europe since World War II. Yet the event may not have been much of a surprise. Consider the timeline leading up to the Kremlin’s commitment to use overwhelming force: three months earlier satellite images showed an ongoing buildup of at least 100,000 Russian forces near the Ukrainian border; two months prior to the invasion Russia presented security demands that included NATO pulling back troops and weapons from eastern Europe along with a guarantee that Ukraine could never join NATO; one month prior to the invasion NATO put forces on standby, reinforced eastern European allies with more ships and fighter jets, while Washington’s response to Russian demands were rejected as unacceptable by the Kremlin; just days before the invasion Washington T. J. Volgy (B) School of Government and Public Policy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] K. M. Gordell Social Sciences, University of Arizona, Room 315, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_4

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announced additional troop deployments to Poland and Romania and warned of severe economic sanctions if the Russian Federation were to take hostile military action.1 The invasion, at least in Washington, came as no surprise. President Biden publicly proclaimed a week before the invasion that Russian President Putin had already made the decision to invade Ukraine (Vazquez et al., 2022), and continued to assert the claim even as the Kremlin indicated that it was pulling some of its troops back from the Ukrainian border.2 Whether the Russian invasion inside Ukraine was a surprise is a bit more confusing. On the one hand, President Zelensky minimized the buildup of Russian troops, publicly indicating that the increase in Russian military strength was an attempt to frighten the West and downplayed the “increasing likelihood of a Russian invasion even as Western leaders continued to sound the alarm” (Linthicum & Bulos, 2022). On the other hand, the Ukrainian military was preparing for an invasion, including increasing security at the borders, strengthening critical infrastructure, seeking to prevent sabotage, and reinforcing training of reservists, including recruitment of citizens to be trained in urban guerrilla tactics (e.g., see Kramer, 2021; Scully, 2021). Given this context, did the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine constitute a political shock to the states involved? Is the event similar to other events typically treated as political shocks in the literature, such as the 9/11 terrorist attack on the United States, the global economic meltdown of 2008, the oil shock of 1973, the Covid19 pandemic, the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the genocide in Rwanda, the devastating Haitian earthquake in 2010, or the Iranian revolution that replaced the Shah? And does it matter if we classify the Ukrainian invasion as a political shock? The answers to these questions very much depend on the conceptual and theoretical approach one uses to identify and explain the salience of political shocks. In Chap. 2 Gordell’s review of recent international relations literature on political shocks suggests that scholarship on the subject has overwhelming relied on “classes” of events to demark what is or is not a political shock, and clearly the initiation of a major war, as one such class of events, would make the Ukrainian case a prime candidate for the political shock of 2022. Yet is that an appropriate approach to what constitutes a political shock and its effects on those who are impacted by it? For the reasons we discuss below, we suggest that the answer very much depends on the actors involved, aspects of the event, and depending on the broader conceptual and theoretical perspective with which we approach political shocks, their effects on foreign policy decision-making and policy implementation. In what follows we elaborate on our objection to “classes of events” constituting the empirical identification of shocks, offer a theoretical perspective regarding the salience of political shocks in the foreign policy making process, offer 1

These and earlier, relevant timelines are identified by Reuters at https://www.reuters.com/world/ europe/events-leading-up-russias-invasion-ukraine-2022-02-28/ (retrieved April 9, 2022). 2 See “As Russian Announces Pullback, Biden Warns Ukraine Invasion Is Still Possible,” New York Times, February 15, 2022, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/02/15/world/russia-ukr aine-news.

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an alternative conceptualization and operationalization for political shocks, and offer one illustration of the empirical relevance of political shocks for how states conduct their affairs. In the conclusion we return to the Ukrainian case and outline a set of answers to the questions we have posed.

2 The Need to Reconceptualize Political Shocks We will not repeat the literature review contained in Chapter 2. Here we wish to briefly summarize what has emerged as a rough consensus in scholarship around the concept of political shock. Conceptually, there appears to be broad agreement that a political shock is an event that has at least four critical properties. One is that the event carries a surprise element: it is unanticipated or unexpected by the actors involved (thus the emphasis above on which actors were surprised by the decision to invade Ukraine). A second property is that the event occurs suddenly and thus is differentiated from evolving or slow-moving processes of change. Third, the event creates a dramatic or major disruption to current political or economic conditions. Fourth, the event is perceived by the actors experiencing it as unique and thus different from the repertoire of problems policy makers have confronted in the past and on which substantial time and energy has been spent previously to address the type of problem created by the shock.3 In addition, the literature also appears to be in agreement over two other issues. The first is that a political shock can occur at any level of analysis: shocks can appear at the state level, between dyads, at the regional level, or globally, and either endogenously or exogenously generated shocks can be equally salient (e.g., Goertz & Diehl, 1995; Rasler, 2000). Second, and irrespective of the perception4 by policy makers that a specific event is unique, political shocks are reasonably common occurrences across the actors populating international politics (e.g., Sowers & Hensel, 2002; McNamee & Zhang, 2019; Weber, 2019). The classes of events typically utilized in the literature to gauge the occurrence of a political shock are ones that may include all the criteria we noted above: constituting a surprise to the actors involved, occurring suddenly, capable of creating a dramatic or major disruption to the status quo, and seen as a unique event at the time of its occurrence. There are a broad variety of events that are thus classified as designating 3

This property is salient for models of decision-making in the literature. Recall for instance Allison’s (1969) classic models of alternative decision-making approaches: organizational, incremental, and even bureaucratic politics models typically require extensive previous involvement with an issue for a policy decision to emerge. Only the rational actor model appears to be better suited for dealing with unique policy problems. 4 The literature on political shocks diverges over the issue of whether shocks are perceptual phenomena. Implicit in the large-N quantitative work is the assumption that political shocks are of sufficiently high magnitude that they are most likely to be perceived as shocks by policymakers. This is not the case for scholars conducting case studies or approaching the phenomenon from a constructivist perspective.

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a potential political shock: these include—but are not limited to—wars, dramatic and quick changes to systemic, regional, or dyadic power relationships, major acts of terrorism, natural disasters, dramatic and/or unanticipated regime changes, the outbreak of civil wars, or sudden disruption to a state’s resource base or its economic conditions. We label these classes of events as “potential” political shocks since they may meet the conditions required for being a political shock, although not necessarily so. Take for instance the outbreak of a war between two states. Some wars are anticipated by the sides involved while others are not; in the first case such an event violates the unanticipated/unexpected criterion. Some wars are unique while others are not: Israel fought four wars with Egypt between 1948 and 1973, averaging about one war per decade. Were all those wars perceived by the decision-makers involved as constituting a unique event around which they’ve had no previous experience? Or consider the ongoing conflict between Hamas and Israel; these conflict events have been “routinized” to a substantial degree and both sides have developed substantial contingencies for their occurrence while mostly avoiding dramatic or major disruptions to the ongoing status quo.5 Or consider a class of events categorized as regime or political change. A coup that alters the regime of a state could be considered a political shock; however, it is less likely to be so in countries that are coup prone.6 The rapid fall of a government could likewise be considered a political shock but in states (e.g., Italy or Lebanon) where political coalitions routinely disintegrate, such a change becomes a norm and is unlikely to constitute a political shock. Similar problems exist with other classes of events: acts of terrorism, depending on their severity, may constitute political shocks albeit states routinely experiencing such activity are no longer facing events that meet the criteria we had outlined.7 Likewise, natural disasters or natural resource shocks (e.g., the oil crisis of 1973) may constitute a political shock impacting a state, but repeated versions of the same

5

As both Israeli and Palestinian negotiators noted to one of us during interviews held in 2019, these actions were part and parcel of what each side considered to be the status quo. Palestinian negotiators indicated that they expected these conflict onsets and their sense of identity was wrapped around them. Israeli negotiators noted that these conflict onsets were anticipated and their security responses to Hamas-initiated conflicts were robust and routinized, and noted that their primary security concerns were no longer over this conflict (as Iran had become the primary focus). 6 Recent examples include Mali and Burkina Faso. For evidence that coups may beget more coups, see Faulkner et al. (2022), Ogunmodede (2022). 7 Consider France’s experience with terrorist attacks: it was subjected to roughly 65 terrorist attacks between 1958 and 2020, with a third of those attacks occurring between 2012 and 2019, averaging over three incidents per year. According to one research consortium, nearly 80% of the initiators of those attacks were on a terror watch list and 97% were on the “radar” of authorities (see NBC News, 2019, “Report: Nearly all terror attacks in France carried out by radicals already known to police,” retrieved at https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/report-nearly-all-terror-attacks-francecarried-out-radicals-already-n955276, May 25, 2011). It would be difficult to make the case that these attacks were events that could be characterized as political shocks when defined as unique, unexpected/unanticipated, and creating a dramatic alteration to the state’s stability.

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phenomena repeatedly being faced by the same state is unlikely to have the effect that the original event had created. Thus, we need to differentiate between classes of events that are “potential” political shocks versus those events that are actual political shocks. The identification of classes of events that may become shocks are a good first step but are insufficient to determine whether an actual political shock has occurred. If this is the case, then how do we proceed to examine systematically the effects of political shocks on the foreign policies of states? The approach we suggest is to place political shocks into the larger theoretical context of foreign policy change; we do so in the next section and then return to the issue of empirically identifying political shocks.

3 A Framework for Analyzing Political Shocks and Foreign Policy Change Both the public policy literature and scholarship on foreign policy change and changes in the conflict behaviors of states have underscored that major changes in policy direction do not occur very often, even when policies may not be working as anticipated. In large-N quantitative studies of interstate behavior, typically the best predictor of the dependent variable of interest is the lag of the dependent variable, suggesting a very high level of path dependency,8 reflecting much stability and mostly incremental changes from past policy decisions. This may be especially the case when states are tied into long-term quarrels and conflicts such as interstate rivalries (e.g., Rasler, 2000) or territorial disputes. Yet major policy changes do occur, sometimes rivalries are terminated, many territorial disputes are resolved, and the range of considerations that constrain policy makers from changing their policies and altering their behavior can be overcome by certain factors. We suggest that political shocks have occupied the attention of scholars precisely because they constitute one highly salient set of events that can overcome path dependency both in domestic and foreign policy. Note however that we do not consider political shocks to be sufficient to create policy change; between the shock event and policy change are a series of steps that may limit either the willingness and/or the ability of policy makers to change policy paths. In this sense we consider, along with other scholarship (e.g., Diehl & Goertz, 2001; Goertz & Diehl, 1995; Rasler, 2000) political shocks to be necessary, albeit insufficient conditions for changing the behavior of states. Figure 1 reflects the general direction of our theoretical perspective towards political shocks and their impact on foreign policy change. Our approach borrows from public policy studies that have focused on a punctuated equilibrium model to account

8

For discussions of path dependency in both domestic and foreign policies, see Schieder (2019), Pierson (1996), Sarigil (2015).

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for conditions when policies are likely to change.9 As Chap. 3 suggests, we are far from being alone in utilizing this approach (e.g., see Goertz & Diehl, 1995; Rasler, 2000 among others). The framework begins with a state10 experiencing a potential political shock: an event that is unanticipated, occurs quickly, is perceived as unique, and has the potential of dramatically disrupting the state’s status quo. If the event does result in a major disruption to the state’s status quo, we then designate it as an actual political shock. What would constitute a major disruption to the status quo? There are numerous ways in which such disruptions can occur ranging from major, immediate changes to a state’s resource base (and thus its economy) to the functioning of its political system. Such changes can be negative or positive. A major natural catastrophe such as a large hurricane event may dramatically impact on the state’s economy, creating major decreases in the state’s revenues, resulting in a major negative disruption. The discovery of a very large new oil field can create a very positive effect on the state’s economy as it may dramatically increase the state’s resource base. Both events would be considered dramatic disturbances to the status quo.11 By creating a dramatic change in the state’s status quo, the event then likely raises serious concerns among the affected state’s decision-makers regarding both their internal and the external security environment. A substantial loss of its economic resource base may create substantial political threats to policy makers’ survival domestically; likewise, a substantial and dramatic increase in state capacity potentially leads to substantially greater domestic demands for public goods and if unsatisfied, can create similar survival issues for those in power. External security concerns would depend on the nature of the state’s external security environment as states facing substantial external threats would find the loss of a resource base decreasing the state’s ability to confront external security threats. Even a dramatic improvement from the status quo could create substantial uncertainties about the external security environment: increasing capabilities on the part of the state may make it more threatening to its neighbors. The public policy literature addresses these dynamics through a “punctuated equilibrium model.”12 Applying the model to foreign policy and international politics Diehl and Goertz (2001: 1939) argue that “states make relatively long-term 9

The punctuated equilibrium model was initially pioneered in the field of U.S. domestic public policy (e.g., Baumgartner & Jones, 1993; Brummer et al., 2019) with later applications to comparative and foreign policy analysis. Public policy scholars had adopted much of this approach from evolutionary biologists (e.g., Eldredge, 1985, 1995). 10 For sake of simplification, the framework is focused on a monadic, state level of analysis. We recognize however that one political shock may have effects on more than one state, including as well regional and global effects. We also recognize that a political shock can results in “aftershocks” that may include a substantial number of states in addition to the state experiencing the event. We discuss these variants below. 11 As Rasler (2000) notes some contexts will need stronger shocks than other to dislodge ongoing commitments to policies. 12 See especially Baumgarten and Jones (1993), Jones et al. (1998).

Change in State behavior

Major Policy change (s)

Policymakers reassess relevant extant policies

s

(external and internal security environments)

Policymakers reassess changing po

Principal/agent problems

Governmental capacity to change

y policy entrepreneurs

cal groups

Actual Political Shock

Major Disturbance to status quo

Uncertainties created regarding state’s security environment

Exogeneous

Fig. 1 A theoretical framework for political shock driven foreign policy change

Increased

Internal pressures by salient

External third-party pressures

No political shock

No major disturbance to status quo

Endogenous

Potential Political Shock Event

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policy commitments and then stick with them until some change in the environment dislodges those preferences and policy choices,” with political shock being a key factor in shaking extant policy preferences. When a political shock occurs, it opens a policy window of opportunity for change (Diehl & Goertz, 2001; Kingdon, 1984). In our framework such windows of opportunity for changing policy result from a political shock that creates a major disturbance to the status quo and thus results in rising uncertainty on the part of policy makers regarding the state’s (and their own) domestic and/or external security environment. As a result, policymakers reassess both the nature of internal and external political conditions and the appropriateness of extant policies, given those conditions and the disturbances to the status quo. Reassessment however may still not lead to major policy change. Our framework suggests that at least four factors may dampen or stimulate policy changes. One factor revolves around the role of external third-party pressures and their role in seeking to dampen or stimulate policy change. In the Ukrainian invasion example, German policy makers moved to abandon Nord Stream 2 and to commit to substantial increases in the German military budget, in part due to substantial third-party pressures that became substantially more salient in the context of Russia’s action in Ukraine (Bennhold & Erlanger, 2022). Third party pressures on India (from the U.S., Australia, and Japan) may have functioned in the opposite way: despite its historically heavy reliance on Russian military hardware, and while it has increased its purchase of Russian oil incrementally, India has avoided public backing of the Russian Federation’s actions, seeking to avoid major policy changes and alignments in its region, and especially as its Pakistani rival has sought to move closer to Russia during the Ukrainian war. Thus, third party pressures may mitigate against or encourage policy change in response to political shocks. Similarly, internal political pressures, either in terms of the domestic political consequences of substantial policy change or through the role of powerful domestic political groups that may press against fundamental changes to policies. Using once more the German response to the Ukrainian invasion, policymakers in Germany were reluctant to actually commit to an oil and gas embargo, as groups within the ruling coalition pressed against the policy change while substantial questions were also being raised about the willingness of the German public to endure the potential consequences of such an embargo. Even the pace of implementing changes to military policy and military aid to Ukraine slowed, apparently in part due to domestic political resistance (Bennhold & Erlanger, 2022). Rasler’s (2000) work on political shocks and rivalries also highlights a third factor: the role of policy entrepreneurs in facilitating policy change in the aftermath of political shocks. We concur that policy entrepreneurs can substantially facilitate policy change during the phase of policy reassessment as they aggressively promote alternative approaches away from the status quo and can provide policymakers with meaningful policy alternatives. Policy entrepreneurs can exist both inside and outside the government’s policy infrastructure. How active and influential they will be and whether their advocacy results in policy change will likely depend on two considerations. One is the extent to which policy entrepreneurs have systematic access to policymakers, and especially in times of turmoil. Miller’s (2021) work has contrasted

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policy change between China and India as each has sought to reassess its role in international politics; she has noted that in the democratic state of India the foreign policy establishment has kept policy entrepreneurs at arms-length while Chinese foreign policy makers have routinely attended forums of Chinese think tanks focusing on new challenges to Chinese foreign policy.13 Second, it appears that the influence of policy entrepreneurs, public or private, may depend on the extent to which they engage in all facets of policymaking, ranging from agenda setting to implementation (Aviram et al., 2020). Fourth, our framework also suggests that states vary with respect to their capacity to change policy. This consideration is an issue about state strength, part of which concerns having sufficient resources with which to create new policies, but just as importantly having the organizational and political capacity to change.14 Organizational capacity refers to the effectiveness and efficiency of policymaking institutions; such capacity varies extensively across states and across time. Another aspect of organizational capacity is control over corruption, which may be critical for translating policy changes into policy implementation. Consider again the Ukrainian example; a decade of modernization of the Russian military appears to have led to disastrous consequences during the first month of the Ukrainian invasion, partly due to the extent of corruption involved with spending for both procurement and logistics (Beliakova, 2022; Dangwal, 2022). Likewise, political gridlock both in democracies and nondemocratic states may prevent sufficient political support for the development of new policy or for the generation of resources for its execution, even in the face of political shocks.15 Finally, principal-agent problems can critically impact on not only the development of policy change, but as well its implementation (Groves, 2015). The principalagent model suggests that a) there are goal conflicts between principals and their agents; and b) that there is information asymmetry favoring agents—when the two groups are in conflict—in both the development and the execution of policy (e.g., see Waterman & Meier, 1998 for both a summary and a critique of these assumptions). Creating major policy change in the face of political shocks can become exceedingly difficult (both in the making of policy and its implementation) if in fact the agent(s) have different goals and have more information than the principal regarding the shock and about implementing new policies in responding to those shocks. However, as Waterman and Meier (1998) make clear, both goal conflicts and information asymmetry should be treated not as given but as variables and we find virtually no scholarship that has addressed the issue of which types of political shocks will generate conditions where agents will possess informational asymmetry and goal 13

For a recent review of the literature on policy entrepreneurs in comparative perspective, see Aviram et al. (2020). 14 For examples of work highlighting the need to constrain state strength by governmental efficiency and control over corruption, see Beckley (2018), Gordell and Volgy (2022). 15 In the United States, caught in deep partisan divisions, generating a bipartisan approach to the Ukrainian invasion has been extremely difficult within both parties. Furthermore, Republicans have jockeyed to try to gain political advantage from the Biden administration’s carefully calibrated responses to Russian aggression.

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conflict with their principals. Thus, we raise this issue as one that can potentially constrain major policy change and change in state behavior even in the face of significant political shocks. We suggest that there is a substantial need for further research to explore these constraints in the context of political shocks. The theoretical framework we offer in Fig. 1 is far from being a thorough explanation of political shocks and their consequences for changing state policies. Instead, it is designed to make two points. First, it is meant to suggest the range of roadblocks through which policymakers must navigate to change their policies even if they are motivated to do so by the political shocks impacting on the state. By indicating the range of such constraints, we are underscoring the critical point that political shocks may be necessary but insufficient conditions for changing policies. Second, the framework is meant to help guide us towards a clearer conceptualization and operationalization of the concept of political shock than simply utilizing classes of events that may or may not actually shock the state. We now turn to that objective.

4 Political Shocks and Their Operationalization As is evident from Chapter 2 the vast majority of quantitative work that has utilized the concept of political shocks in empirical models have focused on classes of events that likely meet the criteria of being unanticipated, of short duration, unique to the actor experiencing the event, and capable of creating a major disturbance to the status quo in which the actor operates. The categories of events typically utilized (war onset, terrorist attack, natural disaster, etc.) may or may not meet all these criteria, but most problematic to us is the extent to which these events actually create a major disturbance to the status quo. Our framework suggests that of the four criteria that an event must meet to move from being a potential political shock to an actual one (given the punctuated equilibrium model driving the framework) the most salient is the extent to which the event creates a dramatic disruption to the state’s status quo.16 Therefore, rather than first identifying classes of events impacting an actor, we seek instead to first identify major disruptions to the state’s status quo and then to determine if such a disruption is associated with an event that may have triggered the disruption. The key assumption behind our strategy is that such disruptions are relatively rare and they are most likely triggered by potential political shock events endogenous or exogenous to the state. What types of disruptions to the state’s equilibrium? The international relations literature has identified a series of conditions associated with state instability and the literature is sufficiently voluminous to make it impractical to summarize it here.17 We focus on two critical dimensions that may 16

We are not suggesting that the other three criteria are not salient; however, without satisfying the criterion of status quo impact, the event in question should not have the type of consequences we suggest in our framework, even if the event satisfies the other criteria. 17 For a discussion of these works and alternative measures for operationalizing state instability, see Gordell (2021), Chap. 3.

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disrupt the stability of states. One revolves around major changes to a state’s economy and its resource base (e.g., Alesina et al., 1996; Blanco & Grier, 2008; Fearon & Laitin, 2003). The second constitutes major changes to a state’s governance process (e.g., Alesina & Perotti, 1996; Hegre & Sambanis, 2006; Jong-A-Pin, 2009). Consistent with our framework, both major changes to a state’s economic resources and/or to its governance process should create substantial uncertainty for policy makers regarding external security threats, the stability of foreign policy commitments and importantly, threats to leadership survival both in democratic and non-democratic political systems. Thus, we focus on identifying quickly occurring and unusual large changes to a state’s economy and/or its governance process as measures of disruption to a state’s stability.18 We identify a major change to a state economic resource base by measuring a state’s annual growth (or contraction) of its GDP, and then focusing on cases where the change in GDP exceeds one standard deviation from the mean in either a downward or upward direction.19 Using this procedure we identify (Gordell & Volgy, 2022) 766 cases of “punctuations” to economic stability for roughly 177 states between 1961 and 2019.20 We assume that such large deviations from the normal economic growth patterns of a state do not occur without a precipitating event of the type that we have labeled as a potential political shock. It is the disturbance, created by the event and in combination with the disturbance that fits our framework’s conceptualization of an actual political shock. Is this assumption warranted? To test this idea, we created a sample of just over 100 cases from the 766 cases of dramatic economic disruptions,21 reflecting longitudinal variation (Cold War vs post-Cold War), geographical diversity (sampling all regions) and diversity across types of states (including levels of wealth, regime type, and country age). Next, we sought to ascertain whether these dramatic changes were accompanied22 by events typically classified as political shocks in the literature, including economic shocks, natural disasters, regime changes and coups, major interstate and intrastate conflict, sudden changes in global power distributions, and 18

Note that these changes can be either positive or negative (e.g., major increases or decreases in economic resources) that may dramatically impact the stability of the state. For example, we would consider the discovery in Equatorial Guinea (in 1996) of a major oil field resulting in a dramatic growth of its economy as a “positive” punctuation in state equilibrium. 19 We are far from being the first to use GDP growth to measure changes in economic performance (e.g., Gleditsch & Ward, 2006; Meierding, 2013). Distinguishing major shocks through the use of standard deviations to measure the magnitude of a shock is also relatively common in the literature (e.g., Dreher et al., 2012; Sprecher & DeRouen, 2002). 20 We use the World Bank’s GDP data, available at https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP. MKP.CD. GDP data are not available from the World Bank for the socialist economies of the USSR and its European allies during the Cold War era. 21 Technically we could have conducted event tracing for each of the 766 cases of major economic change; however, many of the 177 states included in this effort have had insufficient attention to them either in the academic literature or in current events sources, likely creating too many false negatives. Therefore, we settled on sampling within these cases. 22 To qualify as a disturbance associated with a potential shock event, the event must occur either during or one year prior to the economic disturbance.

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large terrorist events.23 Event matching of qualifying events required that the event be unanticipated, occurring quickly, and as well occurring parallel to or immediately prior to the time the state was experiencing dramatic economic change. The results are impressive and consistent with our assumption: virtually all such dramatic changes to a state’s economic condition were accompanied by a potential political shock event and yielded only three possible “false positive” cases where the two coders could not agree whether a potential shock event accompanied the change in economic condition (Gordell & Volgy, 2022). While the relationship between the event and the change in the status quo is not perfect, it does yield the anticipated result for over 97% of the cases. We conducted a similar exercise—and with similar results—around the dimension of major changes to a state’s governance process. The extant literature offers a very rich variety of approaches to measuring political stability in general and more specifically stability surrounding a state’s governance process. Unfortunately, most also depend on classes of events, and sometimes the very same events that appear as potential political shocks (irregular transfers of power, civil wars, etc.). We suggest an alternative to measuring major breaks from the normal fluctuations in a state’s governance process: dramatic changes in the state’s political extraction of resources from its economy. Kugler and associates (e.g., Arbetman & Kugler 2018; Kugler & Tammen, 2012) have pioneered a measure of relative political extraction (RPE) which is designed to ascertain the extent to which a state extracts resources from its economy that is different from what would be considered “expected”, given its level of development.24 Values above 1 are considered to be “over-extraction” while values below 1 are considered “under-extraction” by the state. Clearly, the extraction of resources for governmental purposes is a political process with substantial consequences: substantial under-extraction reflects the inability or unwillingness of the state to generate the typical amount of resources that are available for both domestic and foreign policy pursuits. Substantial over-extraction likely indicates that the government is responding to some immediate stimulus by generating unusual amounts of revenue for policy purposes. Major changes in either direction in a given year should indicate punctuations in the political equilibrium, consistent with our framework for observing political shocks. Consistent with our approach to economic disruption, we generate a set of cases using RPE data to identify instances when a state dramatically under or over extracts resources from its economy at a rate that is one standard deviation beyond its mean rate of extraction. The procedure yields 823 cases across 177 states from the 1961– 2017 timeframe. These cases constitute a dimension largely separate from the cases based on major economic change,25 and these political disruptions are accompanied

23

Additionally, we consulted event histories when available. For all the procedures involved, including data sources and reliability checks, see Gordell and Volgy (2022). 24 RPE data are available at http://transresearchconsortium.com/data. 25 The correlation between the two dimensions is 0.25.

A Framework for Analyzing Political Shocks and Their Effects Table 1 Instances of dramatic changes in RPE, accompanied by shock events, U.S. and Sierra Leone, 1961–2017

Year of RPE change

75

Shock event

United States 1964

Assassination of JFK

1969

Tet offensive

1971

Oil shock

1983

Bombing of US marines/Lebanon

2002

9/11

2009

Global economic crisis

Sierra Leone 1991

Civil war outbreak

1995

Large massacre of population

1998

Overthrow of government by military

2000

Military intervention by the UK and Guinea

2015

Explosive outbreak of Ebola

by potential political shock events at roughly the same rate as with the economic dimension.26 We offer two illustrations of the relationship between potential political shock events and RPE measured political disruptions. We do so to highlight the events creating disruption and as well to indicate that a “class of events” may not be suitable for identifying an actual political shock. The two cases—involving the U.S. and Sierra Leone—reflect two very different types of actors in international politics. In the U.S. case we find six instances of punctuations in the political equilibrium (Table 1); all these cases surpass the mean rate of change in U.S. political extraction by one standard deviation, and all six cases are accompanied by well known events typically considered to be political shocks. They also reflect the variety of shocks that may impact a state: dramatic personnel change in governance (JFK assassination), major terrorist attacks (the Lebanese bombing and 9/11), a major war event (Tet offensive), and dramatic impacts on U.S. economic well-being (oil shock of 1971, global economic crisis of 2009). Note also the opposite: the second oil crisis did not lead to another dramatic change in the political extraction process; while two terrorist incidents are associated with disturbances in the political equilibrium, none of the other 2,600 terrorist attacks on U.S. targets27 had similar effects, including the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995.28 26

Those results are described in Gordell (2021). According to START’s global terrorism database, available at https://www.start.umd.edu/gtd/ access. 28 The FBI claims that this case was the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. We suspect that it did not have a political shock effect since it may have been perceived as a one-off aberration and not a case of security failure. 27

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Likewise, the five cases of major political disruption in Sierra Leone, as reflected in dramatic changes in RPE values, are all accompanied by various events typically seen as political shocks. These events include the outbreak of civil war, a military coup, an external military intervention, an upsurge of violence against civilians, and a major pandemic. As with the U.S. example, only a few of these classes of events create dramatic political change in Sierra Leone’s RPE values.

5 Respect for Human Rights: An Illustration of Political Shock Effects Political shocks should be a salient subject for scholars interested in a broad variety of foreign and domestic policy changes. Here we highlight one possibility: political shocks can have a substantial impact on the domestic human rights policies of states, especially in non-democratic political systems. While human rights issues are highly important on their own merit, they also have substantial impacts beyond domestic politics. International relations scholars study human rights issues because they impact on a variety of phenomena that cross borders, including becoming a source for migration, a catalyst for interstate conflicts between neighbors and within regions, and human rights concerns have been a major source of disputes between states regarding regional and global norms. In what ways can political shocks impact on a state’s human rights record? We had suggested earlier that political shocks create for policymakers substantial new uncertainties regarding both their external and domestic security environments. Uncertainty regarding the domestic environment leads to concerns regarding leadership survival both in democratic and non-democratic political systems.29 In nondemocratic regimes negative economic shocks likely decrease even further the provision of public goods and may decrease the ability to provide private goods to the coalition that keeps the leader in office.30 Positive economic shocks (dramatically increasing the ability of the government to provide additional public goods) will run the likelihood that pressures will be created on policymakers to increase public services, demands that policymakers may not wish to satisfy but will fear increased protests and perhaps organized violence.31 Under such circumstances we anticipate two possible outcomes. One possibility is that political shocks (either positive or negative) in non-democratic regimes will lead to increased levels of governmental repression of human rights in order to dampen or preempt protests over the delivery of public goods, and equally importantly, to 29

For an example of this dynamic see Blavoukos’s (2019: 31) study of the Palestinian uprising as a political shock impacting domestic political survival and creating a policy window for the Oslo accords. 30 This argument is derived from selectorate theory; see Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003), Siverson and Bueno de Mesquita (2017). 31 For the complex relationships between positive oil shocks and conflict, see Andersen et al. (2022).

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discourage defections from the governing coalition, particularly if private goods are less available. The second possibility is that, as political shocks create a policy window through which leaders reconsider extant policies, governments may allow political reform, greater political participation, and ultimately less repression. Selectorate theory would suggest that the second option is far less likely in non-democratic polities with relatively small winning coalitions, creating too much high risk for leadership survival. We have tested these competing possibilities in previous work (Gordell, 2021; Gordell & Volgy, 2022) and here we simply summarize the effort. The dependent variable in the empirical analysis is the Physical Integrity Rights index comprised of data on disappearances, extrajudicial killings, political imprisonment and torture on the part of governments; the data are available for most countries since 1981.32 We initially built a “base model” using variables in the literature to predict levels of human rights in countries, including internal unrest, neighborhood unrest, state wealth, population size, net aid assistance, presence of peacekeeping missions, a dummy variable for the Cold War, and most importantly, an executive constraint variable. All independent variables were lagged one year. Since the dependent variable is ordinal, we used an ordered logistic regression including clustered robust standard errors as the observations are independent across countries but not within them. In the base model all the standard independent variables behave as expected in the extant literature: internal and neighborhood unrest, population size, foreign aid received, and third-party presence all correlate with higher levels of repression while executive constraints and state wealth correlate with lower levels of repression. When we expand the base model and add the presence/absence of a political shock33 we find both statistical significance and large, substantive effects. For example, when all other independent variables are held constant, the political shock variable accounts for over a 44% negative change in the odds that a state is in the highest category of human rights protections, compared with other, lower categories, when we lag the political shock variable. Further, when we disaggregate political shocks into negative and positive cases, we find that it is the set of positive shocks (dramatic positive increases in economic growth) that are associated with higher levels of repression for non-democratic polities. We conjecture that this is so as repressive governments, facing uncertainty but now with substantially greater resources at their disposal, use those resources to ramp up repression against potential and actual foes in the political system. Major decreases in economic capabilities may leave these governments with fewer resources with which to increase repressive practices.

32

The data were accessed at https://dataverse.harvard.edu/dataverse/cirihumanrightsdata. Here we used the economic dimension (major changes to a state’s GDP occurring concurrently with a political shock event) to assess the presence or absence of a political shock.

33

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6 A Look Back at the Russian Invasion of Ukraine Given our framework, was the invasion of Ukraine a political shock? It is dangerous to discuss an ongoing case as circumstances change and as we write the war in Ukraine continues while much evidence regarding the event(s) and its consequences must come later. However, even in a preliminary manner, examining this case a bit further highlights the complexities of identifying political shocks, the precipitating event(s) and even the difficulty of uncovering the range of actors impacted by such shocks.

6.1 A Political Shock for Ukraine? If President Zelinsky’s public statements before the onset of the invasion are reflective of his mindset regarding an invasion, then we are fairly confident in indicating that for Ukraine the event constituted a political shock: unanticipated, sudden, unique34 and causing a dramatic disruption in the economic and political processes of the state. The dramatic disruption to Ukraine’s status quo is undeniable and unsurprising given the large-scale of destruction already caused by the war: its economy is expected to shrink by nearly half (Knowles, 2022; World Bank, 2022) and its normal governance process has virtually disintegrated, including its ability to continue to extract substantial revenues from its shattering economy.

6.2 A Political Shock for the Russian Federation? This question highlights the need for a more nuanced approach to complex events as political shocks. As in the case of the Tet offensive in the Vietnam war for the U.S., it may not be the war initiation itself that is the shock as much as what may be occurring during the war. Clearly, the onset of the war was not a political shock for the Russian Federation. However, Russia most likely experienced political shock as the war unfolded, including two highly unanticipated, quickly occurring and relatively unique outcomes with substantial disruptive consequences for the status quo. One was the failure in execution of its military policy: the original, full-fledged assault on Ukraine had completely bogged down in the face of substantial Ukranian resistance and poor Russian logistics. Second, the Russian administration had worked for nearly a decade to minimize the potential effects of sanctions on its economy while assuming that European dependence on Russian exports and internal disagreements among NATO 34

While Ukranian and Russian forces had been fighting since 2014 in and around the Donbass region of Ukraine, that conflict was a relatively tame affair compared to a full-scale Russian invasion that had initially targeted most of the country, including its capital.

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allies would not lead to extensive economic punishment by the West. Yet immediately in the aftermath of the invasion NATO allies acted nearly in unison and imposed unprecedented sanctions on the Russian economy and its elites. As a consequence, dramatic economic disruption has resulted in Russia: the ruble plunged, the stock market closed, and the Russian economy was expected to constrict by nearly ten percent with a 20% inflation in 2022 (Bloomberg News, 2022a, 2022b; Ivanova, 2022; Sonnenfeld & Tian, 2022). We have virtually no evidence to gauge major disruption to Russia’s governance process, but it would not be surprising if its political extraction capabilities have similarly eroded. Two policy changes appear to be happening as a consequence. First, Russian war aims have shifted from total conquest, leadership decapitation (including the taking of Kyiv) and regime change to securing instead the Russian speaking eastern part of Ukraine. Second, and not inconsistent with our arguments regarding political shocks impacting on human rights policies in non-democratic states, Russian authorities have engaged in substantial additional censorship, and repression of dissent and criticism within Russian society. Thus, we would argue that within a month of the invasion Russia was also experiencing a political shock from the event and engaged in policy changes as a result.

6.3 Aftershocks to Other States? Part of the difficulty in analyzing the effects of political shocks is to determine the range of actors impacted by a particular shock. As with earthquakes, political shocks may radiate out in concentric circles impacting a range of states across the effected region and—depending on the nature of the shock—globally. States in close proximity to the event would, unsurprisingly feel the effects. Such would be the case for Poland which has now become the recipient of nearly three million Ukranian refugees (UNHCR, 2022). Economic sanctions in response to the invasion, and particularly if the EU implements fully its sanctions on Russian oil imports, are likely to have substantial negative impacts on most EU states and especially Germany, which imports 50% of its natural gas and coal and 36% of its oil from Russia. The EU as a whole is not far behind in its dependence on Russian energy resources.35 How far these concentric circles will reach across the entire global political system is difficult to ascertain until more data become available. Some analysis suggests however that there have been and will continue to be major disruptions in food supplies, given global dependence on Russian and Ukranian grain exports, creating substantial food security issues for countries far from the ongoing conflict. Hardest hit may be states in both North and Sub-Saharan Africa (Kiel Institute for The World Economy, 2022); reports from Tunisia indicate dwindling bread supplies and growing concern over domestic unrest in the face of such shortages (Lynch, 2022). 35

Importing 40% of gas and 47% of solid fuels from Russia, along with 25% of oil (Kalish, 2022).

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These potential aftershocks from the original event underscore the complexity involved in gauging the range of effects that may be created by a political shock, not only on the actors directly involved with the event, but as well on other states enmeshed in global economic and political processes. We suggest that our approach, which looks at disruptions at the state level and then links those disruptions to potential political shock events, can fruitfully uncover the range of states effected by the same political shock. More important, such an approach will allow researchers to probe the variety of exogeneous and endogenous conditions that may leave states more, or, less vulnerable to the same political shock.36

7 Conclusions and Caveats The effort in this chapter to provide a framework for assessing political shocks and their potential for creating major foreign policy change is but a first step towards a more comprehensive understanding of the phenomenon and the conditions that constrain or facilitate policy change under the duress of political shocks. We have yet to systematically explore the range of constraints (e.g., the role of policy entrepreneurs, the nature of domestic politics, etc.) mediating between political shocks and the willingness of policymakers to redirect the course of their foreign policies. Much of that work still remains. In addition, we offer several caveats to the steps we developed in this chapter. First, we recognize that we have identified only two dimensions where major disruptions or change can occur in a state’s equilibrium: changes in a state’s economy and change in a state’s political extraction of resources. However, there may be other dimensions as well that may be equally salient and worthy of further consideration. For instance, a state may experience a sudden, dramatic change to its bureaucratic efficiency; this may have been the case when the Trump administration sought to “clean the swamp” by seeking to replace career civil servants with political appointees both in domestic and foreign policy organizations, including the intelligence services, and the departments of Defense and State.37 Further research is needed to explore additional dimensions of major disruptions to a state’s status quo, and to assess the extent to which such dimensions are independent of each other. Second, scholars should be concerned about varying magnitudes of political shocks, recognizing that policy change under certain circumstances (e.g., the ending of rivalries) may require substantially larger shocks (Rasler, 2000) than for other policy changes. Plausibly, researchers can create a category of political shock that spans across dimensions; for instance, we found that twenty percent of disturbance on our economic and political dimensions occurred simultaneously. One possibility 36

For more on this concern see the chapter in this volume on differential responses to the Arab Spring. 37 Unfortunately annual observations on bureaucratic effectiveness/efficiency through the World Bank are restricted to the 2000–2018 timeframe.

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is that such multidimensional disturbances have substantially greater impacts on the willingness of policymakers to change policies than when disturbances occur on only one dimension38 and future research may profit from examining this concern further. Third, we note that the monadic approach we use here makes it somewhat problematic (albeit not impossible) to view the simultaneous effects of political shocks on a larger number of states that may be impacted by them. Just as salient, we need to know more about conditions within regions that may facilitate or retard the spillover of such shocks from one state to the remaining region. This is a specific concern in this volume regarding the Arab Spring as a shock in the Middle East and Maghreb regions (see Chapter 9). It is also relevant for our earlier discussion about shocks versus aftershocks in the Ukranian invasion case. Again, we know too little about such regional (and global) spillover resulting from high magnitude shocks and further research is again warranted.

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We did not find this to be the case when examining the effects of political shocks on human rights practices of states. However, they may be more evident in other policy areas.

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Bloomberg News. (2022b, March 25). Russia seen on course for deep two-year recession, 20% inflation. Retrieved at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022b-03-25/russia-seen-oncourse-for-deep-two-year-recession-20-inflation Brummer, K., Harnisch, S., Oppermann, K., & Panke, D. (Eds.). (2019). Foreign policy as public policy? Manchester University Press. Bueno de, B., Smith, A., Siverson, R. A., & Morrow, J. D. (2003). The logic of political survival. MIT Press. Dangwal, A. (2022, March 8). Military experts mock Chinese ‘low-quality’ hardware for Russia’s sluggish progress to swep Ukraine, Seize Kiev. Eurasian Times. Retrieved at https://eurasiant imes.com/chinese-hardware-for-russias-sluggish-progress-to-sweep-ukraine/ Diehl, P. F., & Goertz, G. (2001). War and peace in international rivalry. University of Michigan Press. Eldredge, N. (1985). Time frames: The evolution of punctuated equilibria. Princeton University Pres. Eldredge, N. (1995). Reinventing Darwin: The great evolutionary debate. John Wiley and Sons. Faulkner, C., Johnson, J., & Singh, N. (2022, March 1). Don’t blame contagion for the resurgence in coups. World Politics Review. Retrieved at https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/30361/ don-t-blame-contagion-for-the-resurgence-in-military-coups Fearon, J. D., & Laitin, D. D. (2003). Ethnicity, insurgency, and civil war. American Political Science Review, 97(1), 75–90. Gleditsch, K. S., & Ward, M. D. (2006). Diffusion and the international context of democratization. International Organization, 60(4), 911–933. Goertz, G., & Diehl, P. F. (1995). The initiation and termination of enduring rivalries: The impact of political shocks. American Journal of Political Science, 39(1), 30–52. Gordell, K. M. (2021). An assessment of political shocks: Considering the domestic and international consequences. PhD Dissertation. University of Arizona, at https://www.proquest.com/docview/ 2532159754?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true Gordell, K. M., & Volgy, T. J. (2022). Political shocks in foreign policy and international politics: An alternative approach. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, 28(2), 109–126. Groves, B. (2015). Principal-agent problems: Why war strategy doesn’t always match policy aims. International Journal of Political Science and Development, 3(2), 63–78. Hegre, H., & Sambanis, N. (2006). Sensitivity analysis of empirical results on civil war onset. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 50(4), 508–535. Jones, B. D., Baumgartner, F. R., & True, J. L. (1998). Policy punctuations: U.S. Budget Authority, 1947–1995. Journal of Politics, 60(1): 1–33. Jong-A-Pin, R. (2009). On the measurement of political instability and its impact on economic growth. European Journal of Political Economy, 25(1), 15–29. Ivanova, I. (2022, April 6). Western sanctions are pummeling Russia’s economy. CBS News Money Watch. Retrieved at https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sanctions-russia-economy-effect/ Kalish, I. (2022, March 15). How sanctions impact Russia and the Global Economy. Deloitte Insights. Retrieved at https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/economy/global-economic-imp act-of-sanctions-on-russia.html Kiel Institute for the World Economy. (2022, March 11). Cereal exports: Ukraine default hits Adrican countries hard. Retrieved at https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/media-information/2022/cer eal-exports-ukraine-default-hits-african-countries-hard/ Kingdon, J. W. (1984). Agendas, alternatives and public policies. Little Brown & Company. Knowles, H. (2022, April 11). Ukraine’s economy could shrink 45 percent this year, World Bank says. Washington Post. Retrieved at https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/04/11/russiaukraine-war-news-putin-live-updates/ Kramer, A. E. (2021, December 26). Training Civilians, Ukraine nurtures a resistance in waiting. New York Times. Retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/26/world/europe/ukraine-rus sia-civilian-training.html Kugler, J., & Tammen, R. N. (2012). The performance of nations. Rowman and Littlefield.

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Linthicum, K., Bulos, N. (2022, February 22). Ukraine is winning—At least in the public relations battle. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved at https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2022-0227/zelensky-is-beating-putin-at-least-in-the-public-relations-battle Lynch, D. (2022, April 14). Tunisia among countries seeing major economic consequences from war in Ukraine. Washington Post. Retrieved at https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/ 04/14/ukraine-war-economic-impact-tunisia/ McNamee, L., & Zhang, A. (2019). Demographic engineering and international conflict: Evidence from China and the former USSR. International Organizatio, 73(2), 291–327. Meierding, E. (2013). Climate change and conflict: Avoiding small talk about the weather. International Studies Review, 15(2), 185–203. Miller, M. C. (2021). Why nations rise: Narratives and the path to great power. Oxford University Press. Ogunmodede, C. O. (2022, January 28). Burkina Faso’s Coup is Déjà vu all over again. World Politics Review. Retrieved at https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/30283/burkinafaso-coup-is-deja-vu-all-over-again Pierson, P. (1996). Increasing returns, path dependence, and the study of politics. American Political Science Review, 94(2), 251–267. Rasler, K. (2000). Shocks, expectancy revision, and the de-escalation of protracted conflicts: The Israeli-Palestinian case. Journal of Peace Research, 37(6), 699–720. Sarigil, Z. (2015). Showing the path to dependence: The habitual path. European Political Science Review, 7(2), 221–242. Schieder, S. (2019). New institutionalism and foreign policy. In Brummer et al. (Eds.), Foreign policy as public policy? Promises and pitfalls. Manchester University Press. Scully, R. (2021). Ukraine defense minister warns of bloody massacre if Russian invades. The Hill. Retrieved at https://thehill.com/policy/international/europe/584672-ukraine-defense-min ister-warns-of-bloody-massacre-if-russia Siverson, R. M., & Bueno de, B. (2017). The selectorate theory and international politics. Oxford University Press. Sonnenfeld, J., Tian, S. (2022). Actually, the Russian economy is imploding. Foreign Policy. Retrieved at https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/07/22/russia-economy-sanctions-myths-ruble-bus iness/ Sowers, T. E., & Hensel, P. R. (2002, March). Political shocks, evolution, and the origins of interstate rivalry. Presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Assocation, New Orleans. Sprecher, C., & DeRouen, K., Jr. (2002). Israeli military actions and internationalizationexternalization processes. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 46(2), 244–259. UNHCR. (2022). Refugees fleeing Ukraine (since February 24 2022). Operational Data Portal. Retrieved at https://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine/location?secret=unhcrrestricted Vazquez, M., Liptak, K., Klein, B., & Fossum, S. (2022, February 19). Biden says he’s now convinced Putin has decided to invade Urkaine, but leaves door open for diplomacy. CNN Politics. At https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/18/politics/joe-biden-russia-ukraine/index.html Waterman, R., & Meier, K. J. (1998). Principal-agent models: An expansion? Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 8(2), 173–202. Weber, H. (2019). Age structure and political violence: A reassessment of the “youth bulg” hypothesis. International Interactions, 45(1), 80–112. World Bank. (2022, April 10). Russian invasion to shrink Ukraine economy by 45 percent this year. Retrieved at https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/10/russianinvasion-to-shrink-ukraine-economy-by-45-percent-this-year

Role Theory and Political Shocks Cameron G. Thies

and Leslie Wehner

Abstract This chapter explores political shocks from a role theory perspective. Role theory, like most approaches to political shocks, views a shock as providing a potential window for policy change away from the status quo. For example, the end of a war may induce a longstanding rivalry to end as well. The exact process whereby this occurs may not always be investigated. We suggest that political shocks often work through a change in a state’s role—either the adoption of a new role in place of an existing one or a revision of how an existing role is enacted. Role theory has an extensive conceptual repertoire to help us explore the dynamics between a shock and policy change, including intrarole and interrole conflict, role dissensus, and the like. We demonstrate the utility of considering the ideational dimensions of political shocks through roles with several cases from Latin America. Keywords Role theory · Political shock · State role · Latin America

1 Introduction Political shocks, and the change they represent, appear to be ubiquitous in international politics. Interstate wars, coups, terrorist attacks, financial crises and other critical events drive the news cycle and changes in domestic and international affairs. Yet, most of our theoretical approaches are grounded in explaining the recurring patterns of the status quo. When we need to explain change, our field usually turns to political shocks for the explanation. A re-examination of political shocks from a number of perspectives is therefore warranted. In this chapter, we outline a role theory approach to political shocks. C. G. Thies (B) James Madison College at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA e-mail: [email protected] L. Wehner Department of Politics, Languages and International Studies at the University of Bath, Bath, UK © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_5

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Role theory adds an ideational element to the material conditions often identified as causes or consequences of political shocks. Roles are a form of identity rooted in the beliefs and expectations of the actor and their significant Other. They are often expressed as a social position or as the kind of actor it is possible to be (Harnisch, 2011; Thies, 2010). Common roles mentioned in the international relations and foreign policy literature include balancer, ally, rival, great power, liberator, free trader, and so on. Roles can also be understood as repertoires of behavior; thus, they help us to connect identity with anticipated behavior of the actor (Wehner & Thies, 2014). This chapter explores how political shocks, understood as critical events, affect a state’s roles. The argument is that political shocks induce role shocks, thus requiring agents acting on behalf of the state to maintain, modify or select new roles to enact. We suggest a number of factors that either increase or decrease the intensity of the role shock. These factors include whether the role is a status or auxiliary role, how long the state has enacted the role, the number of other available substitute roles in the state’s role set, the material capacity of the state, the state’s level of integration in the system, and the depth of societal cultural support for the role. We consider how these factors mitigate or exacerbate the impact of a political shock on the role shock experienced by a state and its resulting role change. We examine two cases from Latin America that illustrate some of our hypotheses, including the political shocks of the Malvinas/Falklands War on Argentina and the populist shock on Brazil.

2 Change, Shocks, and Foreign Policy Given the importance of critical moments of change in international affairs, such as the end of the Cold War, the Great Depression, or the ebbs and flows of democratization, one might expect that scholars have produced a body of theory devoted to explaining such changes and their effect. Yet, most theories of foreign policy and international relations remain squarely situated in explaining the status quo—the regularities and patterns that prevail during the periods between transformational episodes. There are notable exceptions to this general rule, including work on hegemonic transitions (e.g., Gilpin, 1981; Organski & Kugler, 1980; Thompson, 1988) that began to identify events like global war as a kind of political shock that ushers in a sweeping transformation of the international political order. Others who study conflict processes see similar effects of interstate war, civil war, or regime changes on the termination of rivalries (Goertz & Diehl, 1995; Thies, 2001). Such shocks are seen as disrupting domestic and international structures and processes that support a government and society’s orientation toward a rival international Other. Political shocks have emerged as a useful conceptual tool to understand the endings and beginnings of international and domestic political structures that condition conflict processes. Foreign policy scholars have also added to our understanding of change and the role political shocks may play in restructuring domestic and international politics.

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Hermann’s (1990) identification of types of foreign policy changes is the touchstone for most subsequent work in this literature. Hermann (1990: 5–6) describes a continuum of changes in foreign policy: adjustment changes, program changes, problem/goal changes, and international orientation changes. While political shocks may affect change across this continuum, it is the international orientation that draws the most attention from scholars. This type of change involves the “redirection of the actor’s entire orientation toward world affairs…and a basic shift in the actor’s international role and activities.” The sources of major foreign policy change are identified as leader driven, bureaucratic advocacy, domestic restructuring, and external shocks—essentially some form of internal or external political shock. There is therefore a great deal of consistency across conflict processes and foreign policy analysis about the central importance of shocks in understanding change. While scholars are quick to operationalize political shocks, their conceptualization is often ad hoc. Gordell and Volgy (2022: 111, Chapter 4) usefully distill the defining features of a political shocks as an event, that is “unanticipated or unexpected,” producing a “dramatic or major disruption” to the status quo, which occurs “suddenly” rather than incrementally. Such shocks tend to cross all levels of analysis and seem to be fairly common in international politics. Gordell and Volgy (2022) list a wide variety of shocks identified in the literature, including those connected to conflict and violence (e.g., interstate war, civil war, terrorism), economics and resources (e.g., depression, financial crisis, foreign aid), natural disasters (e.g., climate), policy (e.g., electoral outcomes, demographic shifts), and power/state system (e.g., state collapse, regime change, end of Cold War). Gordell and Volgy ultimately propose an alternative to events-based classifications of political shocks, but it is clear that most of the literature focuses on the impact of critical events in disrupting the status quo. To the extent that role theory has examined change and the importance of political shocks, it has mostly relied on an events-based approach. Role theory has also focused its attention on what Hermann (1990) called international orientation change since it involves shifts in the actor’s roles. In the next section, we develop our approach to political shocks from a role theory perspective.

3 Political Shocks and Role Theory Role theory was originally developed in Sociology and Family Studies and imported into foreign policy by K.J. Holsti (1970) in his study of national role conceptions (NRC). A NRC or role identity (we will simply use the term “role” in the remainder of the paper) refers to “repertoires of behavior, inferred from others’ expectations and one’s own conceptions, selected at least partly in response to cues and demands” (Walker, 1992: 23). A role can refer to both a position in a society or group as well as any socially recognized category of actor (i.e., the kind of actor it is possible to be in a society) (Harnisch, 2011; Thies, 2010). Roles are therefore a form of

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identity and an identity marker when actors seek to establish role relationships (see Wehner & Thies, 2021; see also McCourt, 2014; Wehner & Thies, 2014). Actors seek affirmation of their roles in the role location process whereby they bargain with significant Others to adopt a complementary counterrole. Once an appropriate role and counterrole are identified, the actors have formed a role relationship. Further, actors may maintain a variety of roles in their role set, some enacted actively while others await an appropriate context or role partner. Actors may try to adopt any role they choose, but at least when they are countries, relative power is an important consideration in their successful enactment (Thies, 2013a). Thies and Nieman (2017) used a role theory framework to explore whether socalled rising or emerging powers were prone to foreign policy revisionism. This work was grounded in Thies’s (2013a) model of states being shaped by socialization and competition as they occupied and moved between master statuses supported by auxiliary roles. If movement into an emerging power status generated revisionism, Thies and Nieman expected this shock would be evident in changes in the state’s role set and its militarized and economic conflict behavior. They also examined other potential shocks identified in the literature. Ultimately, there was little evidence across the BRICS that the political shock of moving into emerging power status produced foreign policy revisionism. Changes in the role sets and conflict behavior could be traced to other political shocks, such as war or regime change. Thus, there is some evidence that political shocks affect a state’s roles as expected theoretically. Yet, exactly how political shocks affect role change and subsequent behavioral changes is not explored by Thies and Nieman (2017). If we accept an events-based approach to political shocks, then there are a number of possible avenues for them to have an effect on a state’s roles. At a very broad level, political shocks could emanate from the external or internal environments with repercussions across both as roles link the domestic and the international contexts. Political shocks produce “role shocks” for an actor (Byrnes, 1966). Roles central to a state’s identity and its social relations with others may be upended by a political shock. This can produce ambiguity about a state’s social position or status, the loss of “normal” roles and interstate relations, and the need for new roles that my not fit well with the previous conception of the state’s identity. The disjuncture between the state’s previously negotiated ideal role and the new realities imposed by a political shock can be hard to overcome. Roles rest upon domestic political foundations and international bargains, all of which must be renegotiated when they are disrupted. The sources of domestic contestation of roles are well-documented (Cantir & Kaarbo, 2012) as are the international processes of role location (Thies, 2013a). As Wehner and Thies (2021) point out, the leader of a state serves as the fulcrum between these domestic and international processes playing a key part in determining whether to maintain or refine an existing role or pursue a new one. It should be obvious that political shocks reverberate across all levels of analysis: system, state, and individual leader, in a role theory approach. We can hypothesize that the degree of role shock induced by political shocks may vary on several dimensions. First, is the role in question a status (a role that is salient in every situation, also known as a master role), or an auxiliary role that supports the status such as leader, ally,

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mediator and security provider (see Thies, 2012; Wehner, 2015). A political shock that calls into question a state’s status induces the highest degree of political shock. For example, the end of the Cold War that concluded the USSR’s superpower status and left the successor state of Russia searching for its identity (great power, regional power, Eurasian power, rising power, etc.) represented a huge role shock that has ramifications to this day. A political shock that disrupts an auxiliary role should be less consequential, especially if the role set contains numerous auxiliary roles. Second, we should consider the amount of time spent in a role. The longer a role has been part of a state’s role set and the longer it has been actively played, the more extreme the role shock. For example, Thies (2013b) documented a constellation of roles including bloc leader, defender of the faith, and liberation supporter (or liberator) that formed the basis of an ideational structure or culture of the Cold War and US identity. Such roles have been hard to shake in the post-Cold War world and have been reinterpreted to fit the new context rather than abandoned. Roles enacted for a shorter time should be easier to shed in the face of a political shock. Third, states with a greater number of roles in their role set may be better positioned to absorb a role shock, since they have a number of other roles available to play. As long as there exist fulfilling close substitute roles, the role shock may be lessened and contained through enacting another role that is part of the role set. Fourth, states with greater material capacity may be able to resist change and maintain roles despite a political shock. Thies (2013a) found that both the U.S. and Israel were able to force the adoption of roles despite being rejected by significant Others when their material capacity was favorable. Fifth, the degree of role shock may vary with a state’s level of integration into the regional or international system if the political shock emanates from the external environment. Pariah, rogue, or simply isolated states may be able to resist the effect of political shocks on their roles because there are few additional consequences for them for doing so. The primary roles of North Korea or Iran have probably not changed significantly in the face of their respective sanctions regimes. Finally, roles that rest on tenuous societal foundations are more subject to role shocks induced by political shocks. Leaders ultimately choose which roles are enacted by the state and they are also able to select a new role altogether or modify the enactment of existing roles of the role set (Wehner, 2020). Those that are deeply rooted in the cultural material available in domestic society may withstand a role shock better than those imposed from above. Role theory is notoriously elite-centric in its applications in foreign policy, but we should recognize that the cultural material that roles are crafted from vary in their origin. In the following cases from Latin America, we examine the impact of a political shock on role change through examining the extent of the role shock induced. As hypothesized, some political shocks induce a high level of role shock leading to disarray in the search for a replacement role. Other political shocks have milder role shock effects that lead to reinterpretation of the existing role or an easy substitution with another role from the state’s role set.

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4 Illustrative Cases from Latin America 4.1 The Malvinas/Falkland Shock Argentina during the dictatorship period (1976–1983) used war as a mechanism to increase its domestic support and legitimacy in 1982. The sovereign claim of the Malvinas islands as part of Argentina (Falklands for the UK) started a few years after her independence from Spanish colonial rule. Argentina achieved her independence from Spain in 1816 and proclaimed its sovereign right on the Malvinas in 1820. However, Great Britain exerted control over the islands since 1833 after expelling Argentine officials which was followed by a policy of populating the Falklands. Argentine never renounced the Malvinas as part of their state and brought the issue of her sovereign rights regularly up in the UN once this institution was established after WWII. The Argentine military made the decision to invade the Malvinas and on 2 April 1982 Argentina occupied the islands. This action meant the start of a war against Great Britain. The conflict lasted 10 weeks until British troops reoccupied the Falklands and expelled Argentine troops. The formal Argentine surrender and cease of fire occurred on 14 June 1982 (see Cisneros & Escude, 1999; Rapoport, 2010; Razoux, 2002; Yofre, 2011). Following from the previously explained features of political shocks, interstate wars fulfil the criterion and thus this type of shock is also expected to trigger changes on Argentina’s roles. Argentina during the authoritarian government held different types of roles, including some newly enacted during this non-democratic period and others that were more permanent features of the identity fabric of the state. Before and during the authoritarian period, Argentina held the role of regional power which created contestation and competition vis-à-vis Brazil, despite existing material power differences between both actors. The South American regional order in this period was a bipolar sub-regional structure (two regional hegemons) and a US overlay as a great power. Moreover, Argentina also adopted the role of non-aligned country. This role took form first as having observer status in the Non-Aligned Movement (1964) and then upon becoming a full member in 1973. During the military junta period Argentina continued participating in this movement in order to achieve three foreign policy goals: first, to generate solidarity and support for its quest to reestablish sovereignty over the Malvinas vis-à-vis the UK; second, to diffuse external pressure and condemnation over her human rights credentials at the UN Human Rights Commission; and third, to make sure Brazil would always consult Argentina over the use of shared natural resources as stipulated by the Non-Aligned Movement (Russell, 2001). In addition, Argentina also adopted an entirely new role during the non-democratic regime years. It adopted a de facto isolate role in addition to her presence in the Non-Aligned Movement and the UN, as it sought to give priority to domestic matters. The constant questioning on human rights issues from the US under President Carter’s human rights policy and from European states made Argentina reduce her social interaction with other states. Instead, Argentina focused on domestic matters and regional rivalry tensions. At the same time, Argentina’s

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priority for domestic matters, and interstate rivalry and competition were also driven by nationalistic expansionist ideals among the military elite ruling the country. Regionally, Argentina and Brazil started to cooperate on the issue of non-nuclear proliferation at the bilateral level despite the existing competition for regional hegemony. Argentina was also involved in a rivalrous role relationship with Chile on border issues, especially over the sovereign right of three small islands (Picton, Nueva, and Lennox) located in the Beagle Channel. The dispute of these three islands almost triggered a military confrontation between both countries in 1978, which was solved through the mediation of the Pope. In the light of the Malvinas war, Chile provided Great Britain with intelligence information. Chile believed that after the Malvinas, Argentina would occupy the three disputed islands (Razoux, 2002). Argentina along with the authoritarian governments of Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay were also able to coordinate and implement a systematic program of repression and intelligence exchange information to target political dissidents of the respective authoritarian regimes. All actors were able to develop this type of cooperation to violate human rights despite existing rivalrous role relationships over geopolitical interests (McSherry, 2019). Above all in this period including the Malvinas war, Argentina adopted an authoritarian and non-democratic role identity. In fact, the internal questioning of the dictatorship brought General Galtieri to power as President of Argentina who saw the Malvinas issue as a way to gain internal support and cohesion when the popularity of the government was being questioned nationally. Thus, Argentina during the Malvinas war and dictatorship enacted a series of roles such as rival of UK, while both the UK and Argentina cast each other as the legitimate actors that held sovereign rights over the Malvinas/Falklands. At the same time, Argentina played the role of non-democracy and authoritarian actor. Further, Argentina also had in her role set the role of rival with Chile. Argentina also held the role of regional hegemon/power in a competitive and rivalrous regional order vis-à-vis Brazil in South America. However, as Argentina lost the war a series of role changes were triggered as a consequence of this political shock. As Argentina lost the conflict against Great Britain a series of role changes of different magnitudes unfolded in the short and medium term. The social category of defeated state was imposed on Argentina, which had to accept most of the conditions presented by the British side to end the war. At the same time, losing the war ended Argentina’s regional power and hegemony project in favor of Brazil. Argentina experienced over the twentieth century a systematic decline as international actor, but the Malvinas enterprise became the corollary and end of this regional aspiration. The regional order became unipolar as Brazil became the most powerful actor in the South American order. Thus, Argentina became a secondary regional power underneath the predominant position of Brazil in the hierarchical order of this region. Another deep transformation was the change of regime in Argentina. The defeat in the Malvinas weakened the position of the authoritarian government and provoked strong internal pressure and mobilization against it. The literature on democratization in Latin America describes the transition to democracy in Argentina as a

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process of rupture since it was externally triggered due to the defeat in the Malvinas (Mainwaring & Viola, 1985; Munck, 1985). In role theory language, Argentina domestically adopted the role of a democratic state. This role change due to the political shock of the interstate war also brought a new foreign policy orientation once democracy was established with the election of president Raul Alfonsín. For instance, as a newly re-established democratic state, Argentina not only wanted to cement democratic pillars at the domestic level but also to impede any possibility of authoritarian regression. Alfonsín had to face different sets of military insurrections during his mandate. Thus, Argentina adopted the roles of democratic promoter and entrepreneur at the international level as a way to externally lock-in the ongoing democratic transformations. At the same time, the new government also moved away from the negative human rights credentials of the authoritarian government by conceiving a role of human rights promoter within multilateral institutions (Delicia, 2010; Rapoport, 2010; Russell & Hirst, 1987). Unlike the roles of regional power, authoritarian and isolated state, Argentina was able to maintain the role of non-aligned state. Yet, Argentina under the new democratic government of Alfonsín enacted the role in a different way than the authoritarian government that was driven by different reasons as well. Argentina worried about potential nuclear proliferation in the Atlantic (specifically the use of Falklands to do so) with the support of NATO. The Non-Aligned Movement was key to opposing any initiative on this matter. In fact, Argentina supported Brazil’s proposal at the UN that sought to make of the South Atlantic a Zone of Peace and Cooperation, which became formalized through resolution A/RES/41/11 of the U.N in 1986 (Delicia, 2010; Russell & Hirst, 1987). In addition, Alfonsín wanted to bring back the active independent role of Argentina in a Cold War context and non-aligned status was key to achieving a goal of gaining more autonomy vis-à-vis great powers, especially the US. The active independent role was a role that has been played recurrently in Argentine foreign policy pre-dictatorship with moments of selective and pragmatic followership to the US as a great power (Thies & Wehner, 2021). The existing cultural repertoire around the roles of non-aligned (new ways to enact this role) and active independent made possible to play these roles with credibility and be accepted by the political elites of the governing coalition and foreign policy apparatus of the state. Thus, the interstate war of Malvinas and its outcome for Argentina as a political shock induced a role change in Argentine foreign policy. One of the deepest changes occurred in its master role as a regional power in South America that was a contested status position vis-à-vis Brazil. Argentina became a reluctant secondary regional power that still contested Brazil’s regional aspirations over the following decades. Furthermore, Argentina also experienced a role change as a democratic state that displaced and took out the authoritarian state role from Argentina’s role set. As part of Argentine foreign policy, the role of democratic state was key to engaging with the norms, practices and institutions of the liberal international order that sought to promote democracy. Similarly, the isolate role adopted during the dictatorship was replaced by bringing back the active independent role that was a recurrent feature of Argentine foreign policy in previous governments. Finally, a role that continued

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being performed after the political shock of the interstate war was that of being the non-aligned state. However, the non-aligned role was performed rather differently and for different motives during the Alfonsín’s years. In other words, the political shocks of the Malvinas war triggered role shocks of different magnitudes, some affected the aspired master role of Argentina as a regional power and others on a series of auxiliary roles that were changed altogether or adapted in the way they were performed. Political shocks brought role shocks and made the Argentine agents of foreign policy rethink the ways they conceived and played roles internationally.

4.2 The Populist Shock in Brazil Populism has been a longstanding phenomenon in Latin America. The election of Jair Bolsonaro in 2018 marked the beginning of a new wave of populist leadership in this region. President Bolsonaro (2019–present) adopted a Manichean rhetoric of us versus them to be elected. Bolsonaro relied on a confrontational and missionary message of eradicating the corruption of traditional political parties and re-establishing order in Brazilian political affairs. What makes Bolsonaro a populist is the constant antagonistic rhetoric and actions and his mission of saving the people of Brazil from the corrupt political elite of left-wing parties that governed Brazil for the previous 18 years, especially under the rule of Lula da Silva (2003–2011) followed by the government of Dilma Rousseff (2011–2016). Both leaders belonged to the same Workers Party. According to Lúcio Rennó (2020), Brazilians elected Bolsonaro for different reasons, including anti-workers party sentiment, the promise to adopt deeper neoliberal economic policies, the promise of restoring a sense of law and order, the rejection of social policies, and cultural backlash elements. Bolsonaro’s populist message presented him as the savior and fixer of the country that has lost its identity. At the same time, he adopted a nationalistic and nativist rhetoric that embraced conservative and religious values, which according to Bolsonaro had previously been eradicated from the nation by the political elite (see Tamaki & Fuks, 2020). Bolsonaro promised to restore these lost values of Brazilian national identity. Internationally, Bolsonaro spoke of a global elite and attacked multilateral institutions such as the UN for being places in which global political elites and the left wingers of the workers party gather (Wehner, 2022). Thus, Bolsonaro’s election represents a political shock triggered internally via elections as Bolsonaro did not represent any of the traditional competitive parties that governed Brazil since the return to democracy in 1985. As such the election of Bolsonaro represents a crisis of the democratic state and party system that have been unable to deliver on their promises to the electorate. In fact, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff was removed from power due to an impeachment while former President Lula da Silva ended up in prison due to corruption charges. Dilma Rousseff was followed by the interim presidency of Michel Temer (2016–2018). Since the return to democracy, Brazil established an international reputation as a trusted partner, democracy promoter, and multilateralist state. Brazil led debates

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on climate change, especially on biofuels (see Casarões & Farias, 2021), and also became a norm entrepreneur and advocator when pushing to adjust the international norm of R2P to RwP (responsibility while protecting) (see Benner, 2013). Brazil also engaged in peace building missions in both Haiti (MINUSTAH) and in Africa (Kenkel, 2010). Within the South American context, Brazil and Argentina abandoned the rivalrous role relationship for one of friendship, which was a consequence of a series of measures to build mutual trust (Oelsner, 2005). At the same time, both states led the process of regionalism in South America in a joint leadership venture to create the regional group Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR) along with two small states: Paraguay and Uruguay (Malamud, 2011), while Brazil also became active during Lula’s presidency to locate her role as regional power in South America. This role of regional power was underpinned by the auxiliary role of leader during the Lula years. Brazil, for instance, led the articulation and setting back of the regional group UNASUR (South American Union) that developed a series of conceptions and practices of security cooperation and was used as a platform for mediation in both interstate and intra-state tensions and crisis situations (Nolte & Wehner, 2014). Brazil, along with Argentina, were key to the adoption of a democratic clause in MERCOSUR and similarly in UNASUR (also with Chile). The regional power role was seen as springboard for global power. In fact, Brazil became a member of the BRICS group and within the UN was member of the P4 group seeking to obtain a permanent seat in the UNSC. Overall Brazil presented a rich role set of roles being performed rather recurrently such as regional integrator, multilateralist, mediator, and leader which underpinned regional power status and the aspired master role of global power. Although regional peer expectations sometimes do not neatly match Brazil’s aspirations, constraining the role play of some auxiliary roles like leader, Brazil was still being recognized as the most influential actor in South American affairs (see Malamud, 2011) and thus as holding the master role of regional power (Wehner, 2015). However, once Jair Bolsonaro was elected, the political shock of populist leadership also brought a series of changes to Brazil’s foreign policy in the form of new roles and new ways to enact previous roles that have been present in the past of Brazil’s role set. Once in power, Bolsonaro continued to advance his narrative of the international as a battlefield between the people and the elite by locating a series of roles for Brazil’s foreign policy. Bolsonaro and his foreign affairs minister advanced new ways to perform existing roles and locate new ones by weakening and bypassing the foreign affairs office. As Destradi and Plagemann (2019) argue, one of the big changes brought by populist leaders to foreign policy is the personalization of foreign policy which is a consequence of the disarticulation and sidelining of the traditional foreign policy apparatus of the state. According to Guimaraes and Silva (2021), Bolsonaro has been able to cast at least three different roles: nationalist, antifoe and antiglobalist. The nationalist and antifoe roles are not that new in Brazil’s history. In fact, the nationalist role was performed under the dictatorship in Brazil and the friend-enemy role (antifoe) was also a recurrent feature in this period of Brazil’s history especially vis-à-vis neighboring states (see Wehner, 2022). The anti-globalist role encompasses behavior that

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seek to undermine multilateral institutions and commitments with the purpose of restoring Brazil’s sovereignty and autonomy that were traded away by the workers party elite and its leadership. Casarões and Farias (2021) note that the antiglobalist rethoric of Bolsonaro promising to walk away formally from multilateral commitments did not happen. What has happened is that Bolsonaro’s government has left leadership positions in debates such as climate change and rather than withdrawing formally from multilateral climate commitments, the government of Bolsonaro has not done much to domestically follow up and implement measures that help mitigating climate change. For instance, Bolsonaro frames the criticism of Brazilian rainforest deforestation as foreign intervention on Brazilian sovereign matters. At the same time, Bolsonaro’s foreign minister has talked pejoratively of multilateral institutions such as the UN and the Human Rights Commission as places full of communists. Yet, Bolsonaro has also shown capacity to accommodate domestic demands to avoid damaging trade relations with key partner such as China. During Bolsonaro’s electoral campaign he referred to China as a communist state and as the antithesis of what Brazil would be under his mandate. However, Bolsonaro has shown as president a dose of pragmatism and has toned down his anti-China rhetoric in order not to put at risk the economic benefits of the trading relationship with China (see Guimaraes & Silva, 2021). Bolsonaro also mimicked Donald Trump’s approach to politics and sought to establish a close relationship with him rather than with the US as a state. Brazil has traditionally shown a distant but pragmatic relationship with the US and sought to reduce its footing in South American affairs. Bolsonaro supported Trump’s decisions on Cuba, Israel, and Venezuela, which resulted in Brazil achieving the status of major non-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally of the US. At the regional level, Bolsonaro prioritized the nationalist and antiglobal roles as he has shown apathy and disinterest for regional cooperation initiatives such as MERCOSUR. While Bolsonaro is not to blame for Brazil’s withdrawal from UNASUR, started under Temer and completed by Bolsonaro, he only supported and did not lead the new regional initiative proposed and articulated by Colombia and Chile called PROSUR (established 2019). Thus, Brazil has adopted more of a follower role than a leading one in South American cooperation initiatives (Wehner, 2022). The electoral shock of Bolsonaro and his government policies in the international realm brought a role shock of different magnitudes. The nationalist role, antifoe, and especially the antiglobalist roles undermined other roles of the state that were previously performed during the years of FH Cardoso (1995–2002), Lula, Rousseff, and even Temer. In the latter case, the foreign policy apparatus operated rather inertly (Saraiva, 2020), which shows the importance of this institution for Brazil’s international clout. Under Bolsonaro, the role of responsible regional power became inactive and was not seen central to Brazil’s anti-global role. In fact, the antiglobal role undermined and eroded Brazil’s reputation as the most important player in the region. Other states still see Brazil as a regional power but no longer as a reliable regional power. Similarly, the regional leader role as contested as it was during the previous years of the rising power era of Brazil was also made peripheral and thus inactive in the role set of Brazil (Wehner, 2022). Whether these roles will remain

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inactive in the future under a new presidential leader is not dependant on Brazil alone but it also depends on the demands and role recognition of other regional peers. Thus, Brazil under Bolsonaro as an electoral shock triggered the adoption of a new role such as the anti-globalist role and brought back two roles that were part of the authoritarian era role set of Brazil, such as antifoe and nationalist ones. This does not mean that Brazil has entered an authoritarian path despite some democratic institutional erosion and backsliding in Brazil under this populist presidency. Neither does it means that Brazil has enacted these two roles from the past in the same manner as the authoritarian government as the regional historical context is different and Bolsonaro and his minister of foreign affairs have brought their own ways to enact these two roles.

5 Conclusion This chapter presented a role theory approach to understanding the impact of political shocks on foreign policy. Like most of the existing international relations and foreign policy literature, we also conceived of shocks as events. Political or other types of shocks are expected to induce role shocks, which cast doubt on the roles currently enacted by leaders on behalf of the state. Such role shocks may be induced by either international or domestic political shocks. Leaders must decide whether to maintain existing roles, modify their enactment, or abandon them in favor of new roles. The process of managing role shocks will vary based on whether they affect a status/master role or an auxiliary role, the amount of time spent in a role, the availability of other substitute roles in the role set, a state’s material capacity, the level of a state’s integration into the regional or international system, and the depth of societal foundations for a role. We illustrated these expectations considering an international political shock and a domestic political shock from Latin American cases. First, the international political shock of the Malvinas war was observed to have triggered role shocks of different magnitudes for Argentina, some affected the aspirational master role of regional power and others on a series of auxiliary roles that were changed altogether or adapted in the way they were performed. Second, the populist electoral shock that brought Bolsonaro to power led him to cast the new role of antiglobalist and resurrect the antifoe and nationalist roles from Brazil’s role set while undermining the responsible regional power master role long sought by previous leaders. Political shocks are therefore observed to induce role shocks leading to new roles often resurrected from the state’s role set and enacted in new ways. New roles rarely appear out of thin air and must be grounded in a society’s cultural material in order to be plausible. Similarly, the deployment of material capacity to support ideational roles is also essential. While our two cases illustrated some of our propositions about the factors conditioning the inducement of role shocks, future work on additional Latin American or other cases is needed to flesh out the exact process by which an

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internal or external shock leads leaders to maintain roles, modify the enactment of existing roles, or choose new ones for the state.

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Populist Leadership, Economic Shocks, and Foreign Policy Change Stephan Fouquet

and Klaus Brummer

Abstract This chapter approaches shocks from a vantage point that is different from the one commonly found in the foreign policy analysis (FPA) literature on foreign policy change. This literature typically conceptualizes shocks as one of several opportunities for or even drivers of policy change. Contrary to this predominant approach in the FPA literature, this chapter analyzes shocks not as drivers of and opportunities for external reorientations (hence as independent variable) but as consequences of—and potential constraints for the success of—attempted policy change (hence as intervening variable). In so doing, the chapter also contributes to the exploration of inhibitors of foreign policy modifications, which have received considerably less attention in the literature than the examination of possible drivers of change. Keywords Economic shock · Foreign policy change · Populist leadership

1 Introduction When Donald Trump escalated a trade war in the spring of 2018, there was no sustained slump in US stock markets, and his hardline advisers appeared unimpressed by the economic cost of China’s retaliation. With satisfaction, they concluded “that even when Trump played hardball, the Chinese leadership would still negotiate and the markets wouldn’t collapse” (Rogin, 2021, p. 136). While Trump was in a position to alter his country’s policy toward China, other populist leaders have encountered much greater obstacles when trying to redirect foreign economic policy. Indeed, in many instances efforts by populist leaders to fundamentally modify their country’s foreign economic policy culminated in shocks which in turn rendered the S. Fouquet · K. Brummer (B) Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Eichstätt, Germany e-mail: [email protected] S. Fouquet e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_6

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implementation of foreign policy change much more challenging, if not outright impossible. Against this background, this chapter approaches shocks from a vantage point that is different from the one commonly found in the foreign policy analysis (FPA) literature on foreign policy change. This literature typically conceptualizes shocks as one of several opportunities for or even drivers of policy change. For example, placing particular emphasis on developments in a state’s external environment, Charles Hermann (1990, p. 12) considers “external shocks” as one of the key “change agents” that could possibly usher in major redirections of foreign policy. Similarly, Jeffrey Legro (2005, p. 11) emphasizes the role that “external shocks” or “dramatic events” can have for ushering in policy change. In turn, Jonathan Renshon’s study of the political beliefs of George W. Bush shows that 9/11 did indeed lead to major alterations in Bush’s beliefs which were subsequently followed by major changes in US foreign policy (Renshon, 2008). Contrary to this predominant approach in the FPA literature, this chapter analyzes shocks not as drivers of and opportunities for external reorientations (hence as independent variable) but as consequences of—and potential constraints for the success of—attempted policy change (hence as intervening variable). In so doing, the chapter also contributes to the exploration of inhibitors of foreign policy modifications, which have received considerably less attention in the literature than the examination of possible drivers of change (Brummer & Oppermann, 2021, p. 318; for an exception, see Goldmann, 1982). The international agency of populist government leaders such as Rafael Correa, Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan, or Viktor Orbán, which receives increasing scholarly attention in recent years (for an overview, see Destradi et al., 2021), offers a fruitful area to analyze the impact of shocks occurring in response to attempted policy change. Existing comparative studies conclude that, exceptions like Hugo Chávez notwithstanding (Wehner & Thies, 2021), most populist chief executives do not bring about what Hermann (1990, pp. 5–6) calls comprehensive international orientation changes, but at best specific goal changes. Populist led-governments usually continue to handle most external affairs broadly in line with preceding administrations, but make occasional transformative attempts at challenging relations with selected actors. Those issue-specific confrontations to liberate ‘the people’ from oppressive ‘foreign elites’ have sometimes succeeded in delivering lasting change, yet notably failed in other cases (e.g., Destradi & Plagemann, 2019; Wajner, 2021). Focusing on issues of foreign economic policy, this chapter argues that self-provoked shocks are often an important factor to account for the diverging outcomes of populist led-governments’ international change efforts. The occurrence of shocks as consequences of attempted change can be frequently observed when populist leaders strive to fulfill their campaign promises of economic change by boldly shaking up foreign relations with and forcefully challenging the economic interests of powerful international actors. These confrontational change initiatives often provoke external reactions that may cause an economic shock for populist decision-makers. The political economy literature commonly uses this notion when governments suffer “a significant contraction of resources available” due to “externally driven shocks”, which tend “to be exogenous, beyond efforts […]

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by the rulers” (Shih, 2020, pp. 2, 9–10). This study, in contrast, examines largely selfinduced, issue-specific economic shocks, understood as a significant increase in the economic risk or cost of a government’s antagonistic change endeavor due to backlashes from the targeted multilateral institutions, multinational corporations, and/or affected market participants. Such situational external countermeasures in response to a populist leader’s challenge do usually not have a systemic international impact, but could nonetheless leave his or her government without the necessary resources to push through the proclaimed economic ‘will of the people’ and may therefore doom the change attempt to failure. If populist leaders’ change initiatives repeatedly trigger or catalyze international pushback that significantly impairs government finances, the administration’s economic operability, a country’s terms of trade, or overall macroeconomic stability, the question arises whether populist leadership is capable of weathering those shocks. To explore that matter, this chapter relies on Kurt Weyland’s (2001) political-strategic approach to populism. Whereas discursive and ideational concepts explain why and how actors construct and interpret issues as antagonistic, Manichean ‘people-vs.elite’ conflicts (Hawkins, 2010), a political-strategic perspective elucidates how populist leaders rule and under which conditions their transformative projects of power concentration and policy change are likely to succeed or fail. While the international room for maneuver of any strategy of rule is conditioned by structural conditions, the two definitional core components of political-strategic populism—plebiscitary support and personal authority—can occasionally make individual rulers capable of overpowering entrenched veto players and resisting pressures from vested interests at home and abroad (Roberts, 2006; Weyland, 2002, 2019). This study, then, explores to what extent those three factors at the systemic, domestic, and leader levels of analysis enable populist decision-makers to push through international goal changes despite self-engineered contextual obstacles: Do a robust structural position, majoritarian popular support for a leader’s disruptive agency, and/or his or her personal monopoly on decision-making provide a government with the power to defy and overcome economic shocks in the pursuit of issue-specific foreign policy change? Empirical patterns pointing toward potential causal pathways are observed from a structured, focused comparison of six cases in which European and Latin American populist leaders campaigned on delivering economic change by redefining relations with external actors, tried to make good on those pledges after coming to power, and faced economic shocks as a consequence. The observations indicate a country’s strong structural position in conjunction with a populist leaders’ majoritarian plebiscitary support or firm personal authority as two alternative pathways for implementing foreign economic policy change in spite of economic shocks. The chapter’s remaining five sections conceptualize the interaction between populist leadership and economic shocks, clarify the case selection, conduct the case studies, summarize and discuss the empirical findings, and make concluding remarks including an outlook on future research avenues.

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2 How Populist Leadership Provokes (and Defies?) Economic Shocks Strategies of rule can be systematically distinguished along two central components, namely the type of political actor striving for power and the principal power capability which that actor mobilizes to gain political influence (Weyland, 2001, p. 12). Populism revolves around an individual ruler, as opposed to the informal groupings of clientelistic and oligarchic strategies or the formal institutions of party government and corporatism. Rather than engaging in pragmatic authority-support exchange relationships or playing by institutionalized rules and procedures, populist leaders seek to accumulate as much unfettered personal authority as possible. To reach individual political hegemony and personally embody ‘the will of the people’ by beating political rivals, dismantling checks and balances, and gaining independence from entrenched special interests, populism primarily mobilizes large numbers of unmediated mass support. Populist leaders typically leverage the plebiscitary instruments of showcasing impressive approval across the population in elections and referenda, opinion polls, and rallies as a counterweight against the institutional, economic, or military resources of elite opponents (Roberts, 2006; Weyland, 2001). Altogether, political-strategic populism comprises personalistic, plebiscitarian leadership, that is, power personalization by means of mass mobilization. Riding on a wave of sky-high popularity, populist leaders can become determined “change agents” with wide individual leeway to revamp political systems and shift policy objectives at personal discretion (Weyland, 2019, p. 327). At the same time, “its uninstitutionalized, fluid nature and the adversarial relationship to […] established elites turn populism into a high-risk strategy [that] carries a substantial danger of failure, if not disaster” (Weyland, 2002, p. 64). The populist high-wire act differs notably from mainstream strategies of party government, where the authority of top-level politicians is usually sustained and constrained by firm programmatic linkages and lasting institutionalized loyalties. This established framework for stable, moderate, and participatory governance allows and incentivizes decision-makers to purse carefully designed reform programs for gradual change based on cooperation rather than confrontation with powerful veto players. Populism, in contrast, draws on largely unmediated, quasi-direct support from amorphous mass followings across the population—a notoriously fickle, volatile source of power. A personalistic leader’s plebiscitary backing may rise meteorically, but can also melt away at lightning speed. To the extent that popular approval waxes and wanes, populist leadership rests on an inherently brittle, precarious foundation that must be constantly mobilized and recharged to forestall the looming risk of deflating mass support (Weyland, 2010, 2019, 2022). To engineer mass support, populist-led governments typically “thrive on polarization and confrontation”, as manifested in “determined attacks on adversaries and bold measures to resolve problems” (Weyland, 2019, pp. 320, 324). While elected populists may continue the programs of preceding administrations in many areas, they typically concentrate efforts on fulfilling their most salient ‘people-vs.-elite’

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campaign promises by audaciously confronting selected established actors in high-profile attempts at pressing home punctual policy modifications (Destradi & Plagemann, 2019, pp. 726–727; Grzymala-Busse, 2017, pp. S5–S6). Personalistic, plebiscitarian leaders occasionally “have a particular impetus and capacity to break through structural impediments and institutional deadlocks: They simply cut the Gordian knot and effect dramatic change” (Weyland, 2010, p. 24). What often follows is “serious political conflict” between a populist change agent and entrenched elite opponents (Roberts, 2006, p. 137). Populist leaders’ attempts to preempt the peril of crumbling mass backing by boldly pressing home policy change ironically “exacerbates the risks they face from other sides”, because the antagonized established domestic or international actors “often resort to drastic countermeasures” (Weyland, 2019, pp. 320, 325). Domestically, opposition actors, civil society associations, big business, or military establishments frequently use resources such as institutional bastions, organizational capacities, economic weight, or coercive clout to fight back against populist challengers and obstruct their change initiatives. In escalating spirals of mutual attacks and retaliation, populist government leaders around the globe repeatedly faced impeachments, protests, business lockouts, or—in the cases of Chávez and Erdo˘gan—even coup attempts (Weyland, 2022). Not all elite backlashes succeeded in reining in or removing personalistic, plebiscitarian leadership, but in all cases “populism’s irrepressible penchant for confrontation and polarization came back to haunt its instigators” (Weyland, 2022, p. 31). Internationally, it remains debated to what extent foreign actors can lend effective external assistance in defending liberal democracies against populist power grabs (see e.g., Taggart & Rovira Kaltwasser, 2016, pp. 355–357; Weyland, 2022, pp. 20–21, 33–35). However, when it comes to cross-border matters of sovereign debt management, trade relations, or monetary integration, international actors may be highly motivated and command significant economic clout for decisive counterpunches. As to motivation, multilateral institutions, multinational corporations, or global investors may not only feel offended by being denigrated in Manichean ‘people-vs.-elite’ issue framings. Sooner or later, they will also see their substantive interests threatened when populist leaders’ change efforts make a mockery of ‘established economic wisdom’,1 flagrantly step over rules and agreements, impair the expected return on investment or immediately impose painful financial losses. In some cases, there could even be contagion effects for other economies. To make things worse, populist leaders’ vociferous politicization of foreign economic issues tends to hit regional or even global headlines and thus could—if the protagonists get away with their change attempts—set highly salient precedents for other defiant challengers. In brief, there are plentiful of reasons for international actors to try hard to defend their economic interests against populist policy shifts. 1

Although Weyland’s (2001) political-strategic conceptualization refrains from treating ‘economic irresponsibility’ as a defining feature of populism, the combination of personalistic latitude and reliance on plebiscitary approval can explain why “populist leaders often resort to politically attractive but economically damaging miracle cures, such as price and exchange controls, which exacerbate distortions” (2022, p. 18).

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Regarding capabilities, the targeted or affected actors command several economic weapons to ‘shock’ and deter populist change agents. International organizations could bite back by withholding financial transfers or threatening sanctions (Weyland, 2022, pp. 20–21). Multinational corporations may cancel investments, rescind contracts, or outright ‘exit a country’. Last but not least, global investors in the bond, stock, and currency markets can collectively exert local pressure by pulling their capital in large quantities (Johnson & Barnes, 2015, pp. 546, 555). The impact of these contextual countermeasures may fall under the previously introduced definition of a self-provoked shock that causes a significant increase in the economic risk or cost of a populist leader’s confrontational change endeavor. After all, the summarized elite backlashes could deprive the populist-led government of vital resources to see the initiative through until completion and sustain it over time. By deliberately going toe-to-toe with influential foreign actors and kicking off highly salient international politico-economic conflicts, populists frequently provoke the very economic shocks that might present insurmountable obstacles to their antagonistic pursuit of substantive transformations. Populist leadership thus triggers economic shocks, but can it also resist them? The answer to this question lies partly in structural aspects that condition any (populist) leader’s international room for maneuver (Destradi & Plagemann, 2019). For instance, chief executives who “eagerly seek foreign investment are especially vulnerable. Their room for maneuver shrinks further if they depend on voluminous financial aid” (Weyland, 2022, p. 21). While a country’s relative economic weight and financial firepower vis-à-vis foreign institutions, businesses, or investors is largely beyond an individual leader’s control, populist decision-makers could make a difference if the plebiscitarian and personalistic elements of their political strategy shield them effectively against falling prey to self-set economic traps. Populist leaders do not only rock the boat in hazardous change efforts to bolster their fleeting principal power capability, but may also use the mobilized approval as a plebiscitary bulwark against the counterstrikes launched by opponents (Roberts, 2006). Popular backing matters especially in crisis situations where populist leaders face severe threats: “When pushed to the wall, they invoke and thus reveal the ultima ratio of populism: broad mass support” (Weyland, 2001, p. 12). Besides massive election victories, opinion polls are of vital importance to populists, who crucially depend on approval ratings of at least—and preferably well above—50 percent to carry through political and economic transformations against elite resistance (Weyland, 2002, pp. 61–64, 126–130, 248–249). In conflicts over a particular change initiative, plebiscitarian leaders not only closely monitor their general popularity—which legitimates and empowers them—but also issue-specific public opinion—which incentivizes and propels them—to defy significant politico-economic headwind (see Campus, 2010, pp. 150–152). As mentioned before, however, largely unmediated mass support from heterogeneous constituencies is inherently fickle: Popular backing may vanish rapidly when economic shocks imperil the welfare of ordinary citizens (Shih, 2020, p. 12; Weyland; 2002, pp. 64, 2022, p. 18). Personal rather than institutionalized authority can take its toll on overall governmental policy performance, but allows an unchecked leader to boldly initiate and

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unwaveringly push through selected objectives despite significant costs or unintended side effects (Destradi & Plagemann, 2019, pp. 724–727; Weyland, 2010). Populists typically hand-pick aides based on loyalty rather than expertise and operate in informal circles of cronies and sycophants who hardly dare to question their decisions (Weyland, 2022, pp. 18–19). Personal authority may therefore shield determined populist change agents against being confronted with and hampered by warnings of the risks and costs entailed with self-induced economic shocks. Such insulation could predispose them to remain laser-focused on getting things done at any price. While “the disproportionate power and autonomy of populist leaders” can manifest itself in instances where “economic policy is decided ultimately by a single individual” (Weyland, 2002, pp. 64–65), this need not always be the case. Especially populist heads of coalition governments rarely monopolize decision-making authority (Weyland, 2022, pp. 27–30), and even prototypically personalistic presidents like Chávez may in an initial phase of consolidating their hegemonic rule still rely on pragmatic professionals in foreign economic affairs (Weyland, 2002, pp. 244– 247). Trump’s frequently reshuffled inner circle was even notorious for constant infighting between hardline nationalists and moderate ‘Wall Street globalists’, each of them vying for the leader’s ear (Rogin, 2021, pp. 134–137). It thus remains an open question to what extent personalistic instincts actually shield populist decisionmakers from recognizing the destructive potential of economic shocks and becoming flexible enough to (temporarily) share authority with pragmatic advisers pointing them toward an exit from backfiring change initiatives. The following sections explore if and when structural strength, plebiscitary support, and/or personal authority embolden populist leaders to stay the course in international change efforts despite suffering self-inflicted economic shocks. To that aim, six guiding questions are derived from the theoretical discussion: First, what change did the populist leader promise and pursue? Second, which external reactions precipitated an economic shock? Third, how did it affect the change endeavor? Fourth, how do scholars assess the populist-led government’s relative structural position vis-à-vis the targeted foreign actors? Fifth, was there—at the critical moments of the change initiative—majoritarian domestic popular support in terms of general leader popularity and issue-specific public opinion? And sixth, did the chief executive and close confidants subscribing to the antagonistic change effort make decisions at personal discretion, or did the leader share authority with pragmatic officials advocating acquiescent adjustments if not complete course reversals?

3 Case Selection and Method The case selection started with all twenty-first century government leaders in Europe and the Americas which Weyland and Madrid (2019, p. 9) include in “a ‘working list’ of broadly consensual cases” from political-strategic, discursive,

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and ideational approaches to populism. These populist chief executives encompass Argentina’s Néstor Kirchner (2003–2007) and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (2007–2015), Ecuador’s Rafael Correa (2007–2017), Greece’s Alexis Tsipras (2015– 2019), Hungary’s Viktor Orbán (1998–2002, 2010–present), Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi (1994–1995, 2001–2006, 2008–2011), Slovakia’s Robert Fico (2006–2010, 2012– 2018), Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan (2003–present), the United States’ Donald Trump (2017–2021), and Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez (1998–2013). The next step consisted of searching for accounts of cross-border economic change initiatives in publications about the populist rule as well as foreign and economic policy making of those leaders. Based on a comprehensive literature review, only Berlusconi was identified as never campaigning on major foreign economic policy change that would have substantively threatened the interests of powerful international actors. His governments were therefore replaced with the more recent Italian populist coalition around Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini (2018–2019), which is widely recognized as a populist government from different conceptual perspectives (e.g., Baldini & Giglioli, 2021; Weyland, 2022, pp. 27–28, 37). Within this sample of ten populist-led governments, only Chávez (in the areas of trade and oil) and Trump (trade) could initiate and pull off high-profile international economic transformations without facing shocks. Clearly, both leaders enjoyed rare structural privileges: Chávez benefitted extraordinarily from the hydrocarbon windfall bonanza since 2003/2004, and only then became a bold economic change agent (Hawkins, 2010, pp. 22–23; Wajner, 2021, pp. 670–673), whereas Trump had the unique privilege of presiding over a global superpower. Fernández de Kirchner, for her part, also did not suffer a significant increase in the economic cost of sustaining the turn to defiance that her husband had previously performed in Argentina’s sovereign debt management (see below). However, he and the remaining above listed populist decision-makers all had to grapple with different sorts of economic shocks. Among these seven cases, only Fico’s 2006 post-election challenge to Slovakia’s scheduled Eurozone accession became an outright ‘non-starter’: his government was structurally vulnerable, while Fico himself lacked general as well as issue-specific majoritarian popular support, and—after a “personally-engineered bout of capital flight” (Gould, 2009, p. 14)—was immediately reined in by financial technocrats (for details, see Gould, 2009; Pechova, 2012). All other change attempts, in contrast, extended at least over various months and displayed more variation in the international, domestic, and individual power capabilities. These cases were therefore selected for a detailed structured, focused comparison (George & Bennett, 2005, pp. 67–72), guided by the set of questions on the promoted change, the triggered economic shock, the outcome, as well as contextual structural strength, plebiscitary support, and personal authority. The next section answers those questions based on existing academic literature, complementary journalistic accounts, and available opinion polls.

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4 Case Studies 4.1 From Cooperation to Autonomy: Turkey and the IMF Under Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan When Turkey suffered a currency collapse and severe economic crisis in 2001, authorities resorted to the country’s nineteenth stand-by agreement with the IMF. The externally supervised stabilization program in exchange for $32 billion in loans from the IMF and World Bank brought some stability, but Turkey’s November 2002 election was still dominated by widespread socio-economic hardship and popular grievance about lost national sovereignty. AKP leader Recep Tayyip Erdo˘gan did not promise to sever ties with the disliked IMF, but pledged to establish ‘partner-like relations’ and change the ‘fundamental deficiencies’ of the reform program by negotiating revisions to aggressively tackle poverty and inequality (Patton, 2006). Having surprisingly won a parliamentary majority, the new AKP government sought to revise the externally approved budget bequeathed by its predecessors. From late-2002 until March 2003, “the AKP tried to find ways to loosen the IMF’s tight leash, time and again announcing policies that showed it wanted to wriggle out of IMF constraints.” Consequentially, various budget-related “policy issues emerged as highly contentious between the government and the IMF” (Patton, 2006, pp. 517–518). The Fund, however, had secured itself immediate leverage over the incoming decision-makers by not releasing the last scheduled loan disbursement ($1.6 billion) under the previous government. Soon after, the World Bank also threatened to withhold funds ($1.4 billion) earmarked for economic reform (Patton, 2006, pp. 517–526). Faced with the shock of being cut-off from urgently needed external financing, the Turkish government became less confrontational and by mid-2003 switched to full cooperation. Rather than seeing through the promised change of more assertive relations with the IMF, Erdo˘gan maintained the externally prescribed fiscal restraint and courted foreign investors, which paved the way for an unprecedented economic ˝ s, 2014, pp. 49–53; Patton, 2006). The leader thus “stayed in line boom (Aytaç & Oni¸ with the IMF program and eschewed an unbounded populist path” (Patton, 2006, p. 515). A decade later, Erdo˘gan celebrated the repayment of all debt to the Washingtonbased institution as a liberation and started to regularly campaign against the ‘imperialist IMF’ and its local stooges (Soylu, 2020; Zengin & Övünc Ongur, 2020, pp. 584, 590). Having gained independence from external conditionality, the leader pursued increasingly unorthodox economic policies (Erdemir & Lechner, 2020). This change did not evoke an immediate foreign backlash, but in 2018 Turkey’s economy suffered a currency depreciation shock that was, at least from a former IMF executive’s perspective, “almost entirely self-inflicted” (Krueger, 2021). Not tackling the imbalances of a credit-fueled, consumption-driven growth model made Erdo˘gan’s government vulnerable to international investor sentiment, while his own agency largely triggered the loss of confidence which resulted in massive

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capital flight. During a visit to London in May 2018, the leader alarmed investors by insisting, against all economic wisdom, that central banks must lower interest rates to fight inflation. After winning the June presidential elections, Erdo˘gan tightened his already firm personal control over economic policy by appointing his son-inlaw as Finance Minister and casting doubt over central bank independence. Finally, an escalation of diplomatic tensions with the US government provoked President Trump to announce punitive tariffs against Turkish products. The market reactions severely hit the Turkish lira, which by August had depreciated 40 percent against the US dollar throughout the year. This shock, in turn, precipitated a full-blown financial and economic crisis that lasted well until 2019 (Cochrane, 2018; Zengin & Övünc Ongur, 2020, pp. 582–584). By late-2021, with the fallout of Erdo˘gan’s “selfimposed” shock being reinforced by external events beyond his control (Fahim, 2022), the Turkish economy again got into dire straits (Spicer, 2021). In reaction to the 2018 currency depreciation shock and the ensuing “severe economic circumstances, a new deal with the IMF was […] floated by several sources as a viable path forward for the AKP government” (Zengin & Övünc Ongur, 2020, p. 585). However, these ongoing calls from domestic and international voices have thus far not been heeded. Erdo˘gan categorically rejected a return to the negotiation table with ‘the lender of last resort’, ramped up his ‘people-vs-elite’ issue framing, and even refused to reassure global investors with some of the measures suggested by the IMF from abroad. He even deepened the change efforts in foreign economic relations and ordered the cancellation of his administration’s cooperation with the US-based McKinsey Company, which had regularly provided consulting services to Turkish decision-makers (including the first AKP government) since the mid-1980s (Erdemir & Lechner, 2020; Zengin & Övünc Ongur, 2020). All the while, Turkey’s Central Bank continues to implement Erdo˘gan’s idiosyncratic interest rate policy and burn reserves in futile attempts to stabilize the exchange rate (Spicer, 2021). How have the leader’s structural and political-strategic power capabilities evolved since he first gave in to (2002/2003) and later resisted (2018–present) economic shocks which jeopardized his project to change Turkey’s relations with the IMF? Initially, extraordinarily high indebtedness and strong dependence on external financing left the new AKP government little structural room for maneuver vis-à-vis the IMF (Patton, 2006, pp. 516–517). Subsequently, Turkey emerged as a pivotal middle power between Europe and Asia that nowadays has the structural weight of “a geopolitically and economically significant country” (Krueger, 2021). Although the economy remains reliant on the influx of foreign capital, in 2018 the government commanded “enough financial ammunition” to weather even “a complete drying up of foreign funding” for some time (Cochrane, 2018). The 2002 elections were a watershed moment in Turkish politics and (due to a 10 percent threshold) gave the AKP a comfortable parliamentary majority, but with 34.3 percent of the popular vote (Patton, 2006, pp. 513–515), Erdo˘gan’s electoral success had still been “relatively marginal” compared to future performances (Zengin & Övünc Ongur, 2020, p. 581). In the 2018 elections, the first ones under Turkey’s new presidential system, Erdo˘gan received a vote share of 52.59 percent, more than twenty percentage points ahead of the runner-up. However, with the economic

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shock of August 2018, the leader’s approval rating dropped and remained under 45 percent for twelve months. After a recovery at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, popular backing even fell below 40 percent in the second half of 2021, when Turkey’s economic troubles once again dominated the headlines (Spicer, 2021). Issue-specific public opinion, by contrast, was supportive of refusing cooperation with US-based institutions (Zengin & Övünc Ongur, 2020, pp. 586, 590). Even after the 2018/2019 crisis, 69 percent of poll respondents remained opposed to taking an IMF credit line (Soylu, 2020). An impressive majority thus backs Erdo˘gan’s foreign economic defiance, but the consequences apparently erode his vital general popularity. Erdo˘gan’s personal authority has increased dramatically over the years. Due to an earlier conviction for incitement to violence, the AKP leader was legally prevented from becoming Prime Minister (PM) in November 2002 and could only assume the post four months later, concomitant with the government’s cooperative turn toward the IMF. Although caretaker PM Abdullah Gül consulted decisions with Erdo˘gan, there were disagreements and a general lack of guidance for the various ministers sharing economic responsibilities. These “ambiguities of dual executive authority […] only strengthened the hand of the IMF” (Patton, 2006, pp. 529– 531). In the following years, Erdo˘gan largely delegated economic management to professional officials. By 2018, however, he had transformed Turkey into a leaderdominated regime, and was about to bring economic policy fully under his individual control, as financial institutions are now run by frequently reshuffled Erdo˘gan loyalists (Fahim, 2022; Zengin & Övünc Ongur, 2020, pp. 581, 584, 589). Interestingly, his personal authority not only spooked foreign investors (see above), and allows him to stay the course despite significant economic pushback, but the prospect of “IMF conditionality and its potential to undermine his hypercentralized style of governance” arguably also motivates him to do so (Erdemir & Lechner, 2020). To conclude, Erdo˘gan made his first attempt to assert Turkey’s economic sovereignty from a vulnerable structural position, and with neither unambiguous plebiscitary support nor personal authority. This broad lack of power explains why, when facing “threats from the World Bank and IMF to withhold financial assistance […], the government had no leverage to thwart economic blackmail” (Patton, 2006, p. 521). More recently, by contrast, Erdo˘gan has upheld Turkey’s autonomy although a largely self-inflicted exchange rate shock significantly increased the economic cost of staying on his post-IMF trajectory. This prolonged defiance is possible under changed circumstances, including a fortified structural position, domestic public opinion cutting both ways, and a virtual leader monopoly on decision-making.

4.2 Néstor Kirchner’s Defiant Sovereign Debt Restructuring In 2001/2002, Argentina’s debt-financed ‘neo-liberal decade’ went bust when the government declared the then largest sovereign default in history (around $100 billion), followed by a traumatic socio-economic meltdown. The 2003 presidential

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elections brought Néstor Kirchner to power, who promised a ‘national and popular’ change project of prioritizing domestic recovery over the interests of Argentina’s upset foreign creditors. While the new government agreed on an IMF lending program of up to $13 billion that was primarily destined to continue paying debt with international financial institutions, it adopted a hardline ‘non-negotiating’ approach to the private investors that previous administrations had been courting before defaulting on their bonds. In September 2003, the Kirchner government announced the restructuring of Argentina’s non-performing debt with private creditors—an amorphous group of big investment banks, distressed debt funds, and thousands of small retail investors dispersed around the globe—by offering new exchange bonds with an unprecedentedly severe nominal ‘haircut’ of 75 percent (Cooper & Momani, 2005; Helleiner, 2005). Kirchner’s “combative stance held considerable risks” (Cooper & Momani, 2005, p. 312). His audacious initiative to turn Argentina’s relations with private creditors upside down caused a large outcry among the international financial community (Laudonia, 2013, pp. 32–41). To begin with, the IMF sought to assume its established function as coordinator and enforcer of private debt restructurings, using the regular revisions entailed in the stand-by loans to insist that the Kirchner government negotiate ‘in good faith’ with creditors. Argentine authorities, however, managed to keep the debt swap off the table. To separate both negotiations, Kirchner even threatened to default to the IMF and in September 2004 asked for a suspension of the three-year lending program, which was never resumed afterwards.2 A segmented approach to public and private creditors thus strengthened Kirchner’s hand (Cooper & Momani, 2005). Different private bondholders also tried to fight back and “mooted a number of disciplinary options”, such as seizing overseas Argentine state property, but “notwithstanding a great deal of press speculation, […] these tactics gathered no sustained traction” (Cooper & Momani, 2005, pp. 316–317). Among foreign creditors, international investment banks commanded most leverage over the debtor, because they played additional roles in the process: their reports and recommendations were an important source of information for other actors (Laudonia, 2013, p. 32), and Buenos Aires also depended upon the intermediation of a banking committee to perform the intricate swap. Kirchner’s government needed to collaborate with a major US American, an English, and a mainland European investment bank to reach all relevant bond markets. In late 2003, Argentine authorities thus tendered contracts for operational assistance among the biggest players except those who had, like Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse, been most actively involved in costly operations before the 2001/2002 default. While some banks engaged in advanced technical talks with the Kirchner administration, the global association of investment banks triggered a domino effect by warning its members against the reputational loss and dangerous precedent of assisting Argentina: By early 2004, the back-then top five global investment banks 2

With a preponed full repayment of all debt to the IMF in 2006, Kirchner eventually ‘dismissed’ the Fund from Argentina (Laudonia, 2013, pp. 134–143).

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(Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley) had all withdrawn their offers (Laudonia, 2013, pp. 91–101). An Argentine official later remembered enormous pressure from the banks to improve the terms of the swap and admitted that their refusals had caused them severe technical headaches: “It was a shock for us” (Laudonia, 2013, p. 93). Although Barclays (England) offered assistance and Deutsche Bank could be replaced with UBS (Switzerland), “the situation, to say the least, was desperate”, because all contacted US banks had dropped out. Pushed to the wall, the government finally swallowed the pill of asking the thus far boycotted Merrill Lynch for help on short notice (Laudonia, 2013, pp. 95–96). In February 2004, after “some considerable hesitations and tensions” (Cooper & Momani, 2005, pp. 316–317), Buenos Aires appointed Merrill Lynch, Barclays, and UBS to organize a formal swap offer (Helleiner, 2005, p. 957). Argentina’s final offer contained “some ‘sweeteners’” (Laudonia, 2013, p. 115), and was “a little more generous to the creditors”, but still imposed large haircuts of almost 70 percent in net present value terms. When the swap was about to be launched in late-November 2004, investors continued demanding substantial improvements (Helleiner, 2005, p. 958). At the very last moment, a second shock hit the government. The Bank of New York (BONY)—one of few entities capable of acting as Argentina’s clearing agent in charge of handling the documentation for the swap—rescinded its contract with the government, arguing “it needed more time and money because of the complexity of the transactions” (MercoPress, 2004). Argentine decision-makers interpreted the move as a last-ditch attempt to extract better conditions for BONY and creditors at large by once again jeopardizing the viability of the entire swap, which could collapse if no quick solution was found. To overcome what the Economy Minister, Roberto Lavagna, retrospectively recalled as the most challenging moment, his team postponed the swap and urgently renegotiated the contract with BONY (Laudonia, 2013, pp. 104–105; Wainfeld, 2016, p. 147). The terms of the offered exchange bonds, however, remained unaltered when the operation finally could be launched in January 2005 (Cooper & Momani, 2005, p. 312). In early March, Kirchner announced triumphantly that private bondholders representing 76 percent of the entire debt in default had entered the swap despite suffering losses of around 70 percent in net present value, respectively some 65 percent in nominal terms. This rate of acceptance was higher than predicted by most commentators and therefore widely regarded as an unexpected Argentine success. Although acting pragmatically when being let down by foreign banks, and making subtle concessions to all creditors, the leader essentially pushed through a risky change initiative without ever backtracking from his principal objective of imposing a large haircut (Helleiner, 2005; Wainfeld, 2016, pp. 151–153). Altogether, the “Kirchner government revealed that it could do much to gain and retain momentum, modifying the direction of discourse and policy innovation. Albeit under enormous stress, it found ways to create room for manoeuvre vis-à-vis its creditors” (Cooper & Momani, 2005, p. 317). This feat was partly possible because Argentina had already suffered the worst before Kirchner changed the government’s sovereign debt management. The leader’s inauguration coincided with a prolonged recovery and thanks to booming commodity

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prices since 2003, “Argentina’s growth during this period was not dependent on ˝ s, 2014, p. 53). Over time, the IMF seemed more capital flows” (Aytaç & Oni¸ concerned with recollecting money from Argentina than the Kirchner government with continuing to receive stand-by loans. The latter’s position was further strengthened when the George W. Bush administration took a ‘hands-off’ stance that bordered on implicit support for Argentine defiance. Without active IMF involvement, Buenos Aires had the whip hand over most fragmented private creditors around the globe (Cooper & Momani, 2005; Helleiner, 2005). While international investment banks played pivotal roles that allowed them to cause Argentine authorities significant troubles, those shocks concerned technical issues which—although being far from trivial—did not extend to even more critical questions of financing. As one involved banker noted: “Argentina raises the question of what leverage do you have over a country once they stop payments… The answer is, not much” (quoted in Helleiner, 2005, p. 965). Kirchner gained power with only 22 percent of the popular vote, since his main rival had abandoned the run-off election, but the new President was soon propelled by a huge surge of popularity (Cooper & Momani, 2005, pp. 309, 314). In February 2004, Kirchner’s overall approval peaked at 88 percent, while support for his unyielding handling of the debt restructuring reached 73 percent (La Nación, 2004). Both numbers remained above the 50 percent threshold until the swap was launched and resulted in a huge political success for the leader (Página/12, 2005; Wainfeld, 2016, pp. 152–153). Kirchner oversaw the complex debt restructuring together with the independentminded Economy Minister Lavagna, who had already served under the previous interim President. Lavagna and his team of aspiring professional experts were tough negotiators, but still more inclined to make concessions than the combative Kirchner. Some joint decision-making sessions in critical moments thus produced punctual disagreements (Laudonia, 2013, pp. 46–48, 115–116; Wainfeld, 2016, pp. 147–153). While Kirchner loyalists vehemently opposed Lavagna, they acknowledged that the President still needed him to finalize the intricate swap. In fact, both stumbling blocks put in the government’s way by international banks could only be overcome because key members of Lavagna’s team were well connected in global finance (including a personal contact at Merrill Lynch), and managed to urgently renegotiate the government’s contract with BONY (Laudonia, 2013, pp. 95–96, 104–106). Kirchner’s decisive leadership certainly mattered, but his issue-specific shared exercise of authority allowed for a crucial dose of “technical acumen” (Cooper & Momani, 2005, p. 317). Summing up, Kirchner benefitted from a robust structural position, massive plebiscitary tailwind, and—against his personalistic instincts—professional expert participation when succeeding in reasserting Argentine interests vis-à-vis foreign creditors.3

3

In 2014, credit rating agencies declared Argentina in default after Cristina Fernández de Kirchner refused to comply with US court orders to fully pay creditors who had refused to participate in the 2005 swap (and a second round in 2010), but the expectable economic shock did not fully

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4.3 Rafael Correa’s Pragmatic Turn in Ecuador’s Trade Relations with the European Union Upon entering power in 2007, Rafael Correa proclaimed the spearheading of a ‘citizens’ revolution’ against neo-liberalism and to reassert Ecuador’s autonomy vis-à-vis dominant global powers. The new President envisioned a ‘sovereign and competitive integration’ in the world economy and railed against the free trade agreements (FTAs) promoted under previous administrations. While negotiations with the United States had already been cancelled during the short incumbency of his immediate predecessor Alfredo Palacio (under whom Correa briefly served as Finance Minister), Ecuador was still involved in talks about a prospective FTA between the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) and the EU. In 2008/2009, Ecuador (and Bolivia) opted to drop out, whereas the other two CAN members negotiated a Colombia-Peru-EU FTA which was applied since 2013 (Jaramillo, 2020; Schade, 2016). Correa could initiate trade policy change and exit the CAN-EU negotiations without noticeable economic blowback. In fact, under the EU’s Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP), Ecuadorian products continued to enjoy non-reciprocal preferential access to the European market, their second most important export destination. In 2013, however, “Ecuador was facing not one, but two interrelated shocks to its trade pattern with the EU”, whose impact was “radically altering the conditions which had previously allowed the country to walk away from negotiations” (Schade, 2016, p. 79). From 2010 to 2012, the EU had been reforming its GSP rules to focus the scheme more exclusively on developing countries. When the World Bank classified Ecuador as an upper-middle income economy for the third consecutive year in 2013, it was no longer eligible for GSP treatment as of 2015. The impending competitive disadvantage from significantly increased export duties was compounded by the simultaneous provisional application of trade agreements between the EU and some of Ecuador’s neighbors with similar agricultural export patterns (Schade, 2016, pp. 78–81). The significant increase in the prospective economic cost of Correa’s change effort was not directly caused by targeted counterstrikes, but more a coincidental side effect of his country’s economic growth, the EU’s tightened GSP rules, and the trade policies of neighboring governments. Even so, Ecuador’s issue-specific vulnerability to these developments was an endogenous consequence of Correa’s anti-FTA change efforts. After all, it allowed the European Commission to use the formally purely technical GSP reform as a means of pressure to coerce Quito into abandoning its ‘sovereigntist’ trade policies (Schade, 2016, pp. 81–86). In 2013, Correa chose to resume technical consultations about acceding the Colombia-Peru-EU FTA, followed by unusually short formal negotiations between January and July 2014. As a result, the Commission granted Ecuador a two-year extension of GSP treatment before joining the FTA in 2017 (Schade, 2016). Under Correa’s presidency, “Ecuador became a contradictory partner in trade with the materialize: The Buenos Aires currency and stock markets stayed calm as the immediate fallout for Argentina’s real economy seemed limited (Fraga, 2014).

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EU, comfortable pretending umbrage and making defamatory claims in public, but ready to work behind closed doors in order to return again to the negotiating table” (Jaramillo, 2020, p. 343). Altogether, the leader made a “pragmatic turn” to prevent the fallout of “the economic shock that the country would otherwise have faced on 1 January 2015” (Schade, 2016, pp. 80, 84). Judging from economic size and dependence on market access, Ecuador was in a weak bargaining position vis-à-vis the EU. This structural power asymmetry made Quito particularly vulnerable to a trade shock (Schade, 2016). Domestically, Correa enjoyed sky-high popularity ratings, as his net approval rose from above 60 percent in early 2013 to an all-time peak of 80 percent at the beginning of 2014 (PolgaHecimovich, 2020, pp. 31–32). This impressive plebiscitary backing for Correa’s overall leadership was surprisingly out of sync with public opinion on his specific efforts to redefine Ecuador’s trade policies. In 2010, an opinion poll indicated that 50 percent of Ecuadorians were in favor of renewed efforts to negotiate FTAs (Zepeda & Egas, 2011, p. 114). Another survey conducted between January and February 2014 found that 56.7 percent supported an FTA with the EU, rather than Correa’s years-long opposition to it (Montalvo, 2015). Correa’s pragmatic turn in 2013/2014 was overshadowed by infighting among presidential advisers. While Foreign Minister Ricardo Patiño stayed firmly on the leader’s anti-FTA line, the Deputy Foreign Minister responsible for trade policy, Francisco Rivadeneira, represented a faction more supportive of joining the ColombiaPeru-EU FTA. Correa himself eventually delegated authority and created a separate Ministry of Foreign Trade under Rivadeneira, who directed and concluded the FTA negotiations (Schade, 2016, pp. 79–80). When a shock to Ecuador’s prospective trade patterns with the EU made Correa’s change initiative unsustainable, the leader operated in a weak structural position, had only ambivalent public support, and did not exercise personal authority.

4.4 Viktor Orbán’s ‘War of Liberation’ Against the IMF On an austerity course since 2006 and hit hard by the 2008/2009 global recession, Hungary’s socialist government resorted to a e20 billion loan from the IMF, World Bank, and EU with further spending cuts attached. Blaming the old ‘communist establishment’ for the economic crisis and submitting ‘the people’ to foreign dictates, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party won a two-third parliamentary supermajority in 2010. The incoming government started to negotiate a new standby loan with the IMF, but these talks broke down in July due to irreconcilable disagreements over Orbán’s unorthodox intentions to rejig Hungary’s economic policy. Rather than giving in to the externally demanded corrections (regarding budget deficit targets, central bank independence, ‘investor friendliness’, etc.), the leader switched to defiance by boldly declaring that Hungary no longer needed IMF assistance (Deák, 2013; Johnson & Barnes, 2015).

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The Hungarian government was betting on a quick economic recovery, although refraining from further IMF cooperation while picking fights with other foreign actors (e.g., from the EU) remained, “as Viktor Orbán himself admitted, […] a risky undertaking” (Deák, 2013, p. 161). Initially, his confrontational change endeavor worked out without too much external blowback. The IMF had no effective means to counteract Orbán as long as he could do without another loan. This seemed possible, since the spread between Hungarian and German bonds, which had almost reached 10 percent in 2009, largely hovered around 5 percent until mid-2011 (Johnson & Barnes, 2015). Nevertheless, “the IMF and various credit-rating agencies warned that Orbánomics was damaging Hungary’s credibility, undermining the confidence of investors, and threatening its ability to borrow on international markets” (Johnson & Barnes, 2015, p. 555). Such foreign admonition became a self-fulfilling prophecy when the second round of the European economic crisis hit in the autumn of 2011. The forint exchange rate depreciated from 275 to 324 per euro in less than four months, and Hungarian bonds were downgraded to ‘junk status’ while their spread with German bonds surged steadily toward 8 percent. Orbán’s government was tumbling into liquidity problems (Csaba, 2013, p. 162; Johnson & Barnes, 2015, pp. 550–558), until finding itself “on the brink of bankruptcy” (Jenne & Mudde, 2012, p. 149). Facing this market shock, in November 2011 “Orbán had to suffer the humiliation of asking for the IMF’s help again” (Deák, 2013, p. 161). It turned out, however, that Orbán had not performed a complete U-turn and never buried his change ambitions. Over the next year, his officials engaged in on-and-off ‘negotiations about negotiations’, aiming more at appeasing the markets than getting serious about striking a substantive agreement with the IMF. Although the latter and credit rating agencies continued to force Orban’s hand with bleak forecasts, his gamble paid off. Throughout 2012, Hungary’s spread returned to 5 percent and the government again successfully floated bonds in the markets. By early 2013, securities were auctioned at only half the yield than a year before. In August, the IMF was repaid in full and its resident representative left Hungary (Csaba, 2013, p. 163; Johnson & Barnes, 2015, pp. 550–558). In retrospect, Orbán mounted a “surprisingly successful resistance” by seeing through policy change “in defiance of pressures, expectations, and advice from the IMF” (Johnson & Barnes, 2015, pp. 536, 552). Hungary has the “economic significance of a middle income, medium sized country” (Csaba, 2013, p. 165), which benefits from EU membership both directly (financial assistance through the cohesion fund) and indirectly (reduced risk premium in bond markets). In the years under consideration, however, the government’s structural room for maneuver was limited by budgetary constraints and strong economic exposure to crisis-ridden Western Europe (Johnson & Barnes, 2015). Overall, Hungary thus seemed “to be in a weak position to resist the pressure of global markets” (Johnson & Barnes, 2015, p. 557), while the IMF was expected “to have considerable leverage” over Orbán’s government (Jenne & Mudde, 2012, p. 149). After achieving a landslide victory of 52.7 percent in the 2010 elections, different polls reflected that support for Orbán’s personally controlled Fidesz party steadily

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fell when the economic woes continued. Popular baking eroded from around 50 percent to a mere 20 percent in May 2012. Although the opposition remained in disarray, Orbán did not recover his widespread popularity until 2013 (Deák, 2013, pp. 146, 159, 162; Jenne & Mudde, 2012, p. 148). Moreover, in December 2011 a poll indicated that “only 25 percent of the population was ready to support Viktor Orbán’s ‘war of independence’ against the IMF” (Balogh, 2012a). In the biannual Eurobarometer surveys, the national government had at best small (and far from majoritarian) leads over the IMF when Hungarians where asked about the actor best able to take effective actions against the economic crisis. The balance shifted only noticeably after the government had repaid the standby loan in mid-2013.4 The Hungarian government’s prolonged showdown with the IMF lacked “a formally approved integrated strategy”, as Orbán’s centralized leadership never invested in a “coordinated vision, a joint economic chief of staff”, but rather trusted in “a narrow circle of close advisors” (Csaba, 2013, pp. 163, 169). Although the Fidesz rank-and-file seemed split on the IMF issue, Orbán himself was mostly acting in an echo-chamber with his loyal Economy Minister György Matolcsy and handpicked economists invited for occasional briefings, who appeared to tell him what he wanted to hear and what reinforced his Manichean reading of international finance (e.g., Balogh, 2011, 2012b). To conclude, with relatively little structural leeway and lacking persistent mass support, Orbán’s personal authority could not simply shrug off a market shock in 2011/2012. The financial risk was defused by symbolically abandoning the antagonistic change project for some time, allowing the leader to complete it in 2013 once investors had been reassured.

4.5 Alexis Tsipras’ Capitulation to Foreign Creditors In 2010, Eurozone countries and the IMF bailed out the Greek government with roughly e110 billion, followed by another e130 billion in 2012. The ‘Troika’ institutions—European Commission, European Central Bank (ECB), and IMF—supervised the local implementation of the corresponding economic adjustment programs. After the Greek economy had contracted by more than a quarter, the left-wing SYRIZA won elections in January 2015 with combative promises of radical change. SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras formed an ‘anti-establishment’ coalition government with the far-right ANEL, and immediately began to make good on his pledges by unilaterally rescinding austerity and reform measures, expelling Troika supervisors, and insisting on renegotiating the second adjustment program to relax surplus targets and achieve a significant debt reduction (Tsebelis, 2016; Wolf, 2018). The creditors responded by withholding the final outstanding bailout tranche of e7.2 billion until Athens would come up with measures to meet the original fiscal targets (Wolf, 2018, pp. 832–833). Month-long discussions brought little progress, as Tsipras remained overall defiant although his demands were rejected by all other 4

See the Hungarian factsheets at https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/browse/all/series/4961.

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18 Eurozone members, ever more private capital fled the country, and the economy dove back into recession. Meanwhile, the Greek government continued to be starved of external financing and was running out of cash for payments on salaries, pensions, and IMF debt. Once the leader doubled down by announcing a domestic referendum to reject the creditors’ proposals in early July, the ECB curtailed emergency liquidity assistance to the Greek financial sector, which forced the Tsipras-led government to shut down banks and impose capital controls. Concomitantly, the Commission and Eurozone leaders openly discussed Grexit while signaling preparedness to shield their economies against the fallout (Tsebelis, 2016, pp. 26–32; Wolf, 2018, pp. 842–843). These shocks made Tsipras learn the hard way “that the only alternative to accepting the EU’s terms was to drive his own country into bankruptcy and chaos” (Tsebelis, 2016, p. 27). The July turmoil alone increased the government’s need for financial assistance by some e30 billion. Trapped in this catch-22, Tsipras eventually accepted a third bailout of about e85 billion with even more austerity and creditor oversight attached (Kyriakidou, 2015). One of the most daring populist change attempts thus resulted in an “about-face”, as the terms of the new memorandum “amounted to a complete capitulation” (Wolf, 2018, pp. 829, 833). Structurally, “the negotiating deck was stacked in the EU’s favor” (Tsebelis, 2016, p. 27). Not only does Greece represent no more than three percent of EU GDP, but foreign creditors had additional institutional, substantive (i.e., control over liquidity), and temporal bargaining advantages. Non-European powers like the US, China, and Russia also gave Tsipras a cold shoulder (Tsebelis, 2016; Wolf, 2018, pp. 831–835). After SYRIZA won 36.6 percent of votes in the January 2015 election, “the government’s popularity soared as soon as Athens began challenging the creditors” (Wolf, 2018, p. 839). Majoritarian support for Tsipras was directly related to enormous issue-specific approval of up to 80 percent. Although public opinion became somewhat less enthusiastic as the adventurous negotiations dragged on, more than 61 percent followed the leader’s recommendation to say no to the creditors in an earlyJuly referendum (Tsebelis, 2016, pp. 27–31; Wolf, 2018, pp. 833, 841). According to an insider from the PM’s inner team, the “aim was to use a vote on the EU’s bailout terms as a way to entrench the prime minister as the dominant political figure in Greece, rally public support around him and give him leverage with lenders” (Kyriakidou, 2015). Despite ‘capitulating’ only one week later, “Tsipras remained the most popular Greek politician. A poll taken days after the crucial EU summit showed that 61 percent supported his performance in the talks” (Wolf, 2018, p. 845). Tsipras initially teamed up with his hardline Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, but increasingly sidelined the ‘radicals’ and surrounded himself with pragmatic advisers. Eventually, the PM even made a pact with established opposition leaders to secure enough parliamentary votes for an imminent U-turn (Kyriakidou, 2015; Tsebelis, 2016, pp. 28–32). When suffering a series of costly shocks, a structurally weak Tsipras without personalistic control could not leverage his plebiscitary capital to see through a hazardous foreign economic revolt.

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4.6 The M5S/Lega Coalition’s ‘Battle for the Budget’ with the European Commission Italy’s 2018 parliamentary elections resulted in a short-lived populist coalition between the ideologically heterodox Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) and the right-wing Lega, bound together by their pledge to reclaim sovereignty from European bureaucrats and jumpstart the languishing Italian economy with a significant increase in government spending. While the populist party leaders Luigi Di Maio (M5S) and Matteo Salvini (Lega) became influential Vice-PMs, they crowned the outsider Giuseppe Conte as PM (Conti et al., 2020). In July, the self-titled ‘government of change’ agreed in intergovernmental EU proceedings to reduce its budget deficit for 2019 from 1.6 percent of GDP to 0.8 percent. The European Stability and Growth Pact in conjunction with the Fiscal Compact made such prudence mandatory to cope with Italy’s excessively high level of debt. In October, however, the M5S/Lega coalition pointedly stepped over those rules by updating the draft for its ‘people’s budget’ to a 2.4 percent deficit based on an overly optimistic economic growth forecast (Codogno & Merler, 2019; Fabbrini & Zgaga, 2019). This blatant “attempt to challenge the legitimacy and validity of the rules governing the Euro and the authority of the Commission” (Conti et al., 2020, p. 337) was unparalleled in the history of Italian governments (Baldini & Giglioli, 2021, p. 516). Pushed by most Eurozone countries to resolutely inhibit the rule-breaking fiscal change efforts, Commission representatives denounced the ‘unprecedented departure’ from previous agreements and threatened an infringement procedure for excessive debt (Fabbrini & Zgaga, 2019, pp. 285–286). The escalating “battle for the budget” (Di Quirico, 2021, p. 73) “provoked an immediate negative reaction from financial markets and a sharp increase in Italy’s borrowing costs” (Conti et al., 2020, p. 337). By November, the spread between Italian and German bonds had more than doubled since May, reaching the highest level in over four years. The interest rate hike risked not only the sustainability of Italy’s public debt and local banking system, but also affected domestic businesses and citizens (Di Quirico, 2021, pp. 73–74; Harlan, 2018). At year-end, the Italian economy was slipping into technical recession (Codogno & Merler, 2019, p. 307). Di Maio and Salvini initially responded defiantly to the self-provoked economic shock, but over some weeks, the Conte-led coalition became willing to negotiate with the Commission. A compromise was struck in mid-December, revising the deficit down to 2.04 percent, which—due to somewhat lowered growth projections— resulted in a deficit reduction of almost 0.6 percent of GDP (Codogno & Merler, 2019, pp. 299–301; Fabbrini & Zgaga, 2019, pp. 284–286). Although the M5S/Lega coalition could not fully shake off external fiscal constraints (Baldini & Giglioli, 2021, p. 516), it is nonetheless striking that the populist change agents got away with more than half of what they had added to the initially agreed upon deficit. As Codogno and Merler (2019, p. 308) point out, “if the Italian government has not won, the Commission indeed has not won either.”

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Despite having the second highest debt-to-GDP ratio of all Eurozone members, Italy’s weight as the third-largest economy provided its leaders with structural leverage to embark on a blackmail strategy (Di Quirico, 2021, p. 74). Conjunctural factors like the upcoming European Parliament elections further played into Rome’s position vis-à-vis the Commission (Codogno & Merler, 2019, p. 301). After the M5S (32.7 percent) and Lega (17.3 percent) entered power with exactly half of the popular vote, the remainder of 2018 was marked by “the weakness of the parliamentary opposition and the enduring popularity of the government (a rather rare feature for executives in Italy)” (Baldini & Giglioli, 2021, p. 516). Especially Salvini’s popular approval soared enormously and the entire coalition was propelled by clear majoritarian support in late 2018 (Fabbrini & Zgaga, 2019, p. 281). Issue-specific backing, by contrast, dwindled amid growing economic concerns (Di Quirico, 2021, p. 73). According to one pollster, “54 percent of Italians in midOctober were in favor of the budget plans. By mid-December, that percentage had fallen to 47” (Harlan, 2018). In a coalition of (competing) personalistic strongmen (Conti et al., 2020), the budget row caused expectable internal division. The non-partisan Finance Minister Giovanni Tria was evidently embarrassed and PM Conte increasingly uncertain about Salvini’s and Di Maio’s collision course (Di Quirico, 2021, pp. 73–74). Ultimately, the populist Vice-PMs kept their hands off when the pragmatic Conte-Tria duo negotiated with the Commission (Codogno & Merler, 2019, pp. 300–301). In sum, the threat of being sanctioned by the Commission triggered an interest rate shock that induced the M5S/Lega coalition—which started from a robust bargaining position but lost plebiscitary tailwind and lacked a single personalistic leader—to make compromises on the promised change.

5 Comparative Observations The empirical analysis (summarized in Table 1) highlights that self-engineered economic shocks often pose insurmountable obstacles that thwart or dampen populist leaders’ antagonistic attempts at pushing through specific goal changes in foreign economic policy. Especially chief executives with neither structural room for maneuver nor contextually strong personalistic, plebiscitarian assets tend to give in quickly, as the case of Erdo˘gan, right after assuming power. illustrates.5 Even the M5S/Lega government, which had a relatively strong structural position, moderated its ambitions and accepted a compromise. The only two leaders who fully defied economic shocks while pressing home or maintaining risky change initiatives counted on structural strength and successfully leveraged one of the two core components of personalistic, plebiscitarian leadership.

5

Fico’s instantly aborted challenge to Slovakia’s Eurozone accession (see case selection) is another example.

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Table 1 Summary of the empirical discussion Leader promoting change initiative

Foreign actors Outcome responding with economic shocks

Structural position

Plebiscitary support

Personal authority

Erdo˘gan: Autonomy vis-à-vis the IMF (2002/2003 and 2018–present)

2002/2003: Change IMF and World abandoned Bank withhold funds

Weak

Ambivalent

No

2018: Investors cause a market shock

Change maintained

Strong

Ambivalent

Yes

Investment banks cause technical shocks by refusing operational assistance and canceling contracts

Change completed

Strong

Yes

No

Correa: No FTA with 2013: New EU the EU (2008–2014) regulation deteriorates terms of trade

Change abandoned

Weak

Ambivalent

No

Orbán: Autonomy vis-à-vis the IMF (2010–2013)

2011/2012: Investors cause a market shock

Change suspended

Weak

No

Yes

2012/2013: Regained market confidence

Change completed

Weak

No

Yes

Tsipras: Termination of Troika prescribed austerity (2015)

Eurozone creditors, IMF, and ECB withhold funds among private capital fight

Change abandoned

Weak

Yes

No

M5S/Lega coalition: Termination of EU prescribed budgetary constraints (2018)

Commission threatens infringement procedure and investors cause a market shock

Compromise solution

Strong

Ambivalent

No

Kirchner: Defiant sovereign debt swap with private foreign creditors (2003–2005)

Own illustration

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For one, Erdo˘gan’s more recent unquestionable personal authority permits him to stubbornly remain on his autonomous track, even if the macroeconomic fallout takes a toll on his overall popularity. For another, Kirchner was propelled by a massive plebiscitary tailwind. Somewhat paradoxically, his change project also benefitted from the absence of individual authority, as the delegation of technical responsibilities to professional experts became the key to defusing critical shock situations. Further, comparisons with Orbán and Tsipras underscore the importance of structural latitude. Erdo˘gan and Orbán both commanded personal authority, but with less financial firepower, the latter had to temporarily suspend his change endeavor and wait for the market shock to subside. Kirchner and Tsipras were both driven by massive domestic support, but the latter’s vulnerable bargaining position forced him to succumb to the compounded impact of serial shocks after holding out for a few months. Besides indicating patterns as to when and if populist agency can(not) defy economic shocks, the case studies also yield nuanced insights about the intervening role of foreign countermeasures: the substance, punch, and contingency of economic blowback matters. While the operational troubles of technical shocks may be solved pragmatically with concessions on means rather than ends (Kirchner), this appears more difficult when market turmoil or withheld funds put a government’s liquidity at stake (Erdo˘gan I, Tsipras). Orbán could be an example to the contrary, but his eventual return to defiance seemed only possible because the “attempted punishments from the bond market were small, short-lived, and ineffective” (Johnson & Barnes, 2015, p. 556). In the case of Tsipras, multilateral institutions and private capital flight dealt the populist-led change initiative a more definite knockout blow. While Erdo˘gan (2002/2003), Tsipras, or the M5S/Lega coalition witnessed immediate targeted counterstrikes, there are also cases of shocks hitting only several years after a policy shift. Correa (2008/2009) and Erdo˘gan (2013) could change course without catalyzing a direct foreign economic backlash, but the new directions left Ecuador (2013) and Turkey (2018) vulnerable to future accidental or self-inflicted shocks. Finally, some inferences can be drawn for the study of political-strategic populism. Most notably, none of the analyzed populist decision-makers was contextually emboldened and shielded by both majoritarian popular support and firm personal authority. As expected, leader popularity (Erdo˘gan II), issue-specific public backing (M5S/Lega), or both (Orbán) can dwindle in the face of negative externalities, with Tsipras being an exception. These observations cast doubt on the effectiveness of polarizing international economic showdowns for the political-strategic end of mobilizing persistent mass support—even more so if a leader’s policy goal appears generally out of sync with majoritarian preferences (Correa). Regarding the seldom issuespecific exercise of personal authority, the economic and political stakes seemed too high (Kirchner, Correa, Tsipras), and/or there were too many executive veto players (Erdo˘gan I, M5S/Lega) to make decisions at individual discretion. Tellingly, the two leaders who operated in closed-off inner circles (Orbán, Erdo˘gan II) are those among the sample who did most lasting damage to liberal democracy (Weyland, 2022).

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6 Conclusion Contrary to most foreign policy scholarship, which conceives of shocks as one of the key independent variables for the explanation of foreign policy change, this chapter considers shocks as intervening variables—something that is caused by leaders’ attempts to alter course and that may or may not compromise their ability to actually see through policy change. More specifically, arguing from a political-strategic perspective on populism, this chapter zooms in on economic shocks that were triggered by populist leaders’ efforts to redirect their country’s foreign economic policy and the effects that those shocks had on the adoption, or lack thereof, of policy change. Six cases from different regions provide the empirical basis of the discussion. This chapter lends additional support to earlier findings in the literature that highlight the rather ambivalent results generated by populist leaders in the realm of foreign (economic) policy. A few leaders (e.g., Erdo˘gan and Kirchner) successfully defied pushback and ensuing economic shocks triggered by powerful external actors and managed to alter their country’s course of action (whether those changes were also economically prudent is a different story and goes beyond the scope of this chapter). Conversely, other populist leaders (e.g., Correa and Tsipras) patently failed to find adequate responses to economic shocks, thus having to abort their efforts of altering their country’s foreign economic policy. The empirical vignettes suggest that rather than boiling down to a mono-causal explanation, it is the interaction of systemic factors (i.e., strong structural position) and domestic-political (i.e., strong popular support) or individual factors (i.e., strong personal authority) that open up pathways through which populist leaders can redirect their country’s foreign (economic) policy in spite of economic shocks. In closing, this chapter’s discussion suggests several avenues for future research. For starters, scholars of comparative politics and international relations could extend the analysis of populist leaders’ capabilities to overcome self-provoked shocks to other areas of domestic or foreign policy, asking whether similar patterns emerge as with economic shocks in external confrontations. It also seems worthwhile adding to the discussion on both populism and shocks some of FPA’s personality theories which examine the idiosyncratic characteristics of leaders (e.g., Fouquet & Brummer, 2022). One could explore, for example, whether certain leadership traits make populist leaders more or less likely to engage in the kind of foreign policy change that risks triggering economic shocks as well as to cope more or less successfully with the subsequent repercussions of such shocks. Finally, future research should explore the extent to which coalition governance and politics increase or dampen populist leaders’ ability to weather external shocks in their pursuit of foreign (economic) policy change.

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Tie-Capacity Shocks and the Resilience of International Trade and Alliance Networks Zeev Maoz and Kyle A. Joyce

Abstract We analyze the effects of shocks on international networks. We develop an agent- based model (ABM) that allows us to: (1) examine two network formation processes that characterize international networks—preferential attachment and homophily; (2) study the properties of such networks at equilibrium; (3) induce shocks that reduce the capacity of nodes to form ties; (4) analyze how the networks react to these shocks by regenerating themselves in the post-shock period; (5) estimate network resilience—the extent to which networks retain their structural characteristics following shocks. We do this by comparing the pre- and post-shock structures of these networks at equilibrium and derive propositions about the relationship between shock type and network structure. We then test the propositions deduced from the ABM by comparing simulated networks to real-world alliance and trade networks. Our results suggest several things. First, shocks have a negative impact on nodal resilience in the ABM as well as on states’ alliance resilience, but not on trade resilience. Second, shocks have also indirect positive effects. Specifically, non-shocked actors whose alliance partners are dropped, increase their own resilience as well as the resilience of other nodes by forming new ties with other non-shocked actors, which increases the overall resilience of the network as a whole. This result matches the insights derived from the ABM. Third, at the network level, shock magnitude increases the modularity resilience of random networks, but reduces polarization and clustering resilience. This holds true for alliance modularity resilience but not for alliance polarization, which tends to increase following high-magnitude shocks. On the whole, economic shocks do not appear to have a significant effects on the resilience of trade networks. We discuss the implications of these results for theory and practice. Z. Maoz (B) Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis, CA, USA e-mail: [email protected] K. A. Joyce Governmental Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_7

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Keywords Shock · International networks · Network Resilience · Agent-Based Model (ABM) · Alliances · Trade

1 Introduction Shocks (i.e., sudden and dramatic events) have important implications for social and political systems. Yet we know very little about the effects of shocks on international relations. To illustrate this point Fig. 1 shows the effect of a major economic shock (“Black Tuesday”, the stock market crash of 1929 in the United States) on the volume of global trade. The blue line shows the actual (logged) volume of global trade. The red line is an extrapolation of the pre-1929 trade, and represents a hypothetical level of trade that would have been observed had “Black Tuesday” not occurred. This figure suggests—holding a great number of things constant—that it took the international system more than 50 years to return to the projected pre-1929 trade growth. This example suggests that shocks induce dramatic changes in the international system, thus accentuating the need for a better understanding of the ways in which shocks affect the structure of international networks. Shocks may take on many different forms, and they may be due to a wide variety of causes. We define a shock for the purpose of this study as any event or process that

Fig. 1 Log world trade: actual and interpolated based on the 1929 global depression (Source of data COW international trade dataset [Barbieri et al., 2009])

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results in a dramatic drop in the ability or willingness of a state to form ties with other states. The reasons for this drop may be internal to the state (e.g., a dramatic decline in productive capacity due to a major financial crisis), or external to the state (e.g., war involvement which changes the structure of its incentives to form alliances). International relations have gone through multiple shocks of a diverse nature. Some shocks are economic (e.g., the stock market crash of 1929), other shocks are political (e.g., the world wars or imperial collapse). In this chapter we offer a window into the ways in which shocks affect international networks, focusing on the following questions: 1. How do shocks affect network re-organization processes? 2. What is the relationship between the characteristics of a shock (e.g., spread, severity) and the structure of a network following the shock? 3. What aspects of existing networks make them more or less resilient to shocks? Before we outline the scope and structure of the paper, it is important to explain what we do not study and why we have selected these particular questions. First, we do not study the origins of shocks. The origins of shocks are an important topic. Yet, the causes of one type of shock may be fundamentally different from those of another type of shock. Theories of economic crises (e.g., recessions) are different from theories of political crises (e.g., wars, imperial collapse, or regime changes). At the same time, the characteristics of different types of shocks and their consequences may be generalizable across multiple substantive domains. Economic crises limit the ability of states to trade; political and military crises limit the ability of states to form or maintain alliances. The drop in the ability/willingness of states to form or maintain network ties may have similar systemic consequences, whether this shock is economic or political. Second, there are many types of shocks; some may involve dramatic changes in network size (rapid growth or decline in the number of states), others may result from fundamental changes in the attributes of actors (e.g., democratization, technological innovations that increase states’ capacity). We cannot cover all types of shocks in a single study. Therefore, we focus on shocks that reduce the capacity of states to form ties because we expect such shocks to have similar implications for the structure of different international networks. We analyze other types of shocks in subsequent studies. Third, since our focus is on network reorganization, we treat shocks as exogenous events and side-step the question of endogenous shocks. We do this for two reasons. First, the literature on shocks in international relations is patently thin on the implication of shocks for network re-organization. Consequently, we have little theoretical and empirical work that can guide our understanding on endogenous shocks. Second, as in the case of viruses or of some major diseases, we have little knowledge about their medical causes, but a great deal of knowledge on their symptoms, diffusion and public health implications. Epidemiology is based entirely on the logic that we can understand the spread of contagious diseases (e.g., COVID-19 epidemic) or the public health implications of non-contagious ones (e.g., cancer), without delving into their causes. Similarly, we can study the implications of shocks for international

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networks as a first step towards understanding how such networks may cause shocks to emerge and spread. Our strategy involves the development of an agent-based model (ABM) that outlines the process by which shocks affect networks and the manner in which networks re-organize following shocks. The ABM allows deduction of propositions regarding the effects of shocks on international networks. We test these propositions by analyzing how real-world (alliance and trade) networks respond to similar types of shocks. We start by reviewing the literature in the physical, social, and political sciences on the effects of shocks on networks.

2 Shocks and Networks: State-of-the-Art We begin by defining some of the key terms used in the literature. A network is a system composed of: (1) units (also called nodes)—biological entities such as nerves, physical entities such as computers, or social entities such as individuals, organizations, or—as in our case—states, and (2) a rule that defines the presence, magnitude, and direction of a tie (or edge) between any two nodes. In our case, ties reflect alliance or trade relations. Network analysis is a science that studies the formation, evolution, structure, and impact of such systems (Newman, 2018). The study of shocks has been an important topic of research in network science, spanning multiple disciplines. Thus, a brief review of the research on shocks in social and physical networks is in order. Physical Networks. Early research on shock-related processes modeled the cascading effects of nodal failure, that is, shocks causing some of the nodes to fail, thus dropping all of their ties (Albert et al., 2000; Watts, 2002). These models examined the extent to which a given network structure is more or less vulnerable to cascades and nodal failures. A key result suggests that scale-free networks are quite resilient (Albert et al., 2000; Barabási & Albert, 1999; Newman, 2003b), although others dispute this claim (Centola, 2008). A key challenge concerns the determination of the vulnerability of a given node to failure. This vulnerability is often understood as a probability distribution conditional on the number of failed neighbors of the focal node (Watts, 2002). Others simulate this probability using various distributional assumptions (Holme et al., 2002). Recent research on complex networks examines empirical shocks, mostly through the use of cellular phone data (Bagrow et al., 2011) to identify social response to emergencies in communication and transportation networks. Social and Economic Networks. Economists showed that small shocks can propagate through financial networks, causing a great deal of damage (Allen & Gale, 2000; Cont & Bouchaud, 2000). Incomplete economic networks stabilize quickly if strong hubs act as circuit breakers that slow down contagion (Gale & Kariv, 2003; Kelly & O’Grada, 2000; Leitner, 2005). Some interesting ideas on how to minimize

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contagion in financial systems due to endogenous shocks emerge from historical reviews of financial crises (Tirole, 2002). Uzzi (2018) studies the vulnerability of firms to shocks, arguing that firmembeddedness in inter-firm networks increases Pareto-efficiency within firms but exposes firms to higher shock effects. Watts (2004) suggests that shock propagation has threshold effects in social networks, which contain some degree of memory. Eguíluz et al. (2005) study changes in patterns of cooperation and defection due to global cascades in adaptive social networks. International Networks. The idea that shocks have significant effects on international processes is not new. Economic shocks can have a profound ripple effect on the economics and politics of the entire international system (Maoz, 2010: Chap. 9). Global wars (e.g., the Napoleonic Wars, World Wars I and II) can have a tremendous effect on the composition of the international system—state formations in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia—on alliances, and on the international political economy (Brecher, 2008; Gilpin, 1981). Shocks can also wield a powerful effect on the outbreak and termination of international rivalries (Diehl & Goertz, 2001; Goertz & Diehl, 1995). The fall of empires (Spain in South America in 1823, the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires in 1918, and the Soviet Empire in the late 1980s) had a dramatic effect on the composition of the international system, resulting in state formations, regime changes, and global realignments. Finally, revolutions— such as the Arab Spring in North Africa and the Middle East—have important effects on the frequency and severity of international conflicts (Colgan, 2013; Maoz, 1989, 1996; Walt, 2013). There are several issues with these studies. First, there is very little work on the causes of major shocks. Both the structural realist and the liberal paradigms have yet to offer compelling explanations of system change (Maoz, 1996; Wendt, 1999). Second, the causal mechanisms underlying shock-related effects are poorly understood. Third, it is unclear whether these effects are generalizable across different types of shocks (e.g., wars, economic crises, empire collapse, revolutions). There exist primarily inductive studies connecting different characteristics of the international system to the probabilities of certain shocks. For example, polarity affects the probability and magnitude of war; political revolutions and regime changes tend to diffuse spatially (Leeson & Dean, 2009; Starr, 1991; Starr & Lindborg, 2003). However, we know very little about the effect of shocks on an outcome of particular importance: the structure of cooperative international networks (e.g., alliance, trade). Similar issues characterize research on shocks in network science. First, models of cascades do not incorporate different network formation processes. Second, most research pays little or no attention to the process of network re-organization following shocks and to the difference between the pre- and post-shock network characteristics.1 Third, most models of cascades bear little relevance for international relations. In international relations, there are relatively few instances of permanent state

1

For some exceptions see Burghardt and Maoz (2018), Smaldino et al. (2018).

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collapse. Accordingly, we focus on the ways in which networks reorganize following shocks in networks which evolve according to different rules.

3 Theory: Shocks and International Networks The lack of a theoretical foundation on shock-related effects on international networks requires us to juxtapose known aspects of international networks and network evolution processes with notions about how states restructure their relations following shocks. This requires us to specify models that characterize network formation and network evolution, because we need to compare pre-shock to postshock networks under conditions that are similar in all respects except the actual occurrence of shocks. We rely on several foundational assumptions: • Networks are emergent structures. International networks form and evolve as a result of the choices of states to form ties with one another. In order to understand how networks form, evolve, and react to shocks, we need a model that explains why states choose to form ties and the logic that guides their choice of partners. • States’ calculations of tie-formation and their choice of partners vary by domain. The logic that drives states to form alliances differs from the logic that drives states to form trade agreements. This necessitates different network evolution models. Such models may share some common elements, but they have different logical underpinnings, which result in different structural characteristics. • All states use the same rules to decide whether and with whom to form ties. This is a working assumption that simplifies modeling; it could be altered in future iterations. • Shocks do not alter the calculus of tie-formation. The reasons that agents form ties, or the criteria by which they choose partners are not altered by shocks. Shocks change the identity of agents, their attributes, or their number, but not their tie-making logic. • No aftershocks. A shock does not recur while the network is recovering from it. In the real world, shocks can strike repeatedly such that a new shock may erupt while the network is rebuilding from a previous shock. This assumption too is necessary as a means of simplification. Our logic—and thus the structure of the ABM—follows four stages in the history of international networks: formation, evolution, shock, and re-organization. We trace the processes that characterize each stage and deduce proposition about shock-related effects and network re-organization from the structure of these stages. Our argument is that in order to understand how international networks react to shock, we must outline the microfoundations of each of these processes. These are the key elements of the four processes.

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3.1 Network Formation: Models and Process Our foundational assumption (which underlies many game theoretic models of networks, e.g., Jackson, 2008) is that states select partners for cooperation or conflict in a manner that maximizes their (expected) utility. However, the components of states’ utility functions vary by substantive domain. Consequently, different utility functions yield different network formation processes. We examine two network formation models, each characterized by different tie-making logic. Before a state enters the network it defines its needs and capacity to form ties. These needs vary by domain. The need for allies depends on the extent of a state’s security concerns and its capacity to confront security challenges via its own resources. States that have many enemies require more allies than states with few enemies and enough capabilities to confront them. The need for trading partners depends on the size and structure of states’ economies. A state with excess production needs partners for its exports; a state that requires raw materials or other goods needs import partners. We call the need to form ties with other states the “tie-capacity.” Tie-capacity defines the upper bound of the number of partners (allies or trading partners) a state can acquire. Partner-selection is based on utility calculations. Utilities are a function of the intrinsic attributes of would-be partners (such as their ability or willingness to aid the focal state if it is attacked, or the quality and price of goods they offer), and of the kind of ties they have with other states. An attractive alliance partner is not only a highly capable and reliable state, but also one that has capable and reliable allies. A weak but well-connected ally may have high utility as an alliance partner because it can draw in its more powerful allies in support of the focal state. Likewise, an attractive trading partner is not only a state that offers low prices for imported goods; it is also one that has many suppliers of the components of the traded goods. Ties involve transaction costs. To minimize such costs, states opt to link to relatively few but well-connected partners (Jackson, 2008; Jackson & Wolinsky, 1996). We label the utility assigned to a would-be partner on the basis of the partner’s intrinsic attributes as first-order utility, while the utility assigned to a would-be partner on the basis of the attributes of the partner’s neighbors is labeled second-order utility. We elaborate on these concepts below. We consider two commonly-studied models of network formation, which differ with respect to the elements of the utility function of states. First, the preferential attachment (PA) model suggests that a state’s utility for a would-be partner is based on the popularity of the latter: being connected to a popular partner brings with it the benefits of this partner’s connections. Each tie brings benefits but also entails some costs. Consequently, a state can maximize its utility by forming few ties with well-connected partners (Jackson & Wolinsky, 1996). Thus, in the PA model states rank potential partners according to the centrality of the latter. This model was shown to generate networks with properties that are similar to international trade networks (Benedictis & Tajoli, 2011; Garlaschelli & Loffredo, 2005; Li et al., 2003; Maoz, 2012).

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The second network formation model is the homophily (HO) model (McPherson et al., 2001; Newman, 2003a). It is based on the idea that states wish to form partnerships with similar states in terms of certain attributes. Utility is defined in terms of attribute similarity, which forges shared values, better communication, and stronger affinity. In the HO model, the higher the similarity between states on a number of critical attributes, the higher the utility each state assigns to another. Key characteristics of homophily include political similarity—joint democracy (Siverson & Emmons, 1991), strategic interest similarity—sharing common enemies (Farber & Gowa, 1995; Mearsheimer, 2001; Maoz et al., 2007), and cultural—religious and linguistic similarity (Maoz, 2010; Maoz & Henderson, 2020). These attributes were shown to be important determinants of alliance choices. The combination of these factors within a homophily network model provides reasonably good fit to actual alliance networks (Maoz, 2012; Maoz & Joyce, 2016). Once the focal state has assigned utility scores to all other states, it makes a tieoffer to the state with the highest utility. The would-be partner accepts the offer if either one of two conditions holds: (a) it is below its tie-capacity and the utility from forming the new tie exceeds the cost of doing so, or (b) if it is at its tie-capacity and the utility it assigns to the offer is higher than its least-valued current tie. The new state goes on making offers to potential partners until (a) it reaches its tie-capacity, or (b) it exhausts all states in the network. This process continues every time a new state joins the system.

3.2 Rewiring In real-world situations, states constantly monitor the structure of the network, and, based on this structure, they reassess the utility they derive from their current connections and attempt to add, drop, or switch ties so as to maximize their utility. We call this rewiring. Rewiring processes involve states revising their utilities on the basis of the current configuration of the network. If a state is below its tie-capacity, it can make additional offers to existing states without dropping any of its current ties. If it is at its tie-capacity, it can substitute a low-utility tie for a higher-utility tie. However, a state can improve its utility only if its new tie-making offers are accepted. For an offer to be accepted, the offeree must also improve its utility, either by adding a tie or by substituting a low-utility tie for a high-utility one. As long as rewiring occurs, states’ utilities for other states will also change. At some point the network may equilibrate: no state can improve its utility by rewiring, or no new rewiring offers are accepted. However, not all networks equilibrate; rewiring may continue infinitely. This is a common feature of real-world networks. When shocks hit, they may happen either when the network is stable (i.e., equilibrated) or when it is still evolving.

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3.3 Shocks In this study we define shocks as exogenous events that cause some of the states to lose some (or all) of their capacity to form ties. This forces the “shocked” states to drop some of their current ties, and it encourages the “dropped” states to seek rewiring options. The logic of tie-dropping is also based on utility calculations; a shocked state starts by dropping its least-valued neighbor and continues until it reaches its postshock tie-capacity. Shocks are measured by a number of attributes: (a) shock size: the extent of loss in a state’s tie-capacity, (b) shock spread: how many states have been shocked, and (c) shock magnitude: a product of the shock sizes and the network position of the shocked states. Negligible shocks are those in which relatively few and marginal states lose a small proportion of their tie capacity. Major shocks are those in which many states—including very central ones—are forced to drop many of their allies or trading partners.

3.4 Post-shock Reorganization Post-shock reorganization follows the same rules as pre-shock rewiring. States that have been dropped by shocked partners now need to rewire. Shocks also cause major changes in the utilities states assign to current and potential neighbors. Post-shock rewiring takes into account those changes. Yet the principles of rewiring remain unchanged. Each state ranks all other states in terms of utility and makes offers to potential partners in declining order of utility. Would-be partners accept offers if they can increase their marginal utility—either by adding a partner if they are below their tie-capacity, or by swapping a less-valued current partner with a higher-valued one if they are at their tie-capacity. Figure 2 shows the ABM’s flowchart.

4 Agent-Based Model of Shocks and International Networks Agent-based modeling (ABM) is particularly suitable for our enterprise for a number of reasons. First, ABMs enable analysis of complex systems. In our case, complexity arises not only due to the number of nodes and the number of possible ties among them but also because of the interaction of various shock types with different network formation processes. ABMs allow us to model network formation and network dynamics within a controlled environment in terms of the initial conditions of the network and the characteristics of the shocks. The large parameter space produced by the various combinations of network sizes, shock types, and network formation processes make traditional analytic approaches less useful. Second, ABMs allow

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Fig. 2 Flowchart of ABM. Left panel shows the decision process of an active agent i (agent whose turn it is to move). Right-hand panel shows the decision process of a passive agent j who receives a tie-offer from i

the examination of counterfactuals. These counterfactuals allow for a better understanding of the difference between the singular empirical reality and alternative realities that could have emerged under different conditions. Finally, ABMs allow systematic process tracing—a dynamic delineation of the process of network formation, network evolution, and network re-organization in ways that statistical models do not (Cederman, 1997; Epstein, 2006).

4.1 Utilities for Different Network Formation Models We start the model by randomly assigning each node in a network a tie-capacity value that varies between 0 (isolates) and 70% of the network size. We then randomly select 20% of the nodes if the network size is N < 60 and 10% of the nodes if N > 60. These nodes randomly form ties with each other, resulting in an initial sub-network. At this point we begin adding nodes. A node is selected at random; it calculates a utility (U ij ) for all nodes currently in the network and ranks these nodes from highest to lowest utility. The precise elements of the utility function vary by network formation process. However, the general form of the utility function is the same across all models. Specifically,

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Ui j = u i1j +

1 ∑ x jk u jk − ci j n − 1 k/=i

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(1)

where u i1j is the direct benefit the focal node i derives from having a tie with node j. We define the content of this utility below. The second element u jk is the secondorder utility, reflecting the utility the focal node derives from j’s neighbors (where x jk = 1 if j and k have an edge, and zero otherwise). We define uik as: 2 u jk = u ik

(2)

2 where u ik is the squared first-order utility that i assigns to j’s neighbor k. This reflects the fact that indirect utilities (utilities derived from a neighbor’s ties with third parties) are weighted less than the first order utilities of one’s direct neighbors. Finally, cij reflects the cost of a tie with a particular partner. The general idea is the following. A state has certain intrinsic attributes that make it more or less attractive as an alliance or trading partner. This is reflected in the first-order utility term. At the same time, a state can benefit from a tie with another state whose neighbors are also highly-valued, without paying the cost of a direct tie with them. However, the benefit a state derives from forming a tie with a state that has valued neighbors is discounted (in this case, squared) by the second-order relation. This utility function also makes would-be partners more attractive as a function of the number of neighbors that they have and the attractiveness of these neighbors. While different network formation models have the same general structure of the utility function, they differ with respect to its content. As noted, we focus on two network formation models that have been shown to mimic real-world international networks. In the PA model, the first- and second-order utility a node assigns to another node is:

dj n−1 ∑ u jk dk2 u ik = k n−1 u i1j =

(3)

∑ ∑ where d j = k x jk , dk = l xkl are respectively the degree of node j and the degree of j’s neighbor, and x jk = 1 if j and k have an edge, and zero otherwise. The utility function for the homophily model relies on the common result (Maoz & Joyce, 2016; Siverson & Emmons, 1991) that the order of factors in the utility function of democratic states is different from the order of factors in the utility function of non-democracies. Thus, the homophily utility function is given by: { u i1j

=

0.5r j + 0.3ei j + 0.2si j i f ri = 1 −0.1r j + 0.6ei j + 0.3si j i f ri = 0

(4)

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where r i and r j are the regime types of states i and j, respectively, r = 1 defines a democracy and zero defines an autocracy. The other terms in the function are eij = 1 if states i and j share at least one common enemy, and zero otherwise, and sij = 1 if the two states are culturally similar, and zero otherwise. The idea is that democracies value ties with other democracies more than they value states with which they share enemies, while autocracies go for common interests (i.e., shared enemies) before they value cultural similarity.2 Note that uik for the homophily model is the same as specified in Eq. 2 above. In both network formation models, the cost of a tie is defined by: ci j =

u i1j

(5)

n−1

This reduces the overall utility to: Ui j =

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∑ The goal of each node is to maximize its utility (max(U i ) = j x ij uij ) subject to the tie-capacity constraint. The decisions of each node at any given point of the ABM are governed by this objective. Once a node has ranked all other nodes in terms of utility, it offers to form a tie to the highest-ranked node j. We assume that tie formation requires mutual consent. However, tie-dropping is unilateral. Thus, if j is below its tie-capacity and U ji > 0, it accepts the tie-offer and the tie is formed. Otherwise, j rejects the offer. In either case, as long as the new node i is below its tie-capacity, it continues to make offers to existing nodes in declining order of U ij . This process continues until either i has reached its tie-capacity, or it exhausted all nodes currently in the network. At this point, another node enters the network. This process iterates until the network reached its assigned size.

4.2 Rewiring Phase The rewiring phase starts once the network has finished growing. We select a node at random. The node revises its utility over all other nodes based on the current network configuration. If the focal node i is below its tie-capacity, it makes an offer to the non- neighbor j with the highest utility. If i is at its tie-capacity and there exists a node j such that U ij x ij = 0 > min (U ik x ik = 1) then i offers j to form a tie. If j accepts, i drops its tie with k and adds a tie to j. Agent j accepts the offer under one of two conditions (a) it is below its tie-capacity and U ji > 0, or (b) it is at its tie-capacity and U ji x ji = 0 > min (U jq x jq = 1). In the second case, j drops its tie with 2

These weights follow those assigned by Maoz and Joyce (2016) to the homophily model.

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q in favor of the new tie with i. The principle here is dynamic updating or dynamic utility maximization; nodes constantly update their utility calculations based on the current network configuration. They rewire if they can improve their overall utility by adding nodes or swapping low-valued ties by high-valued ones. Rewiring continues until the first of the following conditions has been met: 1. The network equilibrates: no new offer is made or no offer is accepted. 2. The rewiring process reaches iteration 6N. In the absence of equilibrium, this allows each node six opportunities to rewire, on average. This condition also replicates real- world network evolution processes, where no real stable state is reached. At the end of the rewiring stage, we measure the network topology. We discuss the key elements of the network topology below. Before that, however, we discuss the key measures of shock size, shock spread, and shock magnitude.

4.3 Shocks: Characteristics and Process We induce a shock where a certain fraction of the nodes (between zero and N) experience a percent drop in their tie-capacity. The size of the shock can vary from zero to 1 (in which case a node becomes an isolate). We focus on three characteristics of shocks: size, spread, and magnitude. Shock size is the proportion of ties lost by a node due to the shock, specifically: Si =

(tci0 − tcis ) tci0

(7)

where tci0 and tcis are the pre- and post-shock tie capacities of node i. Shock Spread. Is the fraction of nodes that experience a shock of any size. Shock magnitude The weighted product of shock size and shock spread. This statistic takes into account the size of the shock each node has experienced, the number of the nodes affected by the shock, and their position in the pre-shock network (degree centrality): M=

∑ Si di0 n−1 i

(8)

where di0 is the pre-shock degree of node i. Once a state’s tie-capacity is reduced it must decide which of its ties to drop. A shocked node starts by dropping tie with the node provides the lowest utility, and so on in ascending order of utility until it reaches its post-shock tie-capacity. Note that nodes lose ties even if they do not experience a shock, because their shocked

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neighbors may sever ties with them. This may bring non-shocked states to below their tie-capacity and force them to seek new partners.

4.4 Post-shock Re-organization At the shock stage we split the network into two parallel networks: a control (nonshocked) network, and a treatment (shocked) network. These two networks are identical in all respects except for the fact that the treatment experiences a shock and the control network does not. When a node experienced a shock or when some of its pre-shock ties were dropped it needs to rebuild its ties. The ABM proceeds in the following manner. First, the same node is selected at random in the control and treatment network. The focal node revises its utility function based on the configuration of the (treatment or control) network, and makes offers based on its revised utility. This process iterates until the networks equilibrate, or until the stopping point if they do not. Our empirical analysis focuses on the comparison between the patterns observed in the ABM using random network data and the patterns observed in the way realworld networks respond to shocks. In particular, we focus on the degree to which the factors affecting network resilience in the ABM are similar to or different from the factors that affect the resilience of real-world networks. Network Resilience. As noted, resilience concerns the extent to which a network retains its structural features following shocks. In general there is no single measure that best captures the features of networks. Moreover, since networks are not linear aggregates of their elements, there may be different measures that best capture the position of individual nodes, the relations between dyad members, the structure of subgroups, and the structure of the network as a whole. We use several network characteristics to tap the resilience of individual nodes and the overall network structure. For individual nodes we use nodal degree centrality and local clustering as the key indicators of nodal position in the network. Nodal degree centrality measures the nodal degree—the number of edges—of a given node di as a fraction of the maximal nodal degree (n − 1 in a network of n nodes): dci = n−1 Local clustering of a given node measures the number of triangles associated with a given node, as a fraction of the number of possible triangles for that node given the nodal degree. Specifically, ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ 2 j/=i k/= j xi j x jk xik j/=i k/= j x i j x jk x ik (9) ci = = ( ) di (di − 1) di 2 where x uw = 1 if nodes u and w (u, w ∈ i, j, q) and zero otherwise, and d i is i’s degree (d i = ∑ j x ij ). In order to control for network size (rather that for the number of triangles given a node’s degree), we modify the local clustering coefficient (labelling it as local transitivity) as:

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At the network level, we examine three network characteristics: density, clustering, and modularity. Network density is simply the number of edges in the network divided by the possible number of edges, given the network size (n). The global clustering coefficient (Watts & Strogatz, 1998) is a network-level extension of the local clustering coefficient. It measures the number of closed triangles in the network as a fraction of the possible number of triangles: ∑ ∑ C=

i

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(11)

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(12)

where D is the network degree (number of edges), δ is the Kronecker delta, which assumes a value of 1 if i and j are in the same community (ci = cj ), and zero otherwise. Network Polarization Index (NPI) (Maoz, 2010: Chap. 2). The network polarization index measures the extent to which the network approaches a strict bipolar structure. It is measured as: ) ∑k ∑k ( ∑ q=1 r =1 gdq − gdr k pk ( pk − 1) × (13) N PI = GPOL × GO = .25k k(k − 1) where GPOL is group polarization and GO stands for group overlap, pk is the fraction of nodes in community k, and gd q , gd r are the densities of communities q and r, respectively. NPI is zero when the network is completely connected (and collapses into a single community of size N), and assumes a value of 1 if and only if the network is split into two communities of size N/ 2 each and no node overlaps over these two communities. Measuring Resilience. The key question of network reorganization requires defining the concept of resilience. We define resilience as both an attribute of a given node and as an attribute of the network as a whole.3 Nodal (network) resilience 3

In principle, resilience may reflect an individual property, a property of a dyad, of a subset of the network (e.g., group), or as an attribute of the network as a whole. Here we focus on nodal resilience and on network resilience.

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measures the extent to which a node (network) retains its structural properties following a shock. Accordingly, nodal (network) resilience measures the difference between the structural characteristics of the control group node—such as degree and local clustering of unshocked nodes—and the structural characteristics of the equivalent treatment—shocked nodes. Like- wise, at the network level we compare the characteristics of the control (unshocked) network—such as the global clustering, modularity, polarization indices—and the equivalent characteristics of the treatment network. Using these key nodal and network statistics, we offer the following measures of resilience (We denote resilience by ψ and adjust it by level of analysis): 1. Nodal resilience. This reflects the extent to which a node preserved its network position given the structure of its post-shock ties compared to the pre-shock ties. ψi =

N Sist N Sict

(14)

where NS ist , NS ict are, respectively, node i’s network statistics (degree centrality, local clustering) of the treatment and control agent at iteration t ∈ [0, 6] of the ABM. Clearly a node’s resilience increases with the size of δ i . 2. Network resilience. ψ=

N Sst N Sct

(15)

Resilience scores are defined in the range of 0 ≤ ψit ≤ ∞, with ψit > 1 meaning that the treatment’s agent (or network) score at iteration t is higher than that of the respective control agent (network). High levels of resilience indicate a capacity of individual nodes and/or the network as a whole to retain (or even improve) the quality and quantity of its ties, compared to the counterfactual—non-shock—scenario. Low levels of resilience indicate a reduction in the quality and quantity of the post-shock ties relative to counterfactual scenario.

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4.5 Theoretical Expectations Our theoretical expectations are formed both by the logic driving the ABM and by the results of the ABM, which—as stated above—provide us a guide to the empirical effects of shocks. We discuss these expectations here, but—for the sake of brevity— provide the results of the ABM parallel to the results of the analysis of real-world networks. Clearly, shocks that limit states’ ability to form ties induce some changes in the structure of networks. Unless those states recover some or all of their tie-capacity that had been lost during the shock—which we do not assume at present—the post-shock network will differ from the pre-shock network. And the higher the shock magnitude, the larger the difference. However, our theory suggests that the resilience of certain network is due both to the characteristics of the shocks, and to the structural characteristics of pre-shock networks. Some networks possess certain structural features that make them more resilient to shocks than others. Consequently, our discussion of network resilience focuses on two principal factors: shock characteristics and pre-shock network structure. Shock Characteristics and Network Resilience. Shocks affect states in direct ways and indirect ways. Direct effects include the experience of a shock by a focal state. If a state loses some or all of its ability to form security or economic ties due to an external or internal development, its position in the network is affected in direct proportion to the size of the shock. The same happens even if the focal state is not shocked, but its partners to security or economic cooperation lose their ability to maintain ties. In such a case, they these partners might drop the ties with the focal state, and here too, the focal state’s position in the network changes in direct proportion to the shocks operating on its neighbors. Direct shock effects are straightforward and—in some way—even trivial. We can capture them by the following propositions: P1 The higher the shock size/magnitude, the lower the network’s resilience. Specifically: (a) The higher the shock size—the loss of a state’s tie-capacity—the lower the focal state’s resilience. (b) The higher the shock size of a state’s neighbors (its pre-shock partners for cooperative ventures)—the lower the focal state’s resilience. (c) The higher the shock magnitude in the network as a whole, the lower the network’s resilience.

These direct effects of shocks are intuitive. However, the indirect effects of shocks are less obvious. This is one of the more important contributions of complex network analysis to the study of social and political processes. What we mean by indirect effects of shocks are shocks that operate on the agent’s neighbors, that is, on the pre-shock partners of agents with which the focal agents had ties prior to the shock. When an agent’s neighbors are shocked, they drop ties to some of their previous neighbors. These agents now have an incentive to rewire. While the focal agent may have been a less attractive partner for cooperation prior to the shock, now it may

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become increasingly attractive after other agents have lost some of their previous partners. Thus, while agents may lose resilience when they are shocked, they may actually gain resilience when their neighbors are shocked. Accordingly, we expect: P2 The higher the shock magnitude of an agent’s neighbors, the higher the focal agent’s resilience.

Pre-shock network structure and network resilience. In general, and consistent with studies of resilience in simulated and physical networks (Burghardt & Maoz, 2018; Smaldino et al., 2018), more central and clustered nodes are more resilient to shocks (whether they are shocked or their neighbors are shocked) than peripheral and nodes that have low clustering. This is so because the former nodes find it easier to rewire than the latter. Such rewiring is made possible by the fact that central and highly clustered nodes are generally assigned higher utility by other nodes (as the utility equations suggest). Therefore (a) they are less likely to be dropped if their neighbors are shocked, and (b) they are more likely to drop other highly central and clustered nodes if they become the target of shocks. The idea that agents experiencing shocks drop their less desirable partners before they drop their more desirable ones follows from the logic of the ABM and the process of network evolution. However, what we expect is that states look not only at the desirability of their partners in terms of their intrinsic attributes, but also at the position of these partners within the network. In particular, agents are reluctant to break up cliques even if the values of individual ties within such cliques are lower than the ties they have with nodes that are not part of such cliques. There are several reasons for such behavior. First, security cooperation cliques carry benefits beyond the sum of their individual parts; they signal to rivals a collective commitment and capability to defend members that isolated dyadic alliances do not typically possess. This signals a higher degree of resolve than states that have bilateral alliances. Second, consider the problem of alliance reliability. Rivals contemplating attacks on states involved in security cliques know that even if one of the allies of their rivals fail to meet their alliance commitment, other allies may comply. By contrast rivals of states engaged in bilateral alliances know that if an ally of their rival reneges on its obligation, their rival is left alone in the conflict. Third, in economic networks, trade cliques often reflect some multilateral agreements such as free-trade or reduced tariffs agreements; breaking up such cliques by dropping specific partners is more difficult because it violates a broader agreement which may cause widespread retaliation. In short, we expect that states may face a tradeoff of which partners to drop when a shock forces them to drop some of their ties. As noted above, states tend to drop less valued partners in terms of their intrinsic attributes prior to dropping more valued ones. At the same time, states may opt for maintaining lower-valued ties that are part of a clique structure over higher-valued ties that are part of isolated bilateral agreements. This is the case even if clique membership of an actual or would-be partner is not a direct part of the state’s utility calculus. Consequently, we expect the following relationship between the structure of pre-shock networks and their post-shock resilience.

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P3 Resilience increases with the attributes of of pre-shock networks. This implies that: (a) The resilience of individual states is a function of their pre-shock attributes (e.g., degree resilience is a function of pre-shock degree). (b) The resilience of networks is a function of their pre-shock attributes.

We now turn to the discussion of the empirical research design.

5 Empirical Methods We discuss the strategies for ABM validation using real-world alliance and trade networks, as well as estimating the effects of shocks on these networks.

5.1 Data We use several datasets to estimate our models. First, the alliance network (Leeds et al., 2002) lists all security alliances between states over the period of 1816–2018. Each year constitutes a discrete alliance network with states as nodes and alliance ties as edges. Second, we use the COW trade data (Barbieri et al., 2009) that includes trade transactions between states over the period of 1870–2016. We dichotomize the trade network such that trade values of 0.001 or higher of the exporter’s GDP assume a value of 1, and zero otherwise. Here too, each year dyadic trade figures (binarized) is treated as a distinct network. Third, we use several datasets to generate the utility values. For the trade network, which we assume is formed via a preferential attachment process (Maoz, 2012), we use the trade network for each year to generate the utility scores as given in Eq. 3. For the alliance network, we assume that the network was formed via a homophily dynamic (Maoz, 2012; Maoz & Joyce, 2016). To generate homophily-based utility we use several datasets. First, the POLITY IV dataset (Marshall et al., 2002) is used to derive democracy measures. Second, the dyadic MID dataset (Maoz et al., 2019) is used to generate enemy-of-enemy data via a procedure discussed elsewhere (Maoz et al., 2007). Third the cultural dataset is based on religion similarity as discussed in (Maoz & Henderson, 2020: Chap. 3). Finally, we use the COW capability data (Singer, 1988) and the strategic reference group index (Maoz, 2010) to generate shock measures in the alliance network.

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5.2 Measuring Shocks in Real-World Networks We use the international alliance and trade networks to compare the effects of shocks on random networks to the effects of shocks on real world networks. Most of the realworld network metrics that we use are identical to the ABM metrics discussed above. However, the measurement of real-world shocks is more nuanced. Importantly, we have no way of knowing the tie-capacity of states in any of these networks. This means that the actual number of ties a given state has in either of these network may mean either that a state is at its tie-capacity, below its tie capacity, or even over its tie-capacity.4 Actual changes in the number of ties may be due to reasons other than shock. For example, decline in the competitiveness of a state’s product reduces its attractiveness as a trading partner. This precludes measuring shocks in terms of changes of the number of ties associated with a given state. Instead, real-world shocks entail changes in the factors that affect a state’s capacity or willingness to form ties. A reduced capacity to trade is due to a drop in a state’s productive capacity. Such drops reduce the supply of goods and services, resulting in lower exports. They also limit the available income for importing goods and services. Accordingly, we measure shocks in trade networks by negative economic growth (i.e., a drop in GDP per capita). For any given year, the proportion of states that experience negative economic growth measures the spread of the shock. Shock size is calculated as in the ABM, that is, the percent drop in per capita GDP for a given state. For alliance networks we use an indicator of a shock that reflects the motivation of states to form alliances. States seek allies to the extent that they are unable to deal with external challenges using their own resources. In this situation, a state may be willing to give up some autonomy in return for increased security via pooling of resources with allies (Morrow, 1991; Smith, 1995). A state’s need for alliances is a function of the gap between its own capabilities and the cumulative capabilities of its enemies; the higher the gap, the greater the state’s need for alliances (Maoz, 2010; Maoz et al., 2022). In alliance networks a shock is defined as the percent change in a state’s national capabilities relative to the capabilities of its actual or potential enemies, using the Correlates of War Combined Index of National Capabilities (CINC) (Singer, 1988). The smaller the gap between a state’s CINC and the combined CINC of its enemies, the less the state needs allies. An increase in the state’s demand for allies, measured by a negative change in a state’s relative capabilities is assigned a shock size of zero because we do not examine “positive” shocks. Alliance shock spread is the proportion of states that have experienced a shock of any size in a given year. Shock magnitude is calculated as in the ABM.

4

In the ABM we assumed that agents cannot exceed their tie-capacity. In the real-world, however, states may have more ties than they need or can afford. In fact, exceeding tie-capacity may be one of the endogenous causes of shocks. However, this is the subject of another study.

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5.3 Estimating Shock Effects An important modification is required when estimating the effects of shock attributes on network dynamics in real-world networks. Since there is no meaningful equivalence between the network equilibria generated by the ABM and network equilibria in real-world networks, we need to assess both the immediate and longer-term effects of shocks on network structure. Therefore, we use three-year moving averages of shock characteristics rather than single year lags. This enables us to assess longerterm effects, as well as aftershocks (i.e., shocks that recur over a number of adjacent years). Another important challenge concerns the measurement of network resilience in real-world networks. As noted, resilience reflects the ability of the network to return to its pre-shock structure following the shock. Since time is involved, this ability is compared to the evolution of a non-shock network that is identical to the shocked network—except the actual shock. In the ABM we measured this as the ratio of a given pre-shock network attribute and the same attribute in the control network (Burghardt & Maoz, 2018; Smaldino et al., 2018). Here we need to generate a “control” group for the real-world network. In order to do that, we generate a matching process whereby we use the average scores of non-shocked states as a control for shocked states for each year where the latter experienced a shock. We then use the pre-shock year as the base year and calculate the resilience scores as in Eq. 14. We go from the pre-shock year twenty years back to generate a preshock trend based on the control group base on a regression of the nodal and network characteristics on time.5 We extrapolate from these regressions an expected evolution of the nodal/network statistics in the absence of a shock and compare these to the actual resilience of nodes/network.

5.4 Inference In general, our inferences are based on a comparison of the predictions derived from the ABM with those derived from analyzing real-world alliance and trade networks. We use several strategies to manage these comparisons. In order to facilitate some of the comparisons, we break the shock statistics (size, spread, magnitude) into three levels (low, medium, high) with about a third of the cases falling into each category. We start with the analysis of node-level results. We compare the nodal statistics derived from the ABM runs with random data to the nodal statistics derived from the real-world networks. This provides a general picture of the effect of shock attributes on nodal/state behavior. Here we perform two general comparisons. First, we compare the effect of shocks on nodal resilience scores in the ABM to the same The regressions are of the general form yt = a + b(yeart) + e, where yt is a given network statistic (nodal/network density, transitivity) and yeart, 20 t 1 is a specific year score, a, b are parameter estimates, and e is the error term.

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patterns in the real-world networks. This gives us a qualitative sense of the extent to which the ABM results match the results in the real-world networks. Second, we examine how shocks affect real world networks by comparing post-shock nodes to similar control (non-shocked) nodes. Third, we extrapolate expected evolution data of nodal positions based on pre-shock trends, and compare them to post-shock nodal characteristics. This allows us to assess quantitatively what would have happened if the focal node had not been subject to a shock, thereby providing some counterfactual scenarios. Finally, we estimate shock-related effects on nodal statistics via fixed-effects time-series cross sectional models. We then move to the network-level analyses. Here we follow a similar process as in the node- level analyses. However, since the characteristics of real-world networks show significant volatility over short time-spans, we examine the effects of shocks on real world networks over five-year time slices. Hence, we average network statistics of alliance and trade networks at five-year intervals and examine shock-related effects on these statistics based on five-year lags. If the network experienced a shock of a certain magnitude level at time-slice t, we examined how this shock affected network structure at time-slice t 1 .

6 Results We start the discussion of the results by looking at the history of security and economic shocks over the period of 1816–2018. This is given by Fig. 3. The major spikes in this figure correspond intuitively to what historians would describe as the major global security and economic shocks. Not surprisingly, the major spikes in terms of the spread of global security shocks are the two World War periods. There are also some noticeable spikes in the 1860s and 1870s around the period of Italian and German unifications. The nineteenth century appears to be more volatile in terms of shock fluctuations than the twentieth century, but the shock levels of the former period are not as prominent as in the latter century. Finally, we find a minor spike towards the end of the observation period (around 2014–2016) with the noticeable event there being the annexation of Crimea by Russia—seemingly a precursor to the Ukraine War of 2022. In terms of economics, the major shock took place—as seen in Fig. 1—with the global depression following the 1929 markets collapse. But we also see major economic shocks immediately prior to and during the first World War, during the second World War, the 1998 market crash and the 2008–2010 recession.

6.1 Nodal/State-Level Comparisons Figure 5 displays the comparison between the ABM and the real-world network resilience scores by shock magnitude levels. Several interesting points emerge. First,

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the ABM suggests significant shock magnitude effects on nodal degree and nodal transitivity resilience. It appears that shock magnitude has a more pronounced effect on nodal degree (given the differences between average nodal degrees across shock magnitude levels), than on nodal transitivity. By contrast, we do not find similar effects of shock magnitude levels on either alliance or trade networks. In fact, we find surprising short-term increase in average alliance degree in the first five years following low-magnitude shocks. Second, we examine extrapolated levels of nodal degree and transitivity based on pre-shock trends. We find that the actual degree and local transitivity of alliance networks tend to be significantly lower than the extrapolated pre-shock levels. Low level shocks in alliance networks induce—for the most post-shock period—higher levels of alliance degree than the extrapolated ones. However, alliance transitivity scores are significantly lower than the extrapolated levels. This suggests that alliance networks seem quite resilient to shocks when we examine post-shock effects, in

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12

4

5

6

Medium

8

Shock Year

7

9

10

High

11

12

Trade Local Transitivity Resilience by Average Shock Magnitude

Low Shock Magnitude

Trade Degree Resilience by Average Shock Magnitude

13

13

14

14

15

Projected

15

Projected

16

16

17

17

18

18

19

19

20

20

Fig. 5 Marginal effects of shock size, neighbors’ shocks, and pre-shock attribute on nodal resilience. The dependent variable in the top panel is degree resilience; the dependent variable in bottom panel is transitivity resilience. Left panel shows marginal effects in the ABM, middle panel shows the results of alliance resilience, and right panel shows the results of trade resilience

Low Shock Magnitude

1.4

0

.2

.4

.6

.8

1

1.2

1.6

4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 .5 0 2 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 .8 .6 .2 0

.4

4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 .5 0 2 1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1 .8 .6 .2 0

.4

ABM Degree Resilience by Shock Magnitude

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contrast to the expected ABM results. However, using pre-shock data as an indication of the counterfactuals of shock effects, we find that average alliance degree and local transitivity decline, in line with the simulation. By contrast, trade networks seem quite resilient to shocks. For one thing, we find little or no shock magnitude effects on nodal resilience. In addition, post-shock levels of trade resilience are not significantly different from the extrapolated preshock expectations. This, of course differs from the simulation results. We return to these points in the next section. Table 1 shows the results of a set of fixed-effect models of nodal resilience scores on a number of predictor variables. Figure 5 shows the marginal effects of several key independent variables on the resilience outcome. We start by discussing the effects of shocks on the ABM runs with random data. As expected, shock size reduces degree and transitivity resilience. However, surprisingly, shocks operating on an agent’s neighbors have a positive effect on nodal resilience. It appears that the reason for that is that a node whose neighbors were shocked—and therefore may have dropped their ties with the focal agent—were able to rewire by forming new ties with their non-neighbors who were also dropped by their own neighbors (neighbors of non-neighbors shocks). In addition, they were able to form ties with “surviving” non-neighbors, that is, with other agents who were not shocked. This is indicated by the positive effect of neighbors of non-neighbors and by non-neighbor survival on focal agents’ resilience scores. Overall, using the ABM with random network data as a foundation of our expectations from real-world networks provides some interesting insights. We can therefore move to a comparison of the effects of shocks on real-world alliance and trade networks. Using the boldface figures in Table 1, we can see that levels of agreement between the predictions of the ABM and those of the real-world networks are mixed. First, pre-shock nodal degree and nodal transitivity have a positive impact on postshock resilience. This is true for both the alliance and trade networks. Second, in general the resemblance between the reaction of alliance networks to shocks and the ABM results is quite high. As was the case in the ABM, shock size reduces alliance resilience, while neighbors’ shocks and non-neighbor survival rates increase alliance resilience. Third, the effects of shocks on trade networks are less supportive, given the expectations generated by the ABM. Trade shock size does not significantly affect trade degree resilience and—contrary to expectations—has a significant positive effect on trade transitivity resilience. Second, while shocks operating on a state’s trading partners increase trade transitivity resilience, they do not have a significant effect on trade degree resilience. Finally, all other indirect effects of shocks on trade resilience are not statistically significant. The overall fit of the shock models in case of trade networks is quite low, suggesting that the reorganization of trade networks following shocks is not systematically explained by the attributes of the shocks, that is, by the degree and magnitude of drops in countries GDPs. The results of these analyses suggest a need for a more nuanced understanding on how shocks affect nodal resilience in both simulated and real-world networks. We now turn to the effects of shocks on overall network structures.

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Table 1 Comparison of ABM and real-world networks: fixed-effects regression of nodal resilience scores Degree resilience

Local transitivity resilience

ABM

Alliances

Trade

ABM

Alliances

Trade

0.173**

3.771**

0.294**

0.811**

4.785**

1.351**

(0.006)

(0.087)

(0.021)

(0.031)

(0.108)

(0.131)

−0.896**

−0.942**

0.148

−0.958**

−0.714**

2.917**

(0.004)

(0.161)

(0.102)

(0.007)

(0.169)

(0.461)

Neighbors’ shock size

0.659**

1.03**

0.886

0.618**

1.252**

12.23**

(0.013)

(0.161)

(0.624)

(0.026)

(0.17)

(2.819)

Neighors of non-neighbors shock

0.875**

0.021*

−8.758**

1.01**

−0.029**

1.457

(0.04)

(0.01)

(0.783)

(0.084)

(0.01)

(3.538)

Non-neighbors survival

1.531**

1.018**

−9.738**

1.847**

1.056**

4.637

(0.048)

(0.278)

(0.837)

(0.099)

(0.295)

(3.778)

Constant

−0.614**

−0.238

10.648**

−0.96**

1.617**

−3.819

(0.047)

(0.27)

(0.836)

(0.099)

(0.286)

(3.775)

N

20,900

14,439

12,697

20,900

14,243

12,697

F-score

26,000

410.95

67.57

8,020.9

426.20

49.37

R2

0.863

0.197

0.025

0.657

0.192

0.020

Pre-shock statistic Shock size

Numbers in parentheses are robust standard errors. Boldface numbers indicate ABM-Real-world agreement *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01

6.2 Network-Level Comparisons Figure 6 displays the comparison of a number of overall network characteristics between the ABM and the real-world alliance and trade networks. Table 2 shows the analysis of shock magnitude effects on these network characteristics. Several things are worth pointing out. We start with the way shock magnitudes affect the structure of random networks as indicated by the ABM results (top panels of Fig. 6). First, surprisingly, the modularity of random networks increases with shock magnitude. On the other hand, both the clustering and polarization of random networks decrease with shock magnitudes. The same is true for other network characteristics (e.g., density) that are not displayed in this figure. By contrast, we do not find a consistent pattern of shock magnitude effects on the characteristics of alliance and trade networks. Modularity resilience of alliance and trade network exceeds the modularity of the control (non-shocked) network at both low and high shock magnitude levels. This results in resilience scores that are often much higher than 1 (perfect resilience). In the case of trade modularity, we find that low shock magnitudes result in generally reduced resilience, but high shock magnitudes—as in the case of alliances—exhibit extremely high resilience scores. It appears that real-world networks respond to high-magnitude shocks by forming

Fig. 6 Network characteristics by shock magnitude levels: comparison of ABM with alliance and trade networks

156 Z. Maoz and K. A. Joyce

0.202

R2 0.322

167.098

1425

(0.008)

0.998**

(0)

−0.001

(0.006)

0.018**

(0.034)

1.991

0.556

51.402

202

(0.077)

1.23**

(0.336)

−0.755*

1.966

0.334

21.174

202

(0.128)

1.11**

(0.535)

−1.409**

(0.001)

0.001

−0.001 (0.001)

(37.533)

(23.594)

96.961**

Clust.

1.992

0.455

34.553

202

(0.021)

0.963**

(0.092)

−0.042

(0.018)

0.004

(6.487)

5.602

NPI

Trade

2.00

0.454

25.647

149

(0.064)

1.021**

(0.036)

−0.013

(0.001)

−0.001

(4.338)

4.523

Modul.

1.97

0.67

61.12

149

(0.039)

0.997**

(0.022)

−0.012

(0.031)

0.006

(2.686)

2.855

Clust.

1.96

0.205

8.612

149

(0.014)

0.942**

(0.008)

−0.003

(0.001)

0.004**

(0.92)

0.288

NPI

Numbers in parentheses are robust standard errors. Real world analyses are time-series regressions. Boldface numbers indicate ABM-Real-world agreement *p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01

Dubrin-Watson

296.357

77.173

F 0.452

1425

(0.02)

1425

0.821**

(0.019)

(0.001)

(0.001)

0.825**

−0.003**

(0.016)

(0.018)

−0.003**

0.022

(0.089)

0.016

(0.083)

46.989*

−0.379**

−0.294**

0.845**

N

Constant

Shock magnitude × Network size

Network size

Shock magnitude

Alliances Modul.

NPI

Clust.

ABM

Modul.

Table 2 Comparison of ABM and real-world networks: effect of shock magnitude on network topology

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cohesive clusters of states, that is, both cohesive alliance blocks and cohesive trade blocks. This is confirmed in the regression results for alliance networks. We find that shock magnitude affects positively the modularity resilience of alliance networks. However, contrary to the ABM, shock magnitude has also a significant positive effect on alliance network polarization. Finally, we do not find any significant effect of shock magnitude on the resilience of trade networks. The results here suggest that while there are significant effects of shock magnitude on the network statistics in the ABM, shock magnitudes do not seem to have a meaningful or consistent effect on network structure in alliances or trade networks. The ABM suggests that shock magnitude increases modularity resilience, but decreases clustering and polarization resilience. While security shock magnitudes have a significant positive effect on alliance modularity, shock magnitudes do not appear to affect any of the other characteristics of alliance or trade networks.

7 Discussion Security shocks and economic shocks happen frequently, just as earthquakes do. However, and like in the case of earthquake, for the most part, the magnitudes of these shocks are relatively low; high magnitude economic or political shocks are relatively rare. Our study focuses on the effects of such shocks on the resilience of economic and security cooperation networks. We used an agent-based model to simulate the logic by which such networks, form, evolve, and reorganize following shocks of varying sizes, spreads, and magnitudes. We used the results of the ABM run on random network data with characteristics similar to those of real-world networks to deduce propositions about how such shocks affect the ability of real-world networks to retain their pre-shock properties. We then applied these ideas to an empirical study of international alliance and trade networks. Several insights emerge: An important finding that is consistent across all analyses is that pre-shock nodal and network attributes increase post-shock resilience. Highly connected and clustered nodes are more resilient to shocks that nodes with low connectivity and clustering. By and large, tie-capacity shocks reduce both the connectivity—degree, local and global clustering, as well as the polarization of networks. These effects are common to networks in which tie-formation is driven by nodal popularity (preferential attachment) and to networks in which tie-formation is driven by similarity factors (homophily). As we can see in the comparison between treatment and control networks, these effects are fairly permanent. As long as tie-capacity levels do not return to their preshock levels (and in our simulation they do not), network connectivity and network consistency following shocks tends to be significantly lower than networks that continue to evolve without noticeable shocks. At the same time, modularity levels increase with shock magnitudes. It remains to be seen—and this is beyond the scope

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of this study– what happens to networks that recover from shocks by nodes regaining pre-shock tie-capacity after a period. The comparison between random networks generated by an agent-based model and real-world alliance and trade networks reveals some notable similarities but also significant differences. In particular, we find a better match between the reorganization and resilience of alliance networks following security shocks and the expectations deduced from the ABM than the match between trade resilience and the ABM results. It appears that trade networks are more resilient to economic shocks in certain respects than are alliance networks. This is particularly visible when we examine the changes in nodal characteristics of these networks (nodal degree and local clustering), but it also shows at the network level. Interestingly, while random networks equilibrate fairly quickly, real-world networks do not. This suggests a more volatile attempt to examine the logic of network reorganization following shocks may be needed. For example, we may allow nodes to regain some of their lost tie-capacity after a period. This may reflect the ability of states to reallocate resources for their security, by moving funds from economic programs to military ones. Or this may reflect governments’ responses to economic crises by increasing spending (through various stimulus plans that increase budget deficit but filter funds into the economy, e.g., the new deal, the various stimulus plans following the recessions of 2008 and 2020). This may well be the next step in this project. One possible reason for the differences between the results of the ABM and those of the real-world networks is that real-world networks are much more volatile in terms of shock distributions over time than the networks modelled in the ABM. This is evident from the time-series of shocks in Fig. 3. While ABM networks tend to equilibrate following shocks (see Fig. 6), real-world networks do not. Time-series regressions of a one-year time-lag do not allow for similar equilibration in the realworld data. Since shock magnitudes fluctuate significantly over time in real-world networks, we need a more in-depth analysis of how real-world networks reorganize following shocks in the aggregate. Another possible reason for these differences may well be that shock magnitudes in the real-world are exceedingly low, at least in the sense we have measured them. Other types of shocks may be more punctuated than the ones we observed here. For example, major wars or major economic crises are far more pronounced, and also significantly rarer than the types of shocks we have observed here. The examples we show here (the great depression of the 1930s, the two world wars) may require a more nuanced analysis than the one we have provided here. Third, in the ABM we induced “negative” shocks—a reduction in nodal tiecapacity. In the real world, however, shocks can be both “positive” and “negative.” Positive shocks can lead to an increase in nodal tie capacity. These “positive changes” may include technological breakthroughs that result in significant economic growth, such spurts of internal economic growth may well incentivize trade. Likewise, changing strategic circumstances may motivate states to search for additional allies. For example, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact resulted in NATO expansion in the 1990s and first two decades of the

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twenty-first century. Negative and positive shocks may wall happen simultaneously (e.g., NATO expansion may have increased Russia’s threat perception, and may well have been one of the causes of its invasion of Ukraine in 2022). However, we did not assess the effects of positive shocks on networks. We leave this for a subsequent study. This study presents several innovations. First, we examined several network formation processes. Consequently, we can assess the way in which shocks affect different network types. The results of the ABM and the empirical analyses on realworld networks suggest that this assumption is only partially correct. These networks studied exhibit mostly similar patterns of network-re-organization across multiple levels of analysis. This is an important result for network science beyond the specific political science context. Second, in contrast to other research in network science that focuses on how shocks propagate within or across networks, our focus was on network re-organization. Our reasoning is that the effects of shocks are best realized by comparing the structure of the networks before the shock to after the shock. These differences tell us how this re-organization process works. This allows us to identify the consequences of a simulated process of network re-organization and compare it to real-world processes in political and social networks. Finally, in contrast to several studies using ABMs to study complex processes, we attempted an empirical validation of the patterns emerging from our study of shocks in simulated networks. This validation process yielded some interesting parallels but also revealed several differences between the clean and controlled processes modeled via the ABMs and the “more” messy process of shocks operating on real-world networks. The similarities suggest important insights into network functioning following shocks. The differences between the ABM results and the empirical patterns offer novel ideas about both modeling network evolution and the empirical analysis of international networks (Table 2). Acknowledgements Support for this study was provided by the National Science Foundation (SES-201121962) to both authors and by the Minerva Initiative and the Army Research Office to the first author (W911NF-19-1-0332). Neither of the funding institutions is responsible for the views and opinions in this paper.

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Domestic Shocks and Prospect Theory Richard Saunders

Abstract This chapter explores the influence of domestic shocks on foreign policy decisions through the lens of Prospect Theory. As a theory of decision-making under risk, Prospect Theory explains how decision-makers’ perceptions and cognitive biases significantly influence their willingness to take or avoid risks when responding to an event. An understanding of these cognitive influences on decision-making is critical to understanding foreign policy responses to a changing environment. The insights of Prospect Theory are especially salient in the study of domestic shocks. Domestic shocks in one state place the leaders of that state and others into a situation where each must respond rapidly to a changing environment while relying on imperfect information about the ultimate outcome of the shock and how it will impact their own individual interests as well as the national interest. In this environment leaders must contemplate foreign policy decisions that carry significant risks if they wish to avert impending losses or take advantage of events for gain. Thus, Prospect Theory, can shed much light on how domestic shocks should be expected to influence foreign policy by explaining how decision-makers’ risk attitudes change in light of common cognitive influences that they might experience due to domestic shocks. For these reasons, the application of Prospect Theory to the study of shocks suggests important theoretical advancements, and also provides for new empirical predictions about the foreign policy behavior of pairs of states jointly responding to a domestic shock in one. Keywords Shock · Prospect theory · Risk · Foreign policy change

R. Saunders (B) Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_8

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1 Introduction Domestic political shocks have drastic and far reaching effects upon the international system as a whole and especially on the foreign policy of the’shock state’ and those other states that are heavily engaged with it. Major upheavals in domestic politics like revolutions, regime change, and coups significantly alter the preferences, composition, or institutions of a national government and influence patterns of cooperation and trade as well as patterns of conflict, even war (Bobick & Smith, 2013; Leeds et al., 2009; McGillvray & Smith, 2004; Siverson & Starr, 1994). Domestic shocks are also very common when compared to major global events like World Wars, the breakup of empires, or major changes to the global distribution of power. Regime change for instance, took place somewhere in the world slightly more often than twice per year on average from 1919 to 2008.1 Given this relatively commonplace nature of domestic shocks, they exert much more frequent—if individually less earthshaking—influence on states’ foreign policy decisions than do large shocks to the world system. However, despite their frequency and importance to understanding foreign policy, the impacts of these domestic shocks is under-theorized and has received little attention from scholars in recent years. In this chapter I explore the influence of domestic shocks on foreign policy decisions through the lens of Prospect Theory (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). As a theory of decisionmaking under risk, Prospect Theory explains how decisionmakers’ perceptions and cognitive biases significantly influence their willingness to take or avoid risks when responding to an event. An understanding of these cognitive influences on decision-making is critical to understanding foreign policy responses to a changing environment. Applications of Prospect Theory to foreign policy have motivated important advancements in theory (Butler, 2007; Druckman & McDermott, 2008; Hatemi et al., 2013; Stein, 2017), and has been used profitably to explore leaders’ responses to specific crises and shocks such as the Iranian hostage crisis (McDermott, 1992), the Cuban missile crisis (Haas, 2001) and the 1938 Munich crisis (Farnham, 1992). I argue that the insights of Prospect Theory are especially salient in the study of domestic shocks. Domestic shocks in one state place the leaders of that state and others into a situation where each must respond rapidly to a changing environment while relying on imperfect information about the ultimate outcome of the shock and how it will impact their own individual interests as well as the national interest. In this environment leaders must contemplate foreign policy decisions that carry significant risks if they wish to avert impending losses or take advantage of events for gain. Thus, Prospect Theory, can shed much light on how domestic shocks should be expected to influence foreign policy by explaining how decision-makers’ risk attitudes change in light of common cognitive influences that they might experience due to domestic shocks. For these reasons, the application of Prospect Theory to the study of shocks 1

This figure is based on the definition of regime change used by Geddes et al. (2014).

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suggests important theoretical advancements, and also provides for new empirical predictions about the foreign policy behavior of pairs of states jointly responding to a domestic shock in one.

2 Prospect Theory Prospect Theory encompasses a number of distinct but linked cognitive biases and effects that are commonly observed in experimental subjects (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). A few of these individual effects are especially salient for our discussion here. Reference dependence, loss aversion, pseudo-certainty effects, and endowment effects all act as important influences on the decision-making process of state leaders and other important policymakers. Each of these concepts represents a violation of traditional expected utility theories of decision-making, leading decision-makers away from a strictly rational cost–benefit calculus when contemplating foreign policy decisions. It is crucial to a thorough understanding of foreign policy that researchers account for these common violations of rationality in their theories. These four concepts are discussed in detail in the appropriate sections, but are briefly summarized in the table below for ease of reference. Concept

Definition

Reference dependence Actors value outcomes in terms of gains or losses from a reference point rather than in terms of absolute values Loss aversion

Actors subjectively over-value losses relative to gains

Pseudo-certainty effect In complex decision-making, actors perceive outcomes as certain when they are merely likely Endowment effects

Actors over-value their possessed assets relative to identical assets outside their possession

Formally, Prospect Theory posits that decision-making takes place in a 2-stage process. The first stage in the decision-making process is an editing stage in which actors (largely unconsciously) simplify and organize information into a series of discrete options or courses of action to choose from. Framing affects come into play in this editing phase, the most important of which for our discussion is the framing of the actor’s reference point. In Prospect Theory, this reference point is of key importance because humans are argued to exhibit reference dependence in decision-making. Prospect Theory argues –with support from experimentally derived evidence –that decision-makers appear to define the value of outcomes in terms of gains or losses from a reference point rather than in terms of the absolute value of the outcome as would be predicted by an expected utility model of decisionmaking. Actors are expected to respond much differently when contemplating likely losses from their reference point than they would when contemplating potential gains above the reference (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979; K˝oszegi & Rabin, 2007; Schmidt, 2003; Tversky & Khaneman, 1986, 1991; Weber et al., 2007).

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Once the available options have passed through this editing phase, a conscious evaluation phase begins in which the decision-maker selects the option with the highest value as determined by the product of a value function and a probability weighting function. While mathematically somewhat complex, the model provides for straightforward expectations of the results of this evaluation phase. The first expectation is commonly illustrated by a plot like the one below, which provides a visual representation of actors’ observed loss aversion. In the plot, the curved line passing though the origin is representative of a typical value function as derived from experimental evidence (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979).2 The primary purpose of such a plot is to illustrate that in experimental research, the apparent subjective value of gains and losses are not perfectly correlated with the objective value of the gain or loss a subject experiences and that actors exhibit loss aversion in their choices. When contemplating losses from a reference point, the subjective experience of a loss is greater than the objective value of the loss. “Losing” has a pain all its own. Because of this pain of loss, subjects are commonly observed to accept a gamble that would violate traditional expected utility –for example, subjects were observed to disproportionately turn down a 50/50 gamble that resulted in either a $100 loss or a $110 gain despite the offer holding a positive expected value (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). However, when contemplating gains from a reference point, the subjective value of gains appear to be lower than the objective valuation. Winning is not nearly as inherently enjoyable as losing is painful. Experimentally, this manifests as subjects disproportionately taking a guarantee of $500 over a 50/50 gamble that rewards either $1050 or $0, despite the gamble holding higher expected value.3 This mismatch between the subjective experience of gains/losses with their objective value has important implications for the study of decision-making under conditions of risk. Because decision-makers experience losses acutely, they will tend to over-value a course of action that could reverse those losses. Their attempt to maximize the (subjective) expected value of a course of action will lead them to accept a far lower probability of success (as compared to the prediction of expected utility theory) when that course of action is aimed at avoiding or reversing losses. In contrast, when the actor contemplates a course of action that puts current gains at risk—even if significant additional gains could be had—the decision-maker will significantly underweight the value of additional gains and accept only relatively high-probability policy options. These effects lead us to the predictions of Prospect Theory. Decisionmakers are expected to exhibit risk-seeking preferences in a domain of losses relative to the reference point and risk-averse preferences in a domain of gains relative to the reference point, when probabilities are moderate (Fig. 1).4 2

The plot appearing below is exaggerated for visual effect but is otherwise similar to Kahneman and Tversky’s (1979, p. 279). 3 That the value function is concave in the region of gains but convex in the region of losses illustrates diminishing sensitivity. I.e. replacing a relatively small $50 gain or loss with a $100 gain or loss has a much larger impact on subjects’ behavior than does replacing a $1000 gain or loss with a $1050 gain or loss. 4 Tversky and Kahneman find that decision-makers often over-weight very small probabilities in a way that can reverse this pattern. For example, subjects will pay well over the expected value to

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Subjective gains

Fig. 1 A typical experimentally-derived value function

Losses

Gains

Subjective losses Defining the reference point is often thought to be extremely problematic for explanations rooted in Prospect Theory. However, I argue that when contemplating domestic shocks and policy responses to them, we find ourselves in one of the rare situations where the nature of politics simplifies rather than complicates the problem. In finance, for example, it is quite difficult to determine an investor’s reference point. Do they assess gains and losses relative to their current wealth, relative to their expected annual rate of return, relative to what could be earned by buying treasury bonds instead of stocks? There is no one obvious answer to this question. However, when contemplating gains or losses resulting from a political shock in a foreign state (or one’s own state) it seems much harder to think of a logical reference point other than the pre-shock status quo. Even if the pre-shock status quo is not static –such as in the case of improving or worsening relations –it should still be fairly easy to assess whether a shock has reversed or accelerated this change. Thus, I do not see defining the reference point to be problematic in this case. If we accept the status quo as the logical reference point, then Prospect Theory would predict that any state’s response to a domestic shock in another state will be heavily dependent on the nature of the ex-ante relationships between those states. The expectations of Prospect Theory regarding domestic shocks will be discussed extensively below. But first, it is important to note that these expectations break down ensure against a 0.01 probability of losing a substantial sum—thus overvaluing the probability of experiencing that loss and exhibiting risk aversion. Subjects will also pay well over the expected value to take part in a lottery that provides a 0.01 probability of winning a substantial sum, thus overvaluing the probability of winning and exhibiting risk-seeking preferences (Tversky & Kahneman, 1992).

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in cases where actors contemplate the possibility of catastrophic losses resulting from risk-seeking gambles (Levy, 1996; Libby & Fishburn, 1977) and also in cases of certainty or near-certainty regarding the outcome of a course of action (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979, p. 275; Levy, 1992). These boundary conditions are frequently dismissed as a nuisance or outside the scope of studies that rely on Prospect Theory, but they provide important additional expectations when thinking about foreign policy. Prospect Theory implies that decision-makers are not fully rational. It does not imply that they are stupid or insane. An actor contemplating a risky gamble that could result in ruinous or catastrophic losses (such as instant death) will discard that option even when exhibiting risk-seeking preferences. Thus, Prospect Theory does not imply that a leader would find risking a general nuclear exchange a reasonable decision in a gamble to avert moderate losses. Similarly, when it is judged that a course of action will fail (or succeed) with certainty, the actor is no longer operating under conditions of risk and will thus avoid an additional certain loss even when in a domain of losses or will act to realize additional certain gains even when in a domain of gains. This latter point regarding certain or near-certain outcomes becomes especially salient when discussing the domain of gains below.

3 Prospect Theory and Domestic Shocks What does this all mean for domestic shocks and their influence on foreign policy? For a start, it tells us that states whose interests are damaged, or appear very likely to be damaged as a result of the political upheaval in the shock-state will find themselves in a domain of losses and should be expected to embrace high-risk high-reward policies that, if successful, would reverse the damage to their interests. Conversely, states that see the upheaval of a domestic shock in another as beneficial to their interests should be expected to become somewhat more cautious toward the shock state –refusing to pursue policies that would risk these benefits even if success would lead to significant additional gains. Second, Prospect Theory provides expectations about which states will find their leadership pushed into a domain of losses and which will be pushed into a domain of gains by the occurrence of a shock in a second state. Researchers must pay careful attention to the ex-ante relationship between the shock state and others. States closely aligned with the shock-state in the status quo ante are states that are most likely to benefit from the continuation of that status quo, and thus these’friends’ of the shock-state are most likely to see their interests damaged by a domestic shock. Thus the existing’friends’ of the shock state are those most likely to experience the shock as a loss and should be those most likely to accept significant risk in attempting to reverse or mitigate the results of a domestic shock. Those states that were enemy or rival to the shock-state, on the other hand, are likely to see the domestic political upheaval (along with likely damage to the shock-state’s economic and military capabilities) as a net gain, and acting from a domain of gains they will be hesitant to push for additional gains if there is a risk that it could backfire.

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While much of the analysis presented in this chapter focuses on the decisions of important foreign policy actors in outside states as they respond to a domestic shock in another.5 But for their part, decision-makers within the shock-state will also react to the shock differently depending on whether it results in personal losses or gains. Those individuals who find themselves newly empowered by a domestic shock— such as the leaders of a successful coup or revolution—are likely to exhibit two behavioral effects. First, the’winners’ in the shock will find themselves in a domain of gains and are likely to behave somewhat cautiously about gambling to extend those gains if failure in that gamble would see their’winnings’ from the shock eliminated. Beneficiaries within the shock state are also likely to exhibit a strong endowment effect. Experimental research has shown that subjects tend to subjectively overvalue the things that they feel ownership of when compared to comparable but’unowned’ objects (Thaler, 1980, pp. 43–47). This endowment effect exists even when the subject is given a windfall by chance, but is significantly stronger as the subject is required to put out more effort to obtain the object in question (Knetsch, 1989). In practical terms, this means the’winners’ in a domestic shock will exhibit a strong endowment effect. That endowment effect will be especially strong if they win a tangible reward like control of the regime, and will become even stronger if they had to fight or otherwise expend effort to realize the reward. In such a case, these winners are likely to become very possessive of their reward and will pay irrationally high costs to keep it. In aggregate, we should expect that the newly empowered beneficiaries of a shock will be hesitant to implement policies that would risk their winnings (e.g. control of the regime), but will likely respond with extreme prejudice to potential threats to their hard-won endowment.

3.1 The Domain of Losses: Friends to Enemies Two things become immediately apparent when examining domestic shocks (or any political shock) through the lens of Prospect Theory. First, to understand how any actor will respond to a shock, we must begin by understanding where their reference point lies. Fortunately, as discussed above, in the case of political shocks it seems that the obvious and most logical reference point is the status-quo ante.6 Second, we must assess whether the shock will be seen by relevant decision-makers as a gain or loss from the status quo. When a shock places actors in a domain of losses we are entering into particularly dangerous territory. In a domain of losses actors are likely to exhibit risk-seeking 5

Much research that draws on Prospect Theory is similarly decision-centric, however this is not universal and Prospect Theory can function well in a strategic model. See (Butler, 2007) for an application of Prospect Theory to bargaining models of war for a useful example of Prospect Theory in a strategic application. 6 I make this assumption explicit in the work that I refer to in this chapter. However, it should also be noted that a deeper exploration of actor’s reference points could be a fertile field for additional research and may explain much of the variance in actor’s responses to political shocks.

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preferences. In effect, this means that actors will gamble much at low probabilities of success so long as the actor believes that a successful outcome would reverse the losses that will accrue if they do nothing. Put simply, actors contemplating losses gravitate to high-risk/high-reward policy options to reverse those losses. In the foreign policy environment, these high-risk/high-reward options are often military in nature, including actions like supporting counter-revolutionaries in the shock state (as in the Bay of Pigs invasion), aiding third parties in trying to overthrow the new regime (as with the significant Western support for Iraq during the Iraq-Iran war), or direct military action, among other risky alternatives. As suggested above, domestic shocks should be most likely to place the leadership of other closely aligned states into a domain of losses when the two states are heavily interdependent in terms of trade, security ties or other salient links. When states are heavily reliant upon one another, then a domestic shock in one is likely to damage interests held by the other. Previous research provides support for this notion. Studies have shown that domestic shocks can damage formerly strong trading relations and reduce foreign direct investment (Bobick & Smith, 2013; McGillivray & Smith, 2004). Domestic shocks have also been shown to damage strong security ties, leading to the abrogation of alliance commitments (Leeds et al., 2009; Siverson & Starr, 1994) and reducing foreign policy cooperation (Ratner, 2009). Thus, domestic shocks in one state can put the leaders of closely aligned states into a domain of losses across a number of dimensions. Domestic political actors in ‘State B’ who hold investments in or are reliant on trade with the shock state ‘State A’ will perceive a threat to their economic well-being through price shocks due to damaged trade ties, through the potential expropriation of FDI, and through loss of access to important resources or trade goods that are not produced domestically. Similarly, a domestic shock in a State A that is important to one’s national security will cause domestic publics in State B to feel increased perceptions of threat and insecurity. Thus, a shock in a closely aligned State A can damage the interests of State B across a number of dimensions, leading both elites and the general public to pressure their own government for action or blame their own leadership for economic hardships or perceptions of weakness. Given these pressures, the leadership of State B will fear a loss of support among their own support coalition, thus also entering a domain of losses. That a shock can damage another state’s interests across a number of dimensions is important to an analysis that tries to apply Prospect Theory to political phenomena, as the losses suffered by a leader (whether direct personal losses or political losses due to reduced public and elite support) must be salient to the leader. Trivial losses do not frequently evoke the same risk-seeking response (McDermott, 1992). Previous research (Saunders, 2021a, 2021b) has shown that the empirical evidence seems to match the expectations of Prospect Theory. Outside states respond particularly belligerently to a shock when the states in question are closely aligned prior to the shock. In essence, domestic shocks in a State A seem likely to turn that state’s old friends (States B) into new enemies by establishing new international rivalries. Just under 1/3 of new rivalry onsets (24 onsets for 31% of the total) during the 1950–2005

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period occur within 5 years of a domestic shock in one state of the pair.7 In every case in which a domestic shock leads to rivalry onset, the states in question were closely aligned prior to the shock –sharing either a formal defense pact, high levels of trade integration, important shared foreign policy positions, or some combination of the three (Saunders, 2021a, 2021b, 521–523). In fact, it seems likely that a high level of ex-ante shared interests between two states is a necessary condition for a shock to turn them into rivals ex-post.8 This finding –that shocks only cause rivalry between previously friendly states –runs counter to many theories that attempt to explain how domestic shocks cause international conflict. Shocks do not seem to motivate opportunistic or predatory behavior from the shock state or pre-existing enemies that hope to capitalize on a moment of weakness as would be predicted by Maoz (1989) or Walt (1996). Rather, this conflict appears to be driven by disruptions of pre-shock interdependent relationships. Further, if the process of winning a revolution selects for aggressive leaders in post-revolutionary (or other post-shock states) as is suggested by Colgan (2010) and Weeks (Colgan & Weeks, 2015), the empirical evidence discussed above also implies that these shocks provide new leaders with incentives to engage in militarized behavior specifically toward friends and allies of the old regime rather than opportunistic aggression toward weaker targets of opportunity, as would seem to be expected. Finally, these findings do not match well with the expectations of bargaining theory or other rational-choice theories of conflict either. Domestic shocks do not lead inherently to a bargaining failure. Shocks can influence relative power and could exacerbate information problems, but to the extent they do so, it seems unreasonable to think that this would lead to conflict between erstwhile friends and allies but not between existing enemies. Additionally, shocks do not automatically imply that a previous good relationship will be destroyed. The seemingly rational response to a shock in one state by its friends and allies would –at worst –seem to be one of guarded neutrality so as not to incur the additional costs of conflict. At best, arguments rooted in rational choice might predict active engagement with the new regime to try to preserve those valuable ties. It seems necessary that something not fully rational must be going on to move the relationship from one of close engagement to one of outright hostility following a shock. I argue that this relationship is best explained by the interplay of loss-aversion and the emergence of risk-seeking preferences on the part of leaders in State B alongside the emergence of a significant endowment effect and a fierce defense of their new endowment on the part of leaders of State A. Further evidence shows that the relationship between domestic shocks and conflict that is discussed here holds not just between formerly friendly states, but also between states that have tangible reasons to seize upon the chaos of a domestic shock to launch an attack. States that are party to a territorial dispute also exhibit an interesting pattern of behavior in the wake of a domestic shock in one. When two states have managed their territorial dispute well –sharing strong trade relations or security ties 7

Empirically, the domestic shock in question here is a change in leader support (SOLS change) as defined in the CHISOLS dataset (Mattes et al., 2016). 8 See (Saunders, 2021a, 2021b, Appendix A, pp. 52–53) for a discussion of necessary conditions.

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and otherwise avoiding militarized behavior in relation to the disputed territory for a substantial time—a shock in one state of the dyad is very likely to reignite the dispute, leading to immediate militarized behavior (Saunders, 2021b, 2022b, Working Paper). When two parties to a territorial dispute maintain good relations despite the dispute, a shock in the target state (the owner of the disputed territory) leads to a significant increase in the probability of a MID over the disputed territory within the next year (Saunders, 2021b). Depending on the measure of relations in question, the increase in predicted probability of MID onset can rise as high as 0.37, or 3 times the base rate in the sample (pp. 72–73). Similarly, in accelerated failure time models, regime change in a’friendly’ territorial-dispute-dyad decreases the mean predicted time between MIDs from a base rate of 9.4 to 3.29 years (Saunders, 2022b, Working Paper). However, when parties to a dispute share few trade or security ties or have engaged in recent clashes over the disputed territory, a shock in the target reduces the probability of a subsequent MID from a base rate of 0.11 to approximate zero in some specifications (Saunders, 2021b, pp. 72–73). This latter conflict-suppressing finding is discussed in detail in the next section, but helps to further illustrate that domestic shocks do not seem to motivate conflict by providing an enemy with an opportune moment for conquest. Rather, domestic shocks seem to trigger loss-aversion in the leadership of the outside state by undermining the benefits to be had from existing good and stable relations with a potential adversary.

3.2 The Domain of Gains: Cautious Until Certain How then, would a domestic shock in another state put leaders into a domain of gains, and once in a domain of gains how are these leaders likely to behave? I argue that domestic shocks in a State A will be viewed as a positive development by the leadership of other States B that have a hostile ex-ante relationship with the shock state (such as when states are engaged in a rivalry). Domestic shocks like coup, revolution or regime change serve to disrupt the existing state, weakening it politically, and at least temporarily damaging the country’s economic prospects and undermining its military efficacy and capabilities as well. Domestic shocks also generally serve to remove old actors from positions of power within the state and bring new actors, ideas, and potentially new ideologies into power. When the state undergoing such a shock is an enemy or rival, the weakening of state power and removal of belligerent leaders is likely to be seen, on the face of it, as a positive event. Thus, the leadership of States B that are enemy to the shock state are likely to respond to the shock from within a domain of gains. As discussed above, much of the logic regarding risk-preferences and actors’ behavior reverses itself when moving from a situation in which a shock inflicts losses upon an actor to a situation in which a shock instead provides gains to an actor. Rather than the risk-seeking preferences associated with decision-making in a domain of losses, the actor that finds themself in a domain of gains is likely to exhibit risk averse preferences, responding to the shock with more cautious policies.

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In the case of international politics, I find that this caution when responding to shocks in another state takes two forms. Actors are hesitant to engage in military adventurism against the shock state, but are also hesitant to extend an olive branch or engage with the shock state in an attempt to resolve their outstanding disputes. In contrast with the predictions of many theories rooted in rational choice, I provide evidence that the leaders of State B are unlikely to take a shock in an enemy state as an opportunity to attack. Military action can lead to significant rewards if successful, but also inherently carries a number of risks. Chief among these risks, of course, is the possibility that a costly war or outright military defeat could undermine the tenure of leaders in State B, thus undoing any possible personal or political benefit they could gain from seeing an enemy state weakened by internal turmoil. It is also entirely possible that military action against the shock state could re-empower the elements of the old government by energizing counter-revolutionaries, swinging public opinion back in favor of the tried-and-true, or weakening the new unconsolidated regime and allowing for a return of the old. Such a reactionary outcome would also likely serve to erase State B’s gains. Thus, while successful military action may hold high potential rewards, risk-averse actors will be unlikely to take that gamble. However, trying to make peace with an enemy is also a gamble. Leaders contemplating peace face a dilemma. Conflict is costly, as is arms-racing, maintaining military alliances, and holding one’s forces at a high degree of combat readiness. Ending an ongoing rivalry allows a state to lay down these costly security burdens and focus on economic development or other valuable domestic projects. Successfully making peace with a rival should be associated with a’peace dividend’ for the state and likely also with increased support for a leader seen to end the rivalry on good terms.9 But there is also a danger inherent in trying to make peace with a rival. The risk of taking the’sucker’s payout’ would loom large in the mind of any leader contemplating offering an olive branch to the new leadership of a rival state. Not only can cooperation with an insincere rival lead to military vulnerability in the future, but previous findings have shown that leaders judged by their domestic audiences to be overly cooperative (or insufficiently competitive) with a rival are putting their leadership tenure at risk by engaging with the enemy (Colaresi, 2004, 2005). Given that military action and peacemaking both present a risky gamble, the basic prediction made by Prospect Theory would be that actors respond to a domestic shock in an enemy state with guarded neutrality –neither launching an attack nor pursuing peace. As noted above, however, Prospect Theory’s predictions regarding risk-seeking and risk-averse preferences begin to break down as actors approach certainty about the outcome of a potential course of action. If the leadership of State B were to be made certain that either military adventurism or diplomatic engagement would yield additional benefits without risking their windfall–the benefit gained due to a domestic shock in an enemy state –then the leaders of State B would logically work to realize those additional gains. Certainty about outcomes will overcome a leader’s risk-averse preferences even while in a domain of gains. I argue that it is 9

See Mintz and Stevenson (1995), and Ward and Davis (1992) for a discussion on peace dividends and evidence for their existence.

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very unlikely that a leader would ever come to view military action as a risk-less prospect. Even in cases where the ultimate outcome of a war is near-certain due to a major power imbalance, military action is still costly and the political outcomes of war are often uncertain even when battlefield victory is virtually assured. Further, the rise of guerrilla warfare and insurgent tactics mean that even major powers often find themselves caught in bloody and intractable conflicts that can be politically damaging to a leader or undermine their tenure completely. I find it unlikely that risk-averse actors should ever think military action to be preferable to a wait-and-see approach to a domestic shock in a rival state. The benefit of peacemaking, though, likely can be made certain or near-certain, depending on the nature of the domestic shock in question. In previous work, I provide evidence that rivals respond very differently to a domestic shock in one, depending on whether the shock leads to major institutional change within a state (Saunders, 2022a). I argue that major institutional changes provide a degree of certainty, which can serve to override a leader’s referencedependent risk aversion. This certainty comes due to two aspects of institutional reform. First, the fundamental institutions that that make up a regime,10 once put in place by revolutionary events, tend to be resistant to further major change for a significant time –likely permanently until or unless another set of upheavals (another shock) occur in the state (North, 1990, pp. 83–91; Shepsle, 2001). Like Shepsle (2001), I argue that while small scale institutional change occurs in a more or less constant process in most polities, large changes that fundamentally rewrite who will exercise power and how, are likely to take on the pattern of a punctuated equilibrium, occurring rarely and leading to long periods of relatively static institutions in between. Second, the major reshaping of state institutions should also be expected to have far-reaching effects on the foreign and domestic policy-stances of the state. Institutional regime change signals a clear break with past leadership and past policy. By definition11 regime change serves to rewrite the process by which leaders are selected and policy is made, and also reshapes the political landscape of a state by changing which elements of society hold influence over leader selection and policymaking. In this sense, major institutional changes act not like a change in the leader’s winning coalition, but rather, serve to fundamentally reshape the membership of the selectorate from which the leader can try to draw a support coalition. This fundamental reshaping of ‘who matters’ in the political environment also fundamentally reshapes the menu of viable policy options that a leader can choose from while still maintaining necessary support. Previously influential groups that are excluded from power under the new institutional arrangement are no longer of political value to the leader. The removal of these actors from a position of influence eliminates the political value of appeasing those actors’ preferences, thus also removes their preferred policies from the menu of policy-options that a leader is likely to consider. Conversely, some 10

I follow Geddes, Wright and Frantz by characterizing a regime as the set of formal and/or informal rules that govern who is eligible to be selected as the leader and who or what groups hold influence in the policy-making process (Geddes et al., 2014). 11 Following from the Geddes, Wright and Frantz definition of a regime.

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previously excluded groups will have gained influence over policy and leadership selection under the new institutional arrangement. These groups will be a new and potentially very valuable source of support for the leader, thus appeasing their preferences by adopting their preferred policy positions becomes a viable and maybe even a necessary political strategy for a leader conscious of his or her tenure in office. The leaders of outside States B observing a domestic shock in State A should expect the effect of the institutional shock will be to begin a long-lasting movement of State A away from (at least some) previously held foreign and domestic policy stances toward a new and durable policy outlook. When the State B in question has been engaged in a long running hostile relationship with State A—such as in the case of ongoing territorial disputes or positional or ideological rivalry—this perception that a domestic shock in A will lead to a durable movement away from previous foreign policy positions can become an important source of certainty about State A’s future behavior. When the shock removes actors from influence who have gained political, financial, or other benefits from the ongoing conflict12 and instead empowers elements of society that were previously excluded from benefits associated with the rivalry, then the leadership of State B should expect A’s subsequent policy outlook to become less belligerent. Actors with a preference for pursuing the rivalry have lost their influence over the state while other actors have gained control over policy. Further, due to the ‘stickiness’ of the new institutional arrangement, the leadership of B should expect this newly conciliatory stance on the part of State A to represent a durable rather than transitory position. This perception that following a domestic shock, State A would be expected to engage in a sustained reduction in belligerence allows leaders in State B to overcome their risk-aversion and reach for the peace dividend that could be had by resolving their outstanding disputes with A. For practical purposes, it is important to note that in Prospect Theory we need not talk about true mathematical certainty in the sense of a probability equal to 1. Evidence suggests that as decision-makers assess the probability of an outcome as more and more likely, they eventually reach a point where they effectively round off that probability to 1 in their own subjective assessment. That is, in the editing phase of decision-making, actors simplify unknown but estimated probabilities to create a subjective assessment of risk. In doing so, the decision-maker will often be’sure’ of a likely outcome even if the true mathematical probability associated with the outcome is below 1 (Khaneman & Tversky, 1979, p. 275). Additionally, actors exhibit a related phenomenon referred to as the pseudocertainty effect in complex multi-stage decision-making in which actors will ignore uncertainty in an early stage of decision-making (when thinking about the stability of a new regime for example) if outcomes are certain at a later stage in the process (certainty of a peace dividend once rivalry is ended, for example) (Kahneman & Tversky, 1986, pp. 266–268). The upshot of these psychological effects is that decision-makers often treat likely but mathematically uncertain outcomes as certain outcomes (Levy, 1992, p. 178).

12

See Colaresi (2005, pp. 24–29) for a discussion of the benefits that rivalry may bring to subnational actors.

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While political actors live in a world where true mathematical certainty is rare, they frequently behave as if they are sure of the outcome of a course of action anyway. However, not all domestic shocks should be expected to provide the degree of certainty about durable changes in a state’s policy stance. Domestic shocks take many forms and need not necessarily signal fundamental or long-term change in the state. Political shocks like irregular leadership transitions can occur due to a leader’s assassination or death in office—which in isolation signals no major change within the state. Similarly, a number of states have experienced so-named status-quo coups that replace one leader with another while otherwise leaving the rest of the regime largely intact. Examples are relatively frequent in military juntas where coup may be the primary mechanism of leader replacement but can also occur in other regime types when the military returns to the barracks once a new leader is elected or installed. Examples of these status quo coups can be found in the Turkish coups of 1960 and 1971, the Brazilian coup of 1964, or in the forced resignation of elected leaders such as Ecuador’s Jaun Martínez in 1932 and Velasco Ibarra in 1934 and 1947. Each of these coups was certainly a shock to the domestic political system of the state in question. But in each case the coup signaled rather more continuity of policy to outside observers than it did change. Additionally, a state’s winning coalition can change significantly without signaling any fundamental change in the state’s behavior. We see this sort of political turnover occur commonly in democracies when one party hands off power to another that is backed by a significantly different group of supporters. But coalition changes in many autocratic states follow a similar pattern where different factions within the regime contend to govern the country. This intra-regime contest can result in the previously mentioned status-quo coup but can also lead to the division of a ruling party, thus bringing a new faction to power. Examples of this kind of intra-party turnover occurred in Mexico’s PRI in 1946 and 1964. Importantly, these institutionalized changes do not alter the basic set of interests and preferences that a ruler can appeal to in order to maintain power, thus do not significantly alter the menu of politically feasible policy options that the state may follow. Further, even when a new leader does attempt to strike out in a new direction—such as in the case of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization and reorientation of Soviet policy, uninstitutionalized changes provide no certainty that policy change will outlive the leader in question, nor that the leader’s tenure will survive the attempt to change existing policy. Mark Haas (2007) provides a useful illustration of the importance of changing political institutions to reconciliation between long-term enemies in his study of the end of the Cold War.13 During the mid-to-late 1980’s members of the Reagan administration witnessed a number of important changes in the Soviet Union, including changes in Soviet foreign and domestic policy, military power, and finally significant changes to the governing institutions of the U.S.S.R. Haas undertakes a review 13

I note that Haas does not explicitly draw on Prospect Theory in his 2007 analysis. His previous work on the Cuban Missile Crisis (Haas, 2001) does draw on Prospect Theory, and in any case his explanation of the end of the Cold War is entirely consistent with Prospect Theory despite the lack of an explicitly cited connection.

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of public and declassified primary documents from the period to trace the history of the Cold War from 1985 to 1989. In doing so, he demonstrates that from the beginning of Gorbachev’s reforms in 1985 up to the eve of the formal institutionalization of Gorbachev’s reformist ideology at the Nineteenth Party Conference, American decision-makers were unwilling to accept the risky gamble of cooperative engagement with the Soviets. Key U.S. policy-makers during this period were highly suspicious that Soviet policy-change represented an actual reorientation of Soviet goals (1997, pp. 161–163). These policymakers argued that even if Gorbachev sincerely desired peace with the West, his conciliatory foreign policies were likely to be reversed quickly by Soviet hard-liners after Gorbachev lost power—which was considered a likely outcome due to hard-liners’ resistance to the reforms (p. 165). At worst, American policymakers argued that the Gorbachev reforms were insincere and were meant only to buy breathing space for the Soviet Union to reorganize its military and economy so as to be more competitive with the United States in the long run (p. 168). This is a clear illustration of the kind of risk-averse response that Prospect Theory would predict of a rival witnessing the upheaval associated with Gorbachev’s reforms. Gorbachev’s withdrawal from Afghanistan would have been seen as a clear ‘win’ in the West, as would the political weakening of the Soviet state due to reduced censorship and the encroachment of western influence under perestroika, as well as the internal turmoil resulting from the anti-reform efforts of Soviet hardliners.14 Prospect Theory predicts that Western leaders would respond to these gains as they did in reality, taking a position of guarded caution and avoiding both the risks of military aggression and diplomatic rapprochement with the U.S.S.R. However, this cautious Western approach to Gorbachev’s reform effort changed rapidly starting in 1988 with the Nineteenth Party Conference. The Nineteenth Party Conference resulted in broad changes to the structure of government and selection of leaders. These institutional reforms included the establishment of secret ballot elections to fill key posts in the party and state bureaucracy, and the establishment of a new partially-elected supreme legislative body—the Congress of People’s Deputies of the Soviet Union (Bessinger, 1988). According to Haas’s examination, these institutional reforms were critical to American policymakers’ willingness to take a more cooperative stance in relation to the Soviets. These reforms convinced American leaders that the underlying process of Soviet policy-making had fundamentally changed (p. 167). In essence, the institutional changes enshrined at the Nineteenth Party Conference broke through the risk-averse attitude of American leaders’ that was the result of perceived gains against the Soviets and thus U.S. policymakers’ entry into a domain of gains. The 1988 institutional reforms provided the degree of certainty that was needed to allow U.S. policymakers to reach for additional gains by attempting to resolve their rivalry with the U.S.S.R. This prompted U.S. policy-makers to switch from a cautious wait-and-see policy to what would previously have been perceived as a risky policy of active cooperation with the Soviet Union.

14

See Hazan (1990) for a discussion of public statements against the reforms and internal resistance by Soviet elites to Gorbachev’s reforms.

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Haas and others focus explicitly on democratization as a cause of peace. I argue, however, that the logic of Prospect Theory goes farther, implying that any regime change –be it democratizing, autocratizing, or lateral on the policy scale can lead to peace. The key component is that the regime change in question makes it obvious that there is’no going back’ to the old way. Democratization in the Soviet Union had this effect on the thinking of Western policymakers. But so too did a brutal autocratic crackdown in Videla’s Argentina–the National Reorganization Process –pave the way for the ending of the 163 year long Argentine-Brazilian rivalry. Videla’s coup and subsequent’dirty war’ served to eliminate the Peronists as a political force in Argentina (Resende-Santos, 2002). In eliminating the Peronists, this brutal crackdown allowed room for the Brazilian military regime to engage diplomatically with its Argentine counterpart without fear that a resurgent Peronist movement would come to power and exploit a relaxed Brazilian defense posture. Before moving on to discuss the empirical support for this argument, I note that the forgoing explanation still leaves room for heterogeneity in the effect of regime change on conflict. I do not expect every regime change to solve any and all outstanding conflicts a state is party to. Actors in State B can observe many characteristics of a regime change or other domestic shock in real time. They will assess what groups have been excluded and what groups have been newly included in positions of influence by a change in institutions, and while institutions are generally thought to be’sticky’ it is certainly true that some are more sticky than others. On average, because regime change frequently eliminates the most influential elements of the old regime from power, it will be expected to eliminate those most involved in pursuing the ongoing rivalry or dispute from power, and should lead to the expectation of significant change in policy. In short, when the old regime was hostile, eliminating its core membership from political influence should be expected to bode well for the likelihood that the state will behave in a more conciliatory fashion going forward.15 Empirical analysis reveals that the observed pattern of state behavior when responding to shocks in an enemy state fits the predictions of Prospect Theory. When contemplating a domestic shock in an enemy state, leaders display a degree of caution regarding both aggression and dispute resolution. Ongoing work demonstrates that leaders appear hesitant to respond with military force following domestic shocks in an enemy state. I find that when two states are party to a territorial dispute have previously held relatively hostile relations—they share few economic or security ties and/or have engaged in militarized disputes in the recent past—that regime change in one of the disputant states suppresses the probability that the other will subsequently initiate a Militarized Interstate Dispute (MID) against it (Saunders, 2021b, 2022b, Working Paper). Regime change in a dyad that is party to a relatively’hot’ or 15

It is common in the literature on rivalry termination to either explicitly or implicitly assume that any change in policy will, on average, be a change toward more peaceful policy where highly belligerent rivals are concerned (Bennett, 1997, pp. 374–375; Rooney, 2018, pp. 970–973). I explicitly make use of this assumption as well and provide some justification for its use here. Ultimately, if this assumption had no basis in reality, then I would expect null findings in empirical analyses based on the assumption. That I and others find significant results and in the expected direction—given this assumption—provides qualified evidence for its usefulness.

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hostile territorial dispute can reduce the predicted probability of a MID within the next year by half—in some specifications regime change in a hostile dyad reduces the predicted probability of a subsequent MID to near zero (Saunders, 2021b, p. 73). This conflict reducing effect also seems to be somewhat durable. Regime change in a hostile dispute-dyad is associated with an increase in predicted mean time until failure (the predicted mean time until the next MID initiation) of 8.5 years (2022b, p. 30). Previous work has also shown support for the notion that leaders are hesitant to make peace with a rival following a domestic shock—unless they can be made certain that the rival will not revert to previous patterns of behavior. I find that domestic shocks have a differential effect on rivalry termination that is dependent upon whether or not the shock in question results in major changes to the governing institution of one of the rivals (Saunders, 2022a). Using Cox Proportional Hazard models of rivalry termination, I find that institutionalized regime change seems to significantly influence rivalry termination, increasing the hazard that a given rivalry will terminate in the next period by between 5.0 and 5.4 times the baseline rate (p. 15). Other shocks like irregular leader transitions and changes in a state’s governing winning coalition have no effect on rivalry termination when they do not also coincide with major institutional changes (p. 15). This finding is consistent with the expectations of Prospect Theory. It appears that domestic shocks only promote dispute resolution and ultimately only end hostilities when they result in thoroughly institutionalized changes in a state’s policy-making process. Uninstitutionalized domestic changes such as Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization effort and attempt at detente with the West may lead to a temporary thaw in relations between rival states but is unlikely to allow for the successful resolution of the underlying conflict. Of broad interest to peace scholars, I also find that this conflict-termination effect is not limited to shocks that democratize. Consistent with much previous research, I do find that democratizing regime changes have a strong effect on conflict cessation. This is not unexpected given the expectations of Prospect Theory around the importance of certainty to peace. Prins and Daxecker (2008) provide sound reasoning as to why democratizing reforms might provide a heightened degree of certainty to outside observers. But where the democratization literature tends to assume that only liberalizing reforms promote peace, I find that autocratizing domestic shocks and those that lead to a lateral movement in relation to the autocracy/democracy scale also play an important role in ending longstanding rivalries (Saunders, 2022a, pp. 17–18). It is the institutionalization of the domestic changes resulting from a shock that matters, not just democratization.

3.3 Foreign Policy Through the Lens of Prospect Theory Approaching the study of domestic political shocks –and likely the study of shocks writ large—through the lens of risk-attitudes and Prospect Theory provides interesting and valuable new insights as to how states will respond to unpredictable

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events in the world, and also helps put microfoundations to many theories that rely on information or risk and reward to explain state behavior. Taken in aggregate, the empirical patterns of state behavior when responding to domestic shocks in another state are difficult to explain using many traditional theories of international behavior. On the conflict-onset side of the equation, traditional bargaining or expected utilities theories have difficulty explaining the conditional relationship I discuss here— that domestic shocks only seem to cause conflicts between former’friends’ in the international system but not between enemies nor even states that were previously neutrally unconcerned with one another. This is an important finding that contradicts many previous expectations about how states will respond to domestic upheaval in a neighbor. Previous research has commonly theorized that shocks like revolution or regime change cause conflict by weakening the shock state and inviting attack—or alternately, by forcing the shock state to behave aggressively to defend itself against expected attack (Maoz, 1989; Walt, 1992, 2013). An understanding of domestic shocks that is rooted in Prospect Theory suggests that we should question these findings. An enemy that has been unexpectedly weakened by a shock does not appear to invite immediate attack by its opponents, but rather appears to be a cause for caution on the part of those opponents. However, when a friendly regime has been damaged or destroyed in a domestic shock, this inflicts significant losses upon closely aligned states and is likely to motivate an extreme and highly risk-seeking response from these injured friends. In this risk-seeking mindset, military options become appealing high risk/high reward strategies that, if not fully successful at the outset are likely to lead to long-last enmity. On the other side of the equation, prospect theory expects that leaders will respond to domestic shocks and gains against the enemy due to the resulting turmoil in the enemy state by taking a cautious stance. Enemies will not attack the shock state because attack risks reversing these gains through military loss or possibly through rallying the enemy to a common cause. However, enemies will also be hesitant to engage cooperatively with the shock state because there is a risk that the enemy is insincere even when actually offering conciliatory policy. Cooperating with an insincere enemy will also risk losing the windfall gains that result from an enemy’s domestic turmoil. But some shocks may serve to make fertile ground for peace between erstwhile enemies. In some cases, when the political changes wrought by a shock are then thoroughly institutionalized, said shock can provide a degree of certainty regarding the additional gains to be had through peace. This certainty of additional gains overcomes the cautious risk-averse mindset that leaders will adopt when in a domain of gains and moves them to adopt a cooperative approach toward the enemy, thus aiding in conflict resolution and ultimately ending long-lasting enmity. The work discussed in this chapter is narrow in scope, but the underlying concepts of Prospect Theory –reference dependence, loss aversion, endowment effects, the mismatch between objective and subjective gains and losses, certainty and pseudocertainty effects, and other heuristics, cognitive biases, and framing effects—all have important implications for the study of domestic shocks, systemic shocks, and foreign policy in general. While Prospect Theory is arguably underappreciated in International Relations, being conscious of these cognitive biases and effects can

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lead us to distinctly different predictions and expectations than those made by more traditional theories of state behavior, and may open up valuable new avenues of research, possibly leading to important breakthroughs in understanding international behavior.

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Mattes, M., Leeds, B., & Matsumura, N. (2016). Measuring change in source of leader support: The CHISOLS dataset. Journal of Peace Research, 53(2), 259–267. McDermott, R. (1992). Prospect theory in international relations: The Iranian hostage rescue mission. Political Psychology, 15(2), 237–263. McGillivray, F., & Smith, A. (2004). The impact of leadership turnover on trading relations between states. International Organization, 58(3), 567–600. Mintz, A., & Stevenson, R. (1995). Defense expenditures, economic growth, and the peace dividend: A longitudinal analysis of 103 countries. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39(2), 283–305. North, D. (1990). Institutions, institutional change and economic performance. Cambridge University Press. Prins, B. C., & Daxecker, U. E. (2008). Committed to peace: Liberal institutions and the termination of rivalry. British Journal of Political Science, 38(1), 17–43. Ratner, E. (2009). Reaping what you sow: Democratic transitions and foreign policy realignment. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 53(3), 390–418. Resende-Santos, J. (2002). The origins of security cooperation in the southern cone. Latin American Politics and Society, 44(4), 89–126. Rooney, B. (2018). Sources of leader support and interstate rivalry. International Interactions, 44(5), 969–983. Saunders, R. (2021a). Only friends can betray you: International rivalry and domestic politics. International Interactions, 47(3), 504–529. Saunders, R. (2021b). Only friends can betray you: Domestic political shocks and interstate conflict behavior [Doctoral dissertation, The Florida State University]. Saunders, R. (2022a). A certain gamble: Institutional change, leader turnover, and their effect on rivalry termination.Conflict Management and Peace Science Advanced. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 07388942221092086 Saunders, R. (2022b). Regime change and the management of territorial disputes (Working Paper). Available at https://richardjsaunders.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/territorial-disputes-working2022.pdf Schmidt, U. (2003). Reference dependence in cumulative prospect theory. Journal of Mathematical Psychology, 47(2), 122–131. Shepsle, K. (2001). A comment on institutional change. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 13(3), 321–325. Siverson, R., & Starr, H. (1994). Regime change and the restructuring of alliances. American Journal of Political Science, 1, 145–161. Stein, J. (2017). The micro-foundations of international relations theory: Psychology and behavioral economics. International Organization, 71(1), 249–263. Thaler, R. (1980). Toward a positive theory of consumer choice. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 1(1), 39–60. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1986). Framing of decisions. Economic Theory, 251(2), 8. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1991). Loss aversion in riskless choice: A reference-dependent model. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 106(4), 1039–1061. Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1992). Advances in prospect theory: Cumulative representation of uncertainty. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 5, 297–323. Walt, S. (1992). Revolution and war. World Politics, 44(3), 321–368. Walt, S. (2013). Revolution and war. Cornell University Press. Walt, S. M. (1996). Revolution and war. Cornell University Press. Ward, M., & Davis, D. (1992). Sizing up the peace dividend: Economic growth and military spending in the United States, 1948–1996. American Political Science Review, 86(3), 748–755. Weber, B., Aholt, A., Neuhaus, C., Trautner, P., Elger, C., & Teichert, T. (2007). Neural evidence for reference-dependence in real-market-transactions. NeuroImage, 35(1), 441–447.

Political Elite Structures in Arab Uprisings (2011 And On) and Foreign Policy Ramifications Imad Mansour and William R. Thompson

Abstract The Arab Spring phenomena seems like a case of the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in one place that sends vibrations that expand into cyclonic turmoil elsewhere. The self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, the initial shock in a series of shocks, impacted the wider region and led to a large number of mass protests, the overthrow of regimes, long-lasting internal wars in Syria and Yemen, and difficult—but not impossible—processes of transitions away from old orders as with Libya. Responses in other parts of the region were arguably muted, such as in the Gulf; there, we do observe, however, incremental changes to governance in response to wide-ranging demands. These outcomes tell us something important about differential responses to the initial shocks. How governments and societies reacted depended considerably on how unified their elite structures were at the time of the initial shocks. The degree of unification also hinged on short-term vulnerabilities in the dominant patron-client coalition of each state. In these respects, responses were very similar to the earlier color revolutions that took place in parts of the former Soviet Union. In the Middle East and North Africa, however, interventions by external actors also played an important role in how events played out. Keywords Arab Spring · MENA · Shock · Contagion · Elite unification · Intervention

I. Mansour Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, Doha, Qatar e-mail: [email protected] W. R. Thompson (B) Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_9

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1 Introduction The Arab Uprisings phenomena seems like a case of the proverbial butterfly flapping its wings in one place that sends vibrations that expand into cyclonic turmoil elsewhere. The self-immolation of a Tunisian street vendor, the initial shock in a series of shocks, impacted the wider region and led to a large number of mass protests, the overthrow of regimes, long-lasting internal wars in Syria and Yemen, and difficult—but not impossible—processes of transitions away from old domestic political orders as with Libya. Responses in other parts of the region were arguably muted, such as in the Gulf; there, we do observe, however, incremental changes to governance in response to wide-ranging demands. It seems to be more salient that how governments and societies reacted depended considerably on how unified their elite structures were at the time of the initial shocks. The degree of unification also hinged on short-term vulnerabilities in the dominant patron-client coalition of each state. We model these domestic elite structures to help explain varied outcomes of uprisings. With successive waves of uprisings in 2010 and subsequent years, foreign policy behaviors across MENA states reflected interest in being involved in others’ protests. Interest emerged either from needing or wanting to support allies in neighboring states, manipulate fissures to see further breakdown, or to capitalize on societal mobilization to showcase influence. What we are interested in doing in this chapter is show how the structure and behavior of political elites in regional states defined the outcome of uprisings and simultaneously conditioned the foreign policy goals and behaviors of potential and interested interveners. Interventions by actors outside of the society in the throes of an uprising—especially from within the MENA—played important roles in how events unfolded. We first describe briefly what transpired domestically at the regional level as a result of the 2010 on wave of the Arab Uprisings, then we put forward a model that highlights how political elites mattered.1 We then explain how political elite structures and behaviors influenced foreign policy change at the regional level. Understanding foreign policy change in the years after 2010, we argue, is enhanced when considering elite structures and behaviors especially in intervening states.

2 The Arab Uprisings Phenomena We define as a first wave of Arab Uprisings the collection of protest movements in multiple MENA countries in 2011 and whose various manifestations have since been metamorphizing. The 2011 Uprisings were triggered by the self-immolation of a Tunisian street merchant who felt (with reason) that he had been sorely mistreated by local authorities. The protest movements picked up on widespread grievances about economic deterioration, governmental corruption and non-delivery of services, and unemployment. Initial protests focused on the need for political and economic 1

For an earlier study of shocks in MENA foreign policies, see Mansour and Thompson (2020).

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reforms. Governmental attempts to break up or suppress the protests only encouraged larger protests and demands that political leaders step down. In three countries (Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen), presidents were forced to resign and in a fourth case (Libya), the president was killed. In three cases, civil wars broke out. In four cases, foreign military intervention made some difference to the outcome. While protest demonstrations occurred in many MENA states as part of the Arab Uprisings, six states receive most of the attention because protests led to political uprisings with variable outcomes: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and Syria. Tunisia: In mid-December of 2010, an unlicensed but college educated fruit vendor in a small town in the center of Tunisia set himself on flame to protest the confiscation of his cart and beating by police. Supportive protest demonstrations were treated harshly leading to dead protestors, escalating clashes with the police, and demonstrations and strikes spreading to other cities that called for the ouster of President Zine Abidine Ben Ali. Cabinet ministers were fired, schools were closed and a state of emergency was announced by mid-January. Ben Ali resigned and fled the country, leading to some confusion about who was in charge of the government, a breakdown of order in Tunis, and some clashes between pro- and anti-Ben Ali groups. Why exactly Ben Ali resigned and fled when he did remain in dispute. Ben Ali had been in control of Tunisia for 23 years and had eased out Habib Bourguiba in 1987 on medical incompetency grounds.2 Ben Ali himself was approaching a 2014 age restriction on his remaining in charge but he had publicly declared that he did not intend to alter the constitution to prolong his tenure. Urban areas were in political turmoil and the police appeared unable to control the situation. The army was called in to maintain order but it had been marginalized by Ben Ali for years and could be said to be less than enthusiastic about his political survival. It appears that it became clear that the army was not prepared to defend the regime by firing on civilian protesters. How that was made clear to Ben Ali, and by whom, or whether that was the signal that it was time to flee remain open questions.3 The ouster of Ben Ali led to a fledgling democratic political system centered on parliamentary politics that managed to last about a decade. In 2022, it was replaced by a presidential system that concentrates political power in one individual and, presumably, implies very limited parliamentary participation in future Tunisian politics. Egypt: Shortly after the fall of Ben Ali in Tunisia (January 14), increasingly large protests calling for the ousting of President Hosni Mubarak began in Egypt on January 25. Mubarak, at age 82, had been president for 30 years after the assassination of Anwar al-Sadat in 1981. The question of whether Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal would succeed his father had been publicly debated for a decade before 2011.4 The Mubaraks denied it while the son prepared to run for president in 2011 after his 2

Bourguiba had in turn ended the new Tunisian monarchy in 1957. See, among others, Brooks (2013), Pachon (2014), Bou Nassif (2015a), and Grewal (2016). 4 The discussion seems to have been triggered by the ascension of Assad’s son in Syria in 2000. The obvious question was whether something similar might happen in Egypt. 3

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father’s presidential term would end in 2010. As it happened, the Egyptian military was one of the main organizational opponents of such a transition. The son lacked the military background shared by all presidents since 1952. The threat the son posed was not about credentials per se but the future position of the armed forces in the Egyptian political system. This observation does not mean that Mubarak was overthrown because of his succession plans; it does mean that the Egyptian military were not in general reluctant to see Mubarak lose his office. As the protest numbers swelled into millions in Tahrir Square in Cairo, police were replaced by the military. Mubarak offered various political concessions short of resigning. Small-scale fighting between protesters and pro-government groups escalated. None of this worked to restore stability and order. On February 11, Mubarak’s resignation was announced by his Vice President. An armed forces junta declared that elections would be held in six months. Protests of various sizes continued. In the election, the presidential winner, Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood candidate defeated Mubarak’s former prime minister who had earlier been an army general. Once in office, President Morsi moved too quickly in moving toward Islamic rule in Egypt. He attempted to rewrite the constitution. He also fired the head of the Egyptian armed forces, Mohamed Hussein Tatawi, and appointed Abdel Fattah al-Sisi as his replacement and new defense minister. New anti-Morsi protests began. At the end of June, and led by the appointed al-Sisi, the Egyptian military declared publicly that the government had 48 hours to satisfy the anti-Morsi demands. No response from the Morsi regime led to the overthrow of the elected president at the end of the ultimatum window. Al-Sisi, the leader of the military coup, ran for presidential office in 2013 and won.5 Yemen: Yemeni demonstrations, focused initially on corruption and democracy, began on January 27 of 2011 without the harsh governmental repression seen in other Arab states. A variety of unsuccessful governmental concessions were advanced that included reduced taxes, increased governmental salaries, a promise that President Ali Abdullah Saleh would not seek re-election in 2013, nor would his son. Saleh had been in power for some 32 years if one counts his presidency of the Yemen Arab Republic (1978–1990) and the Yemeni state created in 1990 that unified the YAR and South Yemen. By February 20, demonstrations in Sanaa had escalated their demands to the level of ousting Saleh. Government repression efforts escalated accordingly with 50 people killed in a March 18 demonstration. A number of Yemeni government officials resigned in protest which were quickly followed by high-ranking military defections. Protracted negotiations over the resignation of Saleh ensued while various rebel groups improved their control over rural and urban areas in the Yemeni periphery. By late May, the fighting had reached Sanaa leading up to an early June explosion in the presidential palace. Saleh was wounded and evacuated to Saudi Arabia. His Vice President, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, took his place and was elected without opposition to succeed Saleh in February 2012. But the Houthi rebellion in northern

5

He won with 96% of the vote in 2014 thanks in part to the Muslim Brotherhood boycotting the election.

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Yemen which had begun earlier and fused with the Arab Uprisings protests in 2011– 2012 resumed in 2014 with the Houthi capture of Sanaa. A civil war had broken out with Hezbollah and Iran aiding the Houthi side and Saudi Arabia and the UAE intervening on the government side.6 Writing in 2022, the civil war continues with the Houthis in control of much of Yemen, an apparent UAE withdrawal from the war zone, and a possible southern Yemen breakaway from the unified state at some point in the future. Bahrain: The Bahrain Arab Uprisings began on February 14, a date chosen because it was the anniversary of the 2002 Constitution, and constitutional reform was to be the focus of the demonstrations. A few days before, the Bahrain King had announced a payment of $2,650 to each family presumably in anticipation of the scheduled protests. The protests proceeded as planned but met considerable governmental resistance in an attempt to disband the demonstrators.7 Daily protestergovernment clashes continued with the number of demonstrators increasing and the demands escalating. By March 6, the demands had expanded first to include the resignations of all National Assembly delegates and the Prime Minister. Two days later, the demands escalated to include the removal of the monarchy. Pro and anti-government clashes continued with the number of demonstrators overwhelming police efforts to break them up. A general worker’s union strike was called. On March 14, the Bahrain government requested external assistance from the Gulf Cooperation Council. Saudi military units and UAE police responded the same day. But the protest demonstrations continued and now were focused on the foreign occupation. On March 16 the demonstrators in the capital city were attacked by a large military/police force, using tanks and helicopters. Over 1,000 protesters were arrested and five killed in the process. The crackdown on dissent continued through April and May. Protests persisted through as late as 2017 but they became less frequent and were more effectively controlled by police and other repressive agents. Libya: The Libyan case featured a highly erratic chief patron who had been in power for 42 years. Several sons and a daughter had high military rank and commanded parts of the Libyan military. Should succession have become an issue, it was presumable that one of Qaddafi’s sons would be the heir apparent although it was not clear which one was most likely to ascend to the top position. Despite Libya’s status as an oil-rich state, very little of the wealth had managed to trickle down to the population. Much of that wealth had been spent on sequential commitments first to Arab–Israeli conflict and then to multiple African subversions stretching across the Sahel and beyond that included a long, losing war in Chad. On February 15, 2011, demonstrations in Benghazi protesting the arrest of a human rights lawyer and calling for Qaddafi’s resignation were met by water cannons and rubber bullets. The protests spread to other cities and the governmental response

6

Saleh returned to Yemen and joined the Houthi side for a while but was killed by them when it looked as if he was defecting back to the government side in 2017. 7 The initial protesters were primarily Shia, reflecting the composition of the state, and subsequent state-demonstration interactions increasingly took on a Sunni-Shia confrontation flavor.

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escalated to firing on crowds of demonstrators and attempted to block communications within and to the state. Diplomats stationed abroad and military personnel associated with the protest repression began to defect to the rebel side which had managed to seize arms from government arsenals. Fighting escalated as rebels gained control of eastern Libya but soon stalemated with governmental forces retaining control of Tripoli in the west. In March, it looked as if governmental forces were winning, a primarily NATO-centric coalition intervened initially to impose a no-fly zone and subsequently to aid the rebel ground forces. Momentum gradually shifted in favor of the rebel forces which took control of Tripoli in September. Qaddafi was captured and killed by rebel forces in October. Syria: Demonstrations for political reform in Syria had begun in January but a turning point was not reached until March 15. Protesting the harsh treatment of several teens caught painting anti-regime slogans on a wall, the demonstration in Deraa turned violent when police fired into the crowd, killing 100 people. Over the next two months, protests of greater scale spread throughout much of the country with corresponding attempts by the government to suppress the dissent and call for the resignation of Bashar al-Assad. Military defections from the Syrian army helped arm an increasingly militant opposition to the regime. By April, some governmentopposition clashes had been militarized with the government side employing tanks and the opposition utilizing small arms. During the next several months there was an odd mixture of demonstrations, insurrection, and repression. By July, a Free Syria Army had been constituted as a rebel army. However, multiple rebel groups became the norm in a civil war that was complicated by the fighting against ISIS and interventions by a large cast of states and armed groups. Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran were the first to intervene in 2013 in support of the al-Assad regime. Russian support became significant in 2014. On the rebel side(s), the United States, Turkey, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and various Gulf states provided financing, arms, and training, as well as occasional air strikes and a limited Turkish invasion to eliminate Kurdish control of the Syrian-Turkish border. One thing that was missing was a way to coordinate rebel actors with goals that were not always identical or even compatible. A quite respectable proportion of Syria was taken from government control but it proved difficult to hold on to it. In the end, the Syrian central government and AlAssad’s regime survived at the expense of a great deal of destruction, millions of refugees, and estimated deaths ranging between roughly 400,000 and 600,000. What we gain from the above review is an interesting snapshot of outcomes. On the one hand, we have these six big and dramatic cases with substantial variation among their outcomes. Rulers were overthrown in four cases, civil wars broke out in three cases, and one ruler survived while another died thanks in part to international intervention. In one case, a military coup overthrew the initial replacement for the autocrat overthrown and in another case, a surprisingly democratic regime became more autocratic after a few exceptional years by MENA standards. Yet there is more to the variation. Other MENA cases prevented political transformation by providing limited concessions and subsidies. Table 1 outlines a more complete picture of the variance in outcome.

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Table 1 Arab Uprisings variation State

Protests

Response

State

Protests

Response

Tunisia

Extensive

Extreme political concessions/initial crackdown

Algeria

Major

Limited concessions

Egypt

Extensive

Significant concessions/initial crackdown

Jordan

Major

Limited concessions

Yemen

Extensive

Limited concessions

Kuwait

Limited

Subsidies

Bahrain

Extensive

Limited concessions/crackdown

Lebanon

Major

No political concessions

Libya

Extensive

Crackdown

Morocco

Major

Limited concessions

Syria

Extensive

Crackdown

Qatar

Limited

Subsidies

Saudi Arabia

Major

Limited concessions

UAE

Limited

Subsidies

Source Based on Tikuisis and Minkov (2015: 79) with one modification—crackdown added to the Bahrain case Note Protests are coded limited if popular participation is in the 100’s, major if in the 1,000’s, and extensive if in the 10,000s. Moreover, limited concessions may also involve subsidies

There are some hints made obvious by the re-arrangement of the original data (reported alphabetically in the 2015 source). Cases with extensive protests are found only in in the left-hand side of the table reserved for the more dramatic cases. So, too, are crackdowns. Clearly, part of the explanation for what took place has something to do with the scale of dissent and the harshness of the governmental response. Yet while there is still considerable variation, there is also extensive diffusion of the phenomena throughout the Arab world. There is something more going on than merely a matter of protest- response dynamics.

3 Previous Modeling of the 2011 Uprisings There are all sorts of analyses of the Arab Uprisings. Most of them, however, do not try to model it explicitly.8 By modeling, we mean what are the general factors that

8

To explore general discussions of the Arab Uprisings phenomena, see Anderson (2011), Gause (2011), Bellin (2012), Lynch (2012, 2014), Weyland (2012), Volpi (2013), and Brownlee et al. (2015). Another popular focus are discussions of the role of the military in the Arab Uprisings. See Brooks (2013), Nepstad (2013), Pachon (2014), Bou Nassif (2015a, 2015b, 2020), Grewal (2016), and Koehler (2017).

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appear to be at work.9 The details about who did what to whom and when are all well and good, and definitely needed. But, occasionally, we need to draw back and ask what the Arab Uprisings is in terms of the dynamics of more abstract processes in progress. Were they anti-corruption drives? Were they random occurrences in a number of different places in one region? Should we view them as failed democratization movements? What does they tell us about how domestic politics function in MENA? Did the Arab Uprisings have foreign policy ramifications? Since Arab Uprisings modeling is not done all that often, we see no need for an extensive literature review. Instead, we describe two efforts, one quantitative and the other more theoretical and qualitative, that provide different types of examples while also setting the stage for our own model. A third candidate for consideration is Tikuisis and Minkov (2015) but this analysis basically analyzed 21 variables to see which ones provided the best predictive power for the combined coded outcomes of death toll, protest intensity, and regime response. The answer was that the combination of level of democracy, years of leader in power, GDP per capita, unemployment rates, youth bulge (percent population under 25), and ethnic-sectarian tension provided 90% predictability. While certainly of interest, this is not quite a model because as the authors admit “what remains unsatisfactory is that it is difficult to explain how the six factors, or perhaps others, relate to each other…” (Tikuisis & Minkov, 2015: 85). Actually, the six variables do fit together easily: poverty and poorly performing economies with extensive underemployment, aging and unresponsive political leadership, and inter-group conflict made for a combustive setting. If the authors had made a case for these factors prior to performing their statistical analysis, we would have been more likely to count it as a model. As we will see, there is still more to say about the variance demonstrated by the Arab Uprisings phenomena. We should also say that we are taking the diffusion of contentious behavior for granted in this analysis. It was not a regional set of random occurrences. Brancati and Lucardi (2019) have demonstrated that most democracy protests do not diffuse from one country to another. They argue that this is because democracy protests stem from domestic conditions that are rarely sufficiently similar. But the 2010–2011 Arab Uprisings, in contrast to what Brancati and Lucardi have said specifically about it, is a case in which there was sufficient similarity across the region to anticipate its spread after the initial case made some headway. A Latin American specialist, Weyland (2019), agrees that democracy protest diffusionary behavior is rare but can be expected if three conditions are satisfied: (1) an unexpected outbreak of protests in 9

If one does a general computer search for Arab Uprisings modeling, the searcher is likely to get some pictures of youth in the latest fashions and/or discussions of the probability/utility of democratic versus Islamic governments in MENA. Many of the articles on Arab Uprisings modeling are what we might call special interest examinations with foci on topics such as use of social media, non-violent protest dynamics, grievances, or protest activity correlations with selected variables. We regard these examinations as modeling with selective foci. See, for instance, Saideman (2012), Hussain and Howard (2013), Wolfsfeld et al. (2013), Lang and De Sterck (2014), Bamert et al. (2015), Costello et al. (2015), Davenport and Moore (2015), Asongu and Nwachukwu (2016), Steinert-Threkeld (2017), Massoud et al. (2019), and Basir and Dotta (2020).

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one place after a long period in which autocratic regime stability is taken for granted encourages others to contemplate similar action, (2) the initial case involves extensive mass mobilization and protests which constitute a challenge for the incumbent regime and receives considerable international attention, and (3) the initial case manages to depose the incumbent ruler. This is a minimalist model for diffusionary behavior that is satisfied in the Arab Uprisings case.10 It explains the diffusion of contentious behavior but it does not explain the variation in political outcomes in which we are interested. One of the two modeling cases in which we are interested, the Korotayev et al. model (2014), attempts to match expected instability with observed instability. Observed instability is a scale ranging from small scale protest actions to successful revolution which apparently requires only the fall of the regime in power. Five clusters of predictive indicators of instability are described as the following: 1. Conflict Potential: (a) the presence of intra-elite conflict and (b) the presence of intertribal/interclan contradictions; 2. Social combustible material—(a) share of unemployed young people in the total adult population and (b) the proportion of unemployed people with higher education; 3. Political order sustainability or the ability of the government to reduce social tensions—(a) regime type ranging from consolidated democracies and absolute monarchies and autocracies to regimes in transition between autocracy and democracy and (b) power transfer tools ranging from no need to transfer power to transfer to a family member; 4. Immunity to internal conflict—(a) large scale conflict in recent past and b) participation of Islamists in the political process; 5. External influence—(a) distortions in media coverage and (b) levels of military intervention. The cluster scores are considered multiplicative, not additive. Thus, the predicted instability score is created by the outcome of cluster 1 × cluster 2 × cluster 3 × cluster 4 × cluster 5 and reported in Table 2 in conjunction with the observed instability scores. Scrutiny of the table reveals a strong correspondence between predicted and observed scores. The scores of the six cases with the most political change are found at the top of the two columns without exception and the other twelve cases with much less political change thanks to the Arab Uprisings are listed lower in Table 2 than the top six. The close correspondence suggests some confirmation for the five clusters providing an explanation of which cases reacted most strongly to the Arab Uprisings shock. But there are also major interpretation problems. Clusters 1 (group conflict), 2 (youth unemployment), and 3 (regime type/power transfer mechanism) are homogenous although one wonders if the power transfer mechanism scale is not highly 10

Further testimony on the diffusion of protest in the Arab Uprisings case can be found in Abdelmoumni (2011), Kirkpatrick (2011), Rashed (2011), Cassel et al. (2013), Spitzberg et al. (2013), Bamert et al. (2015), and Steinert-Threkeld (2017).

192 Table 2 Comparing predicted and observed MENA instability

I. Mansour and W. R. Thompson State

Predicted instability

Observed instability

Libya

114.75

54.72

Egypt

105

50.43

Tunisia

82.5

37.61

Syria

46.2

29.05

Bahrain

29.93

17.8

Yemen

21.0

15.2

Jordan

19.8

15.06

Mauritania

13.5

10.89

Morocco

12.38

16.88

Sudan

9.75

8.23

Kuwait

7.5

7.07

Saudi Arabia

6.75

5.62

Oman

6.3

4.58

Algeria

4.84

6.55

Palestine

4.06

6.12

Iraq

3.88

5.5

Qatar

2.34

2.2

UAE

2.34

2.62

The predicted instability scores are calculated by the authors from data found in Korotayev et al. (2014: 165). The observed instability scores are reported in the same place

correlated with regime type—and, if so, whether two indicators of much the same thing are needed. Clusters 4 (past conflict and Islamist political participation) and 5 (media coverage distortions and military intervention) seem to add disparate information. How exactly this works vis-à-vis contributions to the predicted instability score is less than clear since we are not provided information on how the scales are enumerated. We are also told that clusters 2 and 5 add little to the predictive process since they are statistically insignificant. That leaves us with: states that are characterized by domestic conflict and regime types with routinized transfer mechanisms are more likely to experience domestic conflict instability unless they experienced a civil war already or have Islamists already in the political process. Civil war weariness is one thing but what does it mean to have Islamists already in the political process? Is a weak Islamist party participating in a legislature of dubious institutional power the same thing as a veto process on what can be done in a state ala what Hezbollah has evolved into in Lebanon or what the short-lived Morsi regime in Egypt represented?11 There is also some ambiguity about what time period the dependent variable covers. The immediate outcomes for Tunisia, Egypt, and Bahrain were decided fairly 11

The fourth cluster plays a major mathematical role in a multiplicative equation since its scale is limited to a 0–1.0 range and the first three scales are not restricted in the same way.

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quickly. Yet in the Tunisian and Egyptian cases, the immediate outcomes did not hold. Both states appeared to be moving towards greater democracy but that lasted only a year in Egypt and about ten years in Tunisia. Bahrain continued to have unrest after its uprising was suppressed. The Libyan case resolved Qaddafi’s fate relatively quickly once NATO forces became involved. Yet the Libyan political system outcome remains unresolved and agreed-upon solutions face internal challengers. The Syrian case dragged on for at least nine years and the Yemeni case will drag on for more since it is still in flux. The question becomes one of asking what exactly we are trying to explain. Does it suffice to ask only whether a political system leader was overthrown? Or is there something more at stake in Arab Uprisings cases? Similarly, we might also ask what does it mean to find military intervention statistically insignificant when it was so critical in the Bahrain, Libyan, Syrian, and Yemen cases? Still, it is good to know that some version of the Arab Uprisings outcome was empirically predictable once one gets past the initial fruit vendor self-immolation shock which was definitely not predictable.12 There are puzzles in this analysis but, interestingly, we will be returning to some of the same variables in an alternative formulation. That is, we agree that elite conflict, political power transfer mechanisms, and military intervention are all crucial variables in understanding Arab Uprisings phenomena. Recall that our analysis here covers the first wave noted above. The Brownlee et al. (2015) Arab Uprisings model is a seven variable model, with two paths to separate outcomes. The initial drivers are regime type. Political systems choose leadership on either a hereditary basis or non-heredity basis. The economies are either oil-rich or oil-poor. Non-hereditary and oil-poor states faced with a popular uprising like the Arab Uprisings are likely to have limited despotic power and splits in the coercive apparatus. The anticipated outcome is a breakdown in the political system and some kind of leadership change. States that utilize hereditary political selection methods or oil-rich have extensive despotic power and a coercive apparatus that is likely to remain coherent. In these societies, one should expect a systematic crackdown on dissent and leadership continuity (see Fig. 1). The model is parsimonious, plausible, and seemingly successful. The authors note only one exception to their framework: Libya—due to external intervention. However, there are some apparent problems in the model development and application. They start by eliminating Lebanon and Iraq from the outset for debatable reasons. Sudan is ignored entirely and without discussion despite it being a nonhereditary/oil-poor state that did not have a leadership change. Lebanon is deleted because it has an unusual confessional political system and Iraq is dropped because it had just ended its US military occupation the year before 2011. Both statements are certainly accurate but it’s not clear why any of these cases need to be excluded. Lebanon is a non-hereditary/oil-poor state which, presumably, should have led to breakdown and leadership change which did not happen. As an oil-rich state, Iraq should have undergone a crackdown which did not happen even though there was leadership continuity. 12

Tikuisis and Minkov’s (2015) analysis reinforces the empirical predictability of the Arab Uprisings outcomes.

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I. Mansour and W. R. Thompson Limited despotic power

Non-hereditary and oil-poor

coercive apparatus splits

Breakdowns and leadership change

Popular Uprising

Hereditary or oil-rich

Extensive despotic power coercive apparatus coheres

Crackdowns and leadership continuity

Fig. 1 The Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds Arab Uprisings model

A second problem is that the model appears to assume some type of “popular uprising.” It is left unclear what qualifies as a popular uprising or how these uprisings are stimulated. Uprising connotes an attempt to overthrow a government which was not the norm in responding to Arab Uprisings stimuli. Of 17 Arab states, only 7 (Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Sudan and Syria) experienced what might be termed major public protests. The other 10 saw only limited or no protesting. It should make some difference whether the N is 17, 14 (without Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan), or 7 (excluding the non-popular uprising cases). The authors give the impression that their total N is 14 in which case there may need to be some auxiliary theory for why some societies react differently to external shocks. The “hereditary” variable is a bit odd. Syria is counted as a hereditary political system because the leadership passed from father to son once. But that suffices for the authors because they are using the hereditary variable as a proxy for coercive apparatus loyalty to the incumbent regime. If they were not loyal, they would have rebelled at the installation of the old leader’s son. That explanation may fit Syria, but it works less well with the institutionalized hereditary systems that rely on sons ascending to the lead monarch position as a matter of course. When this happens, can we assume it means that the coercive apparatus is loyal to the regime? In the model, path one has the coercive apparatus “splitting” which implies some back the incumbent and some back the rebels. In the Egyptian and Tunisian cases, it was not so much a matter of “splitting” as in the Libyan and Syrian cases, as it was a matter of opposing the retention of the incumbent leader as an organization. Somewhat differently, the model assumes that oil-rich states have superior despotic powers in comparison to oil-poor states which seems dubious given the notorious despotic powers of Egypt and Syria—two oil-poor states. Interestingly, the more probable reaction of the oil-rich and/or monarchical hereditary systems was to promise some type of political reform or the distribution of funds to their populations—as opposed to cracking down on dissent. A sixth problem concerns the absence of any role for external intervention in the model. Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds exclude Libya as a case of foreign

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intervention which presumably trumps their two paths. But external intervention actually occurred in 4 cases (Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria) and is hard to overlook unless one wants to argue that it came later and does not count in a model designed to explain the initial outcome. However, if one wants to argue that particular position, the seventh problem remains as a question of how should we code protracted outcomes? The Libyan and Yemeni cases have yet to be resolved completely (writing in early 2022). The Egyptian case could be said to have had two outcomes. Yes, incumbent leadership was changed either way, but first Morsi won an election and then, a year later, al-Sisi cancelled the electoral outcome. The Tunisian outcome has been heralded as the sole democratizing response to the Arab Uprisings, but the verdict seems to have been pronounced too soon given the moves toward re-autocratization under Kais Saied since 2021 (and that have been confirmed with the Constitutional amendments presented for popular referendum in July 2022). We acknowledge that there are probably different ways to react to any of these perceived problems with the Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds model. Our position is simply that we may be able to do better without sacrificing parsimony or eliminating cases prior to the analysis. Moreover, we wish to model a wider range of response than limiting the analysis to cases of “political uprising.” There are 17 Arab states in the MENA region. How did they respond to the Arab Uprisings shock and why?

4 The Thompson and Mansour Model: Rationale and Influences We begin with a shock because we assume it takes some kind of abrupt change in the environment to trigger changes in behavior. Inertia is too well-established and must be overcome in some fashion. In the absence of some type of shock, we would expect behavioral continuity. Shocks occur regularly and can take place within or outside a political system. Some shocks seem to have little effect. Others can lead to quite considerable impacts as is illustrated by the attempted self-immolation of a frustrated Tunisian street vendor. Normally, most things occurring in Tunisia would have little effect on MENA behavior. In this case, impacts were registered throughout the region and even beyond. Presumably, the vendor’s frustrations over how he was being treated by an uncaring government official reverberated with the way quite a few people in the region felt about their governments. Public protests of varying magnitude took place in almost all MENA states. But only some can be considered popular uprisings. They ranged from polite petitions through street demonstrations that stopped short of demanding changes in government leadership to massive and protracted demonstrations that did demand changes in government leadership.13 We regard only the extreme end of this continuum as evidence of a popular uprising. 13

Tilly (1978) found that more intensive protest activity in Europe hinged on government repression—the more governments attempted to repress political protest, the more serious the protest

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Internal wars began in three states, in the form of citizens and organized societal actors combating regimes. Four autocratic rulers were removed from office. Shocks followed shocks in a year (2011) that was characterized by one surprise after another. Our alternative to the Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds model is based on an appreciation for “patronal politics” (Hale, 2015) and elite structures. This approach discounts regime type and common institutional foci such as legislatures, political parties, and judiciaries and opts instead to look at the dynamics of elite structures. These elite structures resemble power pyramids, and any political system may be governed by a single pyramid or multiple pyramids which may or may not be hierarchical in nature. That is, there may be a large pyramid with embedded levels that are subordinated to levels above and superior to those below or there may simply be competing pyramids with non-overlapping spheres of dominance, or both. Two basic premises of patronal politics are that these pyramids are natural (Johnson & Earle, 2000; North et al., 2009) and have been with us ever since chiefs or perhaps even heads of families/clans were first innovated. “Natural” in this respect means that they have been around since the hunter/foraging era, have predominated through the agrarian era, and persist in many authoritarian settings. They persist elsewhere as well but are less predominant in political systems than they once were in the form of urban political machines for example. At the top of the pyramid is a patron with subordinated clients who do the bidding of the patron in exchange for benefits and privileges if they perform adequately and punishments of various kinds if they do not. This exchange system is not populated by strangers held together by an institutionalized chain of command. Every elite does not necessarily know all the other elites in a society, but they are acquainted with those immediately above and below them in the governing pyramid. The glue that holds these structures together is the expectation that the elite structure will persist more or less in its present form as long as the patron retains supreme control at the peak of the pyramid. As long as the patron rules, the costs of defying the pyramid, or defecting from it, are too high to ever appear acceptable. Not only are the benefits sacrificed, more terminal costs or imprisonment may be in the offing as well. Yet these pyramids, for all their societal omnipotence, come and go. The Achilles heel of such a system is that the patronal leader is human. Patrons age, they become ill, they die, they may even be regulated somewhat by terms of office, and they can also become highly unpopular. In these contexts, the replacement of the patron is more likely to be perceived as something that is possible. Accordingly, patronal structures are most vulnerable when a patronal succession issue becomes probable, especially if the incumbent is also highly unpopular. Hale (2015) refers to the focus of these episodes as highly vulnerable “lame-ducks.” When the pyramid is presided over by a lame-duck is the most likely time for intra-elite jostling for position. Sensing significant change is in the offing, they look for allies and ways to beat out rivals. The question of whether there will be a change in personnel or who will be the next

activity became. The point is that protests can begin peacefully and become something else depending on how governments react to the peaceful protests.

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supreme patron can become a crisis that can only be resolved by somebody new taking over the structure or abolishing the old structure and creating a new one. The model was designed to fit “Eurasian” elite structures in general, and postSoviet structures in particular. But the Middle East is also part of Eurasia, and this model seems equally appropriate for African application as well. In fact, Hale (2015) points out that in the Arab Uprisings all of the regimes that fell were presidential systems in which the head of state was both unpopular and a lame-duck either due to advanced age or the expectation that a hand-off to someone else was imminent.14 A hand-off to an offspring, moreover, in a system in which that was not normal was all the more dangerous because it tends to polarize elites into two groups: those who can see benefit in the hand-off and those who see it as potentially disastrous. If these same situations are suddenly focused on major waves of popular protest, the setting can be manipulated by elites to serve their own ends. In some cases, the protests may even be stimulated by elites looking to use disgruntled populations to achieve a preferred outcome to the succession crisis. The grievances of the protestors may well be genuine but that does not mean that they cannot be utilized to hasten the departure of a vulnerable and unpopular patron. Hale also notes all of the MENA monarchies survived the Arab Uprisings. He views this outcome as stemming from the fact that monarchies routinize succession as a matter of course. Elites and masses know who is supposed to succeed an ailing monarch. Crown Princes are highly visible and usually provided with ample governing roles to prepare the way for an orderly succession. In contrast, the patron in a non-royal power pyramid often benefits by ensuring that no one knows who his or her replacement might be. A non-royal “crown prince” would be encouraged to begin developing a rival patron-client coalition too early for the comfort of the incumbent. Elites would also be encouraged to hedge their bets by signing on with the heir apparent too early from the perspective of the incumbent. It is better if everyone is kept guessing because that makes the incumbent’s power monopoly even more exclusive.15 Hale’s alternative model is incredibly simple. Look for vulnerable leaders of the dominant ruling coalition because unless their vulnerability is becoming greater, their staying power is usually fairly formidable. It also speaks to the question of which kinds of shocks are likely to have the greatest impact. The impact of shocks in political systems structured around patron-client should be greatest vis-à-vis toppling regimes when the lead patron is highly vulnerable. Shocks can tip the odds in favor of a quick overthrow of the head patron as opposed to a lingering or protracted succession process because they can be manipulated by groups looking for weapons to use to tilt the crisis outcome in their favor.

14

Hale’s comments are not based on an intensive analysis of the Arab Uprisings. His observations should be viewed more as informal comments in a concluding chapter that discusses other possible applications of the patronal perspective. 15 We view this hereditary mechanism as much different from the one espoused by Brownlee, Masoud, and Reynolds and more persuasive.

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The simplicity, nonetheless, may prove restrictive. What works in Central Asia may not work the same way in MENA. Or there may be other factors in play that can contribute to the explanation. The survival of the power pyramid depends on the elite structure remaining unified. If it fragments into warring factions, it is much less likely to emerge unaltered in some way. The choices made by security apparatuses, moreover, are likely to be near-universally significant. Without their acquiescence, regime change is unlikely and that, in turn, may depend in part on the scale of the public protests (Rasler et al., 2022). Or it could well be that other things besides patron vulnerability can encourage defection from the ruling pyramid. In the Arab Uprisings context, successful examples should be expected to be encouraging others to protest and seek leadership change. That is, some contagion is certainly conceivable. There is a reason, after all, why autocrats try to restrict information about the outside world. There may also be other reasons for patron vulnerability than age and succession. We know that voters grow tired of incumbent regimes and seek alternatives that are merely different. Do long periods of autocratic rule without much to show for it become more brittle and difficult to tolerate given the passage of time? For post-Soviet regimes, there is another way in which they may have been distinctive. When states broke away from the Soviet Union, it was possible to use older communist power networks and convert them into autocratic power networks. That possibility smoothed the transitions from one kind of elite power structure to another by making use of many of the same people. It did not happen in every case. Where elite structures were divided into different factions without any single one establishing supremacy, politics proved highly unstable.16 There is also another school of thought that focuses on elite settlements in democratization efforts in which the basic binary construct are divided elite structures versus unified elite structures. The first generates instability while the second is associated with stability. In regions like the Middle East and North Africa, divided elite structures are not uncommon. Divisions over religion, ethnicity, sub-region, and secularists versus Islamists lend themselves to divided and divisive elite structures. There are also relatively unified elite structures that tend to be constructed by the employment of carrots and sticks. Oil-rich states have the ability to use the distribution of wealth and lucrative contracts to placate elites. These carrots are backed up by coercive state agencies that monitor society for behavior that is regarded as disloyal or deviant. One of the leading scholars of elite structure studies, Higley (2021), argues that the Arab Uprisings phenomenon was an exercise in folly. Popular uprisings aim to remove disliked autocratic rulers but to the extent that the uprisings are successful, they tend to remove individuals without altering the basic elite structure. Individual despots come and go but the regime type does not change much. One implication is that there is a limit to what popular uprisings in authoritarian political settings can aspire to achieve. Unless they can overthrow the elite structure—a much more difficult undertaking, regime type is likely to remain the same. Yet there is a flip side to this observation. A combination of shock and political uprising can conceivably do more in settings with less unified elite structures than 16

Early 1990s Georgia may be the best example.

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in systems in which a relatively unified elite merely agrees to sacrifice a weakened patron. In divided elite settings, shocks and uprising create political space for different types of political systems emerging but, most likely, whether these different systems emerge will hinge on the outcomes of civil war. Thus, shock-induced political turmoil can lead to some elite circulation, ranging from firing a prime minister to unseating an aging chief patron, without really threatening a society’s elite structure. To take on the elite structure requires something more—a civil war between or among elite factions to see whose preferences will win out. As Hale (2015) notes, this sort of behavior is not really different from places which hold regular elections. Elections are also a form of warfare but a form that is regulated by rules that frown on the use of violence to determine the winners. Another rule is that the losers are supposed to accept the winners who gain the most votes. In civil wars, winners either must vanquish their opponents or reach some negotiated settlement in the case of stalemates that can be revisited when opportunities arise to try again. Accordingly, we need an elite structure component for our model that differentiates between unified and divided elite structures. If nothing else, patrons are likely to be more vulnerable in divided elite structures than in unified elite structures. Finally, other groups located outside the political system may prefer a different kind of outcome than the one that seems to be developing. This is why we definitely need to add an external component to the Hale model. External actors who care who might replace the incumbent lead patron can act to tilt the outcome in their own favor. They might want the incumbent to stay in place. Better the devil you know than one you know nothing about. Or they might want to hasten his or her departure. Then again, they might want to prevent known rivals from taking the place at the head of the domestic power pyramid. We need to stress that foreign intervention can either intensify the original shock or work to counter the effect of the shock(s) already experienced. Figure 2 demonstrates how we think these components interact with one another. A shock highlights patronal vulnerabilities. Patronal vulnerabilities can include age and succession expectations, but they are also influenced by elite fragmentation/unification. Shocks also encourage public uprisings which we identify as major popular protests with the avowed intention of calling for a change in political leadership. Public uprisings are more likely when patronal vulnerabilities exist or at least are perceived to exist. However, we do not see patronal vulnerabilities as being necessary for the outbreak of public grievances in the forms and magnitudes observed in the MENA uprisings. Exactly what protesters are unhappy about is omitted from the figure although the goal of removing the supreme patron is present by definition. The position of the coercive apparatus is critical. Popular uprisings may appear to cause regime change, but the effect of a popular uprising is filtered by the stance of the state’s coercive apparatus. Popular uprisings can be suppressed by state coercion in most instances. The military and/or police can choose to remain neutral, or they can fragment with some coercive groups siding with the incumbent regime while other groups defect to the side of the popular uprising. Ordinarily, the stance of the coercive apparatus would largely determine the political outcome, but external intervention can occur. The intervention can defend or attack the incumbent regime—or do both

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I. Mansour and W. R. Thompson Elite Unity vs. Fragmentation External Intervention

Patronal Vulnerability Coercive Apparatus Stance

Shock

Political Outcome

Popular Uprising

Fig. 2 The Thompson-Mansour patronal vulnerability—external intervention model

if more than one external actor intervenes. External intervention need not determine the political outcome, but it is likely to have a disproportionate effect on the political outcome, depending of course on the magnitude of the intervention(s).

5 Testing the Thompson-Mansour Model Our model reduces reality to viewing shocks of the Weyland (2019) variety discussed earlier impacting patronal vulnerability (age, succession questions, unpopularity, length of rule) and mass political protest with special attention to “public uprisings” or large scale and protracted protests demanding changes in governmental leadership. We might also add minority regimes to the list of patronal vulnerability issues. In societies where people hold religious commitments (that more often than not are exclusionary of others) and use them to organize interests and their pursuit, a religious minority governing over a majority other becomes a source of antagonism, and regimes might find it difficult to count on popular support when pressed. Patronal vulnerability is negatively related to how unified the elite structure is—divided structures increase patronal vulnerability. Elite structure is also linked to popular uprising with divided elites likely to be reflected in who joins the mass protests. The stance of the coercive apparatus is linked to patronal vulnerability, popular uprising, and elite structure. The basic question is whether the coercive apparatus (military and police) side with the incumbent regime, remain neutral, or side with the uprising. If the apparatus sides with the regime, the chief patron is less endangered. If it sides with the uprising, or substantial segments of the coercive apparatus defect, the chief patron is more endangered. Finally, external intervention can also side with the incumbent regime or against it. Depending on how strong the intervention is, the outcome may be different than it might have been in the absence of intervention.

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Table 3 Applying the Thompson-Mansour model to the Arab Uprisings phenomena States

Algeria

Variables

Outcome

Popular uprising

Patronal vulnerability

Divided elite

Coercive apparatus intervention

External intervention

Demos

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Bahrain

YES

NO

YES

NO

YES

SUPPRESSION

Egypt

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

LEADERSHIP CHANGE

Iraq

Demos

NO

YES

NO

NO

LIMITED CHANGE

Jordan

Demos

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Kuwait

Demos

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Lebanon

Demos

NO

YES

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Libya

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

CIVIL WAR

Morocco

Demos

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Oman

Demos

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Qatar

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Saudi Arabia

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Sudan

Demos

NO

YES

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Syria

YES

MO

YES

NO

YES

CIVIL WAR

Tunisia

YES

YES?

YES

YES

NO

LEADERSHIP CHANGE

UAE

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO

NO CHANGE

Yemen

YES

YES

YES

YES

YES

CIVIL WAR

Note The “demos” entry indicates that street demonstrations occurred in response to deteriorating economic and/or security conditions and people’s overall livelihoods but stopped short of attaining the status of massive protests calling for a change in leadership

An N of 17 cases does not lend itself to very sophisticated statistical analysis.17 Here, we ask instead a series of questions with binary answers (Yes/No). Is there evidence of (1) patronal vulnerability, (2) popular uprising, (3) divided elite structure, (4) coercive apparatus intervention, and (5) external intervention? This approach is admittedly crude. Fortunately, the answers reveal a straightforward pattern. Table 3 summarizes our coding of the answers to the five questions. Table 4 reports the pattern revealed by the answers. If all five questions in Table 3 generated positive responses, the outcome was civil war in Libya and Yemen. Four positive responses, as long as one of them 17

Since the focus is on the MENA region, we might have added Iran, Turkey, and Israel to the N size but it seems simpler to restrict an analysis of the Arab Uprisings to Arab states. There seems to have been some Arab Uprisings impact in Iran but not in Turkey.

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Table 4 Summary of Table 3 results Number of cases

Number of YES

Outcome

States

2

5

Civil War

Libya, Yemen

2

4

Leadership Change

Egypt, Tunisia

2

3

Suppression/Civil War

Bahrain, Syria

0

2

None

2

1

Limited or No Change

Iraq, Sudan, Lebanon

8

0

No Change

Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE

was coercive apparatus intervention, led to leadership change in Egypt and Tunisia. Three positive responses involved external intervention. In both cases, the external intervention facilitated the prevention of leadership change (Bahrain and Syria). But in one of these cases, multiple actors intervened in the ensuing and protracted civil war. Anything less than three responses led to no change in leadership or regime which characterized the outcome in 10 cases. Iraq presented us with a different dynamic, which we see as limited change. Around 2011, the political elites had largely been on the scene from prior to 2003 and had agreed prior to 2003 to work together. After the American invasion, when most came back from exile, and with American assistance, they set up the interim governing council which also reflected division of privileges. However, fissures started appearing with the rise of the Islamic State and especially in the form of negative reactions by the coalition to the policies of Nouri Al-Maliki, including even his old ally Muqtada Sadr who reneged on his support with objections to how state institutions were run and especially how force was used against society. The full effects of the process of elite structure change in Iraq were to unfold after 2018. So far, we have been treating these Arab Uprisings events as independent phenomena. But, clearly, they are not—why else would we lump them together as Arab Uprisings events? They represent a cascade of rebellions against authoritarian governments in which the early event encourages the subsequent events in terms of demonstration effects: if X can do this, why can’t we? Fig. 3 emphasizes the close timing of the 2011 events despite omitting cases that did not lead to rebellion. That is, the cascade is more complex than shown—only the highlights are recorded in the figure. Given their interdependence, it is necessary to supplement the model sketched in Fig. 2 with some causal credit going to what might be called a contagion of protest disorders. Hale (2013: 345) offers a useful theory that is already related to the model displayed in Fig. 2. …..regime change cascades among nondemocratic countries are most likely to occur when expectations emerge in a set of countries that the existing leadership is on its way out (becoming lame ducks); when this leadership is unpopular; when elites tend to lack other focal points around which to coordinate defection from the regime or bet-hedging; when a common frame of reference exists among masses and elites, making events in another

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Tunisia Jan 14 Egypt Jan 25 Yemen Jan 27 Bahrain Feb 4 Libya Feb 15 Syria Mar 15 Fig. 3 Part of the 2011 Arab Uprisings cascade: beginning dates for political uprisings

country seem relevant to events in one’s own country; and when key conditions supporting the old regime type have fundamentally changed.

What this theory does is connect the cascading element to the patrimonial expectation dynamic introduced earlier. Where there is reason to believe the incumbent regime might not persist due to age, unpopularity, and succession considerations such as sons inheriting their father’s political power represents a good candidate for joining the cascade once in progress. The main connector is the common frame of reference in the sense that populations identify with the event occurring elsewhere as applicable to their own country’s problems. In the Arab world that is not a difficult case to make. It is, after all, one of the most prominent regional communities and an area in which pan-Arab sentiments have waxed and waned.

6 Foreign Policy Changes The first wave of MENA Uprisings, on which we focus here, changed government leaders and governments. These shocks had direct and indirect effects on MENA foreign policies. Some of the changes were transitory. For instance, replacing Mubarak with Morsi altered Egypt’s stance vis-à-vis Iran briefly before al-Sisi restored Egyptian antagonism toward Iran. A less transitory but no doubt less than eternal change has been manifested in the main MENA foreign policy coalitions. Before 2011, there were two main coalitions. One revolved around Iran and included Syria and groups like Hezbollah. The opposing coalition was led by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE among others. These two coalitions have persisted since 2011. A third coalition emerged in part as a reaction to the rise and fall of the Morsi regime in Egypt. Both Turkey and

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Qatar had supported Morsi and were not pleased with his overthrow in 2013 by a military coup that was less sympathetic to Islamic politicians. Turkey became more active in MENA politics after Morsi and aligned with Qatar, most noticeably in the 2017 tensions between the anti-Iranian coalition and Qatar which, in turn, had been related to Arab Uprisings and immediate post-Arab Uprisings developments. Whether Turkey and Qatar will remain a third coalition rail in MENA remains to be seen. Meanwhile Israel appears to be joining a coalition opposing Iran, but even that could prove illusory. A dozen new interstate rivalries emerged that can be linked to the Arab Uprisings (Thompson et al., 2022), almost doubling the number of rivalries in the region.18 Numerically, they dominate (71%) the 17 new rivalries initiated since 2010 around the world. Half of them are interventionary rivalries in which nearby states intervene in the politics of nearby states in order to push domestic politics in a more favorable direction than might otherwise have been the case. Qatar and the UAE briefly intervened in in the first Libyan civil war, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey intervened in the Syrian civil war, and Iran, Saudi Arabia and the UAE intervened in the Yemeni civil war. Another three are linked to the near war involving an attack on Qatar in 2017. Saudi Arabia’s asymmetric rivalry with Qatar began years before 2017 but in 2017, Egypt and the UAE initiated rivalries with Qatar. Bahrain renewed a once settled rivalry with Qatar as well. The last two rivalries are positional rivalries— Iran and Turkey and Saudi Arabia and Turkey. These rivalries are about hierarchical jostling among the stronger states in the region. Three states, on the one hand, were knocked out of MENA international relations by civil wars (Libya, Syria, and Yemen) for at least a decade. The Libyan and Yemeni civil wars persist, despite interim agreements that seem to momentarily hold. Syria’s pre-2011 government, although not yet in full control of its former territory, appears to be in the process of re-integrating itself into MENA politics.19 Internal wars became zones with multiple actors from within and outside the region piling on as they attempted to influence the outcomes of the now internationalized domestic wars. Internationalized civil wars seemed to have replaced the more traditional interstate war in MENA. Gulf and Mashriq foreign policies became more intertwined as a consequence. Gulf states intervened in Syria; Iran and Hezbollah intervened in Yemen. Gulf and Turkish interventions in Libya probably pulled Maghreb foreign policies towards eastern Mediterranean and Gulf concerns as well. Finally, Russian intervention in Syria has managed to revive Russian activity in MENA. American interest in MENA has waned, especially given rising concerns in East Asia and the emerging Chinese challenge, but, so far, the United States has yet to develop a formula for withdrawing from the region. The odds are that that prospect will not change as

18

The other 11 rivalries consist of 4 rivalries involving opposition to Iran, 3 older ones linked to Arab–Israeli conflict, and 4 rivalries encompassing antagonisms between adjacent states of the Algerian-Morocco type. 19 In 2022 President Al-Asaad made a state visit to another Arab state (the UAE) for the first time in 10 years.

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long as petroleum remains indispensable to the functioning of the world economy. Elite structures domestically were intricately tied to region-wide interventions. Interventions in uprisings in the first wave largely came from within the MENA. Political elites found in regional uprisings opportunities to pursue myriad goals (e.g., to demonstrate ideological commitments), intensity (e.g., sums of money and hardware) and form (e.g., media campaigns or financing of militant groups and, more prevalently, supporting networks of personal, family or religious/sectarian alliances). Rather than open militarized hostilities or overt intervention, the region saw a proliferation of competitive foreign policies and rivalries. Such foreign policies have since 2011 sustained the region’s historic instability. Many of the interventions were led by governments whose societies did not witness popular uprisings or had minor street perturbations (by our evaluation in Table 3). For a period of around three years after 2011, political elites (mostly in ruling governments) with aspirations for external intervention perceived that they were, and effectively largely were, unencumbered by domestic political obligations. Hence, they shifted state resources and attention towards the foreign policy practices noted above, especially igniting rivalries. However, by 2014 the increasing costs of interventions and demands in societies of intervening elites pushed for receding interventionism. The economic slowdown around 2013–2014 had a role to play in retreating interventions. Political elites had to contend with pressures on their budgets and thus their promised domestic spending and delivery of services. The outcome was redirecting resources to the national front and away from regional intervention. Interestingly, by 2010, most MENA governments had already set in motions developmental blueprints (or vision), which they presented in a frame of urgency. Hence, while political elites in many regional states had their hands liberated momentarily to intervene elsewhere, the pressures for domestic reform that had been weighing heavily for decades, made external adventurism to be short-lived. Political elites in intervening states had imagined their interventions to carry deeper impacts if they got their bets right in the ongoing political transitions. Initially, the shocks of street revolts did promise large payoffs to external interveners. However, by 2014, interventions were not yielding projected outcomes and consequently were rolled back. In some cases, such as with Qatar and Saudi Arabia, the realizations of such foreign policy miscalculations event influenced the distribution of elites. Retreat took on many forms. Qatar retreated from the Syrian and Maghrebi spheres, Saudi Arabia retreated from the Syrian zone, the United Arab Emirates distanced itself from Libya, and Tunisia’s Ennahda ended its professed support for political Islam and the Muslim Brotherhood regionally. The cases above are interesting since Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have a united political elite structure, and Tunisia does not. Qatar and Saudi Arabia even witnessed a transition within the ruling family to individuals with relatively much less interest in championing the form of external interventionism; it is often noted that such generational transitions were galvanized greatly by the outcome of the “old guard” regional adventurism. This change in foreign policy, as is the case here towards retreat, then, was not simply about loss of resources. The change was about political elites being increasingly

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pressured by their own societies to pay closer attention to domestic politics than championing external adventures. Another form of a retreat was loss of appetite for expansive regional foreign policies by societies in the throes of a transition; this was particularly the case of Tunisia. Ennahda, having been elected in a transitioning political process, was empowered to pursue a newly-found activism in support of Islamic causes, such as in Egypt and in Syria, but also more discursively in a broad sense. A couple of years after its ideologically activist foreign policy, Maghrebi states whose sitting governments were struggling with political Islam and with various societal actors themselves expressing displeasure of the rise in what they saw as radicalism, placed significant pressure on Ennahda to revert to its non-interventionist foreign policy that it had adopted since at least 1970. Simultaneously, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt was not enthused about being lectured on political Islam from Ennahda and was not receptive to outbidding and moralizing discourses when it had to deal with a much lesser confined political space than that present in Tunisia for political action. Eventually, voices from within Ennahda advised for a change of course in foreign policy to spend energies on the domestic transition. The realization that bringing about change in ruling elite structures of others states, as well as Tunisia’s own, was perhaps a more powerful driver to this change in internal mindsets.

7 In Lieu of Concluding: Political Elites and More Waves of Uprisings Around 2018, we observe another wave of societal uprisings particularly in Lebanon, Iraq, and Algeria. These societies had seen variants of protests prior to 2018 but exhibited pronounced street-level mobilization as well as distinct forms of intraelite contestation and accord. We believe that what has been going on since 2018 in Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria and others, can be understood through our model. For example, Lebanon’s protests continue with varied intensities since 2018, in a country with a historically divided political elite. Elite behavior, however, mattered more. Around 2018 mounting societal protests by largely un-affiliated citizens and civil society actors demanding mainly reform and a structural response to deterioration in livelihood threatened the position of this elite. In the face of social contestation, the political elite united to suppress any risk to their collective positions and was able to effectively diffuse any demands for it being held accountable to socioeconomic collapse. Unity among Lebanon’s elites to weather societal contestation allowed them to direct external intervention, by the United States, France and Iran alike, to maintain the stability of the political system. Not all regional elites are as blasé about, or immune from, societal pressure as Lebanon, however. Hence, our expectation is for a broad continuation of the decline in intervention to cater to domestic demands. Such a dynamic is likely to have a positive impact in alleviating security concerns in turbulent societies and will help

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processes of regime consolidation for states in transition or in a state of war. However, it is very likely that because governments also show little interest in collaboration, the dynamics above will sustain the reality of weak—or non-existent—intra-MENA collectively-created or sustained security architectures (at least on the short-term). Therefore, given the negative baggage in MENA international relations, and the fact that the 2010–2011 revolts did not—and could not—wipe the (proverbial) slate clean given elite politics which we explained, we expect MENA foreign policies to continue to operate in an environment of mistrust. With weak or fractured national and regional security institutions, costs of monitoring and securing borders from mercenaries, ideologically inclined fighters, or from non-militarized displaced migrants are bound to increase. Shocks, in this context, are critical to the possibility of change. In their absence and other things being equal, change is improbable. However, shocks can be trumped by societal structures that work to cancel out or reduce the probability of changes or change that endures. This generalization holds for both domestic politics and foreign policy. It is one thing to remove personnel from political office, even very important personnel. It is quite another to reform elite structures.

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Chinese Strategic Thinking and the Idea of Shocks: Old Literature, New Application? Steve Chan

Abstract Political shocks to foreign policy and interstate relations are a frequent but understudied phenomenon in the international relations literature. Although scholars often invoke this concept, they do not usually offer a clear and thorough analysis of it. This chapter seeks to make two contributions to this important topic. First, it reflects on some pertinent and often overlooked aspects of political shocks. As Gordell and Volgy (Political shocks in foreign policy and international politics. Canadian Foreign Policy Journal: https://doi.org/10.1080/11926422.2021.201 3911) remind their readers, one cannot assume that any given shock will have the same impact on all actors. I expand on this caveat to argue that one also cannot take for granted that all actors will perceive a particular disturbance or shock in the same way or that they are equally capable of coping with it. Moreover, this disturbance or shock does not “come out of the blue.” Even though, by definition, a shock is a surprise unanticipated by some actors, its source can also be traced to the conscious action undertaken by some others (think of the 9/11 terrorist attack, for example). Thus, a comprehensive understanding of shocks needs to include studies of how these disturbances may be deliberately introduced as part of the policy toolkit of some actors, and not to be taken necessarily as a “given” or an act of nature. Second, I discuss Chinese strategic culture in this context, suggesting that what is or is not a shock is endogenous to the actor in question. Sometimes, an actor may not perceive or even be aware of the occurrence of a shock or the implications of this occurrence. It may not appear to be a shock to it at all, or at least not in the same way that it is to some other actors. Keywords Political shocks · Surprise element · Chinese strategic culture

S. Chan (B) University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_10

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1 Introduction As Gordell and Volgy (2022) have observed, political shocks to foreign policy and interstate relations are a frequent but understudied phenomenon in the international relations literature. Although scholars often invoke this concept, they do not usually offer a clear and thorough analysis of it. This chapter seeks to make two contributions to this important topic. First, it reflects on some pertinent and often overlooked aspects of political shocks. As Gordell and Volgy (2022) remind their readers, one cannot assume that any given shock will have the same impact on all actors. I expand on this caveat to argue that one also cannot take for granted that all actors will perceive a particular disturbance or shock in the same way or that they are equally capable of coping with it. Moreover, this disturbance or shock does not “come out of the blue.” Even though, by definition, a shock is a surprise unanticipated by some actors, its source can also be traced to the conscious action undertaken by some others (think of the 9/11 terrorist attack, for example). Thus, a comprehensive understanding of shocks needs to include studies of how these disturbances may be deliberately introduced as part of the policy toolkit of some actors, and not to be taken necessarily as a “given” or an act of nature. Finally, it behooves us to think more carefully about whether an ostensible shock observed by us is really the cause responsible for the subsequent effects we attribute to it, or whether it is only the trigger or precipitant that sets off an ongoing and more basic process that has been unfolding for some time, albeit perhaps unnoticed. The assassination of the archduke of Austria-Hungary might have been a shock to the European system of interstate relations, but it was not the basic cause responsible for the outbreak of World War I—whose origin was instead located in such processes as the bifurcation of alliances, the intensification of arms races, and the shifting power balance. From this perspective, Sarajevo was just a streetcar—other catalysts (which can often be a recurrent phenomenon like the arrival of streetcars) could have also set in motion the rush to war, if not in 1914, then in some other year (Thompson, 2003). World War I was an accident waiting to happen. Evolutionary biology introduces the idea of punctuated equilibrium to suggest that there can be a long process of incremental gestation and seeming stasis to be followed by a sudden, rapid outburst of major change in speciation. Second, I discuss Chinese strategic culture in the context of the previous remarks. These remarks suggest that what is or is not a shock is endogenous to the actor in question. Sometimes, an actor may not perceive or even be aware of the occurrence of a shock or the implications of this occurrence. It may not appear to be a shock to it at all, or at least not in the same way that it is to some other actors. For instance, whereas the “oil shock” of the 1970s might have introduced a severe jolt to the U.S. economy, it would not and did not have the same effect on oil-producing countries such as Canada, Mexico, or the members states of OPEC (the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting countries).

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A shock is sometimes what an actor decides to make of it. The Rwanda genocide was not a shock to the Washington establishment in the sense that it sought to deliberately minimize what was happening, even to the point of banning State Department officials from using the “g-word” (to avoid any pressure for the U.S. to intervene) and encouraging the evacuation of foreign observers and peacekeepers from Kigali (Power, 2001). Washington also initially downplayed the ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia until Western media publicized the atrocities being committed in Bosnia and later, in Kosovo. As a third example, both the Trump and Biden administrations were vocal in condemning Beijing’s treatment of its Uighur citizens in Xinjiang, calling it a genocide even though some have questioned the use of this terminology (Bostock, 2021; Economist, 2021; Etzioni, 2021). Thus, as Thompson has put it on another occasion, there is the danger of mixing apples, oranges, and pineapples. We cannot assume that same objective event, such as the 2008–2009 financial crisis precipitated by the U.S. housing bubble, would have the same effect on all financial institutions. It did not. In fact, this so-called shock strengthened rather than weakened the centrality of U.S. banks in global financial networks at the expense of banks belonging to other countries (Oatley et al., 2013; Winecoff, 2015). This phenomenon also speaks to the fact that not all actors are equally prepared for or capable of managing political shocks. Some actors may in fact be incapacitated by these shocks while others may be able to seize the opportunity presented by it, a possibility mentioned by both Gordell and Volgy (2022) and Goertz and Diehl (1995). Accordingly, analysts who are interested in studying political shocks should attend to both the relevant actors’ perceptions of unexpected developments and, moreover, their relative ability to cope with and even exploit these developments. Gordell and Volgy (2022) address the latter common shortcoming in much of the quantitative literature when they incorporate states’ different political capacities in their study, an important idea introduced by Arbetman and Kugler (1997)and Kugler and Tammen (2012). How well have different countries coped with the Covid-19 pandemic provides a dramatic example about the importance of political capacity. Medical facilities and personnel in the U.S. are among the best in the world, but this country has performed much less well than countries with a smaller resource base but a greater political capacity. Even though they represent only 4.2% of the world’s population, Americans account for 18.8% of all the infection cases and 15.8% of all the fatalities caused by this virus as of February 15, 2022 (https://www.google.com/search?channel=cus5& client=firefox-b-1-d&q=covid+cases+worldwide). Fukuyama (2020) suggests that three factors are responsible for this poor performance: leadership, social trust, and policy (or political) capacity. The discussion below proceeds as follows. It first reflects on the concept of shocks, seeking to build on and further explore those ideas presented by Gordell and Volgy (2022). It then turns to a discussion of Chinese strategic culture. Chinese discourse on strategic matters does not directly or explicitly address the idea of shocks. Nevertheless, one can draw some noteworthy implications from it, implications that are

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pertinent to the current volume’s focus on shocks and implications that are embedded in Chinese strategic thinking, reflecting both traditional thoughts and communist ideology.

2 The Idea of Shocks The idea of political shocks reminds me of the literature from an earlier era pertaining to the study of international crises, especially the conception of this phenomenon introduced by Hermann (1969). According to him, a crisis is a situation variable characterized by great surprise, short response time, and severe threat. Naturally, a shock is, by definition, something that is unexpected from the perspective of those on its receiving end (from the perspective of the actor who had initiated this shock, say the USSR when it tested its first atomic bomb or when it launched its sputnik satellite, this occurrence would of course not be unexpected). As Gordell and Volgy (2022) also note, a shock necessarily suggests some disruption to the routine or a departure from what is considered the “normal state” of affairs. Presumably, the extent of shock is a function of how much the pertinent event is unanticipated and how much it augurs a new pattern of relations. For instance, there was widespread warning and expectation in the West that Russia would launch an invasion against Ukraine. Once it occurred it may not have been a shock because Russia’s action was widely anticipated. If something is widely expected, can it still be called a shock if it occurs? Should an event’s sudden and unanticipated onset be part of the definition of a shock? This example raises further the question of the extent of actual or potential disruption caused by the disturbance introduced by the alleged shock. Washington and its allies have warned Moscow that should it attack Ukraine, there would be severe consequences, presumably consequences that introduce a basic alteration in these states’ relations. But should we define a shock in terms of the magnitude of these consequences? As just mentioned, Hermann (1969) defines a crisis in part according to the severity of its threat as perceived by the pertinent actor. It is of course an empirical question whether and to what extent the U.S. and its allies see a possible Russian attack on Ukraine to be highly threatening. After all, none of these countries have suggested that they will intervene militarily on Ukraine’s behalf to resist a Russian invasion. Thus, a shock may not necessarily entail a perception of great threat. In fact, as Gordell and Volgy (2022) and Goertz and Diehl (1995) have mentioned, its occurrence can present an opportunity for some actors. For instance, a Russian invasion of Ukraine may divert U.S and Western hostility from Beijing and create greater Russian dependency on China’s assistance. This remark again emphasizes that a shock does not necessarily have to mean negative consequences for all actors. This connotation, reflecting the thinking that a shock is disruptive, does not necessarily hold for all concerned parties. It reflects a bias favoring the status quo, which of course is more advantageous to some than others. Mao Tse-tung had famously

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averred that chaos and disorder under the heaven is a good thing, offering propitious circumstances for revolutionaries. This discussion suggests that the study of shocks is hampered by its very nature as an unexpected event or episode with a sudden onset from the perspective of those impacted by it. This means that such study is prone to post hoc interpretation and hindsight bias. In other words, the study of shocks takes place only after their occurrence as there is little attention in the current literature to discussing how actors may take steps to anticipate or prepare for shocks. The tendency is therefore for analysts to show retrospectively that a shock has happened and to assign conditions observed subsequently to its impact. But how can analysts be sure that the relevant officials in fact recognize and perceive a shock as they allege? Can they take for granted that what they call a shock is seen as such by these officials? The study of shocks seems to me is foremost a matter of perception on the part of the concerned party. There is no reason to assume that officials in different countries will reach the same conclusions about the alleged shock or that their perceptions will correspond with those of analysts. There is usually little concern in the extant literature to address the danger of spurious causal attribution such as those that Campbell and Ross (1968) have reminded us in discussing their famous quasi-experimental study on the Connecticut speed crackdown. How do we know it is the alleged shock rather than some other concurrent event or process that is responsible for the conditions prevailing after the shock? As already mentioned, it is not always clear whether the alleged shock is just a precipitant or trigger for some more basic process responsible for the observed post-shock state of affairs or, in other words, whether the alleged shock serves as the equivalent of deus ex machina in scholarship. It is also possible that a perceived shock is only the culmination of a long process, representing the final climax of this process. It is therefore a symptom or manifestation that this process has reached a high point rather than a cause in and of itself. For instance, the 2008–2009 financial crisis caused by the U.S. housing bubble reveals the climax of prolonged and rampant housing speculation. Similarly, the USSR’s demise was the culmination of many years of steady economic decline, mounting social dislocations and a crushing defense burden, and its occurrence would not have come as a complete surprise to those who were attuned to these processes. Moreover, analysts typically adopt an ethnocentric or at least a self-centered perspective. As most analysts and commentators are Americans, their analyses assume that what is a shock for the U.S. is also a shock for others and, alternatively, what is not seen as a shock by the U.S. is perceived similarly by others. One cannot judge a shock by the magnitude of its observed consequences. To the extent that the disruption introduced by a shock can impinge on an actor’s interests and agenda, one of the key questions for researchers is how well this actor can manage the shock. How susceptible is this actor to a shock? Keohane and Nye (1977) introduce the ideas of sensitivity and vulnerability to show the extent to which an actor is exposed to the actions of others and the extent to which it can cope with the possible adverse consequences of these actions. This last remark returns us to the concept of political capacity. An actor with this capacity and acumen can effectively cope

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with the disturbance introduced by a shock, mitigating its negative effects. Thus, the magnitude of a shock’s aftermath does not necessarily indicate its severity (or threat) but may in fact indicate an actor’s capacity and acumen. Again, to repeat, the study of shocks is after all also concerned about how well different actors are positioned to manage them. Successful mitigation efforts reduce a shock’s negative consequences. As a hypothetical example, if Moscow manages to avoid the direst consequences of Western economic sanctions retaliating against its (possible) invasion of Ukraine, should we say that these sanctions do not represent a shock to the Russian economy? An analyst cannot retrospectively rely on the observed magnitude of a shock’s effects to judge the nature or severity of the shock itself. Hermann’s (1969) third characteristic of a crisis refers to a short response time, suggesting that decision-makers are under time pressure to do something in this situation lest it worsens further. To the extent that the idea of a shock suggests some sense of urgency, it indicates the need for immediate policy attention and response. Thus, a shock usually entails a short response time—at least for those who are most impacted by its occurrence. This remark does not necessarily apply to all actors, some of whom would prefer to see the effects of a shock unfold and take hold rather than undertaking actions to forestall them. Think of the member states of OPEC after some of them boycotted the sale of fossil fuels to the U.S. and the Netherlands in 1973–1974 and others agreed to hike the price of their energy exports. Finally, there is the question of whether a shock comes from an exogenous or endogenous source. The current literature typically assumes that it is an occurrence happening external to the relevant system, entity, or actor. Its sudden onset and disruptive nature suggest something that threatens the system or entity’s stability or integrity, or an actor’s ability to maintain control. But clearly, a shock can be introduced intentionally by an actor itself, such as when a government undertakes “shock therapy” by initiating drastic changes to reorient its economy. One can easily imagine other circumstances of deliberate shock such as when medical intervention seeks to restore normal heart rhythm. There is even the possibility that actors may deliberately undertake foreign policies to “shock” their competitors or adversaries. A surprise attack, Nazi Germany’s Blitzkrieg, and the U.S. air campaign of “shock and awe” against Iraq come to mind as examples. In other words, the agenda for studying shocks should not just attend to the possible effects of shocks on actors. It needs to include how effectively actors can manage shocks and more directly related to this discussion, how actors can consciously plan for and deliberately undertake actions to administer “shocks” to others. That is, actors can proactively deploy “shock” as part of their strategy. “Shock” can be part of their policy toolkit to alter stasis or challenge the existing state of affairs. Some analysts, for example, have described Anwar Sadat’s initiation of the Yom Kippur War in this way, suggesting his intention to use this war to challenge Western complacency and to force Israel to confront the urgency of Egypt’s demands. Richard Nixon’s announcement on one August morning that the U.S. dollar was no longer pegged to the gold also had this effect, an effect tantamount to confiscating or at least depreciating significantly the assets held for foreign holders of the dollar. His announcement that he would travel to

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Beijing in 1972 to meet Mao Tse-tung, America’s communist nemesis, had a similar shocking effect as this decision was also undertaken without any consultation with allies.

3 The Nature of Strategic Culture I have enumerated quite a few issues that await those analysts interested in studying shocks to take up in their research. I acknowledge that these are daunting challenges, and I do not have any magical answer to resolving them. This section turns to a discussion of Chinese strategic culture. Although discourse among members of the Chinese strategic elite do not directly or explicitly discuss the topic of political shocks (at least not to my knowledge in a systematic and analytic manner), its maxims and enjoinders offer some implications for how they are disposed to consider it. How Chinese officials prepare for shocks and react to them are inseparable from the strategic culture in which their thinking is embedded, even though the relevant implications are not always clearcut or straight-forward. Nor, I should add, do all members of the Chinese officialdom or the Chinese scholarly community necessarily subscribe to the same tenets. The Chinese elite is not a monolith. Moreover, as in other longstanding and complex cultural traditions, there are tensions and even contradictions in various aphorisms, a valuable quality that confers suppleness, flexibility, and therefore adaptability to cope with evolving circumstances over time. Finally, the proclivities I describe below for Chinese strategic thinking are not necessarily exceptional or unique to China, but they are in many ways distinct from the ways in which Americans tend to think about the relevant issues. Their differences are often a matter of relative emphasis given by each strategic culture to certain topics rather than strict dichotomies. What is a strategic culture? I take it to reflect a people’s collective memories of their shared experience, with prescriptive suggestions about how best to analyze and cope with interstate relations (for helpful reviews, see Gray, 1999; Johnston, 1995a, 1995b). Strategic culture presents basic beliefs or injunctions about the management of national security that are foundational and enduring. These elements should pertain to a large range of issues and should also be resilient across time. Naturally, they offer basic axioms that are widely subscribed by members of the same community. Finally, they should display some distinctiveness that sets them apart from other strategic cultures. None of these remarks, as already mentioned, should be construed to suggest that these beliefs are static (they can evolve and adapt), homogeneous or straightforward (they can be subtle, supple, versatile, and even seemingly contradictory), or monolithic (internalized by all members of the supposed community to the same degree). Moreover, different national strategic cultures can converge and overlap without necessarily losing important distinctions in perspective or emphasis. Research on strategic culture has a natural affinity to and indeed can trace its origin to earlier work on the belief systems or operational codes of decision elites, such as shown in the pioneering scholarship by Leites (1953) and George (1959, 1969) on

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Nazi and Soviet officials. These scholars were followed by other analysts such as Holsti (1962, 1970) and more recently, Shafer and Walker (2021). Bobrow (1969, see also Bobrow et al., 1979) was the first one to engage in similar systematic work on Chinese leaders. In subsequent years, Johnston (1995a, 1995b) and Feng (2007) have shed additional light on the China’s strategic culture by exploring its ancient texts, its Marxist doctrines, and its more recent conduct and pronouncements. Much has already been written about the more salient and prominent aspects of Chinese strategic thinking, such as its professed emphasis on benevolence, rectitude and harmony in conducting foreign relations, its strong proclivity to view these relations hierarchically with the Chinese emperor at its apex, its focus on the deployment of stratagem and surprise rather than raw military power to prevail in adversarial contests, and its disposition to feign weakness, bide time and rely on self-effort when in a disadvantageous position. Chinese statecraft tends to be opportunistic and while following the Confucian precepts that a resort to arms is inauspicious and indeed ultimately ineffective, it does not shy away from the use of military force when considered necessary. This use of force, however, does not necessarily indicate an offensive motivation or an expansionist agenda; it can in fact reflect an acute sense of vulnerability and an effort to arrest or reverse an unfavorable trend (domestic or foreign)—that is, to prevent a worse situation from happening if China should fail to act (Christensen, 2006). In managing adversarial relations and especially when facing a stronger opponent, Chinese emphasis goes to dissipating an enemy’s energy, distracting its attention, encouraging its complacency, abetting its arrogance, and attacking its weak links. Rather than seeking to defeat the enemy’s forces, priority is given to weakening its will. Key elements of this strategic tradition are captured by Sun Tzu’s much publicized remark that “attaining one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the highest achievement; subjugating the enemy without having to fight is the true pinnacle of excellence” (Sawyer, 1994). Moreover, “the highest realization of warfare is to attack the enemy’s plans, the next is to attack its alliances, the next is to attack its army, and the lowest is to attack its fortifications.” This advice captures the essence of Chinese strategic thinking which views adversarial relations less as contests of raw material capabilities (as much of the Western literature, especially of the realist genre, tends to portray) and more as a protracted series of chess matches involving skills, planning and strategies. In the conduct of diplomacy and military campaigns, especially when one finds oneself in an asymmetric contest (in terms of raw material capabilities), one must attend to and leverage to the maximum extent those intangible factors such as leadership, morale, perseverance, deception, timing, climate, and terrain. All these attributions reflect “stylized facts” or “common knowledge” among scholars who specialize in studying China. I will therefore not spend more time and space to go over this familiar ground. I will instead present several other ideas that tend to separate prevailing Western, especially U.S., thinking from Chinese proclivities. These proclivities represent the central tendencies of Chinese strategic thinking, and they have been documented previously in Bobrow (1969) and Bobrow et al. (1979). Naturally, when making this presentation, I am not claiming that these two traditions or perspectives are mutually exclusive (as the reader will see shortly),

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nor am I arguing that elements of Chinese proclivities cannot be found in Western discourse or vice versa. Rather, my intent is to point to some parts of Chinese strategic thinking that are perhaps under-recognized and under-appreciated in the West. After presenting these general tendencies, I will return to the question of “so what” in this paper’s concluding section, teasing out some implications of these tendencies for Chinese views on and likely reactions to and even active deployment of political shocks. My first idea pertains to Chinese and Western views on change and, more specifically, what I call the acceleration model and the self-exhausting model of change (Chan, 2008). The basic notion behind the acceleration model is that a particular change will beget further change of the same kind. This model therefore emphasizes momentum and an accumulation of effects, such as in the form of rising waves of democratization, falling dominoes to communism, bandwagoning by minor states to join a rising power, contagion of coups, and the spread of terrorist groups across borders. The injunction against appeasing an adversary reflects the concern expressed by this acceleration model, namely, concessions made to this adversary today will embolden it and others to demand further concessions tomorrow and that these concessions will have the effect of strengthening this adversary’s ability to engage in further mischief. The self-exhaustion model argues in contrast that deceleration and diminishing returns will naturally set in, so that, for example, a high rate of economic growth will inevitably slow down. In the relevant U.S. literature, the suggestion of imperial overstretch (Kennedy, 1987) and the idea of loss-of-strength gradient (Boulding, 1962) exemplify this reasoning (the extent to which these propositions have informed U.S. policies, however, is subject to debate). As another example, one may suggest that the aggressive policies of a powerful country will eventually alienate and alarm others and cause them to mobilize a countervailing coalition to oppose it. When this aggressor state undertakes concurrent or repeated campaigns in many places and against many opponents, its actions would cause self-exhaustion and increase resistance by others (for examples, see Treisman’s, 2004 reference to the Spanish Habsburgs’ self-defeating policies and Schroeder’s, 1994 reference to Napoleon’s military campaigns against France’s neighbors). To the extent that such consideration is taken more seriously by Chinese officials than U.S. officials, it suggests that one need not become overly alarmed or be panicked into responding to ostensible unfavorable developments. There is less urgency to act quickly to stop a stampede and more merit to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. Instead of taking precipitous action, conservation of one’s energy and even passivity can be a virtue. These latter maxims are prominent features of Taoism, and they are more prevalent in Chinese thinking than U.S. thinking. A premium goes to avoiding impulsive behavior. A cyclical view that things will right themselves eventually or, to introduce a statistical analogy, a tendency for regression toward the mean to take effect over time help to relieve a sense of anxiety or an urge to act on the part of Chinese officials. Second and related to the above bimodality, there is the contrast between overt opposition and direct deterrence on the one hand, and passive resistance and indirect constraint on the other hand. The former ideas are of course salient in the doctrine

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of containment and continue to characterize the current U.S. military posture of “forward deployment” of its forces (rather than assuming the position of an “offshore balancer”). China presents a different defense posture that avoids taking on overseas military commitments or formal allies. Its military forces are configured to impede and harass a stronger U.S. These Chinese forces are not intended to defeat the U.S. on the battlefield but are rather designed to inflict what Beijing believes to be unacceptable costs to Washington. Their intended effects are more psychological and political than military. Moreover, and importantly, Chinese strategic thinkers decline to be goaded into a direct and frontal military confrontation with the U.S., such as getting into an arms race in which China will be at a distinct disadvantage (as attested by the USSR’s disastrous experience). Thus, strategic avoidance—refusing to engage the enemy on its terms, in its strong suits, or at a time most propitious to it—is a significant part of the Chinese strategic culture. The other face of this culture enjoins leaders to pick forums where the relatively weak party has an advantage, especially in those places and on those occasions where/when its counterpart’s existing rhetoric and posture can be used against it. For instance, Washington has traditionally preached the virtues of international interdependence and international organizations to the rest of world. Here are then two areas where the Chinese can turn the table on Americans. The aphorism 以子之矛 攻子之 盾 means literally to use the other actor’s spear to attack its own shield, suggesting that China should use words and deeds by the U.S. itself to turn the table on it. Thus, by embedding itself in extensive production chains, interlocking financial instruments, intense cross-border investments, and deep and dense commercial networks, China has made it difficult for the U.S. to single it out for retaliation and punishment without also hurting third parties, including its own domestic stakeholders. Domestic interest groups in the U.S. as well as U.S. traditional allies with strong commercial relations with China can be self-motivated to lobby and restrain Washington from undertaking hostile actions. In this way, Beijing turns on Washington the U.S. rationale for engaging China so that it can convert the Chinese people to adopt interests and even identities more congenial to the West. Parenthetically, that China is today deeply embedded in international trade and investment is an important distinction that sets it apart from the USSR’s situation during the Cold War. As for international organizations, the voting majority enjoyed by the developing countries again puts Beijing in a relatively favorable position in commanding the moral high ground. The U.S., especially during the Trump administration, has evidently become more disenchanted and alienated from various international organizations, including the United Nations. It has also withdrawn from many international accords (Chan et al., 2021). This phenomenon demonstrates the efficacy of those approaches favored by traditional Chinese statecraft seeking to entrap and constrain an established hegemon (in this case, by enmeshing the U.S. in webs of commercial ties and multilateral institutions) rather than to defeat it in some outright military sense. The appropriate analogy is provided by judo, not boxing. Following earlier studies, Paul (2018) has shown the ubiquity of “soft balancing” as a policy approach adopted by the weak to restrain the strong. As just noted, this approach

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stems primarily from a defensive motivation and is one usually adopted by weaker actors to tame a strong one. Parenthetically, policies that have the effect of abetting (rather than checking) an established hegemon’s ambitions and inflating its ego are part of this strategy. Siding with current Washington officials’ preferences and humoring their ambitions do not necessarily mean agreeing with long-term U.S. interests, because such policies (e.g., wars in Afghanistan and Iraq) can in fact have a deleterious effect on these interests in the long run. Moreover, U.S. overextension, distraction or ambition (e.g., war on terrorism, democratizing the Middle East) have the effect of relieving pressure on China and increasing the value of Beijing’s support (e.g., in stopping or reversing North Korea’ nuclear program). As Sun Tzu remarked, “If the enemy must prepare to defend many positions, then its forces facing us will be few.” Note that the various points raised here pertain to going along with rather than against the predisposition of the established hegemon. It is naturally easier to encourage such predisposition than to check it by mounting an outright opposition to it. This approach can be more effective against an overwhelmingly powerful hegemon than taking on this adversary in a direct confrontation. My third idea is related to the previous two. It has to do with patience, nursing one’s assets, hiding one’s capabilities, and avoiding becoming the target of an established hegemon’s “strategic headlight.” One critically missing part of the ongoing discourse on power-transition theory is germane here: the most dangerous period for China is when its rise causes grave concern and even alarm in the U.S. but when it is still much weaker than the U.S. This is the moment when the motivation for a declining but still stronger country to wage a preventive war is the strongest (Copeland, 2000; Levy, 1987, 2008). This context in turn explains the injunction to avoid impulsive behavior that would alarm the established hegemon. It cautions against excessive and thus unwarranted optimism that recent gains (e.g., in China’s economic expansion) can be expected to continue or even accelerate in the future. It also argues in favor of a strategy of “soft balancing,” that is, policies aimed at hampering and constraining the U.S. without getting into a direct confrontation or competition with it. A fourth noteworthy element in Chinese strategic thinking is its treatment of the long term and the short term, and the duality of pessimism and optimism in this thinking. As Bobrow (1969) has documented some time ago, Chinese communists are enjoined to be confident in the inevitability of their success in the long run, but they are also cautioned to be wary and cautious in the short run. They are warned that in the short run disappointments are inevitable, and that they should be psychologically prepared to encounter setbacks. But in the long run, they should have an unshakable conviction that their endeavors will be successful. This duality suggests the need to prepare for unfavorable contingencies but also optimism in being able to prevail in the end. Related to this duality is the idea that a crisis can simultaneously present a threat and an opportunity. Indeed, the Chinese word for crisis is in fact a combination of these two characters. Translated literally, it means dangerous opportunity. Therefore, in addition to warning possible setbacks, the belief system or operational code propagated by Beijing emphasizes the need to seize opportunities presented by major

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disruptions. For instance, the Japanese invasion of China gave the communists a popular cause to rally patriotism and to advocate that their domestic nemesis, the Nationalists, should cooperate with them in a joint effort to oppose the invaders. Note that this discussion suggests that the Chinese belief system calls attention to the importance of both structure and agency. While an actor should recognize structural realities (including the existing distribution of capabilities that presents impediments to realizing its mission in the immediate future, thus counseling patience), one must never overlook the importance of human will and effort. This combination thus cautions cadres to be realistic in their policy outlook and calculations, but also not to give up when facing daunting challenges because the human spirit will prevail in the end. Moreover, the current situation (such as the distribution of capabilities between China and its counterparts) is not inevitable. It is subject to change and dependent on one’s own effort mobilization. A fifth idea concerns how one can recognize a situation as a shock and draw the proper diagnosis from it. One important strain in Chinese communist thinking is to argue that one should carefully watch an enemy’s reaction. If this adversary reacts angrily or with alarm to a development, it portends that its occurrence is favorable to one’s cause. If the adversary reacts positively, it is an ominous sign. The Chinese communist belief system also argues that developments cannot be all positive or all negative. That is, there are always favorable and unfavorable aspects for any event or episode. The key point is to recognize this mixture, to draw useful lessons from it, and to be prepared for possible changes and even reversals. In an ancient and resilient culture such as China’s, there are bound to be many different, competing and even contradictory precepts. Whether some rather than other elements of strategic thinking become activated will depend on the circumstances that leaders find themselves in. Therefore, both structure and agency matter. This discussion should not be construed to imply passivity or even pacifism on China’s part. Beijing is quite capable of using force when provoked. Rather, the posture of avoiding a confrontation or showdown and the pursuit of soft balancing coexist with another tougher face, one that can be best described as “non-confrontational assertiveness.” It communicates a disposition to postpone disputes for resolution until a more favorable moment in the future, but at the same time signals a determination to push back if China’s interests are perceived to have been seriously violated. Moss (2012) describes this posture as “China doesn’t pick fights, but … if someone picks a fight with China it will offer a forceful response.” In this way we encounter another bimodality in Chinese strategic thinking and conduct. This duality is critical in encouraging diplomatic adaptation and lends resilience, flexibility and of course, complexity to Chinese statecraft. It has the effect of checking excesses caused by the pull of one or the other pole represented by a particular bimodality. This feature thus enjoins Chinese leaders to seek a balanced approach to formulating policies, and it presents to the outside world simultaneously a “soft” and a “hard” face of Chinese statecraft. Naturally, none of my preceding statements should be construed to somehow suggest that Chinese strategic thinking is prescient or infallible.

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4 Conclusion Although Chinese strategic thinking is not unique or exceptional, it tends to differ in some ways from typical Western and U.S. reasoning. For instance, and as emphasized above, there is a greater emphasis on bimodal thinking (or the coexistence of seemingly opposite injunctions) in Chinese strategic culture. The duality of optimism and pessimism and the enjoinder to be simultaneously both cautious and audacious, for example, are less prevalent or salient in Western and U.S. reasoning, which tends to be based on deductive logic that assigns things to mutually exclusive categories. This reasoning tends to manifest binary thinking. Another apparent difference in these strategic cultures pertains to the conception of history and developing trends. As suggested by the acceleration and self-exhaustion models of change, the Chinese way of thinking tends to be more circular whereas Western and U.S. views tend to be more linear, seeing history as progress (a good example would be Hegelian logic and Fukuyama’s 1989 treatise on the end of history). There is, moreover, a greater emphasis on the need for active intervention against an adverse development in the Western and U.S. way of thinking. In contrast, traditional Chinese culture cautions against impulsive behavior and suggests the virtues of a wait-and-see attitude and even passivity in some circumstances. These differences can thus produce different reactions on the part of Chinese and Americans to what they perceive to be a political shock. The reader can also infer from the previous discussion that the Chinese tend to be more vigilant in preparing their cadres for adversity. They are warned that surprises and setbacks are inevitable, and that they should be psychologically prepared for them. Moreover, there is a greater emphasis on recognizing that political shocks are not entirely negative developments. Developments always have both negative and positive aspects. Officials are enjoined to recognize this mixture, and furthermore to capitalize on the positive aspects. Lastly, there is a greater recognition that political shocks have at least two aspects, one from the perspective of those who are on their receiving end and one from the perspective of those who administer them. There thus needs to be concurrent attention paid to how best to cope with adverse disruptions or disturbances that are unexpected, but also how to proactively use the elements of shock and surprise to one’s own advantage. Taking a low profile and biding one’s time have been part of Beijing’s strategy to avoid being “shocked” (I tend to disagree with those who argue that Beijing has given up on these injunctions attributed to Deng Xiaoping and that it has become more assertive, even aggressive, recently; see, for example, Chan (2023); Hagstrom & Jerden, 2014; Jerden, 2014; Johnston, 2003, 2013). At the same time, this posture as well as feigning weakness, encouraging enemy’s complacency, and attacking its weak links with maximum force and surprise are elements of a strategy to “shock” adversaries when propitious circumstances present themselves. Political shocks, in other words, should be part of a thoughtful strategic actor’s management toolkit as well as an important part of its playbook. Such an actor should be skillful in playing both defense and offense.

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Of course, I do not possess any insider information on Chinese decision processes involving past or ongoing situations of political shock. I conclude by presenting a few propositions on how I would expect Chinese officials to perceive or react to some illustrative cases. They are likely to see the 2008–2009 global financial crisis not as a surprise but would instead tend to view it as a manifestation of the increasing tension and mounting crisis confronting a declining capitalist system. This crisis points to rising domestic economic pressure which can in turn be an ominous sign that Washington may turn to more reckless foreign adventures to divert domestic disaffection. Moreover, despite and perhaps because of increasing political and cultural discord in the U.S., American politicians are expected to become more inclined to blame foreign scapegoats for their mounting domestic problems and popular disaffection, with China becoming the primary target of Washington’s ire and one of the very few issues that Republican and Democratic views tend to converge. On the 1999 U.S. bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade, most Chinese reject the U.S. claim that it was an honest mistake, and instead believe that it was a deliberate attack (a view shared by some Western media reports, e.g., https://www.the guardian.com/theobserver/1999/nov/28/focus.news1 and https://www.theguardian. com/world/1999/oct/17/balkans). Still, Beijing decided not to escalate the situation or from its perspective, to be goaded into doing so by this U.S. action given China’s overall weakness. This episode ended after a series of bilateral steps in what Gries (1994) describes as apology diplomacy. Although China (like Russia) was very skeptical of Washington’s motives for attacking Saddam Hussein, it decided to take a low profile in opposing the U.S. in this instance and instead let Russia and even France to carry this burden. Moreover, it signed on to George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism” for its own purposes such as to crack down on separatists in Xinjiang but also, as mentioned earlier in this paper, to abet Washington’s ambition and encourage its impulse (such as to spread democracy abroad) and thereby to bog it down elsewhere in the world and to remove China from its “strategic headlight.” As another example, but one from a still unfolding event at the time of this writing, is the possibility of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine (this essay was written before this invasion happened). I would expect Beijing to pay close attention to the U.S. stock market. Being a society controlled by capitalists, the rise and fall of security prices on Wall Street (mostly falling in recent days) and especially the price of energy (which has been rising recently) in the U.S. would be most informative in Beijing’s view about whether Washington is genuinely concerned about such a possibility. I would also expect Beijing to pay close attention to this ongoing drama, seeking to draw conclusions about U.S. resolve in another situation that is a high priority for China, namely, Taiwan’s unresolved status. Beijing would see the events surrounding Russia, Ukraine, and the U.S. to be a situation fraught with both positive and negative implications, such as whether it would increase Moscow’s need for greater Chinese support, whether the Western alliance shows signs of disunity, whether this situation would distract hostile U.S. attention from China, and whether it can embolden Washington to increase pressure on China if it sees its deterrence effort against Russia

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has succeeded in this case. Finally, China’s military intervention in the Korean War and its brief border war with India offer classic examples of how to maximize the elements of surprise and geography to administer a decisive shock to its enemy on the battleground (e.g., Whiting, 1960, 1975).

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Globalization Shocks and Foreign Military Intervention Jeffrey Pickering

Abstract Given the impact that rapid shifts in globalization can have for societies and the relevance that the topic holds today, it seems wise to continue to investigate the various ways that shifts in globalization patterns impact intrastate and interstate dynamics. This chapter examines the relationship between such precipitous changes, termed globalization shocks, and the propensity to use interstate military force. In this regard, it is evident that globalization shocks weaken governments and mobilize dissent. A well-worn argument in the interstate conflict literature claims that governments that face significant domestic challenges may turn to the international arena to bolster their domestic political standing. Such struggling governments may use interstate military force both to divert elite and popular attention from domestic problems and to rally the population around their leadership (Fordham in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2017). Given such possible diversionary incentives, it seems reasonable to expect that globalization shocks may at times be associated with the use of interstate military force. Substantial globalization shocks may not only increase the probability that intrastate force is used, but they may increase as well the probability that interstate force is employed. To test this presumption, the chapter builds on a notable empirical study that finds a positive relationship between globalization shocks and civil conflict (Nieman in International Interactions 37:263–292, 2011). The chapter’s results suggest that globalization shocks are related to an increased probability of initiating foreign military intervention, but only for well-established democracies that are highly enmeshed in the global community. Advanced western democracies have a propensity to launch supportive military interventions when they experience globalization shocks, but not hostile military interventions. A similar relationship between shock and intervention is not found for other states. Although more research is needed on the subject, these results suggest that OECD Chief Economist Boone’s concerns about the potential ramifications of rapid deglobalization may be well founded. Stark increases or decreases in globalization levels may not only have wide-ranging domestic consequences, but they may also affect interstate relations. J. Pickering (B) Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2_11

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Keywords Globalization · Shock · Military force · Domestic consequences A steady, uninterrupted expansion of globalization seemed inevitable in the decades leading up to the 2008 global financial crisis. That crisis, the rise in populist and protectionist leaders in several countries, and the global pandemic of 2020 helped to spell an end to widespread claims of inexorable globalization. The 2022 Ukrainian War furthered the retreat from global integration, as major Western countries moved to restrict Russian access to the international economy and fighting disrupted global energy and agricultural trade. Rodrik argues that the Ukrainian War “… put a nail in the coffin of hyperglobalization.”1 Even before the war, major countries such as China and Russia had begun to gradually close off their societies from the global community. The United States has been in a decade long process of raising trade and other interstate barriers as well. US tariffs now exist for nearly two-thirds of Chinese imports as Washington attempts to counter Beijing’s commercial practices. Added to this, the supply chain woes unleashed by these various forces have led many global corporations to rethink their strategies and to emphasize resiliency rather than efficiency and cost. Such resiliency comes with more local and regional supply, and thus less globalized trade. The sum total of these various changes is that “important parts of the integrated [global] economy are unwinding” (Wong & Swanson, 2022). This retreat from global economic integration has been accompanied and at times outpaced by the erection of social and political barriers in many parts of the world, with Brexit and the border walls celebrated by Trump and Orban offering prominent examples. Just as the late twentieth century increase in globalization had profound effects within societies that helped to facilitate some of the dramatic changes highlighted above, the recent movement to limit and even reverse economic and social integration may also have far-reaching consequences. Laurence Boone, Chief Economist at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), worries that recent events have set in motion “deglobalization forces that could have profound and unpredictable effects.”2 Unfortunately, we have yet to develop a full understanding of the various impacts that rapid shifts in globalization levels can have on countries and societies. Recent research has shown that dramatic changes in globalization levels and trade shocks have driven anti-incumbent electoral outcomes in democracies and the rise of far-right and populist political parties. Such international pressures have also heightened xenophobia and eroded trust in public institutions. Autocracies also suffer from sharp changes in globalization patterns, with potentially increased levels of domestic conflict and diminished international financial assistance. Some research even finds that globalization shocks are related to rising popular protest, repression, and at times full-blown civil war. Given the impact that rapid shifts in globalization can have for societies and the relevance that the topic holds today, it seems wise to continue to investigate the various 1 2

D. Rodrik, Harvard University, quoted in Wong and Swanson (2022). Cited in Wong and Swanson (2022).

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ways that shifts in globalization patterns impact intrastate and interstate dynamics. In this study, I examine the relationship between such precipitous changes, termed globalization shocks, and the propensity to use interstate military force. In this regard, it is evident that globalization shocks weaken governments and mobilize dissent. A well-worn argument in the interstate conflict literature claims that governments that face significant domestic challenges may turn to the international arena to bolster their domestic political standing. Such struggling governments may use interstate military force both to divert elite and popular attention from domestic problems and to rally the population around their leadership (Fordham, 2017). Given such possible diversionary incentives, it seems reasonable to expect that globalization shocks may at times be associated with the use of interstate military force. Substantial globalization shocks may not only increase the probability that intrastate force is used, but they may increase as well the probability that interstate force is employed. To test this presumption, I build on a notable empirical study that finds a positive relationship between globalization shocks and civil conflict (Nieman, 2011). My results suggest that globalization shocks are related to an increased probability of initiating foreign military intervention, but only for well-established democracies that are highly enmeshed in the global community. Advanced western democracies have a propensity to launch supportive military interventions when they experience globalization shocks, but not hostile military interventions. A similar relationship between shock and intervention is not found for other states. Although more research is needed on the subject, my results suggest that OECD Chief Economist Boone’s concerns about the potential ramifications of rapid deglobalization may be well founded. Stark increases or decreases in globalization levels may not only have wide-ranging domestic consequences, but they may also affect interstate relations.

1 Globalization and Globalization Shocks Globalization is the “widening, deepening, and speeding up of international connectedness” (McGrew, 2011: 275). It has economic as well as social and cultural components. Recent research has emphasized that the various elements of globalization are so intertwined and interdependent that it proves difficult to analyze any in the absence of the others (Dreher, 2006; Margalit, 2019). As Hays et al. (2019: 2) put it, attempting to examine “… purportedly mutually exclusive economic and cultural categories is very artificial and potentially counterproductive. Economic causes can have cultural effects and vice versa.” Our current understanding of globalization incorporates multiple indicators such as trade, investment, migration, and the flow of information across borders as a consequence. Increasing interconnectedness tends to generate pressures within society as some sectors of the economy and of society benefit from rising globalization while others do not. A wide range of consequences are thought to be produced by globalization and its inevitable creation of winners and losers in a country, or those that gain advantage from interconnectedness and those that do not. The resulting strains can be

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economic, social, and political. Economically, firms in sectors that cannot compete on a global scale will struggle or close, forcing numerous individuals to develop new occupational skills and to seek new employment opportunities. Socially, globalization exposes populations to new cultures and to new ways of doing things that may challenge traditional customs and traditions. The onslaught of new ideas and world views can lead many to retreat into what Rosenau (2003: 16) terms the “psychic comfort …derived from the familiar, close-at-hand values and practices of their neighborhoods.” Economic and social globalization can thus produce local economic dislocation and social anxiety, and such tensions may reverberate throughout the entire political system and fuel popular discontent. The political effects of these interconnected stressors can be substantial. In democracies, retrospective voting leads citizens to vote out incumbents believed to be responsible for poor economic performance and other problems associated with globalization (Healy & Lenz, 2017; Jensen et al., 2017). Faltering economies, particularly in regions hard hit by globalization, erode trust in political institutions and may even result in higher levels of support for authoritarian values (Algan et al., 2017; Ballard-Rosa et al., 2021). Over time, adverse effects associated with globalization diminish support for the traditional political center (Margalit, 2019). Disgruntled voters increasingly turn to more extreme political parties and to leaders who claim to have easy remedies for the various ills associated with openness. Radical right, radical left, and populist parties gain growing constituencies in this context (Colantone & Stanig, 2018a, 2018b; Guiso et al., 2017). Importantly, the growing support for extreme and populist parties that is a consequence of globalization is a socio-tropic rather than an ego-centric phenomenon (Mansfield & Mutz, 2009). The gravitation toward radical parties because of economic hardship and societal change is consistently found at the regional level but not the individual level (Bisbee et al., 2020). Bisbee and Rosendorff (2020: 4) observe that “…an individual does not need to directly experience a wage decline or a job loss before trade and globalization become politically salient; they merely look out of their front door [at their struggling neighborhoods] to have anti-globalization sentiments activated.” This regional, socio-tropic move toward extreme political parties results from the interplay of economic and social components of globalization. Hays et al. (2019), for example, demonstrate that negative regional economic outcomes stimulate pre-existing prejudice and nationalist sentiment, leading to individual responses that spring from ingrained, often chauvinistic predispositions. In that way, the regional economic effects of globalization “…trigger emotional responses rooted in xenophobia … that can be symbolized as a threat from ‘foreign others.” (Hays et al., 2019: 3). The impact of globalization affects non-democracies as well. Opening national economies exacerbates inequality among individuals and societal groups in both democracies and non-democracies (Ezcurra & Manotas, 2017; Olzak, 2011). Greater inequality among groups, such as ethnic or regional groups, can lead to inter-group conflicts over resources and status that create challenges for non-democratic governments (Deiwiks et al., 2012). The flow of information and ideas across borders that comes with globalization often intensifies the tensions created between groups by

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bolstering claims for minority rights and self-determination. Support from international actors and opinion may eventually embolden groups to mobilize against nondemocratic regimes, even if they are repressive (Ezcurra & Manotas, 2017; Flaten & de Soya, 2012). Higher levels of globalized migration can further heighten such tensions, spawning negative reactions from native citizens. Some non-democratic governments may respond by cracking down on opposition groups (Hafner-Burton, 2005), but this will only reduce the regime’s ability to attract foreign investment and international aid because news of oppression travels fast in a globalized information environment. The restriction of access to such resources weakens non-democratic governments and may result in a vicious cycle of protest and economic constraint. The swiftness of the economic and social change produced by globalization is also important. Gradual changes may be managed by governments and may allow societal actors time to adapt to the new environment. Since economic globalization often also produces absolute economic gains across society, more deliberate integration may allow governments to devote more resources to societal institutions that help individuals and localities adjust to the changes wrought by interconnectedness. Governments may also use such increased resources to buy off growing opposition through redistributive policies. They will have more ability to limit dissent by enhancing the capabilities of the police and the national military as well (Hays, 2009; Nieman, 2011). If the change is rapid, however, governments and societal entities have less ability to adapt. Guiso et al. (2019), Nieman (2011), and others call such rapid changes “globalization shocks,” and such shocks are thought to be more likely to generate significant domestic consequences than slower, more measured globalization processes. One economic example is the so-called “China shock” that has afflicted regions where Chinese imports have displaced manufacturing over relatively short periods of time. Colantone and Stanig (2018a, 2018b) maintain that the China shock helps to explain growing support for populist political parties in Europe and the Brexit vote in the UK. Malgouyres (2017) finds that regions exposed to such trade shocks experienced increased support for the far-right National Front in France. Full globalization shocks, and not just economic or industrial shocks, have even been linked to civil war. Olzak (2011) finds that globalization shocks result in ethnic conflicts of greater intensity, while Nieman (2011) shows that these shocks increase the probability of full-scale civil war. Nieman (2011) relies on Fearon and Laitin’s (2003) conceptualization of civil war in his study. Using a different measure of civil war with a lower threshold of violence, Flaten and de Soysa (2012) and Ezcurra and Manotas (2017) find no relationship between globalization shocks and civil conflict.3 These scholars analyze the UCP/PRIO Armed Conflict Database which records civil conflicts with more than 25 battle-deaths per year, while the Fearon and Laitin (2003) measure includes conflicts that have resulted in at least 1000 deaths over their duration, of which 100 are from governmental forces.

3

Elbadawi and Hegre (2008) find no relationship when looking at economic globalization and economic shocks alone.

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Rapidly increasing globalization can thus produce challenges for governments, but sharply decreasing integration can produce difficulties as well (Nieman, 2011). Decreases in globalization may indicate that states are increasingly cut off from the global economy and global supply chains, which will constrain the domestic economy and produce commodity shortfalls. Governments in this context may be seen to be failing to maintain living standards and unable to provide for the people’s welfare. As the economy contracts, the government will have fewer resources to manage the shock and to offer coping mechanisms to assist those who lose employment. Brexit is an example of fairly rapid de-globalization, and this particular form of globalization shock has had substantial economic and social consequences for the UK (Fernandes & Winters, 2021). Another recent example of relatively swift deglobalization comes from the snarled global supply chains that emerged following the 2020 global pandemic. This logistic, and perhaps temporary, shift in interconnectedness has added considerable stress on societies and created challenges for governments.

2 Shocks and Foreign Military Intervention There is thus substantial evidence that globalization shocks intensify domestic political tensions. At times, they may even help to tip countries into civil war. Given the propensity for globalization shocks to weaken governments and to exacerbate popular xenophobia, I suspect that such shocks are related to an increased probability to use violence abroad as well as at home. A common assumption in international relations literature is that governments’ primary objective is to remain in power (Bueno de Mesquita et al., 2005), and I also adopt this assumption. As the previous section illustrates, economic, social, and political shocks from globalization damage governments politically and erode public trust in political institutions. This can lead voters in democracies to vote out incumbents and to turn to radical parties as they search for solutions to the challenges that accompany globalization shocks. In autocracies, such shocks can increase the potential for dissent and domestic conflict, and any subsequent repression may limit autocracies’ ability to access needed investment and financial aid. In this context, most governments will take measures to shore up political support to increase their chances of remaining in power. As noted above, they may expand welfare policies and provide other inducements to societal actors to bolster support. They may also put more restrictive social measures in place or employ repression to try to quell dissent. A range of policy alternatives may thus be available to counter the negative consequences of globalization shocks. I maintain that the use of military force abroad may at times be one of the options considered. The international conflict literature has long claimed that vulnerable leaders dispatch troops overseas on foreign military missions to divert popular attention from domestic problems. Such diversionary uses of interstate force have the potential to spark nationalist sentiment in opposition to

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the foreign country, or the foreign “other,” that is targeted. Foreign military action may also rally the population around the government, if only briefly. Embattled governments may also initiate a foreign military mission as a means to demonstrate their competence. Launching a military operation abroad may illustrate the government’s ability to manage complex problems and to succeed in an important policy area (DeRouen & Peake, 2002; Fordham, 2017). The hope by policy makers would be that a successful operation in the demanding international arena would increase confidence in the government and its ability to succeed when confronted with other policy challenges. One recent study fits well with this argument about globalization shocks and diversionary military force. It focuses on a prevalent outcome of globalization, rising levels of domestic income inequality (Kanbur, 2015). Long and Pickering (2022) find that growing domestic income inequality is related to an increased proclivity to use interstate military force. Building from Solt’s (2011) contention that governments promote nationalist causes to mitigate the domestic grievances generated by inequality, they argue that leaders may at times turn to a policy option that is well known to stimulate nationalist sentiment, the use of military force abroad. Their results suggest that governments do, in fact, frequently initiate diversionary military missions when domestic inequality rises. My argument here does not center on inequality. Rather, it contends that globalization shocks create a wide range of economic and social dislocations that create political challenges for governments. The policy course that governments will take in response to such political turbulence will depend on the state’s political history, the government’s past efficacy, the current political environment, and other potentially context-driven variables. I contend, however, that one policy option that such beleaguered governments may consider is the use of diversionary military force. State use of interstate military force should rise during globalization shocks as a result. To date, empirical findings on state propensities to initiate military force in response to domestic challenges, such as those generated by globalization shocks, are mixed. Consensus has not, for example, been reached over the type of regimes that are most prone to use diversionary force. Some research suggests that democracies are especially likely to launch diversionary missions because these governments cannot repress and they often possess insufficient macro-economic tools to respond to economic downturns (Kisangani & Pickering, 2009; Oneal & Tir, 2006; Powell, 2014). At the same, the consequences of losing office can be more severe for autocrats than democratically elected leaders, and thus autocratic leaders may have incentives to deploy their armed forces for diversionary purposes as well (Lai & Slater, 2006; Miller, 1999). Findings also differ on the type of military force used in such missions. Some maintain that a military operation has to be substantial and must target a threating state, such as an interstate rival, to have value as a diversionary measure (Tarar, 2006; Mitchell & Prins, 2004). Others find that even peacekeeping missions and nonhostile, supportive military interventions to bolster friendly governments can have

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both diversionary intent and impact (Kisangani & Pickering, 2009). For example, Pickering and Kisangani (2023) show that supportive, non-hostile interventions significantly extended the duration of European cabinet governments from 1946 to 2008, while hostile interventions did not. They maintain that supportive interventions are sufficient to shift the domestic policy agenda in ways that produce greater collaboration in cabinet, while the costs and risks associated hostile interventions often produce new and more intense disagreements within governments. This result is reinforced by studies that find that strident diplomatic rhetoric has been used with diversionary intent (Carter, 2020; Yeh & Wu, 2020). Military force is not always required. Some state actors may also be more prone to use diversionary military force in response to globalization shocks than others. There are, for example, reasons to suspect that the world’s most globalized states, or those most open on the various dimensions of globalization, will have the greatest potential to use military force in response to globalization shocks. These countries’ greater openness should translate into greater sensitivity to and higher costs from global shocks. States that are not as highly integrated into the global community will tend to be less affected by sharp changes in globalization levels. Additionally, states that are integrated economically but not politically and socially, such as autocratic regimes that embrace free trade but obstruct other forms of globalization, can be expected to experience less severe, multifaceted globalization shocks than more fully globalized states. Such partially integrated states may have less need to consider significant policy action in response to a globalization shock as a result. As the discussion of the economically, socially, and politically intertwined nature of globalization shocks illustrates above, it is likely that states that are exposed to all dimensions of globalization will face the greatest challenges from globalization shocks. In this study, I use established, advanced industrial democracies as a proxy for the most globalized actors in the international system, given their historic openness to economic and social interaction.4 Added to that, given their relative wealth and power, advanced democracies are among the small set of states that have ample capability to use military force for diversionary purposes. States with fewer resources and capabilities often have less ability to use military force for non-essential reasons, and they are more likely to experience reciprocal violence and potentially unwanted escalation when they do (Fordham, 2002). As a consequence, advanced democracies are arguably the category of states with both the greatest opportunity and willingness to respond to globalization shocks with diversionary force. They have the opportunity because they enjoy enviable military capabilities in comparison to most actors on the world stage. They have willingness because they are among the countries most impacted by multifaceted globalization shocks. 4

Annual globalization rankings produced by the KOF Swiss Institute at ETH Zurich provide considerable support for this demarcation. The top ranks of the index are largely populated by advanced Western democracies, with some variation. Of course, this proxy represents a first cut at understanding the globalization shock-interstate military force relationship. It would be valuable to analyze different, more nuanced measures in the future.

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My argument would seem to contradict Johnson and Barnes’ (2011) proposition that states with relatively open economies are less prone to use diversionary military force.5 Johnson and Barnes maintain that since leaders with open economies are less able to manage domestic economic outcomes, they are not often held accountable for poor domestic economic performance. Leaders in states with open global economies thus have little reason to use military force abroad when the domestic economy falters. It is important to note, however, that their argument and the contention that I put forward here are not mutually exclusive. I make no claims about economic globalization’s impact on the propensity to use diversionary force and, in fact, I find their argument persuasive. Rather, I maintain that the jarring experience of multifaceted economic, political and social globalization shocks will lead governments to search for policy remedies. Diversionary force may be one such remedy considered. It may not be the first or the only policy option that governments turn to, but for many states it may be among the repertoire of responses considered. Overall levels of interstate military force may rise as a result in this context, particularly among highly globalized advanced democracies. In other words, absolute levels of globalization may well dampen diversionary incentives, but for some states globalization shocks will increase these same incentives. Of course, the extent to which any state uses interstate military force in response to a globalization shock is an open empirical question. I offer an initial set of answers to this question in this study. Given the preceding discussion, I focus my analysis on three hypotheses: Hypothesis 1 States that experience globalization shocks have an increased propensity to initiate foreign military interventions. Hypothesis 2 States that experience globalization shocks have an increased propensity to initiate supportive but not hostile foreign military interventions. Hypothesis 3 Advanced democracies that experience globalization shocks have an increased propensity to initiate supportive but not hostile foreign military interventions. The first hypothesis evaluates the degree to which all states, and not just advanced democracies, may be responsive to the challenges that arise with globalization shocks. The second hypothesis builds on recent literature that maintains that less conflictual, supportive military interventions tend to be used for diversionary purposes rather than hostile interventions targeting a government. The final hypothesis evaluates whether only advanced democracies are prone to diversion following globalization shocks.

5

Also, Bussmann and Schneider (2007) find that globalization is weakly linked to domestic instability and Karakaya (2018) finds that globalization is related to nonviolent but not violent domestic protest.

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3 Research Design My empirical analysis examines time-series cross-sectional (TSCS) data on the 122 countries included in the KOF index from 1970 to 1999. It utilizes data from Nieman (2011) for comparability with that study. Since Nieman (2011) is a prominent work that finds that globalization shocks increase the likelihood of intrastate violence, I build on his analysis to determine if shocks also increase the probability of interstate violence in the form of diversionary military intervention. The estimation method is logit for TSCS data, or Bayesian random-effects logit. Standard errors are clustered by country to control for panel heteroskedasticity. Cubic polynomials are used to control for temporal dependence. VIF estimates indicate that the models do not suffer from harmful levels of multicollinearity. Model chi-square results suggest that estimates fit the data reasonably well, and Hausman goodness of fit outcomes reinforce this conclusion.

3.1 Dependent Variables: Types of Military Intervention My measure for military intervention comes from the IMI dataset. The IMI data collection records all verifiable cases when national “˜troops or forces... move into the territory... of another country” to pursue political, economic, or strategic objectives (Pearson & Baumann, 1993: 1). It thus catalogs episodes when national military personnel are purposefully dispatched into other sovereign states. Military intervention is considered first and foremost a policy tool that results from state level political decisions in this conceptualization. IMI provides information on small missions, large missions, and operations against both state and non-state targets. Originally spanning the years 1946–1988, Pickering and Kisangani (2009) extend the data collection into the early 2000s. My first cut at analysis estimates the dummy variable military intervention which captures governments that dispatch troops into other states on any type of military intervention. More detailed information is provided using IMI’s measures for hostile and supportive interventions.6 The former opposes the target government directly or supports insurgents challenging the regime while the latter lends support to the target regime or opposes anti-government rebels. Supportive intervention and hostile intervention are also dichotomous variables.7 I also distinguish interventions that deploy ground troops from missions that do not such as air raids, naval shelling, cross-border artillery fires, etc. Military incursions that dispatch ground troops can be considered costlier commitments than those that do not.

6

Variable 09, “Direction of Intervention,” provides this information in IMI. When a state initiated both a supportive and a hostile intervention in the same year, it is coded for each type of intervention. 7 Since some countries initiated two or more interventions in a single year, I also estimate negative binomial estimates of count dependent variables of different intervention types. Results remain consistent.

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IMI also distinguishes unilateral and multinational operations. The key consideration that differentiates these two types of military missions is a unified military command. If an operation with multiple national militaries is undertaken under the command of a single national military or a unified command structure, it is coded as a multinational operation in IMI. Most other interventions are considered unilateral, even those taken within coalition operations or in concert with other actors.8 I focus on unilateral interventions in this study for two reasons. First, conceptually, accountability resides more directly with governments that launch unilateral rather than multinational interventions. Multinational operations diffuse responsibility within the framework of a multinational command structure or an intergovernmental organization. If globalization shocks compel governments to take action to divert the populace or to demonstrate competence, they are more likely to do so by initiating unilateral rather than multilateral military interventions (see Pickering & Kisangani, 2023). The second reason is practical. IMI does not provide systematic information on the states involved in multinational or IGO-led (e.g., UN, African Union) operations, and thus we cannot test for the impact of involvement in these types of operations.

3.2 Independent Variables: Globalization and Globalization Shocks Globalization is a complex phenomenon that has a range of different components. Consistent with Nieman (2011), I utilize the multifaceted KOF index of globalization produced by the KOF Swiss Institute at ETH Zurich as my independent variable (Dreher et al., 2008).9 The KOF index includes 122 countries and combines measures of economic globalization, political globalization, and social globalization. The economic components of the measure include trade as a percent of GDP, flows of foreign direct investment as a percent of GDP, portfolio investment as a percent of GDP, and income payments to foreign nationals as a percent of GDP. Interstate economic restrictions are also incorporated into the index. The restrictions accounted for are hidden import barriers, mean tariff rate, taxes on international trade as a percent of current revenue and capital account restrictions. Political globalization is captured by the number of embassies that are present in a country, its membership in international organizations, and its participation in UN Security Council missions. Social globalization includes information on personal contact data such as outgoing telephone traffic, international tourism, foreign population as a percent of total population, and international letters per capita. Cultural proximity information 8

The IMI definition of multinational intervention is consistent with Regan’s (2002: 102). Missions taken in concert by multiple actors are considered unilateral so long as individual national militaries retain strategic and operational autonomy. 9 Updates to the KOF index can be found at: https://kof.ethz.ch/en/forecasts-and-indicators/indica tors/kof-globalisation-index.html.

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is also used, as measured by trade in books as a percent of GDP and the number of Ikea and McDonalds stores per capita. The KOF index thus offers a broad, inclusive conceptualization of globalization. While analyses of comprehensive measures have become more common, studies that focus on individual economic indices such as trade, investment and remittances also remain prevalent in the literature (Elbadawi & Hegre, 2008; Leblang & Peters, 2022; Milner & Mukherjee, 2009). Among others, Dreher (2006) emphasizes the utility of analyzing inclusive measures of globalization. He (2006: 192) notes: Most dimensions of globalization are strongly related to each other, so including them separately in a regression induces multicollinearity problems. Excluding those dimensions which are not the primary focus of the analysis−the method preferred in the literature−can, however, severely bias the coefficients estimated …. Since the overall effects of globalization are what matters, the lack of an overall measure and an analysis of its relationship with growth [or other variables of interest] is a serious omission.

The breadth of the KOF index overcomes such limitations to provide a reliable indicator of states’ integration into the global community. The composite index of globalization is lagged by one year. The variable globalization shock is created by taking a country’s current level on the KOF index and subtracting its value from the previous year. The resulting difference is then divided by the present year (Nieman, 2011). The percentage produced takes the state’s pre-shock level of globalization into account. This is important because states that are heavily integrated into the global community can be expected to perceive and to respond to changes in globalization differently than countries that have limited integration. The same absolute level of change may have more substantial consequences in the latter than the former. This measure captures both sudden increases and decreases in globalization levels. As my theory portends, both may be challenging for governments. Stark increases in integration levels may displace workers in traditional industries and may challenge traditional ways of life. These types of outcomes can place pressure on governments that do seem to be up to the task of managing globalization and are perceived to be failing to preserve national mores and identities. Sharp decreases in globalization may indicate growing international isolation that can constrain the domestic economy, constrict the government’s resource base, and produce shortfalls of goods. Governments may face widespread dissatisfaction with their policies given such outcomes and potentially even domestic unrest. My operationalization of globalization shocks differs from the measure of political shocks Gordell and Volgy (2022) analyze earlier in the volume. While their operationalization sets a threshold that must be exceeded for an event to quality as a shock, my approach examines a continuous measure of change from the previous year. Both approaches hold value, of course. I utilize my continuous operationalization because it is consistent with previous work on globalization shocks and domestic conflict, particularly Nieman (2011). I am thus able to determine if globalization shocks, as measured here, are associated with both civil conflict and the use of interstate military force.

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3.3 Control Variables A set of five control variables for state use of interstate force is used to assess the impact of globalization shocks on foreign military intervention. Wealthier and more powerful states tend to have greater ability to use military force across borders. Gross domestic product per capita (GDP per capita) is used to proxy state wealth and capacity. Regime type has also been linked to state proclivity to use external force. Polity is drawn from the Polity IV index and ranges from -10 for autocracies to 10 for democracies. States experiencing instability or civil war may be unable to use force abroad because of internal difficulties. At the same time, intrastate conflict may spill over borders and lead to an increase in interstate force (Kisangani & Pickering, 2022; Peksen & Lounsbery, 2012). Instability is a binary variable that records states that have experienced a change of 3 or greater on the Polity IV index within the last three years. It is lagged one year. Civil war is a dichotomous variable as well. It utilizes Fearon and Laitin’s (2003) measure of civil conflict. Finally, Haynes (2016) and others have argued that ethnic fractionalization within a country is related to an increased proclivity to use interstate force. The control variable ethnic fractionalization uses information provided by the Atlas Naradov Mira data collection. Data for each of these measures are drawn from Fearon and Laitin (2003), as used by Nieman (2011). I also analyze the impact of globalization shocks across both advanced Western democracies and countries that are not included in this category. My demarcation of advanced democracies and other global regions follows the Minorities at Risk (MAR) classification similar to Fearon and Laitin (2003).10

4 Empirical Results Table 1 presents my initial results on the relationship between globalization shock and military intervention. It analyzes the impact of globalization shock on military interventions, supportive interventions, hostile interventions, and interventions that involve ground troops across the full sample of states in my study. As the table illustrates, there is little evidence that globalization shocks are associated with state use of interstate military force. Estimates for globalization shock are negatively signed and they do not approach statistical significance. These results provide little support for Hypotheses 1 and 2, which maintain that states are more likely to initiate different types of military intervention following globalization shocks. Control variable outcomes are consistent with previous studies, lending further support to the results in Table 1. GPD per capita is positively related to most types 10

Minorites at Risk Project (2009). The countries included in the MAR Western democracies categorization are Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany (West and unified), Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.

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Table 1 Globalization shocks and intervention

Globalization shock GDP per capita Polity Instability Ethnic fractionalization Civil war Constant

(1) Intervention

(2) Supportive intervention

(3) Hostile intervention

(4) Ground troops

−0.020

−0.018

−0.006

−0.021

(0.021)

(0.032)

(0.029)

(0.026)

0.077**

0.095**

−0.063

0.106**

(0.037)

(0.037)

(0.078)

(0.043)

−0.022

−0.003

0.011

−0.040*

(0.018)

(0.02)

(0.022)

(0.023)

−0.009

−1.206**

0.249

−0.080

(0.214)

(0.487)

(0.254)

(0.278)

0.880

1.629***

0.959

1.417**

(0.616)

(0.585)

(0.700)

(0.642)

0.752***

0.226

0.753**

0.518*

(0.266)

(0.322)

(0.338)

(0.290)

−4.187***

−7.076***

−3.631***

−5.568***

(0.708)

(0.958)

(0.768)

(0.760)

Observations

3073

3073

3073

3073

Wald chi square

22.08***

40.35***

20.58***

19.65**

Standard errors are in parentheses ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1

of military intervention, including those that use ground troops. Civil war and ethnic fractionalization seem to spill across borders in different ways. States experiencing civil wars initiate hostile interventions that employ ground troops, presumably to attack rebels based in neighboring states or neighboring state militaries that have become involved in the war. Ethnic fractionalization is related to supportive interventions, which likely bolster neighboring governments that battle ethnic insurgent groups that challenge both regimes (Kisangani & Pickering, 2022). States experiencing instability do not initiate supportive interventions. Given the transition and volatility they are enduring, governments in these countries likely have little ability to assist other regimes. Table 2 compares advanced Western democracies to the rest of the sample. As anticipated, globalization shocks have an impact on advanced democracies’ interventionary behavior. Model 5 shows that the shock variable is positive and statistically significant in Western democracies at the 0.01 level. Models 6 and 7 demonstrate that this outcome is a product of supportive interventions. Shock is again positive and significant at the 0.01 level for this type of intervention. Holding variables in Model 6 at their means, an increase of one standard deviation in globalization shock increases

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241

the probability of that a Western democratic state will initiate a supportive intervention by nearly 3% (2.8) on average.11 Since military intervention is an uncommon occurrence, this is a noteworthy increase.12 Figure 1 sheds further light on this relationship.13 It shows that as the magnitude of shock rises the probability of supportive intervention increases fairly consistently as well. Globalization shock is not significant in the estimate for hostile interventions in advanced democracies, and supplemental estimates indicate that it is insignificant for Western democratic interventions that involve ground troops. Shock is also negative and insignificant for countries that do not fall into the advanced Western democratic categorization. Supplemental analyses examine each of the MAR regions that rest outside of the Western democratic world. None of the estimates of different types of military intervention approached statistical significance in these analyses. These outcomes lend considerable support to Hypothesis 3, which states that advanced Western democracies are prone to launch military interventions when globalization shocks occur. As the results in Table 2 indicate, they are more likely to initiate supportive and not hostile interventions in this context. It also worth exploring if shocks have a delayed rather than an immediate effect. Their aggregate impact may take some time to be registered, and it may take additional time before a government feels compelled to respond to any pressures that result from the shock. To determine if such delayed impacts occur, I lagged globalization shock an additional one and three years in supplemental estimates that mirror the models presented in Table 2. Shock remains positively signed and statistically significant at the 0.05 and 0.01 levels for one year and three year lags respectively for supportive intervention by Western democracies. They remain insignificant for hostile interventions by this group of states and for all types of interventions by non-Western democracies. Table 3 investigates this relationship further. Model 11 looks at the extent to which these results are the product of actions by the most powerful Western state during the period analyzed, the U.S.14 The results for supportive interventions remain highly statistically significant when the US is excluded from analysis. Model 12 examines whether more economically powerful advanced democracies, which presumably have the greatest level of integration in the global community and the most military capability, are more likely to respond to globalization shocks than less economically powerful advanced democracies (as measured by GDP per capita). It interacts globalization shock and GDP per capita. Figure 2 eases interpretation of this interaction effect by providing the marginal effects for an increase in GDP per capita on supportive military intervention. The upward slope in Fig. 2 illustrates that wealthier 11

Computed using the mchange command in Stata. As a robustness check, Model 6 was estimated with Firth’s penalized likelihood regression which accounts for rare events with dichotomous dependent variables. Globalization shock remained positive and significant at the .01 level. 13 Ninety percent confidence intervals are used in Figs. 1 and 2 because the expected direction of the impact of globalization shock is known. 14 The US initiated the most interventions in our sample, 55. The next most frequent intervener was France, with 40 total interventions. 12

0.216*** (0.074) 0.231 (0.163) −0.151** (0.059) − 2.19 (2.207)

0.151**

(0.059)

0.265*

(0.160)

−0.234***

(0.03)

−

1.171

(1.973)

Instability

Ethnic fraction

(0.561) −10.81*** (2.582) 591 41.39***

(0.600)

−7.563***

(1.656)

591

177.69***

Observations

Wald chi square

Standard errors are in parentheses ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1

Constant

2.068***

2.80***

Civil War

Polity

GDP per capita

Globalization shock

(6) Western democracies supportive

(5) Western democracies intervention

Table 2 Globalization shocks: advanced western democracies

276.92***

591

(1.835)

−9.881***

(1.343)

2.811**

(2.715)

0.020

−

(0.165)

−0.350**

(0.325)

0.316

(0.183)

0.035

(7) Western democracies hostile

19.59**

2465

(0.663)

−3.414***

(0.261)

0.803***

(0.631)

50.34***

2465

(0.734)

−5.725***

(0.320)

0.221

(0.589)

1.488**

(0.483)

0.589

−0.973**

(0.212)

(0.026)

−0.044*

0.063

(0.021)

−0.011

(0.023)

0.015

−0.016 (0.031)

(0.046)

−0.069

−0.027 (0.023)

(9) Non-western supportive

(8) Non-western intervention

37.72***

2465

(0.728)

−3.108***

(0.349)

0.728**

(0.667)

0.577

(0.261)

0.247

(0.022)

0.032

(0.099)

−0.156

(0.030)

−0.004

(10) Non-western hostile

242 J. Pickering

Globalization Shocks and Foreign Military Intervention

243

Fig. 1 Linear prediction of globalization shock on supportive intervention: advanced democracies

Fig. 2 Globalization shock and GDP per capita: advanced democracies

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democracies are in fact more likely to respond to globalization shocks with supportive interventions than their less wealthy counterparts. It also shows that the variability around intervention outcomes increases as GDP per capita rises. The fact that such wealthy states can be expected to be more enmeshed in the global community and also have more state capacity than other states helps explain why such actors have a greater proclivity to respond to globalization shocks. Other considerations likely lay behind the variability in their response. Some of these countries, for example, spend more than others on “shock absorbers” or governmental sponsored societal coping mechanisms that allow both government and society to weather the challenges presented by globalization shocks. Welfare provisions and job retraining programs are examples. There is also variation in the propensity of these countries to use external military force for most any reason. For a range of historical and cultural reasons, some wealthy democracies rarely if ever deployed their military beyond their borders during the time frame of my sample (such as Japan, Germany, and small European states). As a group, wealthy advanced democracies thus have more willingness and capability to respond to globalization shocks but variation should be expected within this set of states. Table 3 Supportive intervention by advanced democracies: further analysis

Globalization shock

(11) Supportive intervention no U.S

(12) Supportive intervention

0.207***

0.654**

(0.072)

(13) Supportive intervention

(0.255) −0.039

Shock X— GPD pc

(0.024) −0.055

Globalization lagged

(0.036) 0.107

0.367**

0.290*

(0.167)

(0.151)

(0.166)

Polity

−0.109*

−0.179***

−0.079

(0.061)

(0.052)

(0.094)

Ethnic fractionalization

2.132

1.736

2.458

Civil war

(1.93) 2.185*** (0.526)

(2.286) 2.232*** 0.597

(2.225) 2.212*** (0.619)

GDP per capita

−8.811***

−12.191***

−8.696**

(1.247)

(2.184)

(2.280)

Observations

580

608

609

Wald chi square

185.25***

86.61***

50.61***

Constant

Standard errors are in parentheses ***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.1

Globalization Shocks and Foreign Military Intervention

245

Finally, Model 13 examines whether globalization alone can help to explain the initiation of supportive interventions by advanced democracies. Globalization is negative and statistically insignificant in this estimate. This measure of globalization is also statistically insignificant in supplemental estimates that mirror the models presented in Table 2. As expected, it is the shock of rapid changes in globalization levels that is related to external military activity, not the more gradual process of globalization itself.

5 Conclusions Rapid increases in globalization have had profound effects on countries and societies over the past half century. Currently, we seem to be experiencing the opposite−precipitous decoupling of the global economy and of international social connections. Such a stark roll-back of global ties seems likely to have far-reaching consequences as well. Since globalization shocks of either variety, dramatic increases or decreases in globalization levels, weaken governments and promote dissent, one consequence may be an increased propensity for governments to launch diversionary military interventions. In this chapter, I investigate the relationship between globalization shocks and foreign military intervention. Building from a study that finds that globalization shocks are related to intrastate conflict, I find that such shocks are also associated with an increased propensity to launch foreign military interventions. This relationship only holds, however, for states that are the most enmeshed in the international community. Advanced Western democracies are significantly more likely to initiate supportive military interventions when they experience globalization shocks. Such interventions presumably have diversionary intent and are designed to shift the domestic narrative in a more favorable direction for the government. Advanced democracies are not more prone to initiate hostile military interventions during such periods, and states outside of the Western democratic bloc do not use external military force in response to globalization shocks. This chapter thus provides evidence that globalization shocks are related to not only an increased probability of civil conflict, but also an increased propensity for some states to dispatch armed forces overseas. It is necessarily a first cut at understanding the relationship between globalization shock and the use of interstate military force. Future research can advance our knowledge of this relationship in a number of different ways. It would be useful to extend data on interstate military force into the current period of deglobalization, particularly since the 2020 pandemic. The availability of such data would help to better understand the impact of deglobalization and also to help us determine if the shock−interstate force relationship varies over time. Process tracing and comparative case studies that investigate the range of policy options that government decision-makers consider following globalization shocks would also be illuminating and could sharpen understanding. Experimental work, such as Segev et al. (2023), that probes public attitudes toward foreign actors and the use of military force during governmental crises will also deepen our grasp of this

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relationship. Such work helps us to build an understanding of the degree to which the public tends to support the externalization of challenges associated with globalization shocks. While much remains to be done, the far-reaching consequences that globalization shocks have for both governments and populations seem undeniable. At a time when deglobalization both appears to be accelerating and significant global leaders are calling for a rapid reversal of this process through “re-globalization,”15 it seems wise to deepen our knowledge of the various impacts that globalization shocks may have. While only a beginning, I demonstrate that such shocks affect interstate as well as domestic dynamics in this chapter.

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15

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Index

A Acceleration model, 219 Actual political shock, 21, 24, 25, 67, 68, 73, 75 African Union, 237 Agenda setting, 6, 40, 43, 44, 46–48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 56, 60, 71 Agent-based model (ABM), 7, 132, 134, 137, 138, 140, 142, 144–155, 157–160 AKP, 109–111 al-Assad, Bashir, 188 Alfonsin, R., 92, 93 Andean Community of Nations (CAN), 115 Anti-incumbent electoral outcomes, 228 Apology diplomacy, 224 Arab Spring, 8, 27, 80, 81, 133 Arab uprisings. See Arab Spring Arbetman, M., 74, 213 Argentina, 55, 57, 86, 90–94, 96, 108, 111–115, 178 Argentine-Brazilian rivalry, 178 Attribute similarity, 136 Australia, 70, 239 Austro-Hungarian empire, 133

Baumgartner, F., 22, 39–41, 68 Bay of Pigs invasion, 170 Beagle Channel, 91 Bello Doctrine (1837), 54 Ben Ali, Z.A., 185 Berlusconi, Silvio, 108 Biden administration, 71, 213 Biden, J., 64 Black Tuesday (1929), 130 Blitzkrieg, 216 Bobrow, D.B., 218, 221 Bogotá Conference (1948), 59 Bolivia, 56, 91, 115 Bolsonaro, J., 93–96 Boone, L., 228, 229 Bosnia, 42, 45, 213 war crimes, 42 Bourbeau, P., 24 Bourguiba, H., 185 Brazil, 57, 86, 90–96 BRICS, 88, 94 Brownlee, J., 189, 193–197 Buenos Aires Conference (1936), 58 Bureaucratic policy planning, 42 Bush Doctrine, GW, 102

B Bahrain, 185, 187, 189, 192, 193, 195, 201, 202 Bahrain-Qatar rivalry, 204 Bank of New York (BONY), 113, 114 Barclays, 113 Bargaining theory, 171 Barnes, T.D., 235 Bas, M., 23

C Calvo Doctrine (1865), 56 Capacity-to-change, 71 Captain-Generalship of Venezuela, 53 Cardoso, F.H., 95 Carter, J., 90 Cascade, 49, 50, 132, 133, 202, 203 Central America, 55 Central Bank (Turkey), 110

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2023 W. R. Thompson and T. J. Volgy (eds.), Shocks and Political Change, Evidence-Based Approaches to Peace and Conflict Studies 11, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-1498-2

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250 Chaco War, 57, 58 Chad, 187 Chan, S., 8, 9, 219, 220, 223 Chávez, H., 102, 105, 107, 108 Chauvinistic predispositions, 230 Chile, 56, 57, 91, 94, 95 China, 26, 27, 71, 95, 101, 119, 214, 217, 218, 220–222, 224, 225, 228, 231 strategic culture, 9, 212, 213, 217, 218, 220, 223 Classes of events, 21, 64–67, 72, 74, 76 Clean the swamp campaign, 80 Coercive apparatus, 193, 194, 199–202 Cognitive biases, 8, 164, 165, 180 Cohen, M., 41 Colantone, I., 230, 231 Cold War, 42, 43, 73, 77, 89, 92, 177, 220 end, 13, 16, 21, 24, 25, 40, 44, 86, 87, 89, 176 post-, 73, 89 Colgan, J., 14, 16, 20, 45, 171 Colombia, 53, 56, 95, 115 Commission of Neutrals (1933), 57 Contagion, 105, 132, 133, 198, 202, 219 Conte, G., 120, 121 Convention on Conciliation and Arbitration, 58 Convention to Coordinate, Extend and Assure the Fulfillment of the Existing Treaties Between the American states (1936), 58 Correa, R., 102, 108, 115, 116, 123, 124 Correlates of War combined index of national capabilities (CINC), 148 Covid-19 pandemic, 64, 111, 213 Cox Proportional Hazard models, 179 Credit-Suisse, 112 Crescenzi, M., 19, 23 Cuba, 95 Cuban missile crisis, 164, 176

D da Silva, L., 93 Daxecker, U., 179 Decolonization, 42, 43 Deglobalization, 9, 228, 229, 232, 245, 246 Deng Xiaoping, 223 Destradi, S., 94, 102, 105–107 Deutsche Bank, 113 Diehl, P.F., 2, 6, 15, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 65, 67, 68, 70, 86, 133, 213, 214 Di Maio, L., 108, 120, 121

Index Drago Doctrine (1902), 55 Drago, L.M., 55 Dreher, A., 73, 229, 237, 238 E Ecuador, 53, 56, 108, 115, 116, 123, 176 Editing stage, 165 Eguíluz, V.M., 133 Egypt, 66, 185, 186, 189, 192–194, 201–204, 206, 216 Egypt-Qatar rivalry, 204 Electoral continuity, 46 Elite democratization settlements, 198 Elite fragmentation, 199 Elite structures, 8, 184, 196–202, 205–207 El Salvador, 56 Emergent structures, 134 Endowment effects, 165, 169, 171, 180 Ennahda, 205, 206 Epidemiology, 131 Erdo˘gan, R.T., 102, 105, 108–111, 121, 123, 124 Ethnic cleansing, 213 Ethnic fractionalization, 239, 240, 244 Eurobarometer surveys, 118 European Central Bank (ECB), 118, 119, 122 European Commission, 115, 118, 120 European Parliament, 121 European Stability and Growth Pact, 120 European Union (EU), 49, 79, 115–117, 119, 120, 122 Eurozone accession, 108, 121 Evaluation phase, 166 Evolutionary biology, 6, 40, 42, 212 Evolutionary systems, 41 Expected utility model, 165 External intervention, 193–195, 199–202, 205, 206 External third party pressures, 70 Ezcurra, R., 230, 231 F Farias, D.B.L., 94, 95 Fearon, J.D., 73, 231, 239 Feedback escalatory bandwagons, 41 loop waves, 41 slippery slopes, 41 Feng, H., 218 Ferdinand VII, 53 Fernandez de Kirchner, C., 108

Index

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Fico, R., 108, 121 Fidesz, 116–118 Finland, 42, 239 Finnemore, M., 49, 52 Fiscal Compact, 120 Flaten, R.D., 231 Foreign military intervention, 9, 185, 228, 229, 232, 235, 239, 245 Foreign policy analysis (FPA), 7, 68, 87, 102, 124 Foreign policy change types, 6, 7, 27, 67, 69, 80, 87, 102, 103, 124, 184 Foreign policy personalization, 94 Forward deployment, 220 Framing effects, 180 Free Syrian Army, 188 Free trade agreements (FTA), 115, 116, 122 Fukuyama, F., 213, 223

Haiti, 94 Hale, H.E., 196, 197, 199, 202 Hamas-Israeli conflict, 66 Haynes, K., 239 Hays, J.C., 231 Hegemonic transitions, 86 Hereditary systems, 194 Hermann, Charles, 15, 87, 102, 214, 216 Hezbollah, 187, 188, 192, 203, 204 Higley, J., 198 Holocaust, 45, 48 Holsti, K.J., 87 Holsti, O., 218 Homophily model, 139, 140 Hostile interventions, 234–236, 239–241 Houthi rebellion, 186 Hussein, S., 224 Hyperglobalization, 228

G Gains/losses, 165–167, 169 Galtieri, L., 91 Garbage can model, 41 Generalized Scheme of Preferences (GSP), 115 Genocide campaigns, 45 George, A., 217 Germany, 55, 70, 79, 216, 239, 244 unification, 150 Global economic melt down (2008-09), 64 Globalization, 9, 228–246 Global war, 86, 133 Goal changes, 87, 102, 103, 121 Goertz, G., 2, 6, 14, 18, 19, 21, 22, 25, 44, 65, 67, 68, 70, 86, 133, 213, 214 Gondra Treaty (1923), 58 Gorbachev, M., 177 Gordell, K.M., 6, 12, 15, 18, 19, 63, 64, 71–75, 77, 87, 212–214, 238 Gran Colombia, 53 Great depression, 19, 57, 86, 159 Greece, 108, 119, 239 Gries, P.H., 224 Guimaraes, F., 94, 95 Guiso, L., 230, 231 Gül, A., 111 Gulf Cooperation Council, 187

I Ibarra, V., 176 IMI dataset, 236 Imperial overstretch, 219 Income inequality, 233 Incremental gestation, 212 Incremental policy making, 41 India, 70, 71, 225 Institutional intrenchment, 42 International Criminal Court, 45 International energy regime, 45 Internationalized civil war, 204 International law, 6, 40, 45 International Monetary Fund (IMF), 109–112, 114, 116–119, 122 International orientation change, 87, 102 Interstate rivalries, 2, 44, 67, 204 termination, 2, 3, 22, 44, 86, 178, 179 Iran, 66, 89, 187, 188, 201, 203, 204, 206 Iranian hostage crisis, 164 Iraq-Iran war, 170 Iran-Turkey rivalry, 204 ISIS, 188 Islamic State, 202 Israel, 20, 66, 89, 95, 188, 201, 204, 216 Israeli-Egyptian War (1948-1973), 66 Italy, 55, 66, 108, 120, 121, 239 unification, 150

H Haas, M., 164, 176–178 Hagstrom, L., 223 Hague Convention (1899), 56

J Japan, 70, 239, 244 invasion of China, 222 Jerden, B., 223

252 JFK assassination, 75 Johnson, J.C., 235 Johnston, A.I., 217, 218, 223 Jones, B., 14, 16, 22, 41 Joyce, K., 7, 24, 26 Juarez Doctrine, 54

K Kellog-Briand pact (1928), 58 Keohane, R., 45 Khrushchev, N., 176 Kingdon, J., 14, 22, 41, 70 Kirchner, N., 108, 111, 112 Kisangani, E.F., 233, 234, 236, 237, 239, 240 KOF index, 236–238 Korean War, 225 Korotayev, Andrey, 191, 192 Kosovo, 54, 213 war crimes, 42 Ku, C., 45, 46 Kugler, J., 74, 86, 213 Kurds, 188 Kyiv capture attempt (2022), 22

L Laitin, D.D., 73, 231, 239 Lamas, Saavedra, 57, 58 Latin American non-interference norm, 43 Lavagna, R., 113, 114 League of Nations, 48 Lebanese bombing, 75 Lebanon, 20, 66, 75, 188, 189, 192–194, 201, 202, 206 Lega, 120–123 Leites, N., 217 Lennox, 91 Leticia War, 57 Liberal paradigm, 133 Libya, 8, 184, 185, 187–189, 192–195, 201, 202, 204, 205 first civil war, 8, 204 Lima Conference (1847), 54 Lima Conference (1864), 56 Local clustering, 142–144, 159 Long, S.B., 233 Loss-aversion, 165, 166, 171, 172, 174, 175, 180 Loss-of-strength gradient, 219 Lundgren, M., 15, 45, 46

Index M Major institutional change, 174, 179 Malgouyres, C., 231 Al-Maliki, N., 202 Malvinas/Falklands War, 86 Malvinas Islands, 90 Manotas, B., 230, 231 Mao Tse-Tung (Mao Zedong), 214, 217 Maoz, Z., 7, 19, 21, 24, 26, 133, 135, 136, 139, 140, 143, 146–149, 171 March, J., 41 Market crash (1998), 150 Martínez, J., 176 Masoud, T., 193–196 Matolcsy, G., 118 McKinsey Company, 110 MERCOSUR (Common Market of the South), 94, 95 Merrill Lynch, 112–114 Mexican-American War (1846-48), 55 Mexico, 55, 176, 212 Miller, M., 16, 46 Miller, M.C., 70 Minimalist diffusion model, 191 Minorities at Risk Project (MAR), 239, 241 MINUSTAH, 94 Monroe Doctrine (1823), 54 Montevideo Conference (1933), 57, 58 Morgan, J.P., 113 Morgan-Stanley, 113 Morsi, M., 186, 192, 195, 203, 204 Moss, T., 222 Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S), 120 Mubarak, G., 185 Mubarak, H., 185 Multilateral intervention, 237 Munich Crisis (1938), 164 Muslim Brotherhood, 186, 205, 206

N Napoleon Bonaparte, 53, 219 Napoleonic Wars, 42, 133 National Front, 205, 231 National Reorganization Process, 178 Neo-liberal deals, 111 Netherlands, 216 Network analysis, 132, 145 clustering, 143, 144, 155 density, 143, 155 formation, 7, 133–140, 160 modularity, 7, 143, 155

Index polarization index, 143 post-shock re-organization, 142 re-organization, 131, 133, 134, 138, 160 resilience, 7, 142–145, 147, 149, 150, 158, 159 rewiring, 136, 140, 141 Nieman, M.D., 229, 231, 232, 237–239 Nineteenth Party Conference (1988), 177 Nixon, R.M., 216 Nodal degree centrality, 142 Nodal failure, 132 Non-Aligned Movement, 90, 92 Non-nuclear proliferation, 91 Nord Stream 2, 70 Norms adoption, 42 complex, 52, 53, 55–59 dynamics model, 49 international, 44 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 42, 63, 78, 79, 92, 95, 159, 160, 188, 193 expansion, 159, 160 Libyan intervention, 193 North Korea, 89, 221 Nueva, 91 Nye, J.S., 215 O Offshore balancer, 220 Oil shocks (1970s), 20 Oklahoma City bombing (1995), 75 Olsen, J., 41 Orbánomics, 117 Orban, V., 117, 228 Organizational capacity, 71 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 228 Organization of American States (OAS), 59 Organization of Petroleum-Exporting Countries (OPEC), 212, 216 Ottoman empire, 133 P P4 group, 94 Pact for the Preservation of Peace (1864), 56 Pact of Bogotá, 59 Palacio, A., 115 Pan-American Union, 56, 59 Paraguay, 91, 94 Paraguayan War (1864-1870), 56

253 Pareto-efficiency, 133 Partner-selection, 135 Path dependence, 46, 49 Patino, R., 116 Patronal lame ducks, 202 Patronal politics, 196 Patronal vulnerabilities, 199 Paul, T.V., 15, 220 Perestroika, 177 Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), 56 Peronists, 178 Personal authority, 103, 107, 108, 111, 116, 118, 123, 124 Peru, 56, 57 Physical integrity rights index, 77 Pickering, J., 9, 233, 234, 236, 237, 239, 240 Picton, 91 Plagemann, J., 94, 102, 105–107 Plebiscitary support, 103, 107, 108, 111, 122 Poland, 64, 79 Policy consolidation, 43, 47 context, 40 crystallization, 6, 40, 47, 50, 60 domain, 48 entrepreneur, 23, 49, 70, 71, 80 formulation, 6, 40, 47–50, 54, 55, 60 spatial scope, 43, 59 stability/inertia, 41, 42, 45 stasis-change-stasis cycle, 40, 46 temporal scope, 43 Policy-making stream, 41 Political capacity, 71, 213, 215 Political deadlock, 105 Political Islam, 205, 206 Populism, 93, 103–106, 108, 123, 124 political-strategic approach, 103 Porter, P., 23 Portugal, 53 Positive economic shocks, 76 Potential political shock, 21, 25, 26, 66, 68, 72–75, 80 Power pyramids, 196–199 Power transition theory, 221 Preferential attachment process, 147 Principal-agent problems, 71 Principal power capability, 104, 106 Prins, B.C., 179, 233 Probability weighting function, 166 Problem prioritization, 48 Process of rupture, 92

254 Process tracing, 12, 27, 138, 245 Prospect theory, 8, 26, 164–170, 173, 175–180 PROSUR, 95 Pseudo-certainty effects, 165, 180 Punctuated equilibrium model (PE), 6, 40, 47, 52, 67, 68, 72 Putin, V., 64

Q Qaddafi, M., 187, 188, 193

R Rasler, K., 2, 14–16, 22, 23, 65, 67, 68, 70, 80, 198 Reagan administration, 176 Recession (2008-10), 150 Reference dependence, 165, 180 Regime change cascades, 202 Regional power, 89–96 Relative political extraction (RPE), 74–76 Renno, L., 93 Repertoires of behavior, 86, 87 Responsibility to Protect (R2P) norm, 43, 94 Retrospective voting, 230 Revisionism, 88 Reynolds, A., 189, 193–197 Rio Conference (1906), 55 Rise of far right/populist parties, 228 Rivadeneira, F., 116 Rodrik, D., 228 Roles anti-foe, 94–96 anti-globalist, 94, 96 auxiliary, 86, 88, 89, 93, 94, 96 counter, 88 isolate, 89, 90, 92 national conception (NRC), 87 status, 86 Role theory, 7, 85–89, 92, 96 Romania, 64 Rosenau, J.N., 230 Rousseff, D., 93 Routinized succession, 197 RuP (Responsibility While Protecting) norm, 94 Russian Federation: Invasion of Ukraine (2022), 63 Rwanda, 45, 64, 213 genocide, 64, 213

Index S Saavedra Lamas Treaty (1933), 58 Sachs, Goldman, 113 Sadat, A., 216 Sadr, M., 202 Sahd, Kais, 195 Sahel, 187 Saleh, A.A., 186, 187 Salvini, M., 108, 120, 121 Saudi Arabia, 186–189, 192, 201–205 Schenoni, L., 6, 44, 46 Schroeder, P., 219 Schub, R., 23 Segev, E., 190, 245 Selectorate, 174 Selectorate theory, 76, 77 Self-exhausting model of change, 219 Sensitivity, 166, 215, 234 Shafer, M., 218 Shock after, 2, 46, 80, 81, 93 and awe campaign, 216 as attempts at attempted change, 102 China, 9, 212 currency depreciation, 109, 110 definition, 8, 212, 214 globalization, 229, 232, 237, 239, 246 indirect effects, 145, 154 magnitude, 7, 23, 40, 48–50, 81, 93, 95, 96, 137, 141, 145, 146, 148, 150–152, 154, 155, 157–159 origins, 15, 131 political, 1, 2, 6, 8, 11, 12, 16–18, 21–27, 40, 44, 49, 64–66, 68, 70, 72, 75–80, 86–89, 91–94, 96, 167, 169, 223, 224 populist, 86, 93, 96 repeated, 40, 50 role, 5, 86, 88, 89, 93, 95, 96 serial, 50, 123 simultaneous, 26, 43 size, 137, 141, 145, 148, 153–155 spread, 131, 132, 137, 141, 148 successive, 40, 43, 50 therapy, 19, 216 Sierra Leone, 75, 76 al-Sisi, A.F., 186, 195, 203 Sikkink, K., 49, 52 Silva, I., 94, 95 Slovakia, 108, 121 Soft balancing, 220–222 Solt, F., 233 Solution stream, 48

Index South American Union (UNASUR), 94, 95 South Atlantic, 92 South China Sea, 47 South Yemen, 186 Sovereign debt management, 105, 108, 113 Soviet Union, 16, 42, 43, 64, 159, 176–178, 198 Afghan withdrawal, 177 empire, 16, 133 de Soysa, I., 231 Spain South American empire, 133 Spurious causal attribution, 215 Squatrito, T., 45 Standard operating procedures (SOPs), 42, 45, 48, 51 Stanig, P., 230, 231 Strategic culture, 212, 213, 217, 218, 220, 223 Strategic reference group index, 147 Structural realist paradigm, 133 Sudan, 192–194, 201, 202 Sun Tzu, 218, 221 Supply chain problems, 228, 232 Supportive interventions, 234, 236, 239–241, 243–245 Sweden, 42, 239 Swiss Institute at ETH-Zurich, 234, 237 Syria, 8, 184, 185, 188, 189, 192, 194, 195, 201–204, 206 civil war, 8, 204 SYRIZA, 118, 119

T Tahrir Square, 186 Taiwan, 224 Tallberg, J., 45, 46 Tammen, R.L., 213 Taoism, 219 Tatawi, M.H., 186 Temer, M., 93, 95 Territorial disputes, 47, 56, 67, 171, 172, 175, 178, 179 Tet Offensive, 21, 22, 75, 78 Thies, C., 7, 19, 25, 86–89, 92 Thompson, W.R., 2, 3, 8, 14, 16, 20, 86, 184, 195, 198, 204, 212, 213 Tie-formation, 134, 158 Tipping point, 49 Treaty of Good Offices and Mediation (1936), 59 Treaty of Non-Aggression and Conciliation, 58

255 Treaty on Compulsory Arbitration (1912), 56 Treaty on the Prevention of Controversies (1936), 58 Treisman, D., 219 Tria, G., 121 Trinidad and Tobago, 43 Trump administration, 80, 213, 220 Trump, D.J., 20, 95, 101, 107, 108, 110, 228 Tsipras, A., 108 Tunisia, 8, 79, 185, 189, 192–195, 201, 202, 205, 206 Turkey, 108–111, 123, 188, 201, 203, 204 U UAE-Qatar rivalry, 204 UBS, 113 UCP/PRIO Armed Conflict Database, 231 Uighurs, 213 Ukraine, 22, 42, 47, 63–65, 70, 78, 79, 214, 216, 224 Ukraine War, 150 Unilateral intervention, 237 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 187, 189, 192, 201–205 United Kingdom (UK), 55, 75, 90, 91, 231, 232, 239 United Nations (UN) General Assembly (UNGA), 43 Genocide Convention (1948), 45, 48 peacekeeping operations, 45 Security Council (UNSC), 94, 237 United States (US) 9/11 attack, 17, 19 bombing of Chinese embassy in Belgrade (1999), 224 dollar pegged to gold, 216 housing bubble, 213, 215 invasion/occupation of Iraq, 193, 202 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 48 Uruguay, 91, 94 Utility, 7, 135–142, 146, 147, 165, 166, 190, 238 Uti possidetis, 53, 54, 56 V Value function, 166, 167 Van de Graaf, T., 45 Varoufakis, Y., 119 Venezuela, 53, 55, 56, 95, 108 Videla, J.R., 178 Vietnam War, 19, 21, 25, 78

256 Volgy, T.J., 6, 71, 73, 74, 77, 87, 212–214, 238 Vulnerability, 115, 132, 133, 173, 197, 198, 200, 201, 215, 218

Index World War I, 19, 24, 212 World War II, 19, 24, 63

X Xenophobia, 228, 230, 232 W Wallstreet globalists, 107 War of the Pacific (1879-1884), 56 War on terrorism, 221, 224 Weeks, J., 171 Wehner, L., 7, 86, 88, 89, 92–95 Western economic sanctions, 216 Weyland, Kurt, 103–108, 123, 189, 190, 200 Windows of opportunity, 14, 50, 70 Winning coalitions, 77, 174, 176, 179 Workers’ party, 93, 95 World Bank, 26, 73, 78, 80, 109, 111, 115, 116, 122 World Summit (2005), 43

Y Yemen, 184–187, 189, 192–195, 201, 202, 204 civil war, 8, 187, 204 Yemen Arab Republic, 186 Yom Kippur War, 216 Youth bulge, 190 Yugoslavia, 213

Z Zelensky, V., 64 Zone of Peace and Cooperation, 92