2017 Book Advancing Interdisciplinary Approaches To International Relations
2017 Book Advancing Interdisciplinary Approaches To International Relations
2017 Book Advancing Interdisciplinary Approaches To International Relations
Edited by
Steve A. Yetiv and Patrick James
Advancing Interdisciplinary Approaches
to International Relations
Steve A. Yetiv • Patrick James
Editors
Advancing
Interdisciplinary
Approaches to
International
Relations
Editors
Steve A. Yetiv Patrick James
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, School of International Relations,
Virginia, USA University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, CA, USA
v
vi CONTENTS
Index 339
LIST OF FIGURES
vii
LIST OF TABLES
ix
CHAPTER 1
Steve A. Yetiv and Patrick James
level. More and more practitioners as well realize that such approaches are
necessary for addressing transnational challenges such as climate change,
energy security, population explosion, and global terrorism—problems
that often elude disciplinary-bound analyses because they cross borders,
regions, and issue areas. Even though policymakers remain far too stove-
piped, they are sometimes encouraged to move beyond disciplines, par-
ticular specialties, and familiar turf in order to more effectively examine
and fix vexing problems.
Yet, while multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches have
gained significant cachet in and outside the halls of academe, we can still
benefit much more from the knowledge, approaches, and theories of dif-
ferent disciplines to enhance our understanding of international relations
(IR). We offer one of the most comprehensive book-length works on
multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in the field IR, with a focus on
international conflict.
It makes sense to start out with key definitions, although our goal is not
to get bogged down in definitional explorations. We see multidisciplinar-
ity and interdisciplinarity on a conceptual continuum and do not believe
that there is a very clear demarcation between them. But, even if the dif-
ferences are not abundantly clear, several are worth pointing out.
First, while interdisciplinarity can assume many different forms, we
define it as cross-fertilizing empirics, concepts, and approaches from two or
more disciplines, or of sub-fields that overlap disciplines, to enhance explana-
tion.1 By contrast, multidisciplinarity involves far less cross-fertilization of
this kind. Rather, it investigates phenomena from disciplinary perspec-
tives. For example, in one excellent work, scholars provide an introduc-
tory text that applies political science, history, geography, economics,
and anthropology as multidisciplinary angles on various global issues and
world regions, that is, they investigate each issue area through one par-
ticular disciplinary lens. Thus, a multidisciplinary analysis on the subject of
terrorism could offer different chapters on terrorism written by historians,
psychologists, and economists (see Anderson et al. 2014). The disciplinary
angles remain largely intact but are applied to critical subject areas.
As a result, while interdisciplinarity often involves integration or synthe-
sis across disciplinary boundaries, multidisciplinarity does not have such
goals. It may support such goals but is not aimed at them as an enterprise.
Second, interdisciplinarity often challenges the basic elements of dis-
ciplines,2 by interrogating and redrawing their boundaries, theories, and
methods. Multidisciplinarity, as Long (2011: 38) observes, certainly “does
PUSHING BOUNDARIES IN THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 3
so, while others will focus more on the first three goals of the book. But,
overall, the book will present interdisciplinary research which in some
cases aims at redefining fields or ways of thinking.
ADVANCING MULTIDISCIPLINARITY
AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY IN GENERAL
the subject, and because their work often lies at the intersection of IR as
well as sub-fields and disciplines outside of IR, including history, demog-
raphy, technology, and gender studies. We have included non-political
scientists as well from anthropology, psychology, and neuroscience, but
the chapters of this volume reflect the reality of interdisciplinary research
on IR today: a sustained interest among political scientists, with growing
attention and involvement from those outside of political science.
SETUP OF THE BOOK
Steve A. Yetiv, in Chap. 2, examines aspects of how IR can benefit more
greatly from history, with some emphasis on the study of international
conflict from a social science angle. He argues that the historical study of
change is especially vital to understanding IR and conflict in both theory
and practice. Building off of this exploration, he sketches a conceptual
framework that bridges foreign policy at the sub-systemic level with IR
in a new way to explain the behavior of states. Yetiv, who has conducted
IR-oriented work as well as historically oriented research based on hun-
dreds of documents that he declassified, argues that drawing on multiple
disciplines and levels of analysis provides added leverage in explaining con-
flict and foreign policy (also, see Yetiv 2011).17
In Chap. 3, Jonathan Renshon and Daniel Kahneman illuminate the
role of psychological biases in foreign policy decision-making. They find
that the biases recently uncovered by psychological research favor hawk-
ish decisions in conflict situations. “Hawkish” refers to a propensity for
suspicion, hostility and aggression in the conduct of conflict, and for less
cooperation and trust when the resolution of a conflict is on the agenda.
While much extant work examines links between cognitive biases and con-
flict, they offer a new and developed formulation based on the excellent
insight of Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman in the field of psychology
and Jonathan Renshon’s knowledge of IR and conflict.
Chapter 4 deals with neuroeconomics or the study of brain activity and
how choices are made. Kugler and Zak show how oxytocin impacts brain
chemistry and levels of trust, with possible implications for decision-
making, and, in turn, conflict and cooperation. They offer a challenge
to realist theory by questioning its assumptions about a fully Hobbesian
world and by incorporating the notion of trust into our thinking and
modeling as well. We are misled by the overemphasis on anarchy at the
systemic level to the neglect of sub-systemic variables such as trust and
10 S.A. YETIV AND P. JAMES
the neuroscience aspects that help shape it. Kugler and Zak argue that
willingness to accept international rules that restrict behavior and help
avoid conflict depends critically on the level of trust. While they recog-
nize that numerous variables influence cooperation, and that realists cer-
tainly do hold out the prospect for cooperation even if that is difficult to
achieve, they believe that our understanding of trust is under-developed
as is the role of neuroscience in influencing our decisions. Their chap-
ter combines the path-breaking work of Paul Zak in the laboratory with
Kugler’s enormous record in IR.
Analysis by Stefan Fritsch in Chap. 5 begins by identifying schools of
thought with regard to Science & Technology Studies. Technological
evolution has impacted foreign policy decision-making processes at the
micro-level by facilitating data gathering and speeding up decision-
making processes, thus adding another window on government behavior
and international conflict. A technology-driven skill revolution has also
contributed to the emergence of new actors (NGOs and individuals), and
technological evolution has reshaped armed conflict and related decision-
making processes.
In Chap. 6, Ray Scupin sketches the anthropological perspective and
links to IR and conflict processes through an evolutionary and cross-
cultural comparison. Scupin shows how culture—the central concept
developed within anthropology—challenges rational choice models (a
subject of interest to other scholars in this volume as well such as Renshon
and Kahneman)—and illuminates issues such as religious and secular
global trends, conflict, and terrorism (Cannell 2010; Munson 2008; Atran
2010).
Chapter 7 by Maya Eichler and Soumita Basu seeks to advance our
understanding of a growing area of study: gender and conflict. They show
how an empirical and theoretical focus on gender yields entirely different
explanations of conflict than traditionally understood. Their work empha-
sizes the individual level of analysis which this book highlights, be it in
history, psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, or in this case gender
studies, and also how individuals interact with broader phenomena in
affecting conflict.
Chapter 8, from Tadeusz Kugler, argues that looking at politics and
particularly IR through a demographic prism allows for the analysis of
the fundamental structures of society. Kugler links demographic struc-
tures and changes to key dynamics in IR in ways unaccounted for in stan-
dard IPE and economic models. In particular, he reveals links to national
PUSHING BOUNDARIES IN THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 11
economic growth and instability, the rise and fall of regions, and civil war.
Demographic dynamics are also directly connected to unrest that gen-
erates democratic movements or conflicts as observable throughout the
Middle East and much of sub-Saharan Africa.
Kyungkook Kang and Tadeusz Kugler seek to further our knowledge of
economic growth, change, and conflict in Chap. 9. They build a general
model that offers a new perspective on politics. It shows that economic
development is a complex socioeconomic process involving multiple fac-
tors within a dynamic, non-linear relationship. Their model synthesizes
diverse ideas from politics, economics, and demography and helps us
understand problems such as income inequality and major conflict.
In Chap. 10, Carolyn C. James and Patrick James expand on the con-
cept of “systemism,” which is a basic framework that can help in thinking
more broadly about world affairs (also see James 2002, 2012). Rather than
theorizing strictly at the level of the system or its components, systemism
(not to be confused with David Easton’s [1953] “systems theory”) allows
for linkages operating at multiple levels of analysis—at the macro- and
micro-levels.
Chapter 11 by Patrick James and Steve A. Yetiv will draw connections
between the different chapters to further highlight the key themes of this
book. We will assess what their separate contributions mean when consid-
ered together for the study of international conflict. In these reflections,
we will also consider where future research could be most profitable.
NOTES
1. On the nuances regarding multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinary work
and related concepts, see Kessel et al. (2008), Stevens (2008), Cantwell
and Brannen (2011), Miller (2010), Lyall et al. (2011), and Holland
(2014).
2. On the evolution of interdisciplinarity over time, see Aalto et al. (2011:
11–26).
3. Multidisciplinarity therefore involves parallel studies (Long 2011: 38).
4. On components of interdisciplinarity work as summarized by Neumann,
see 2011: 258; see also Long 2011: 38, 40, 502. In his conceptualization,
Neumann explains that multidisciplinarity is in play if the subject matter
holds the enterprise together; if concepts, theories, and methods are held
in common, this is transdisciplinarity.
5. The discussion that follows is based on James (1988).
12 S.A. YETIV AND P. JAMES
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Bloomsbury Academic.
PUSHING BOUNDARIES IN THE STUDY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 15
Steve A. Yetiv
The study of history and international relations (IR) is different, but they
also overlap in some important ways that create synergies for understand-
ing and analysis of key questions in IR. This chapter explores how history
can better contribute to the discipline of IR. Within this effort, I focus on
how history can enhance our understanding of the causes of international
conflicts, chiefly from a social science standpoint as opposed to a variety of
other interesting approaches in history and IR.1
In the first two sections of this chapter, I examine what we mean by his-
tory and explore the differences between history and IR. The third section
argues that the extent to which history can benefit IR depends on finding
the right synergies between the two disciplines. “History and International
Conflict” then argues that while history can serve IR in several ways,
history is especially important for understanding the links between change
and international conflict. Many of the major issues, debates, and theories
in IR involve assumptions or assertions about change, but IR scholars do
not do enough to study, or to draw upon studies of, change empirically.
Since history is concerned with change, it can help fill this lacuna.
WHAT IS HISTORY?
How can history contribute to IR? This question is long standing and has
been addressed by various scholars (see Williams et al. 2012). In fact, the
question of how to incorporate history has been salient in various fields
including “historical sociology” (see Clemens 2007; Hobson and Lawson
2008; BISA 40th Anniversary Conference 2015), “historical anthropol-
ogy,” “historical geography,” and “historical economics.”2 But all this
interconnection raises an a priori question: what is history?
While we defined IR in Chap. 1, much discussion exists among histori-
ans about how to define history, and the discipline is marked by a diversity
of analyses and schools of thought. Historians are engaged in myriad con-
versations about issues ranging from epistemology through ontology in
deciding upon what subject matter is most important to study. As one his-
torian has put it, historians need to explore, interrogate, and understand
the “very nature of realness itself,” in history (Anderson 2015: 789). That
undertaking is useful and captures the complexities of assessing subjective
realities, but an assumption of this chapter is that history can still inform
important areas of IR.
In this chapter, I use the word “history” to refer to the work of his-
torians and to non-historians conducting work on history. Breisach has
asserted that historians aim to demonstrate “the existence of a necessary
link between history, as reflection on the past, and human life” and that
their task is to “design the great reconciliations between past, present,
and future, always cognizant of both change and continuity” (Breisach
2007: 2–3). Put another way, historians are trained to interpret past reali-
ties and to seek “significance, explanation, and meaning” (Appleby et al.
1994: 275). Berkhofer suggests that historians wrestle with a key question
of how and what we can know of the past given that “so much of it is
gone by definition and experience” (Berkhofer 2008: 2), and they aim to
HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND CONFLICT 19
understand history even if they know that “no two accounts of the past
are the same” (see Anderson et al. 2008: 3). As E.H. Carr famously noted,
history is much more than digging up facts—facts which in and of them-
selves raise the question of what is a historical fact (Carr 1964: 7; also see
Appleby et al. 1994: 241–270).
In the next section of this chapter, I discuss how IR and history dif-
fer and explicate key aspects of schools of thought related to the nexus
between history and IR.
who see the world through the focus upon a central idea (Berlin 1953).
But we need both types of thinkers for knowledge to be advanced.
If IR scholars are more likely to seek generalizations, they are also more
likely to see events in terms of existing generalizations. In one sympo-
sium chiefly involving diplomatic historians and IR scholars, contributors
tended to find that “unlike international historians, who did not expect
explanations for a particular historical episode to be consistent with argu-
ments for other events, political scientists assumed that particular his-
torical outcomes and processes could be treated as examples of a larger
phenomenon” (Elman and Elman 2008: 358).
While some historians, as historian Pelz observes, do use generaliza-
tions and theories to explain events, “even if they are reluctant to admit
to the practice” (Pelz in Elman 2008: 87), IR scholars are far more
conscious of theory and sometimes even see it as an end point. One
might say that historians reveal pieces of a puzzle. They know that the
pieces have limited meaning in themselves, but they believe that others
will use them to construct the larger picture in longer-range, broader,
or comparative studies. IR, on the other hand, prioritizes generaliza-
tion and often sees it as the culmination of one’s investigation. For IR
scholars, generalization is used for prediction, whereas historians gener-
alize to streamline history so that it can be explained. Otherwise, they
could write a million volumes on any period of history. For example, IR
scholars are also more likely to interpret great powers as pursuing grand
strategies. As with the aforementioned symposium, several contributors
involved in a 2008 symposium agreed that “much of mainstream IR is
fixed on the notion that international relations is repetitive, timeless,
and cyclical” (Elman and Elman 2008: 359). A particular branch of for-
eign policy studies claims that states pursue coherent, consistent strate-
gies over extended periods of time—that their behavior conforms with
grand strategy such as balance of power or hegemonic grand strategy. By
contrast, historians are less likely to see world affairs in terms of a grand
narrative (see Reus-Smit 2008: 400–402).
Another difference is that IR scholars sometimes seek to make pre-
dictions, while historians rarely do.3 This does not diminish the value of
their work for IR scholars, but it creates a separate, disconnected space of
inquiry and analysis. The same can be said of policy. Many IR scholars seek
to make policy recommendations, while this is more rare among histori-
ans, with some notable exceptions (e.g., Neustadt and May 1988).
HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND CONFLICT 21
By this I mean that the central thrust of neoclassical realism is that bal-
ance of power dynamics cannot in and of themselves explain key outcomes
such as balancing and bandwagoning; rather it is also vital to incorporate
micro-level variables such as perception, ideology, and domestic-society
relations to explain these outcomes. In turn, it is difficult to understand
micro-level variables, which are not as easily amenable to abstraction as
are balance of power dynamics, with slender historical analysis. In fact, the
main methodological approach of neoclassical realists is to test hypotheses
and theories using the process tracing of case studies (see Schweller 2003;
Onea 2012). And, while the approaches of historians and IR scholars can
be quite different, both groups sometimes use process tracing to identify a
causal chain that links independent and dependent variables (see Bennett
and George 2005: 206–207), in a case study approach.
Within both fields, there are more particular genres to consider for
a sensible rendering of what history can offer IR. Hobson and Lawson
identify several schools of thought among historians, which, while hardly
exhaustive, underscore the diversity of thought in the discipline (also, see
Williams et al. 2012). The school of Radical Historicism, insofar as it can
be discerned, assumes that good history must consider the realities of a
given time and place, which shape events; postcolonial studies provide
an example of such an approach, which brings it closer to constructivist
IR, albeit bereft of the grand scope analysis of Wendt (1999). By con-
trast, traditional historians aim to capture truth through archival work
and primary source documents. Such approaches are averse to the work of
Radical Historicism (Hobson and Lawson 2008: 426). While traditional
historians produce work which differs from that of IR theorists, IR posi-
tivists may well see the work of traditional historians as most useful out
of the different approaches in history. They can draw upon it to test their
theories in a positivist manner.
Meanwhile, in contrast to scholars from the other two schools, big
picture historians are not focused on a “random series of isolated move-
ments,” but rather on the broader sweep of events, employing more
generality.4 They seek to examine large-scale change, but that is also the
central province of historical sociologists who have interacted profitably
with some branches of history and IR (Lawson 2006: esp. 408–409).
Historical sociology can be viewed as composed of efforts by sociologists,
economists, philosophers, and even some political scientists to under-
stand, though the study of history, how the modern world evolved (see
BISA 40th Anniversary Conference 2015). Thus, the study of history is
HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND CONFLICT 23
for order carried out in both domestic and international politics.” (in May
et al. 2010: 87). Regardless of whether one agrees with his argument, it
certainly frames the larger question of the weight of different causes of war
and does so with historical evidence. And such work, alongside the use of
databases on war such as that developed by Richard Ned Lebow (2010b),
could augment our understanding of the motives for war over time.
History can also inform the potential change in the causes of interna-
tional conflict writ large. For instance, are tensions over resources such as
oil and water a more or less common cause of conflict over time? How
about the role of individual leaders in an age of greater communications?
How about refugee crises and environmental problems? Human security
factors of this kind are emphasized in non-traditional definitions of secu-
rity; in what ways have they gained in importance over time? (see Kerr
2009). Comparison over time is crucial for answering such questions,
which history can help execute either through in-depth work such as case
studies or by helping to identify and explore indicators of change over
time.
Third, IR could do far more to explore the effects of the fall of empires.
That would help illuminate many concerns in IR in such failed states and
the conflicts they generate; decolonization and the conflictual struggle
between the strong and weak; and numerous conflicts over borders and
resources, especially in the Middle East.
History is integral to this exploration. Many historians have engaged the
question of empire. Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire comes
to mind as well as the seminal and acclaimed work of Braudel (1972), who
investigated the clash of empires and cultures in the Mediterranean in the
sixteenth century by looking broadly at contexts (agricultural, financial,
economic, demographic, technological, etc.) and back through historical
development over a millennium. In more recent times, other historians of
various stripes have addressed questions of empire (e.g., Kennedy 1987;
Maier 2006; Porter 2006; Burbank and Cooper 2010), and in some cases
this work aids not only in understanding the rise and fall of empires but
also the causes and effects of crucial conflicts like the Thirty Years War
from 1618 to 1648 (Whaley 2013)—a time period that some scholars
believe could inform our understanding of religious and inter-state con-
flicts today (see Owen 2014).
Fourth, scholars have produced useful work on whether the United
States is in decline, but this analysis, which is fundamentally about under-
standing change, could be further developed with a systematic comparison
HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND CONFLICT 29
and effects of globalization (e.g., Keohane and Nye 2011; Held and
McGrew 2007; Rosenau 2003; Russett and Oneal 2001). Does globaliza-
tion generate “butterfly effects?” Do they, in turn, cause inter-state ten-
sions? Under what conditions?
All of these claims, be they theoretical or empirical, beg questions about
history and change. For example, one major difference between IR theo-
retical schools has to do with conflict in world politics. Is the world just
as war-prone and violent as in past decades and centuries? Realists would
assume that it is, largely; liberals would tend to disagree. Empirically, that
is a giant question which still requires much more attention and engage-
ment with history and multiple disciplines.6 It is hard to judge such ques-
tions without a careful study of change, with accompanying support from
historical work. Even large-N studies, while highly useful, could be sup-
plemented profitably by consulting in-depth historical work.
Sixth, another major difference between IR theoretical schools has to
do with globalization and change. Some scholars believe that it has gen-
erated a radically different global environment, including a diminished
chance for inter-state conflict, in sharp contrast to the assumptions of real-
ism (Russett and Oneal 2001; Pinker 2011). Historical case studies on the
subject are uncommon and it would be useful to see how they might add
to the literature. Dale Copeland offers an interesting exception in which
his historical work informs theory building on how expectations of trade
affect international conflict more than extant levels of trade (Copeland
2014). More historical studies comparing past eras to the present would
also help in understanding to what extent globalization generates instabili-
ties that may lead to conflict as compared to the past (for an exception, see
Buzan and Lawson 2015). Indeed, IR scholars are interested in the notion
that under globalized conditions, small perturbations might “reverber-
ate” or cause “cascading disruptions”—dynamics which researchers have
noticed in other forms of globalization (Rosenau 2003, chap. 9; Maoz
2006). How have such dynamics changed over time?
Seventh, constructivism is not the focus of this chapter, but certainly it is
rich with potential (see Krotz 2015, chap. 2). The study of history informs
myriad notions of constructivist behavior that can influence conflict.
Consider the nexus of time, change, and meaning. As Ty Solomon sug-
gests, the interweaving of temporality, meaning, and subjectivity affects
the social construction process in ways that are subtle and underappreci-
ated. That is true of conflict and of how the meanings attached to various
events and positions in conflicts change over time in the historical process
HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND CONFLICT 31
While history can inform theory building, it can also benefit the related
enterprise of testing. Historical evidence can also help explore hypotheses
and theories, especially in areas where meta-data or artificial evidence are
prominent and quantitative methods are neither possible nor appropriate
for the subject matter. As Larson points out, historical evidence is “essential
to assess the accuracy of psychological explanations of foreign policy deci-
sions,” because experiments generate useful hypotheses about cognitive
and motivational influence, albeit in an artificial environment, in need of
“validation by real-world data” (Larson in Elman and Elman 2001: 327).
Of course, history also can be a laboratory for the study of counter-
factuals, as a means for drawing inferences or testing theory. Such “what
if” questions, which are employed across disciplines, can help identify
the importance of hypothesized variables that are assumed to have been
absent. Often such variables may be tied to broader theories, allowing for
those theories to be tested, if the counterfactual approach is used effec-
tively (see Lebow 2010a; Harvey 2011). Indeed, all counterfactuals are
not created equal. As is well known, they can be misused, especially if the
variable assumed to have been absent is too divorced in time from the
outcome that it is hypothesized to explain (King and Zeng 2007).
Beyond counterfactuals, we rarely use history to calibrate complex
models. For instance, assume that one develops an agent-based simula-
tion model to study the impact of terrorist attacks on the global ship-
ping system. One can populate the model with actors whose behavior is
governed by algorithms which approximate how those actors are likely to
behave, but calibrating the model requires identifying past events that may
approximate terrorist attacks, such as earthquakes or labor strikes and then
assessing their effects. Since we cannot create terrorist attacks, these other
events help assess whether our model captures the essential effects that it
purports to predict and explain. Historians may offer the work that, when
combined with data analysis of such effects, can help in identifying cases
and their key contours for calibrating models of various stripes, or non-
historians can engage in historical analysis for this purpose.
Historical evidence, of course, may be used in quantitative approaches,
even if not conducted by historians. Thus, some comparative historical
analysis uses large-N statistical analysis, such as the analysis of revolu-
tions. While the level of detail in this work which is conducted often by
sociologists falls short of that of traditional historians, it is more involved
than that of most political scientists. It feeds into the study of IR (see
Goldstone 2003).
34 S.A. YETIV
analyst, but we tend to assume that states try to carefully weigh the costs
and benefits of various options for dealing with the issue at hand, and then
choose, or try to choose, the best option that advances national interests
(Allison and Zelikow 1999: esp. 13, 15–17). We then tend to describe
their behavior as if they acted as a coordinated actor rather than as a com-
bination of competing groups, bureaucracies, committees, and individuals
with their own interests, preferences, and modes of behavior. This concep-
tion of government behavior is captured explicitly in the state-centric ver-
sion of what is called the rational actor model. It is drawn from the study
of IR, with some basis in economics.
Such mono-theoretical explanations based fundamentally on the ratio-
nal actor model can certainly illuminate government behavior. They are
important building blocks to more complex explanations. And in some
cases, they may capture enough of what is vital to be satisfactory. But these
accounts can also be misleading or incomplete,8 notably if they seek to
force reality into pre-fitted boxes. The rational actor model derives chiefly
from political science as applied to states, but could be cross-fertilized bet-
ter with other disciplines to explain foreign policy behavior.
The integrated approach consists of several parts. First, it starts by using
different perspectives to help explain government behavior which includes
how decisions are made (decision-making) and why governments do what
they do. Scholars in different fields have argued the benefits of taking on
different perspectives (e.g., Allison and Zelikow 1999; Tomasello 2014).
The perspectives used in the integrated approach are chosen because they
cover basic aspects of government behavior and offer alternative and some-
times competing explanations.9 Using these five perspectives yields five
different explanations for the same government behavior, in Rashomon
style. The integrated approach is not limited to these five perspectives.
Scholars can add or subtract perspectives to explain the cases that they
examine so long as they cover the basic aspects of government behavior.
The five perspectives are based on different assumptions about what
level of analysis is most crucial (Level of Analysis) in explaining government
behavior; what are the direct or indirect goals or results of the behavior of
the central actor posited in the perspective (Goal or Result); and how that
actor makes decisions consciously or subconsciously (Decision-making).
For each case in question, we would start off by offering a rational actor
model explanation of the behavior we seek to examine, and then move to
offer competing perspectives.
HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND CONFLICT 37
Since this book is focused on the causes of conflict, let us consider the
integrated approach as applied to the case of the 1990–1991 Persian Gulf
conflict which was triggered by Iraq’s August 2, 1990, invasion of Kuwait.
How can we explain why the United States went to war on January 16,
1991, to kick Iraq out of Kuwait? Using the integrated approach, I found
that no one approach provided the best explanation of this conflict,
but when all five were used, a fuller and more complete understanding
emerged. Sub-systemic variables really mattered; individuals, and in par-
ticular the President, counted profoundly in the broader scheme of things
because at critical junctures he pushed for conflict in decisive ways.
President George H.W. Bush operated within a context of personal,
domestic, global, and historical constraints. That was revealed in using the
multiple perspectives of the integrated approach. However, testing these
perspectives against the record also showed that he was also a decisive
actor in direct and subtle ways. The individual mattered in history.
Bush’s past personal experiences in the World War II and his use of the
Munich analogy shaped his cognitive map and decisions that led to war.
Indeed, at crucial junctures, he invoked the analogy both publically and
privately and it firmed him against allowing Iraq any type of face-saving
withdrawal from Kuwait; it also pushed him, and in turn, many of his key
advisers, to want to see Saddam cut down to size. I reached this conclu-
sion through a historical understanding of the Persian Gulf crisis, aided by
my declassification of scores of critical documents, but also by studying the
Munich crisis and the use of the Munich analogy by subsequent leaders
(see Yetiv 2011).
While it would be difficult to understand Bush’s critical role in this
crisis without delving into the cognitive level of analogies, we would
be equally hampered if we did not understand group-level dynamics.
Important aspects of groupthink were present among the small group of
presidential advisors, which ironically did not produce a fiasco as group-
think theory would predict for reasons that I demonstrate and theo-
rize about in detail in my work (Yetiv 2003, 2011). These elements of
groupthink further strengthened Bush’s hand in the crisis, because, as
the group leader, he faced little serious opposition within his own group
of advisers. Moreover, an absence of government politics (i.e., posturing
among members of government agencies to push their agency’s interests)
kept different actors, agencies, and departments from pushing their own
agendas and helped keep the President’s aim of dislodging Iraq from
Kuwait on track.
HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND CONFLICT 41
CONCLUSION
IR scholars can do more to benefit from history be it by drawing on exist-
ing studies by historians or others that are history-inclined, or by upgrad-
ing their own work on history. This chapter explored what history can
offer IR at multiple levels of analysis and then introduced the idea of an
integrated approach. The next two chapters focus special attention on the
individual level of analysis and in particular on psychology and neuro-
science as they relate to decision-making and conflict. While history can
provide special insight into the role of individuals in affecting an event
and subsequent dynamics, psychology and neuroscience focus micro-level
attention on factors that affect individual behavior, and, in turn, major
issues such as international conflict.
NOTES
1. Referred to perhaps initially by historian Himmelfarb, is the postmodernist
revolution that involves myriad schools of thought (2004).
2. The last of these is perhaps most prominently on display in recent times by
Ferguson (2003) who, to illustrate the point, is both a professor of history
and business and uses history to inform modern world politics.
3. For an example of forecasting work in IR and beyond, which relies upon
an expected value model, see Bueno de Mesquita (2009).
4. On the nature of this school and on the three waves of historical sociology,
see Hobson and Lawson 2008: 427–435). Also, on history and IR writ
large, see Lawson (2012).
5. For example, see Gilpin (1981), Goldstein (1988), Legro (2007),
MacDonald (2009), Modelski and Thompson (1996), and Nexon (2009).
6. To some extent, Pinker (2011) succeeds in such an approach and finds that
violence has decreased over time.
7. For foundational works, see Abbott (2001), Bearman et al. (2002),
Mahoney and Rueschmeyer (2003), and Tilly (1995).
44 S.A. YETIV
8. Allison offered one of the first challenges to the rational actor model on
the basis of domestic political processes. On the revision of this work, see
Allison and Zelikow (1999).
9. For expanded discussion, see Yetiv, Explaining Foreign Policy, Chap. 1.
The term “perspective” downplays pretension to theory insofar as it does
not necessarily connote the ability to generate or falsify predictions, while
not precluding the potential for doing so.
10. Thaler is viewed as one of the founders of this field. In recent years, he has
worked with scholars such as Cass Sunstein and Daniel Kahneman to illu-
minate how economic theory can be made more robust if it accounts for
how people actually behave, given cognitive and psychological factors. On
this genre, see their latest work (Thaler and Sunstein 2008).
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HISTORY, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, AND CONFLICT 49
Jonathan Renshon and Daniel Kahneman
J. Renshon ()
Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, USA
e-mail: renshon@wisc.edu
D. Kahneman
Department of Psychology, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA
How would you asses the probability that he was a librarian or a farmer?
Airline pilot of physician? Base rates should play a major role here, as farm-
ers are far more common than librarians. However, because Mark is similar
to mental images or stereotypes we tend to hold about librarians, the base
rate is likely to be neglected.
These heuristics have been used to explain a diverse range of findings
related to beliefs about chance, probability and predictions of others’
behavior. In other cases, one particular bias, such as overconfidence (or
“positive illusions”) is likely to be the result of several mechanisms work-
ing in concert.
This approach, developing out of the cognitive revolution, was itself a
revolution in psychology and led the founding of a new field (behavioral
economics, concerned specifically with the impact of psychological fac-
tors on economic decision-making and modeling), new journals and an
explosion of research in related fields such as decision theory, econom-
ics, neuroscience, political science and management studies. Below, we
provide a short overview of the impact of the cognitive revolution and
the heuristics and biases research program on political science and inter-
national relations.
exaggeration to say this was the single most influential book in this para-
digm (its 4000+ citations are just one indication of this). The book’s
influence can no doubt be traced not just to its comprehensiveness, but
to the model it set for integrating psychology and international rela-
tions. This was a matter of not just importing a psychological factor (e.g.,
beliefs) into politics, but thinking through in great depth how such a
factor might work in the context of international politics (e.g., in beliefs
about adversaries vs. allies).
A second critical event for the study of decision-making in international
relations was the spread of the “heuristics and biases” approach from psy-
chology to other fields. Prospect Theory alone generated dozens of books
and articles as scholars sought to apply its insights to the study of interna-
tional conflict (notable examples include Farnham 1984 and McDermott
2001). But even aside from Prospect Theory, the heuristics and biases
approach gained popularity as a method of analyzing international conflict
and foreign policy. Notable works in this vein include analyses of attribu-
tion biases and the formation of international reputations (Mercer 1996)
as well as overconfidence and war (Johnson 2004).
The study of decision-making in international relations has, through-
out its history, been both interdisciplinary as well as multi-method in its
approach. The most direct relationship has been with the field of psychol-
ogy, from which political scientists have borrowed and adapted theories
of information processing, emotions, identity and beliefs. For example,
one prominent research program has used Social Identity Theory (SIT)
to explain when, how and why states pursue international status (Larson
and Shevchenko 2010). SIT helps by providing a template of strategies
(e.g., social competition, social mobility or social creativity) states use in
the pursuit of status, as well as explanations for why and when they are
chosen. The importation of psychological theories of identity has also
been used to explain systemic-level phenomena. Wohlforth (2009), for
example, uses the idea of status competition in combination with theories
of system polarity to explain the location and timing of great power con-
flict. Other prominent examples of theories borrowed from psychology
include Appraisal Tendency Framework (for emotions) and the notion of
intuitive versus systematic thinking for work more broadly on the subject
of decision-making.
Other fields have contributed as well, as neuroscience (see Kugler and
Zak, this volume), biology and evolutionary psychology have all pro-
vided fertile grounds for the generation of new hypotheses related to
58 J. RENSHON AND D. KAHNEMAN
Positive Illusions
One of the most robust findings in cognitive and social psychology is that
individuals often fall victim to “positive illusions.”4 Among these positive
illusions are: unrealistically positive views of one’s abilities and character,
the illusion of control and unrealistic optimism (Taylor and Brown 1988:
195–196).
Unrealistically positive views of the self have been documented in many
domains. Among other things, most people believe themselves to be bet-
ter than average drivers, decision-makers and negotiators (Svenson 1981:
143; Bazerman 1998: 69). A survey of university professors found that 94
% believed themselves to be better teachers than the average at their insti-
tution, which of course is a statistical impossibility (Cross 1977). Because
individuals resist information that conflicts with positive self-assessments,
these unrealistically positive views of oneself are generally robust over time
(Crary 1966: 246; Marks 1984: 203).
The “illusion of control” is an exaggerated perception of the extent
to which outcomes depend on one’s actions. When people were given a
button and instructed to cause a particular color to appear on the screen,
they erroneously believed that they had substantial control over events,
even when the outcomes were actually determined by a computer (Martin
et al. 1984). Experiments have shown that people act as if they can con-
trol the outcome of rolling a die and are more willing to bet when they
do the rolling (Silverman 1964: 114; Langer 1975: 312, 324; Campbell
1986: 290). It has also been demonstrated that stress (common in con-
flict or crisis decision-making) increases the preference for strategies that
engender a feeling of control, even if it is illusory, and even if it leads to
worse outcomes (Friedland et al. 1992: 923). In a competitive situation,
the illusion of control causes each side to believe that the outcome of the
competition depends mostly on its own actions and abilities, even when it
depends equally on the achievements of competitors.
The third positive illusion is “unrealistic optimism.” The evidence for
“illusory,” or biased, optimism comes from the comparisons of individuals’
judgments of themselves and of others. People generally believe that the
probability of positive outcomes (such as having a gifted child, or enjoying
their first job) is higher for themselves than for their peers and judge the
probability of negative events (such as being the victim of a crime or being
60 J. RENSHON AND D. KAHNEMAN
in a car accident) as less likely for themselves than for others (Robertson
1977: 136; Weinstein 1980: 806; Perloff and Fetzer 1986: 502). In addi-
tion, experimental evidence suggests that people’s predictions of what
will occur correspond closely to what they would like to happen, rather
than what is objectively likely to occur (Sherman 1980: 211). A study of
entrepreneurs who had started small businesses revealed a striking dis-
crepancy between their expectations of success (typically .80 or more) and
the actual probability of success for a small business, which is about 1/3
(Cooper et al. 1988). One important cause of this bias seems to be “refer-
ence group neglect,” in which individuals discount the abilities or skills of
the peer group against which they are competing (Camerer and Lovallo
1999: 307). Experts are not immune to these positive illusions. One
recent experiment, for example, found that professional financial analysts,
making judgments and predictions about their areas of expertise, were just
as overconfident as the base group of students (Glaser et al. 2005).
Within political science, many scholars have found evidence support-
ive of the notion that leaders’ positive illusions have led to more wars
than would have occurred in the absence of that bias. Stephen Van Evera
argued, for instance, that leaders often have unrealistically positive views
of the balance of military power, overestimate their “will” relative to their
adversary, overestimate the loyalty and abilities of key allies, and underes-
timate the cost of potential wars (Van Evera 1999).
A group of researchers has recently documented the link between over-
confidence and war in a simulated conflict situation (Johnson et al. 2006).
Johnson et al. conducted an experiment in which participants (drawn
from the Cambridge, MA, area, but not exclusively composed of stu-
dents) played an experimental wargame. Subjects gave ranked assessments
of themselves relative to the other players prior to the game, and in each
of the six rounds of the game chose between negotiation, surrender, fight,
threaten or do nothing; they also allocated the fictional wealth of their
“country” to either military, infrastructure or cash reserves. Players were
paid to participate and told to expect bonuses if they “won the game”
(there was no dominant strategy and players could “win” using a variety of
strategies). Players were generally overly optimistic, and those who made
unprovoked attacks were especially likely to be overconfident (Johnson
et al. 2006: 2516).5
The consequences of positive illusions in conflict and international poli-
tics are overwhelmingly harmful. Except for relatively rare instances of
armed conflicts in which one side knows that it will lose but fights anyway
HAWKISH BIASES AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF CONFLICT... 61
for the sake of honor or ideology, wars generally occur when each side
believes it is likely to win—or at least when rivals’ estimates of their respec-
tive chances of winning a war sum to more than 100 % (Johnson 2004: 4).
Fewer wars would occur if leaders and their advisors held realistic assess-
ments of their probability of success; that is, if they were less optimistically
overconfident.
Positive illusions also have damaging implications for negotiations.
Neale and Bazerman found that overconfident negotiators (those with
biased expectations of their likelihood of success) exhibited less conces-
sionary behavior, and experienced more impasses, than realistically confi-
dent individuals (Neale and Bazerman 1985: 34; Bazerman 2001: 222).
Positive illusions generally favor hawkish, aggressive behavior when
conflict exists or when a side already contemplates hostile actions. The
implications of optimistic biases are less clear for tense situations that may
lead either to conflict or to negotiated settlement. Actors can be overly
optimistic about the prospects of negotiating a peaceful settlement. Of
course, optimism in negotiations does not necessarily yield good outcomes.
between the judgments made of the same essays in the “Choice” and “No
choice” condition. (Jones and Harris 1967: 6). The authors of this classic
experiment concluded that people are prone to attribute behaviors they
observe to personal dispositions and prone to neglect the influence of situ-
ational pressures—even the overwhelming pressure of a specific instruc-
tion to adopt a particular position in an essay (Jones and Harris 1967: 22).
Some years later, the tendency to underestimate the role of the situation in
explaining the behaviors of others was called the FAE (Ross 1977).
This attribution error is remarkably robust, and people who are
informed about the bias are not immune to it. Students who had learned
about the attribution error continued to overemphasize dispositional fac-
tors and to neglect the importance of situational context or constraints
(Darley and Batson 1973: 100; Pietromonaco and Nisbett 1982: 1). More
recent research suggests that “rumination” (i.e., spending more time
thinking about something) actually increases attribution errors. Subjects
who were asked to take several minutes to imagine the motives, intentions
and strategies of the other players were more likely to be suspicious of
their partners in a computer game (Kramer 1994: 218–219). In line with
previous research on the subject (Wilson and Kraft 1993: 409), rumina-
tion also increased the subjects’ confidence in the accuracy of their errone-
ous judgments.
Explanations of another person’s behavior reflect prior beliefs and atti-
tudes toward that person: actions that are consistent with expectations are
attributed to internal or dispositional factors, while actions that appear
inconsistent with prior beliefs are attributed to situational factors (Regan
et al. 1974). Thus, subjects attributed to stable dispositions the good
actions of people they liked and the bad actions of people they did not
like, and attributed behaviors that violated expectations to fleeting, situ-
ational variables. Thus, the FAE—the tendency to overattribute behavior
to disposition—effectively reverses when disliked or distrusted actors com-
mit positive actions.
Field evidence from the Middle East supports the same conclusion.
Heradstveit conducted interviews with political activists in Egypt, Israel,
Jordan, Lebanon and Syria and found strong support for the predictions
of the FAE: actors tended to overattribute the hostile behavior of adver-
saries to dispositions and correspondingly disregarded contextual fac-
tors. However, this effect was reversed for positive behaviors (Heradstveit
1981: 4). Beliefs in the hostile intentions of adversaries tend to be self-
perpetuating—and of course they also tend to be self-fulfilling.
HAWKISH BIASES AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF CONFLICT... 63
Illusion of Transparency
We have thus far made the case for hawkish arguments being advantaged
by cognitive biases in how actors explain behavior. But how do people
believe their own behavior will be explained? Individuals realize, of course,
that they are not as transparent to others as they are to themselves.
However, they typically do not make sufficient allowances for this differ-
ence in perspective. As a result, people tend to overestimate the extent
to which their own feelings, thoughts or motivations “leak out” and are
apparent to observers (Gilovich and Savitsky 1999: 167).
64 J. RENSHON AND D. KAHNEMAN
Loss Aversion
The assertion that “losses loom larger than gains” was the most important
claim of prospect theory (Kahneman and Tversky 1979: 279). It implied
HAWKISH BIASES AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF CONFLICT... 65
an abrupt change in the slope of the value function at the point that sepa-
rates gains from losses, as seen in Fig. 3.1. The difference in the slopes
of the value function in the positive and negative domains is labeled loss
aversion.
The main evidence for loss aversion in prospect theory was the extreme
reluctance of people to accept gambles with equal probabilities to win and
lose. A majority of respondents will typically refuse to play a gamble in
which they face equal probabilities to lose x or to win 2x (e.g., 50 % chance
to lose $100 and 50 % chance to win $200). Soon after the publication
of prospect theory, Richard Thaler (1980) noted that loss aversion could
explain the observation that he labeled the endowment effect: the fact
that the monetary value that people assign to a good depends on whether
or not it is already part of their endowment. This conceptual advance
extended prospect theory from a theory of choice between gambles to a
more general model of decision-making and provided the foundation of
behavioral economics.
Some years later, Kahneman et al. (1991: 195) reported a demon-
stration of the endowment effect that has become standard. The critical
experiment was conducted in a classroom. Half of the participants were
given an attractive coffee mug. They were told the mug was theirs to
keep, but were given an opportunity to sell it and were asked to record
their cash equivalent (minimal selling price) for the mug. The other par-
ticipants were told that they could choose between receiving a mug and
receiving an amount of money, and were asked to indicate their cash
equivalent for the mug. The options that faced the two groups were
A large majority of people who have been asked this question choose
the gamble over the sure loss—a risk-seeking preference. According to
prospect theory, this preference is explained by two separate factors. The
first is the shape of the value function (see Fig. 3.1). Because of diminish-
ing marginal disutility, the difference between a loss of $900 and a loss
of $1000 is relatively small. The second (and probably more important)
cause of risk seeking in difficult situations is known as the certainty effect.
The certainty effect refers to the overweighting of outcomes that
are certain, relative to outcomes that are merely probable (Tversky and
Kahneman 1981: 455). Kahneman and Tversky illustrated this effect by
the game of Russian roulette. Most people share the strong intuition that
HAWKISH BIASES AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF CONFLICT... 69
one should be willing to pay more to reduce the number of bullets from 1
to 0 than from 4 to 3 (Kahneman and Tversky 1979: 265). The reduction
of the probability of dying is the same in the two cases, but removing the
single bullet achieves the certainty of a good outcome, while reducing the
number of bullets from 4 to 3 does not eliminate the uncertainty. Utility
theory, in contrast, assumes that the rational response to probability is
linear and does not distinguish between the two cases.
In the domain of gains, the certainty effect and the shape of the value
function both favor risk aversion. For example, a large majority of peo-
ple will prefer a sure gain of $850 over a 90 % chance to win $1000.
The certainty effect contributes to this preference because the “decision
weight” that is associated with a probability of .90 is significantly less than
90 % of the decision weight of a sure thing (Kahneman and Tversky 1979:
280–281).9 The overweighting of the sure gain relative to a gain that is
merely probable favors the risk-averse choice in this example. When an
actor faces a choice between a sure loss and a possible loss, however, the
certainty effect contributes to risk-seeking preferences by exactly the same
logic. Certainty enhances the aversion to a sure loss just as it enhances the
attractiveness of a sure gain.
In policy debates, arguments that draw on the certainty effect often
appear more compelling and persuasive than they should be. Experimental
evidence dovetails with the common-sense observation that the invoca-
tion of certainties has a rhetorical power that mere probabilities lack.
Evidence of the special aversiveness of sure losses and the attendant
increase in risk acceptance can be found in a variety of domains. For
instance, Fiegenbaum and Thomas argue that aversion to certain losses
accounts for the negative correlation between risk and return in invest-
ment decisions. Their large-n analysis of companies’ investment portfolios
indicated that most firms are risk-acceptant when they are suffering losses
or are below targeted “aspiration levels” and risk-avoidant when they are
above those levels (1988: 97).
In another domain, Rachlinski examined choices in the context of a
hypothetical litigation case. He showed that decisions concerning whether
to pursue litigation or settle vary with the domain of the individual. He
also showed that respondents who were in the weaker position (low stated
probability of prevailing in court) and were in the domain of losses were
far more likely than their counterparts (weak position but in the domain of
gains) to pursue a costly and risky litigation with a small chance of success
(Rachlinski 1996).
70 J. RENSHON AND D. KAHNEMAN
Pseudo-Certainty
The pseudo-certainty effect refers to a decision-making bias in the
response to multi-stage decisions. Specifically, it describes the tendency
for individuals contemplating multiple-stage problems/scenarios to assign
a high decision weight to an outcome that is certain if the second stage is
reached, neglecting its contingent nature. Pseudo-certainty was illustrated
by Kahneman and Tversky using the following two problems11:
Reactive Devaluation
As already noted, the “bad behavior” of rivals is likely to be attributed to
long-term hostile intentions, even when these inferences are not logically
or factually supported. Similar distortions are observed in the context of
negotiations, where actors must assess the offers presented by their adver-
saries. Here, the evidence suggests that individuals assign different values
to proposals, ideas and plans of action based on their authorship. This bias,
known as “reactive devaluation,” is likely to be a significant stumbling
block in negotiations between adversaries.
In one recent experiment, Israeli Jews evaluated an actual Israeli-
authored peace plan less favorably when it was attributed to the
Palestinians than when it was attributed to their own government, and
HAWKISH BIASES AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF CONFLICT... 73
CONCLUSION
In our view, neither psychology nor decision science can provide a theory
of interstate conflict (Kahneman and Tversky 2000, p. xi). It is simply
unreasonable to expect a theory of choices between gambles with specified
probabilities and monetary outcomes to predict or explain the decisions
of national leaders as they wage war and negotiate peace (Kahneman and
Tversky 2000, p. xi). It is similarly impossible to derive confident pre-
dictions about the future judgments and choices of national actors from
notions such as the FAE or loss aversion. There is too much else going
on. By the same token, post hoc explanations of the judgments and deci-
sions of national leaders in terms of the psychological mechanisms that we
have illustrated are at best tentative and incomplete. A legitimate question
can be asked—and often has been asked: if the psychology of judgment
and decision-making supports neither confident predictions nor complete
explanations of the actions of national leaders, how useful can it be?
A possible answer is that the concepts of psychology—including the
seven biases that we discussed in this chapter—provide templates for pat-
terns that can be recognized in complex situations. The training of histol-
ogists provides a useful analogy. Histologists are not born with an ability
to differentiate different types of cancer cells, and cancer cells of a particu-
lar type do not look exactly alike and are hard to distinguish from other
cells. The trained histologist has seen multiple examples of cells that share
the same label and has learned to identify them in microscope slides. The
74 J. RENSHON AND D. KAHNEMAN
slides look different to the trained eye, they make more sense. We offer
the observations discussed in this chapter as templates that may help make
sense of past events and provide expectations about the future. Sense mak-
ing and expectation are much weaker than explanations and predictions,
but still potentially useful. The notion of the endowment effect, for exam-
ple, prepares us to distinguish truly painful concessions that are treated as
losses from other concessions in which bargaining chips are exchanged.
And the FAE prepares us to find that participants in a conflict underes-
timate their role in provoking the opponent’s hostility. We believe these
intellectual tools may be useful but repeat that “No warranty is implied…
The scholars who use the tools to explain complex behaviors do so at their
own risk” (Kahneman and Tversky 2000, p. xi).
The theme of this chapter was a chance observation, made while draw-
ing a list of the biases of judgment and choice uncovered during the last
few decades: it appeared that these biases were themselves biased in a
hawkish direction. We started out by imagining a decision-maker exposed
to competing advisors, a hawk and a dove. If the decision-maker is suscep-
tible to the usual list of biases, she will tend to find the hawk’s arguments
more believable and the hawk’s recommendations more attractive than
they ought to be. We have found no deep reason for this observation, and
we do not present it as a general and exceptionless claim. The most we can
say for it is that it is intriguing.
NOTES
1. Specifically, this chapter expands upon Kahneman and Renshon (2009).
Jonathan Renshon is responsible for changes and additions in the current
version.
2. More specifically, a bias exists when an error in estimating or assessing a
value is more likely in one direction than another. For example, in estimat-
ing our own skills as drivers, a bias exists because we are far more likely to
over-estimate our abilities relative to others than to under-estimate them.
In the absence of an objective criterion, we take the opinions of a knowl-
edgeable but uninvolved observer as our definition of an unbiased judg-
ment. The perspective of history provides another “unbiased” view of the
situation that decision makers faced.
3. For an overview, readers are directed to the following: Kahneman et al.
(1982), Kahneman and Tversky (2000) and Gilovich et al. (2002). For a
less technical treatment, see Kahneman (2011).
HAWKISH BIASES AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF CONFLICT... 75
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HAWKISH BIASES AND THE INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDY OF CONFLICT... 81
Jacek Kugler and Paul J. Zak
J. Kugler
Department of International Relations, Claremont Graduate University,
Claremont, CA, USA
P.J. Zak ()
Department of Economics, Claremont Graduate University,
Claremont, CA, USA
e-mail: paul.zak@cgu.edu
Fig. 4.1 Cross-country trust levels from the world values survey and others.
Note: Data are latest available from 1999 to 2001, with occasional data from 1995
if later was unavailable. A: high-trust countries; B: lower-trust countries.
Source: Uslaner (2002)
TRUST, COOPERATION, AND CONFLICT: NEUROPOLITICS... 91
ones previously made. We can deviate from these heuristics, but do so only
when the expected reward is sufficiently high. For a range of decisions, the
energy-related constraints on the brain produce bounded rational choices.
Secondly, strategic decisions require a balancing of resources for self and
other, while taking into account that our brains have evolved to facilitate
repeated social interactions and reputation maintenance.
Trust is the critical variable producing the discrepancy between ratio-
nal and rational, rational decisions. Under stress—consistent with crisis
and conflict initiation—the effects of trust diminish. We propose a middle
ground for how trust affects decision-making, an approach that admits
both trust and defection, and presents a model to illustrate this perspec-
tive. The model in this chapter differs from standard formal models in two
important ways.
First, it is an inductive model whose assumptions are based on years
of experiments under systematically varied conditions in order to reveal
general interaction mechanisms (Vercoe and Zak 2010). This approach
departs from typically deductive models in which the modeler sits down
and imagines mechanisms that may produce a particular behavior. Our
approach is problem-based rather than imagination-based and follows
from the natural sciences. Experiments are used to determine appropriate
assumptions.
The second difference is that the model presented here is based on
accumulated evidence on the neurologic basis for trust, much of it from
Zak’s laboratory. Measuring brain activity while participants in experi-
ments make decisions is a perspective now known as neuroeconomics (Zak
2004; Park and Zak 2007). Neuroeconomics is a recent field that applies
the measurement techniques of neuroscience to decisions that involve
money and other people (Zak 2008a, b, c). This field grew from several
strains of research in the social sciences, including evolutionary economics
and bioeconomics, behavioral economics, and experimental economics.
This approach has added value to traditional neuroscience that has mostly
focused on mechanisms of action rather than objectives and constraints
faced by the organism and brain.
From the perspective of modeling domestic and international inter-
actions, neuroeconomics studies allow the modeler to directly identify
mechanism-producing behavior rather than rely on the typical guess-
and-verify method of building models. Neurologically based model
assumptions are founded on the direct measurement of brain activity.
This approach to modeling takes more time and often results in a more
TRUST, COOPERATION, AND CONFLICT: NEUROPOLITICS... 93
the likelihood that participants would spend money to punish those who
were non-cooperative (Zak et al. 2009a).
Neuroeconomics studies also have shown that emotions are especially
important when making strategic choices. The role of emotions should be
understood in an evolutionary context as guiding appropriate behaviors
for a species that is highly social. We examine the neurobiology of trust in
this context next.
Neurobiology of Trust
One of the innovative and useful findings from neuroeconomics stud-
ies of decision-making is an understanding of the chemical basis for trust
between strangers. Prior to the dawn of neuroeconomics in the early
twenty-first century (Zak 2004), it was known that in the studies of mon-
etary decision tasks between strangers, participants in experiments readily
could be incentivized to let others take control of some or all of their
resources—a way to measure trust. Of those shown such trust, nearly all
would reciprocate and share money with the person who originally trusted
them rather than defect and keep all the money for themselves (Berg et al.
1995; Smith 1998). The question was, “why?”
Various explanations were offered for the high degree of cooperation
of many types seen in the laboratory, from the stakes being too low, to
confusion, to prosocial framing (Andreoni 1995; McCabe et al. 2002).
After careful experimentation, none of these explanations could account
for much of the variation in the observed behavior (Camerer 2003). This
led to an explosion of model building, seeking to explain this “anomaly”.
A favored explanation seemed to be imbuing individuals with a taste for
fairness (Rabin 1993; Fehr and Schmidt 1999). Yet these models imposed
a preference for fairness, while experiments had shown that unfair behav-
ior also could be induced easily (Hoffman et al. 1994), revealing this
explanation as either wrong or non-robust. Something interesting was
happening in the laboratory, but participants in these experiments, when
debriefed, had trouble explaining why they decided to trust a stranger.
Analysts were stuck. By the late 1990s, research had found that cross-
country data on trust were highly variable, from around 3 % of Brazilians
to 66 % of Norwegians saying that they thought their countrymen were
trustworthy. This variation was explained through a combination of fac-
tors built into a formal model and tested extensively (Zak and Knack 2001;
Zak and Fakhar 2006). Further, Zak and Knack (2001) showed that trust
TRUST, COOPERATION, AND CONFLICT: NEUROPOLITICS... 95
was among the strongest predictors that economists had ever found to
account for the growth in living standards across countries.
At the same time, the anarchical realist model of international politics
was being challenged empirically by dynamic models of power transition
that rejected the balance of power structure and replaced it with hierarchy
and trust variations. Tests of structural theories are infrequent, but the col-
lapse of the Soviet Union provided an opportunity to assess behavior. The
USA—the single dominant state after 1991—survived the long Cold War
that should have clarified that dominance opportunities occurred rarely in
a century (the previous one was 1946–1955). Given this temporary pre-
ponderance of power, traditional balance of power models predicted that
the USA should take advantage and impose new and stringent rules on
the international system (Mearsheimer 2001). Instead, despite the obvi-
ous realization that its preponderance would diminish with time, the USA
supported the recovery in Russia, continued to encourage the expansion of
the EU, and sought accommodation with China.
This clear incompatibility between theory and practice added further
urgency to understand the misspecification. The concept of trust was res-
cued from the controlled environment of the laboratory so that it could
be applied effectively to economic and political reality. Other general
problems beyond war and peace faced similar concerns. The importance
of trust in reducing poverty, and the desire to build a well-grounded
model of trust between strangers, led to one of the first neuroeconomics
experiments—and certainly the first involving blood draws, in 2001 (Zak
et al. 2004). These approaches represented a major technological change
that, at the level of individual decisions, created the potential for greatly
enhanced knowledge, as per Fritsch (2011) and Chap. 6.
Neuroscientific techniques might be able to reveal why people quite
regularly trust strangers with their money or their security. These trust-
ers are labeled “irrational” by the standard self-interested, game-theoretic
solution of the trust game because participants do not seek outcomes con-
sistent with the sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium. The Nash solution
predicted no trust and no trustworthiness, based on the assumption that
any money sent to a stranger would be kept by him or her. Thus, a “ratio-
nal” person would not send any money to a stranger. Playing Nash, trust
game participants were expected to leave the laboratory with only their
initial endowment.
Yet in controlled experimental studies, those who initiated trust earned,
on average, 40 % more than their endowment, while nearly all of those
96 J. KUGLER AND P.J. ZAK
who were trusted with another’s money reciprocated and still walked out
with 70 % higher earnings than predicted by the Nash solution (Zak et al.
2004, 2005a, b). Somehow these participants had found a way to sys-
tematically beat the Nash payouts. Participants certainly were not irratio-
nal—on average they earned more money than in the Nash strategy—so
something must be wrong with the standard model used by economics
and political science to account for their choices.
What these experiments hoped to find was a direct mechanism in the
brain that told people who to trust and not trust. But where to look?
There was little clarity on the reasons why we trust strangers in the eco-
nomics, psychology, political science, sociology, or other literatures. The
Nobel Prize winner Vernon Smith had run the first trust experiments in
his laboratory and found that, when asked, participants could not clearly
articulate why they had decided to trust a stranger with money on the line.
Seeking a solution, Zak turned to the literature in biology and found a
small and evolutionarily old molecule called OT. OT has classically been
associated with peri-reproductive behaviors. OT comes from the Greek for
“fast birth” as it contracts the uterus during parturition and also initiates
milk flow for breastfeeding. In animal studies, this uniquely mammalian
hormone was also shown to facilitate maternal care for offspring. The ani-
mal literature had reported a few studies in rodents suggesting that in
the 3 % of mammals that are socially monogamous, OT sustains attach-
ment between male and female breeding pairs. These animals often live in
“clans”, with several breeding pairs inhabiting the same burrow, and OT
had also been associated with males tolerating other males in their burrow
and even allowing other males access to food. Anthropomorphizing a bit,
this could be called emerging trust and cooperation.
No literature had built up on the study of behavioral effects of OT in
humans. High interspecies variation in OT’s effects meant that extrapola-
tion from rodents to humans was unwise. Human OT studies had not
been undertaken for several reasons. First, the behavioral effects of OT in
animals had only been established in the late 1980s and early 1990s, so
translation to humans had not yet occurred. Second, in humans, OT was
considered a “female hormone”, simply a concern of OB-GYNs. Being
associated with females meant, as one medical doctor related privately,
that it could not be very important. There were no serious disease states
associated with an excess or lack of OT (although those with autism have
recently been shown to have low OT), so the research community largely
avoided studying OT. Unless a woman was giving birth or breastfeeding,
TRUST, COOPERATION, AND CONFLICT: NEUROPOLITICS... 97
Zak and colleagues had made a mistake that some other unmeasured phys-
iological factor was responding to a signal of trust. So to prove that OT
caused trust, Zak designed a protocol that exogenously manipulated OT
levels using an OT nasal spray (Kosfeld et al. 2005). In this study, those
who received the OT spray sent 17 % more money denoting trust com-
pared with those who got the placebo (N = 58, Mann–Whitney U-test p
< .029). More compellingly, the number of people who showed maximal
trust—sending their entire endowment to a stranger—increased from 21
% in the placebo group to 45 % in the OT group. There were no differ-
ences in an objective risk-taking task or in mood across conditions, show-
ing that OT narrowly affects positive social behaviors. The bottom line is
this: trust is chemical. Social norms, one’s developmental history, and even
current events affect trust, but these do so by modulating OT release as
we discuss below. Because the amount of OT release directly affects trust-
worthiness, it provides a single pathway through which variations in trust
and trustworthiness can be explored and explained. Zak’s laboratory and
others have replicated these results in a variety of settings, for example,
showing that OT infusion in the zero-sum Ultimatum Game increased
generosity by 80 % (N = 68, Mann–Whitney U-test p < .005; Zak et al.
2007). Zak’s lab has also shown that 15 minutes of touch (from a massage
therapist) primed the brain to release more OT after being trusted by a
stranger (not the therapist) relative to untouched controls and increased
monetary sacrifice toward the person who had initiated trust by a phe-
nomenal 243 % (N = 33, two-tailed t-test p < .006; Morhenn et al. 2008).
Neurobiology of Preferences
Does OT have any effect on political preferences? Zak’s team recently
ran an experiment to test this idea by infusing OT or placebo into 88 US
citizens during the 2008 primary elections. After the OT loaded for 60
minutes, participants were asked questions similar to those used in the
American National Election survey. For example, they were asked “How
much of the time can you trust the government in Washington to do
what is right?” They were also asked general trust questions such as “Do
you think people are generally trustworthy?” They found that, relative to
placebo, OT raised generalized interpersonal trust (the likelihood that two
randomly chosen individuals in a country will trust each other) and that
greater trust in other people predicted greater trust in government and
greater satisfaction with government (Merolla et al. 2013). These results
TRUST, COOPERATION, AND CONFLICT: NEUROPOLITICS... 99
reveal that OT’s effects scale up from the interpersonal to the government
as a whole.
These findings are important because knowing the brain mechanism-
producing trust permits us to identify when trust is expected to be high
or low. Familiarity and a history of positive interactions will more easily
stimulate OT release resulting in trust, whereas animal studies show that
high stress inhibits OT release and is therefore likely to reduce trust. Zak’s
lab has shown that OT release is associated with the subjective experi-
ence of empathy: when we release OT we can more easily understand and
empathize with others, resulting in greater trust (Barraza and Zak 2009).
OT release activates a brain circuit now called HOME (Human Oxytocin
Mediated Empathy) that makes reciprocation after being trusted “sticky”
(Zak 2011). OT release potentiates the release of other brain chemicals
that are associated with reinforcement learning and positive effects on
mood.
Humans have evolved to socialize. Humans are the hypersocial ape, and
trusting others utilizes the same brain mechanism that evolved to facilitate
care for offspring. At least this is true for most people. Studies of college
student participants have found that 5 % of them have an OT dysregula-
tion so that they appear immune to its promotion of social intercourse
(Zak 2005). These individuals are unconditional non-reciprocators and
have unusual psychological and behavioral traits similar to those found in
psychopaths. These individuals maximize their own monetary returns as
if they were living in the anarchical world described long ago by Hobbes.
Zak’s lab has replicated the finding of dysregulated OT in patients with
social anxiety disorder (Hoge et al. 2008), indicating the crucial role that
OT has in sustaining appropriate social behaviors. There are also sexu-
ally dimorphic effects of OT release: for every non-reproductive stimulus
developed of the past decade, women release OT more than men and are
similarly more prosocial in their behavior (Zak 2008b, 2011, 2012).
The converse of trust is distrust, and this, too, has a physiological sig-
nature. Examining low transfers denoting trust in trust game, men had a
“hot” physiologic response, but not women. Specifically, men had a spike
in the bioactive metabolite of testosterone, dihydrotestosterone (DHT),
indicating an aggressive response that was reflected in their lower levels of
reciprocity as compared with women (Zak et al. 2005a). Women did not
have this response. DHT inhibits OT uptake by its receptor, acting as an
OT antagonist.
100 J. KUGLER AND P.J. ZAK
The NMT reveals, for example, why on almost all issues France and the
USA agree (variance of interactions, V, low). Both countries understand
that there is value to continuing a cooperative relationship, but that local
exigencies may cause occasional defections. Because trust creates a positive-
sum return possibility for both parties, there is inertia toward trust even
after a breach occurs. The reciprocity function supports a generous tit-for-
tat strategy, but it also rules out a party who is consistently a “sucker”. On
a very basic level, NMT captures the laboratory result showing that most
people are conditional reciprocators and that relationships matter. The
more you trust me, the more likely I am to reciprocate because this creates
values for me (and for the other party). At the same time, having a partner
who I can consistently trust reduces the risk that interactions will result in
a breach and also reduces the search time needed to find other interaction
partners (though this is not part of the NMT model).
These implications are consistent with the two-level games approach
proposed by Putnam (1988). The difference is that NMT does not predict
a return to a state of anarchy and disposition toward conflict after each
round. Rather, it predicts a bias toward trust and reciprocation in most
settings. Applying NMT to deterrence and arms control may also be fruit-
ful in that payoffs are well established and reactions can be monitored over
the last 70 years. In further work we hope to show that such analysis may
provide new insights into how the stability of deterrence during crises is
affected by trust and to what degree arms control increases trust.
NMT also discloses that defectors will seek to demonstrate that their
reciprocity function is positive, even if it is typically not. Note that 5 % of
participants playing the trust game in the laboratory who have deceptive
personalities also have an identifiable dysfunction in the OT system (Zak
2005, 2011). Unconditional non-reciprocators may seek to justify past
defections by claiming that they had been in a high-stress environment
and that the current less stressful environment will produce cooperation.
Understanding defectors neurologically may identify actions that can insti-
tutionalize trust and deter aggression. Can such claims be validated? The
NMT model shows that history matters, as does the current state of the
decision maker. Which state dominates is an empirical question. From the
perspective of international negotiations and agreements, these implica-
tions are potentially important. Recall that the Russian proverb “doveryai,
no proveryai” (trust but verify) was used repeatedly by President Ronald
Reagan when negotiating with the Soviet Union. Starting with a non-
trust posture, the NMT suggests it is possible that compliance will lead to
102 J. KUGLER AND P.J. ZAK
further reciprocation and stability, replacing the need for threats to ensure
peace.
The NMT may also shed light on ongoing negotiations with Iran and
North Korea regarding their nuclear ambitions. In these interactions trust
is a key element needed for resolution. Recall that realist theorists con-
tend that the central feature that distinguishes international from domes-
tic politics is the state of anarchy. Interactions among international actors
are modeled to reflect participation in a Prisoner’s Dilemma, Chicken, or
related games using Nash equilibria to predict dominant outcomes (Waltz
1981; Mearsheimer 2001; Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman 1992). Only
rarely and tenuously do self-interested participants evolve toward trust
(Axelrod 1984). Generally they discover a way to maintain gains under
very restricted conditions, reverting to anarchy when these conditions
are altered. Following the classic representation of the Hobbesian state of
nature, realist theory portrays the interactions among states as an under-
socialized, brutal struggle for self-preservation. In the absence of a central
authority to punish malefactors, no individual actor can maximize his or
her own welfare by building trust and mutual relationships with others.
NMT challenges the realist perspective that rejects trust and concur-
rently questions the complex interdependence arguments that produce a
collective security based on trust. The result is a middle ground consistent
with power transition where international interactions are resolved in an
environment where self-interest can lead to reciprocation and maintain
an autonomous order based on trust and repeated interactions. However,
when trust is low, international agents will resort to confrontation that
can then escalate to war. Continuous interactive negotiations can create
links that ensure satisfaction and trust allowing rational actors holding
information about the costs of war and the benefits of mutual cooperation
to avert conflict.
NMT provides further credence to propositions that hierarchy and
trust are essential for stability. Scholars from Claude (1962) and Carr
(1964) to Keohane (1984) have argued that to secure a trusting environ-
ment that enhances security, participants may build bilateral and multilat-
eral organizations to increase trust among the parties. The large literature
on democratic peace is a modern testament supporting such arguments
(Russett and Oneal 2000; Ray 2009). Organski and Kugler (1980) and
Kugler and Lemke (1998) empirically show that the most serious wars—
World War I and II—were waged when participants approached parity and
anticipated that changing rules will result in a new, less satisfactory order
TRUST, COOPERATION, AND CONFLICT: NEUROPOLITICS... 103
regions are statistically more active in the treatment versus the control
task, so papers inevitably focus on a few of these (often those most signifi-
cant statistically), but these are only part of a much more complex net-
work of interactions in the brain. Isolating parts of the network is nearly
uninformative. Further, interpreting what such isolated differential brain
activation means is fraught with post hoc judgments based on findings
from previous studies that may have flaws, compounding misinterpreta-
tions. Finally, the statistical techniques typically used to analyze activity in
50,000 small chunks of brain issue every six seconds for an hour have been
characterized as “voodoo” correlations (Vul et al. 2009). On balance, one
should be quite skeptical of findings from a single study and using a single
technique.
Convergence is the watchword in neuroscience. An additional concern
is that a well-designed study recently produced data that questions whether
fMRI signals correlate with brain activity at all (Sirota and Das 2009). The
work linking OT to trust avoids these post hoc judgments as it shows that
being trusted is directly associated with OT release and manipulating OT
causes participants to trust others in an active, rather than retrospective,
task. This is direct and convergent evidence on mechanism. But the ability
to do such studies in humans is limited for safety reasons and therefore
unusual in human neuroscientific studies. So, political scientists should
borrow from neuroscience, but borrow carefully.
Second, neuroeconomics studies bring human beings back into the cen-
ter of formal and informal models. Social scientists often model “agents”
making decisions. These mythical creatures do not inhabit the real world.
By directly studying humans, one brings real decision-making to bear
when seeking to understand politics—an intense focus on the individual
level of analysis which is all but ignored in IR theory, but as other sev-
eral chapters in this volume show (in particular, Chap. 3 by Renshon and
Kahneman and Chap. 6 by Scupin), is quite important. This certainly can
be done without measuring brain activity. Controlled laboratory studies
and field studies are the place to start and are becoming more common in
political science (Green and Gerber 2003). Even field observation is unde-
rused by most social scientists (Harrison and List 2004). It is interesting
to note how few economists have visited in person the markets they seek
to model and have given up the opportunity to speak to those who are
making decisions before picking up a pencil to describe these decisions.
For such reasons, neuroeconomics is in an especially promising position
TRUST, COOPERATION, AND CONFLICT: NEUROPOLITICS... 105
NOTES
1. IR scholars have used a number of words to express concepts related to
trust, including commitment to the status quo, satisfaction with a partner,
or risk reduction. Trust is the act of placing confidence in the promise of
another that may lead to harm. Satisfaction with a relationship or a com-
mon status quo is expressed by policy proximity among actors. Over time
satisfaction evolves into trust. Risk usually is associated with individuals not
states. A general reduction of risk propensity is associated directly with trust
among competitors attempting to resolve differences (Smith 2008).
2. Conditional deterrence is the first general formal deterrence model that
shows weak terrorist groups will use weapons of mass destruction if they
acquire them.
3. A nuclear umbrella is offered to allies only. Most NATO and OECD mem-
bers, Japan, and Oceania have a US nuclear umbrella guarantee. This does
not extend to other regions. A strike by Israel on Iran, or a future strike by
Iran on Israel that consumes much of our attention is outside of this frame-
work. Yet, no institution currently inhibits strikes by these parties, and non-
nuclear nations have no trusted guarantee of retaliation should another
nation initiate a nuclear attack against them. The USA recently provided an
extended nuclear umbrella to South Korea and Japan—states that can be
trusted—but a similar benefit is not extended to North Korea. A stable
arrangement requires trust and coverage on all sides.
4. While some formal models permit both degrees of trust and variations in
trust over time (Binmore 1994; Sobel 2002; Camerer 2003), and include
trust-inducing factors such as reputation and monitoring, most game theo-
retic models consider the baseline case to be non-cooperative. We argue
that such models are not incorrect but underspecified, thus excluding a
large set of options.
5. The techniques used in neuroeconomics studies vary from recording single
neurons while animals execute a task, to, in humans, correlating brain activ-
ity using a electroencephalogram or functional magnet resonance imaging
with a decision outcome. Additional techniques used in neuroeconomics
studies measure neurotransmitters and hormones in blood or other bodily
fluids while experimental participants make decisions, and infuse drugs into
the human brain to “turn on” or “turn off” parts of the brain to demon-
strate the causal effect of these substances on decisions. A focused magnetic
pulse called transcranial magnetic stimulation has also been used to inhibit
or magnify neural activity in cortical (outer) brain regions during decision
making. Finally, individuals with focal brain regions have also been studied
in neuroeconomics to prove the necessity of a particular brain region to
doing an economic task. See Zak (2004) for a review of these techniques.
TRUST, COOPERATION, AND CONFLICT: NEUROPOLITICS... 107
APPENDIX 1
The game-theoretic NMT proposed here is based on macro studies on
power dynamics and the studies Zak’s laboratory has done on the role
of OT in facilitating trust. The model is presented to show how findings
from neuroeconomics studies can be included in an otherwise standard
optimizing model. The model is a dyadic interaction that captures the
essence of trust—that one party must make a decision first and the other
party subsequently reacts to this. Our hope is that social scientists will use
this model as a foundation to incorporate trust into models of political
decisions particularly in the complex arena of deterrence where formal
models affect policies that impact the safety of millions.
Let us begin with some notation. The players are identified as decision
maker 1 (DM1) and decision maker 2 (DM2). These can be considered
countries or individual political actors. Table A1 lists the variables in the
model and their definitions. The DMs in this model are self-interested but
also value the ongoing relationship between the parties. Both parties have
identical continuous, increasing, and strictly concave utility functions U().
Decisions are made with full information by both DMs, and we abstract
from stochasticity in this version of the model. For simplicity and consis-
tent with the parity conditions previously identified in power transition
dynamics, assume both parties begin with equal resources (M1 = M2 = M
> 0) and have a history of interacting with each other, V(R) > 0 and V(R)
finite. The results of the model do not change if these two assumptions
are relaxed.
We know from Zak’s studies of OT release discussed above that under
conditions of low stress, when DM2 receives a transfer from DM1, OT is
released and this induces a desire to reciprocate. The degree of reciprocity
scales with the size of the transfer. We will call DM2’s reciprocity function
α(S, E, V) : R+x[0, 1]xR+ → [0, 1]
and assume that it is continuous and increasing in S reflecting status
quo level in power dynamics and decreasing in E and V. The shared exter-
nal environment, E, that both DMs experience affects the reciprocity that
DM2 will have toward DM1 by affecting stress levels during the interac-
tion. E is negatively affected by stress that can emanate from an interna-
tional crisis, imminent elections, a shortage of time to make decisions,
or other factors that impact decision-making. As discussed above, high
stress reduces OT release and therefore DM2 reciprocity. The implications
for the understanding of political exchanges, particularly international
108 J. KUGLER AND P.J. ZAK
or
ηr/(dS)2(S)/dS.
This equation reveals that the amount that DM1 sends to DM2, S,
depends on the return, η, as well as on how DM2 responds to being
shown trust by DM1, K2(S). The function K2(S) is positive and decreasing
in S (equivalently, R(S) is increasing) so that DM1 expects a return from
DM2 unless E is high or there is a fractured history of reciprocity (V high).
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CHAPTER 5
Stefan Fritsch
S. Fritsch ()
Department of Political Science, Bowling Green State University,
Bowling Green, OH, USA
e-mail: sfritsc@bgsu.edu
TECHNOLOGY DEFINED
The drive for theoretical parsimony, criticized by IR scholars of various
theoretical backgrounds, downplayed technology in theoretical accounts
of system change. Technology, often narrowly defined as material arti-
fact, is considered to influence actors and interaction patterns by more
or less being “added” to the structures, actors and processes that make
up the study of global affairs. However, by conceptualizing technology
in the form of more encompassing sociotechnical systems, we can better
TECHNOLOGY, CONFLICT AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 117
monitoring regimes and to limit the number of states with military nuclear
capabilities (Simpson and McGrew 1984). Neoliberal regime theory has
developed strong empirical evidence that arms control and verification
regimes were at least partly successful because both parties realized that
regulation was necessary to control nuclear WMDs’ destructive potential
(Müller 2001; Smith 1987). And yet, regime development was often frus-
trated by qualitative technological evolution in exploitation of regulatory
loopholes as well as politically calculated limited diffusion (Brooks 1975).
From a moral-normative perspective, the real-world use of nuclear WMDs
(as well as chemical and biological) revealed the horrific long-tern conse-
quences (radiation, physical destruction etc.) of nuclear violence and was
pivotal in the incremental development of new technology-related norms
such as the nuclear taboo.
Military technological evolution and globalization are also inextrica-
bly intertwined. Held et al. differentiate between globalized militariza-
tion and military globalization: the former “loosely refers to a generalized
process of global military build-up (measured by increased levels of total
world military expenditures, armaments or armed forces)”, the latter refers
“exclusively to the process (and patterns) of military connectedness that
transcend the world’s major regions as reflected in the spatio-temporal
and organization features of military relations, networks and interactions”
(1999: 88). Military globalization, defined as a process of intensifying and
extensifying military relations between the political units of the interna-
tional system, is seen as the result of technological developments. The
global expansion of European international society was a three-step pro-
cess initiated during the age of discovery (late fifteenth–seventeenth cen-
tury), followed by a period of consolidation (seventeenth–mid-nineteenth
century), which ended in the age of world-empire (1850–1900) (Howard
1984). Each of these periods was marked by a specific combination of
military-technological innovation, socioeconomic and political dynamics,
and interstate competition.
The steamboat, railways, telegraph, radio, nuclear weapons, recon-
naissance satellites or digital networked information and communication
technologies (ICTs) all contributed to the formation of a singular geostra-
tegic space (ibid: 89), marked by increasing time-space compression and
dramatically shortened time spans for deliberation. Military globalization
is also understood as a historical—yet not linear or pre-determined—pro-
cess, which only began to take on a growing global dimension with the
beginning of European colonial expansion toward the end of the fifteenth
TECHNOLOGY, CONFLICT AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 121
can potentially only be used once, before defensive systems are updated,
therefore favoring defensive approaches. Furthermore, the development
of sophisticated cyber-weapons like Stuxnet requires formidable human
and technological resources and time and is therefore unlikely to be eas-
ily replicated by other states or non-state actors. New international arms
agreements to regulate a variety of cyber-activities have little prospect for
success due to issues such as how to distinguish cyber crime from political
activity in cyberspace, verifying the origins and/or perpetrators of cyber
attacks and cyber-aggressors’ preference for non-attribution.
Proponents of cyberspace as a de-facto fifth conflict dimension, cut-
ting across land, sea, air and space, argue that cyber-conflict has simply
become a reality of global security politics (Arquilla 2012). Many countries
are now engaged in a new cyber-arms race and collaborative exercises, for
example that between NATO states have become regular (Ventre 2011).
The leveling effect of digital ICTs in terms of technological capabilities
between countries and non-state actors and the growing complex (tech-
nological) interdependence characterizing contemporary global society
make the invisible continent a relevant battlefield. While critics question
if cyber-conflict actually can be categorized as war, proponents argue that
the shifting boundaries between what counts as aggression and other forms
of interaction such as information gathering (espionage) require a more
nuanced categorization of various forms of cyber-interaction. The anonym-
ity of cyber-attackers is actually potentially the strongest argument in favor
of offensive behavior. Moreover, the extensive cyber-prying campaigns
against US military systems as well as private companies since the late 1990s
represent a new kind of permanent low-intensity form of cyberwar further
blurring the offensive-defensive dichotomy (Arquilla 2012). The interna-
tional legal frameworks will remain rudimentary at best, since states still
seem to assess the potential strategic, political and legal implications of new
cyber-technologies. Iran, the victim of the prominent Stuxnet worm, has
remained silent about this incident. Several explanations have been offered:
(1) public acknowledgement would have created pressure to release further
information; (2) Iran, like many other states, does not want to set a prec-
edent for what constitutes cyber-aggression; and (3) we are actually wit-
nessing the emergence of an implicit consensus regarding new thresholds
as to what constitutes cyberwar (Fidler 2011). By raising the threshold,
countries like the USA, Russia and China remain able to enhance their
capabilities for covert defensive and offensive cyber-operations while simul-
taneously pushing for international legal frameworks that actually allow sig-
128 S. FRITSCH
that “[…] power refers simply to the military, economic, and techno-
logical capabilities of states” (Gilpin 1981:13). In most realist accounts,
technology seems to occupy the role of a passive, neutral and exogenous
instrument. It represents one among many power factors that states try to
maximize. States are primarily driven by ideological/political, not techno-
logical factors (Waltz 1959, 1981).
System-level change is the result of a modified power distribution
among states. Technology, however, does not qualify as a core component
of the system (Herrera 2006). Authors mainly associated with classical
realism have more self-consciously acknowledged that technological prog-
ress has changed international politics considerably, especially in the field
of high politics (security). The reason is that the invention of WMDs has
made total war a very irrational option for the realization of political goals
(Aron 1966; see also Morgenthau 1961: 280; Gilpin 1981: 173).
However, for most realist/neorealist scholars, the basic conditions of
international politics have not changed, since the system is solely defined
by the distribution of power (capabilities). In the wake of economic glo-
balization, many have simply extended the great power game from secu-
rity politics to economic competition. Here, too, technology plays an
important role, since it is a basic requirement for economic power (Gilpin
1987; Brzezinski 1997; Rosecrance 1986, 1999).
Since realism/neorealism mostly works with political concepts (national
interest, power accumulation, anarchy etc.), little room exists for critical
technology-related concepts. The state of nature and forces of politics are
more influential than any technology (Waltz 1979: 173). Furthermore,
most realists/neorealists reject the assumption that technological progress
either has favored the emergence of new actors on the international stage
or radically altered the structure of the system itself (2002; Hirst and
Thompson 1999; Rugman 2001; Held and McGrew 2007).
TOWARD SYNTHESIS
Social constructivists tend to focus on the early stages of technological
evolution (invention, establishment, stabilization and distribution) in
which social agents’ decisions decisively impact design and characteristics
of a technology but neglect their long-term consequences (Winner 1993)
or issues such as path dependency, that is, the availability of a limited range
of known technological options based on previous decisions. Meanwhile,
by avoiding a detailed analysis of invention and innovation processes,
technological determinists underestimate sociopolitical influences in the
early stages of new technological developments as well as society’s ability
to address challenges posed by the increasing proliferation of technology
(Noble 1984).
Offered by Hughes (1969), a synthesizing approach represents a “mid-
dle ground” in S&TS by combining deterministic and constructivist argu-
ments while adding a time-sensitive perspective. He is well aware of the
strengths of each approach, which he tries to combine in a concept of
the “technological system” (Hughes 1969). For Hughes, a “technologi-
cal system can be both a cause and an effect; it can shape or be shaped
by society. As they grow larger and more complex, systems tend to be
more shaping of society and less shaped by it. […] The social constructiv-
ists have a key to understanding the behavior of young systems; technical
determinists come into their own with the mature ones” (Hughes 1994:
112). Technological systems are based on networks in which technological
artifacts, individuals, organizations and so on “become interacting enti-
ties” (Hughes 1986: 282). With regard to global affairs, certain weapons
systems (nuclear weapons), as well as communication, transportation and
energy systems, might qualify as particularly relevant. Their distinct quali-
ties, such as their network character, their tendency to diffuse globally
over time, a vital backbone function in global economics, security and
culture, and particularly impact on time-space compression in global social
relations make these technologies relevant for any in-depth exploration of
the mutual relationship between technology and global affairs.
Hughes’ middle perspective offers a viable avenue to the integration
of technology studies and IR as well as conflict studies in particular. The
middle ground provides IR with an avenue to integrate technology and
global affairs that neglects neither social agency nor technological path
dependencies. As historians of technology emphasize, technological sys-
tems have life cycles (Hughes 1983). Their historical development paths
138 S. FRITSCH
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
S&TS has focused primarily on the interconnections between and among
technology, politics, economics, society and culture within the domestic
context (Teusch 2000) but could do much more to evaluate multiple inter-
TECHNOLOGY, CONFLICT AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 139
constantly creates new societal challenges, which increase the demand for
the development of new interdisciplinary approaches for the investigation
of interdependent and complex problems, including policy advice.
IR could further profit from exchanges with other new interdisciplin-
ary fields such as environmental, sustainability, energy, consumer food and
agro-studies, as well as cultural and media studies, which also investigate the
impact of technological innovations on their respective fields of analyses.
For example, within the technology-global affairs context, demographic
studies as presented in Chaps. 8 and 9 provide further opportunity for
ample cross-fertilization with IR with regard to questions concerning
diverse issues such as the impact of new technological solutions to envi-
ronmental or demographic problems. Do those solutions solve existing
problems or rather create new ones? What and who drives the technologi-
cal selection process, how are dominant technologies established and how
are counter-reactions to technological domination refracted through the
subjective usage of technological devices in a “polity-building process”
representing a “technological drama” (Pfaffenberger 1992: 505)?
The potential overlap between S&TS and Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA)
could also provide opportunities for fruitful interdisciplinary research. For
example, how are foreign policy goals produced and reproduced through
and within certain sociotechnical systems, their technological stan-
dards, control and command structures, predominant and “redressive”
(Pfaffenberger 1992) interaction forms and patterns as well as knowledge
and content-related issues? As discussed below, very little scholarship in
IR bridges the existing conceptual gaps to explore the deeper connections
between technology and global affairs. Technological evolution’s constant
challenges for humanity seem to justify a permanent pursuit of this topic.
empirical insights will likely play a more prominent role in other issue areas
that are covered in this book.
In recent years, the academic community ultimately has reacted. The
attentive observer can discover a trend to include an ever-growing number
of technology-related papers and panels in conferences as well as publica-
tion outlets (Simmons 2011). A final step toward firm establishment of
S&TS within the field of IR is marked by the very recent creation of a new
section within the International Studies Association, entitled “Science,
Technology, Art and International Relations”.
NOTE
1. See, for example, Ropohl’s sparse comments from a moderate social con-
structivist S&TS point of view (Ropohl 1979, 1985).
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CHAPTER 6
Raymond Scupin
R. Scupin ()
Anthropology and International Studies, Lindenwood University,
St. Charles, MO, USA
e-mail: cigs@lindenwood.edu
1946), Margaret Mead (1928, 1935), and others relied on this concept of
culture and fieldwork for understanding differing personalities, values, and
norms in various societies. Most of these early ethnographic studies were
completed in small-scale non-Western societies where cultural boundaries
were assumed to be fixed. This formulation of culture tended to produce
essentialist or stereotypical portraits of different societies that were viewed
as isolated and bounded communities with only a small degree of internal
differentiation, therefore appearing homogeneous and static.
Inspired by Max Weber, later anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz
developed a phenomenological and interpretive-based humanistic under-
standing of culture. In his volume, The Interpretation of Culture (1973),
Geertz advocated a method of ethnographic inquiry that he referred to
as ‘thick description.’ Drawing on a famous statement of Weber, Geertz
described the most important aspect of culture as the ‘webs of signifi-
cance,’ that is, symbols that have meaning that humans have spun. Thick
description focuses on the collection of data on social structure, the econ-
omy, ritual, myth, symbols, and cultural values. From these data interpre-
tations of symbolic meanings—webs of significance—are drawn. In the
phenomenological mode, Geertz advanced the view that culture is shared
intersubjectively by people (Geertz 1985). Later, Geertz criticized the
‘cookie-cutter’ notion of cultures or societies as bounded isolated com-
munities, especially in this global age (2000: 250). This Geertzian ‘culture
as text’ semiotic approach became the major paradigm in cultural anthro-
pology and was widely employed in the social constructivist, postpositivist,
and postmodernist theories in IR (Burchill et al. 2009; Chabal and Daloz
2006).3
Influenced by these semiotic approaches, some mainstream political
scientists and IR specialists viewed ‘culture’ as the major factor influ-
encing the international arena, notably conflict. Two major books that
emphasized the role of culture in IR were published in 1996 by politi-
cal scientists Benjamin Barber and Samuel Huntington. Barber’s Jihad vs.
McWorld: Terrorism’s Challenge to Democracy argued that globalization
represented by the spread of McWorld (McDonald’s, Macintosh comput-
ers, and Mickey Mouse) through many societies has resulted in jihad by
those who resist these global trends and, therefore, react in antagonistic
ways, including supporting terrorism of the sort that led to 9/11. Barber
gives many other examples of jihad that represent a defense of an indig-
enous culture from the McWorld global tendency, some of which have
become extremely violent and dangerous.
ANTHROPOLOGY, CONFLICT, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 157
Some anthropologists have questioned the notion that culture can be con-
sidered a deus ex machina, or prime determinant of behavior or thought
within populations (Fox and King 2002). A less muscular approach to
culture is conceptualized by contemporary anthropologists such as Dan
Sperber and Lawrence Hirschfeld (2004), (Sperber 1996), Rita Astuti
and Maurice Bloch (Astuti and Bloch 2012; Bloch 2012), Scott Atran
(1990, 2010, 2012), Pascal Boyer (2001), and Norbert Ross (2004).
These anthropologists draw on the most current research in cognitive
psychology, evolution, neurology and the brain sciences, social psychol-
ogy, behavioral economics, and related fields to examine the connections
among human thinking, emotions, culture, and behavior. They merge the
ANTHROPOLOGY, CONFLICT, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 159
(1937). He was doing field work among the Azande tribe in the Sudan.
Evans-Pritchard studied the consultation of oracles, beliefs in witchcraft,
and magical practices and argued that these notions were based on ratio-
nality within the context of Azande culture. He tried to demonstrate that
the Azande’s belief in witches helped them make moral and psychological
sense of the misfortunes that befell them. Thus, he advocated the view
that different societies have different criteria for rational belief and action.6
In the study of economics by anthropologists doing research in pre-
capitalist small-scale societies, a similar discussion of rationality and culture
emerged. Anthropological research in small-scale precapitalist societies
emphasized that the neoclassical model of utility maximization and ratio-
nality was not suitable for comprehending economic decision-making.
Anthropologists such as Paul and Laura Bohannan who did field research
on the Tiv tribe in Nigeria suggested that the neoclassical models of ratio-
nality and utility maximization did not take into account the social institu-
tions, cultural norms, and values of the society (1968). This perspective
became known as the ‘substantivist’ economic model that viewed decision-
making and rationality as embedded within the culture and institutions
of a society. Of course, in this globalization era there are few precapital-
ist, small-scale societies that are isolated from the larger global economy.
Yet, anthropologists continue to discover how kinship institutions and
traditional practices influence rationality and economic decision-making
(Henrich et al. 2005). It appears that individual agency and rationality
cannot be understood in an isolated manner without the analysis of the
sociocultural and institutional contexts.
Cognitive anthropologist Dan Sperber has developed a perspective
that overlaps somewhat with Kahneman’s research findings when address-
ing decision-making and reasoning. Sperber discusses two different types
of beliefs that are represented in the human cognitive system; ‘intui-
tive beliefs’ and ‘reflective beliefs’ that involve psychological reasoning
(1996). Intuitive beliefs are based on spontaneous and unconscious opera-
tions that are usually beyond one’s conscious awareness. These intuitive
beliefs involve perceptual and inferential processes that are innate, uni-
versal, and do not vary much cross-culturally. Reflective beliefs are more
conscious and involve deliberate interpretations of representations that
are not self-evident or tacit. Although these reflective beliefs based on
human interaction and communication involve mental effort they may
be ‘half-understood,’ mysterious, or ‘semi-propositional representations’
such as the Christian ‘Trinity’ or they may be ‘rational’ scientific ideas.
ANTHROPOLOGY, CONFLICT, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 161
These reflective beliefs can vary dramatically across cultures and can often
seem ‘irrational’ from the standpoint of those outside of a particular soci-
ety. Sperber’s cognitive anthropology project that draws on our evolu-
tionary heritage has implications for behavioral economics, reasoning, and
decision-making, as does that of some other anthropologists.
The insights of anthropology are rarely mined in the cognitive-rational
debate in IR. Pure theorists assume rationality but for those who want to
study it empirically, this broad anthropological literature could be useful.
Such work may provide insights into the nature and manifestation of cog-
nitive biases, and into how they relate to conflict as well. Relatedly, they
also provide insight into the question of rationality and conflict. In what
measure are irrational actions connected to conflict? And how should we
interpret what is irrational in the first place?
The link between globalization, culture, and conflict must also be con-
sidered in less overt manifestations. Cultural anthropologists focus on
the people in local areas being affected not only by large multinational
corporations and their capital, technology, and governments (globaliza-
tion from above), but also by the transnational flow of people and goods
with relatively small amounts of capitals and illegal and semi-legal forms of
transactions outside of banks, bureaucracies, and lawyers (Mathews et al.
2012). Globalization in this sense invades the political and social space of
individuals, which can in turn make them agents or supporters of conflic-
tual approaches be they terrorism or inter-state conflicts. Cultural anthro-
pologists are expanding methodological approaches to international and
global studies by employing a ‘globalization-from-below’ strategy. This
has resulted in empirical data that advance interdisciplinary approaches in
IR.
the world. This type of warfare has sometimes been referred to as ‘Fourth
Generation Warfare’ that involves insurgent groups or other violent non-
state actors that often develop in failed states or civil wars. Following
the 9/11 tragedy, some anthropologists began following the develop-
ment of this new media and its links with political and religious coalitions
(Eickelman and Anderson 2003).
secular beliefs extending from the West that threaten communities and
morality, new reformulations of fundamentalist and puritan-based reli-
gions result in the creation of jihadist movements. In his overview of
global trends Atran does not see a ‘clash of civilization,’ but rather a
‘crash’ of religion with secular trends. In an essay in Foreign Policy (2012),
Atran advocates a scientific approach to explain why religion is increasingly
significant in international affairs. As people recognize that globalization
is not incidental to their lives but rather is a recognizable transforma-
tion in their everyday circumstances, they draw on religious substance as a
means of restoring power over their lives. Atran has utilized his knowledge
and research as a cultural anthropologist to help understand the issues of
religion and secularism and also to contribute to solving some of our cur-
rent problems with globally sponsored political and religious terrorism.9
Atran’s research is bound to have implications for understanding recent
developments in the Middle East. Beginning in January 2015, Scott Atran
and his team of researchers were based in Iraq continuing his ethnographic
research on jihadism and violent sectarian and ethnic movements.
The recent declaration of a caliphate by the militant group the Islamic
State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) means that violent jihadism is now an
entrenched feature of the political landscape in the Middle East. Neither
the late Osama bin Laden nor Mullah Omar (the Taliban leader in
Afghanistan) could declare the development of a caliphate because they
could not fulfill the conditions of a caliph, a proof of descent from the
Prophet Muhammad’s tribe, the Quraysh. However, the leader of ISIS,
Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, can provide proof of his descent from the Prophet
(Haykel and Bunzel 2015; Bunzel 2016). Al Baghdadi is a charismatic
orator and scholar of Islamic studies and Islamic law who uses sophisti-
cated social media with injunctions from the Qur’an and hadith to help
recruit many young Muslims to this newly declared caliphate. Unlike a
conventional nation-state, this declared caliphate is not subject to fixed
borders and Al Baghdadi has announced plans to defend and expand this
caliphate to incorporate Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and areas of the Levant
such as Lebanon, and perhaps Israel (Atran 2016).
Al Baghdadi advocates that all Muslims, including all jihadist factions,
must acknowledge the caliphate as a collective religious obligation. He
has been able to manage deals with the Sunni tribes of Iraq and conquer
territories in Iraq and Syria. This perhaps temporary jihadist success has
depended on the various divisions within Arab countries and the weak-
ness of governments such as Libya, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Yet,
174 R. SCUPIN
CONCLUSION
Anthropology has an important role to play in furthering multidisciplinary
and interdisciplinary research in IR. Anthropologists can help produce
more enriched, comprehensive, and enlarged explanations and under-
standings of IR and conflict. Anthropologists offer a useful micro-level
look at culture drawing from cognitive and social psychology and other
related fields to analyze human behavior. This interdisciplinary strategy
underscores the enormous intracultural variation rather than the essen-
tialist generalizations regarding homogeneous cultures or monolithic
civilizations.
The combination of primordialist and instrumental or constructivist
approaches has debunked the notion that ethnicity or nationalist concep-
tions can be viewed as fixed or immutable. Yet, despite these findings,
essentialist and stereotypical fixed conceptions of ethnicity and national-
ism appear to have very broad appeal. They offer challenging explanations
of why essentialist ‘us’ and ‘them’ and ingroup/outgroup dynamics are so
pervasive universally. These explanations and research findings can assist
researchers in IR who focus on conflict in the international arena, because
such conflicts are not divorced from sub-systemic variables like culture and
ethnicity which shape how actors see each other in the first place.
Aside from ethnic and nationalist conflicts, anthropologists have been
engaged in long-term research on the incidence and frequency of war-
fare in different types of societies. Employing an evolutionary and cross-
cultural perspective, anthropologists and archaeologists have studied the
origins of warfare in prehistory among hunting gatherers. This research
may illuminate questions about human nature that were based on specula-
tive social contract philosophical theorists of the Western Enlightenment.
Ethnographic research demonstrates that warfare has existed within most
hunting-gathering, tribal, chiefdom, agricultural and industrial, and
postindustrial societies. The anthropological research on warfare will assist
those interested in interdisciplinary research on war, conflict, and terror-
ism in IR.
Since the tragedy of 9/11, more IR specialists have focused their atten-
tion on religious trends in the Islamic world and elsewhere. Ethnographic
ANTHROPOLOGY, CONFLICT, AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS 179
NOTES
1. Historically, the four-field approach in anthropology developed most fully
within the USA. However, other traditions of anthropology developed in a
different manner in regions such as continental Europe and the UK. For an
overview of British, German, French, and American anthropology and their
distinctive trajectories see Barth et al. (2005).
2. There were different nineteenth century understandings of the term culture
in various European societies. Both E.B. Tylor and Franz Boas were influ-
enced by Herder’s concept of Kultur (Ballinger 2012; Kuper 2000; Denby
2005; Zammito 2002; Lewis 1999, 2001; Adams 1998). Like the French
180 R. SCUPIN
usage of culture, the British in the nineteenth century used culture to refer
to civilization and usually to indicate a superior form of European ‘British’
civilization (Arnold 1873).
3. Geertz was not the only social scientist to influence theories in IR. Others
such as the French sociologist/ethnographer Pierre Bourdieu were also
influential; see Adler-Nissen (2013).
4. In part, Huntington was responding to Fukuyama, who had argued in his
1992 book The End of History and the Last Man that the end of the Cold
War presaged the ultimate triumph of the American political and economic
world order and the expansion of the democratic institutions, free markets,
and secularism.
5. In some cases, political scientists have engaged in in-depth ethnographic
studies. For example, political scientist Scott (1987) did a classic ethno-
graphic study in rural Malaysia that drew on many different and dissident
voices.
6. Evans-Pritchard had been a student of Bronislaw Malinowski at the London
School of Economics who had carried out extensive research in the
Trobriand islands near New Guinea during World War I. Malinowski had
advocated a new understanding of reason and rationality among these tribal
peoples in many of his works (1922).
7. The primordialist tradition of ethnicity is an outgrowth of earlier sociologi-
cal theories such as the distinction between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft
developed by German theorists such as Ferdinand Tönnies (1963). Geertz’s
perspective on ethnicity drew on the ideas of sociologist Edward Shils
(1957).
8. See Scupin (2013) and political scientist Duncan McCargo (2007, 2008,
2009) for a review of the insurgency and recent political trends in South
Thailand.
9. Atran has made it very clear that he does not support the development of
the ‘Human Terrain teams’ that employ some anthropologists and other
social scientists in counter-insurgency operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and
other ‘hotspots.’
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Soumita Basu and Maya Eichler
S. Basu
Department of International Relations, South Asian University, New Delhi, India
M. Eichler ()
Political Studies and Women’s Studies, Mount St. Vincent University,
Halifax, Canada
e-mail: maya.eichler@msvu.ca
Rethinking IR
Feminist scholars argue that taking women and gender seriously allows us
to see aspects of conflict (and conflict resolution) that would otherwise
remain invisible. This can make the study of war and conflict in IR richer
and more empirically accurate, more “realistic” as Enloe (1989) has
argued. The analogies that she employs to discuss “underestimation of
power” in the study of international politics, more broadly, help to high-
light the costs of ignoring concepts such as gender in IR; she suggests that
analyses that tend to focus on select variables and centers of power make IR
look like a Superman comic strip or the American detective show Dragnet
(with its “Just the facts, Ma’am” approach to crime-solving) whereas
196 S. BASU AND M. EICHLER
to the lives of individual women and men (Enloe 1989; D’Costa 2006;
Stern 2006; Hamber et al. 2006). Relatedly, feminists investigate war as an
embodied gendered experience (Wilcox 2014) and in relation to conjugal
and family dynamics (MacKenzie 2010; Enloe 1989). In addition to the
individual level, feminist scholarship is interested in gendered societal and
state-level factors, examining for example gendered war discourses (Hunt
and Rygiel 2006) and the gendered organization of violence. Feminist
scholars show that gender is fundamental to the organization of violence,
to the use of force, and to understanding the aftermath of war for states
and societies (Cockburn 2010; Sjoberg 2013).
While much feminist scholarship focuses on individual, familial, soci-
etal, and state levels, feminist scholars of war and conflict place their
analysis within the context of global gender inequalities. Many see the
international system as patriarchal (Reardon 1985; Enloe 1989) or
gender-hierarchical (Sjoberg 2013), and gender as a key component of
the international system. Indeed, the forces of patriarchy and militarism
intersect with other socializing forces such as class, nationality, race, and
ethnicity. As Cockburn has pointed out, “It is not coincidental that the
institution of war, along with state-building, first occurs in human history
in the same period as the emergence of class hierarchy and a patriarchal
sex/gender system” (2007: 254). In the contemporary gendered system,
states try to behave in ways that adhere to characteristics stereotypically
associated with masculinity and military strength.
Behavior associated with femininity such as cooperation, negotiation,
and compromise is less valued in the international system, which is one
factor leading to conflict. As a Saferworld report suggests, “ideas about
masculinities and femininities which are used to justify these inequalities
[manifest in, for example, debates on women’s participation in combat as
well as formal peace processes] might also contribute to conflict and vio-
lence” (2014: 5). The report presents a case study of young men’s involve-
ment in the practice of cattle raiding in South Sudan that instigates “cycles
of violence” between communities, and has become more dangerous in
recent years due to the proliferation of small arms; “owning a gun and par-
ticipating in a cattle raid are rites of passage for adolescent boys”, and cattle
raids are also linked to “bride price” that men need to pay—in cattle—in
order to get married (see Saferworld 2014: 7). As is noted about this
particular case, “masculinity, weapons, cattle and marriage are therefore
closely linked, combining to create powerful incentives for young men to
participate in violence” (Saferworld 2014: 7). More broadly, as evident in
198 S. BASU AND M. EICHLER
spite of growing evidence about their positive roles in peace processes and
negotiations, continue to be minimal—2–4 % (see UN Women 2015: 45).
The marginalization of women, including ex-combatants, also plays out in
post-conflict processes. Based on her extensive research in Sierra Leone,
Megan MacKenzie notes that “the reintegration process for men has been
emphasized as vital to transition from war from peace while the reintegra-
tion process for females has been deemed a ‘social concern’ and has been
moralized as a ‘return to normal’” (2010: 163; see also Wilson 2005: 232,
Luciak and Olmos 2005: 208). This “normalcy” often entails physical,
economic, and social insecurities for women, marking the gendered con-
tinuum of violence for them. Scaling up, Cockburn and Zarkov describe
the “postwar moment” as “part of a continuum of conflict, expressed
now in armed force, now in economic sanctions or political force” (2002:
10). What is notable is that the thresholds between peace, conflict, and
peace again are gendered; understanding and addressing causes and con-
sequences of violent conflicts will remain incomplete without adequate
attention to related gender dynamics (UN Women 2015: 207).
The study of war and conflict is crucial for feminist scholars for analyti-
cal as well as for political reasons. As J. Ann Tickner has noted, “a key goal
for feminist theory is to understand how the existing social order, one
many feminists believe is marked by discrimination and oppression, came
into being and how this knowledge can be used to work towards its trans-
formation” (2002: 276). Feminist scholars of war and conflict empha-
size the significance of gender for ending or preventing war and conflict,
and for redefining security in ways that benefit ordinary men and women.
The transformation of existing power relations, including gender rela-
tions that enable violence, is a key normative concern of feminist scholar-
ship. Feminist scholars are particularly interested in instances in which
women and men reject militarized gender roles (Cockburn 2013; Connell
2002). Focusing on such transformative aspects of gender allows for going
beyond considering responses to symptoms of armed conflict such as
forced displacement, valuable as these may be, to identifying resources for
transforming the very context within which women’s and men’s security
and well-being are examined.
The transformative project of feminist IR is often cognizant of the
“where are the women?” question, and the evidence of women’s mar-
ginalization in the formal peace and security arena highlighted here is
illustrative of the same. However, as pointed out here as well, feminists
have also been critical of essentialist notions of women and men. The next
200 S. BASU AND M. EICHLER
opinion polls in the early phase of the second war revealed that supporters
of then Prime Minister Putin saw him as “decisive, strong-willed and strict
in his demands to re-establish order” (quoted in Alexseev 2006: 101).
As a result of his response to the terrorist attacks, Putin quickly saw his
approval rating rise from 5 % in September 1999 to 45 % in November
of the same year (Alexseev 2006: 108). Putin who at the time had only
recently entered politics and been little known became the most popular
politician of 1999 and even earned the designation of “Man of the Year”
(Fond “Obshchestvennoe mnenie” 2000). Putin became acting president
at the end of 1999 and won a majority of the votes in the first round of
the March 2000 presidential election. The rise in Putin’s popularity was
closely tied to his tough execution of the Chechen war and his successful
appeal to militarized masculinity and patriotism (Eichler 2012: chap. 2).
At the level of state leadership and state discourse, both Chechen
wars relied on militarized masculinity for their justification and appeal.
However, at the societal level the two wars exhibited a markedly differ-
ent politics of militarized masculinity. During the first Chechen war, pro-
tests by soldiers’ mothers against conscription and the war challenged the
state’s waging of war, as did large-scale draft evasion and desertion. Young
men and their families questioned the value of military service as a result of
violent hazing practices, poor service conditions, and the dangers of being
involved in an ongoing war. Also, the introduction of a market economy
in post-Soviet Russia had produced new notions of masculinity rooted
in economic success rather than militarized patriotic duty which under-
mined draft compliance among Russia’s young men (Eichler 2012: chap.
3). Moreover, soldiers’ mothers activists openly questioned the military’s
actions and supported conscripts, draft evaders, and deserters. The moth-
ers blamed the Russian government for the breakout of war and were
critical of the government’s scapegoating of Chechens (Eichler 2012:
chap. 4). The first Chechen war was characterized by a deep question-
ing of militarized masculinity among the Russian population and among
conscript-age men and their families in particular.
During the second Chechen war, soldiers’ mothers groups continued
to challenge notions of patriotic motherhood and militarized masculinity,
but found it increasingly difficult to gain public attention for their cause.
In an attempt to strengthen militarized patriotism and improve draft com-
pliance, the Russian government introduced a patriotic education pro-
gram. In the context of President Putin’s attempts to revive militarized
patriotism and the ongoing war against terrorism, motherhood lost some
208 S. BASU AND M. EICHLER
As noted above, the Chechen wars reflect well the kind of armed conflicts
that have characterized the international security arena in recent decades.
While the status of Russia, not least its identity as one of the permanent
five members of the UN Security Council, has prevented any major inter-
vention by external actors into the Chechen wars, the international com-
munity has had to grapple with these “new wars” in other regions of the
world since the 1980s. It was apparent that the causes and consequence of
these armed conflicts were being increasingly shaped by what is referred to
in this volume as “sub-systemic factors”. On the one hand, scholarly and
policy literatures began to recognize, for instance, that national security
does not necessarily imply the security of its citizens, and that security and
development are connected (Cronin 2002; Duffield 2001; Thomas 2001;
Boutros-Ghali 1992; UNDP 1994). On the other hand, the battlefield for
these wars was no longer demarcated—civilians were deliberately targeted
(ICISS 2001); further, sexual violence—against women and men—was
used systematically—increasingly—as a “weapon of war” (Meger 2011;
Sivakumaran 2007).
210 S. BASU AND M. EICHLER
armed conflicts (Basu 2013). This was recognized in SCR 2106 (UNSC
2013a; Kirby 2015: 470) and certainly gives a more holistic sense of the
social relations that factor into contemporary wars. Thus, while it is possi-
ble to argue—as noted above—that resolutions on “women and peace and
security” work within the traditional framework of the Security Council,
bringing in women, men, and their different experiences of war poten-
tially re-constitutes the meaning of international peace and security at the
Council.
The third “move” of feminist analysis discussed in this chapter relates
to normative change. It is expected that implementation of UNSCR
1325 would lead to protection of women and girls in conflict-affected
and post-conflict societies. Further, increasing the role of women—as
peacemakers and peacekeepers—would lead to gender equality in the
international security arena. UN entities and member states have adopted
specific mechanisms to operationalize the provisions of the resolutions
that, importantly, include allocation of funds and personnel. For instance,
as per UNSCR 1888 (2009a), the Office of the Special Representative of
the Secretary General (SRSG) for Sexual Violence in Conflict was estab-
lished in 2010, with Margot Wallström serving as the first SRSG, fol-
lowed by Zainab Hawa Bangura of Sierra Leone taking over in 2012;
and, as of 2015, more than 50 countries have adopted NAPs for the
implementation of the WPS resolutions. At the same time, conversely,
the UN continues to grapple with the involvement of its peacekeepers
in sexual exploitation and abuse in conflict zones (Ndulo 2009)5; and,
the impact of the NAPs on the foreign policy of donor or troop con-
tributing member states as well as reconstruction efforts of post-con-
flict states is debatable (for a recent assessment, see Miller et al. 2014).
Even as advocates call for more political will and financial resources as
well as a more thorough understanding of specific conflicts—including
local-national-regional-global dynamics—toward better implementation
of the WPS resolutions, the broader normative framework within which
UNSCR 1325 was adopted needs to be highlighted: as Cora Weiss has
famously noted, the aim of resolution 1325 was not to “make war safe for
women” (Weiss 2011). She, among others, has called for more emphasis
on the conflict prevention aspect of the resolution whereby gender is
not only used instrumentally—to talk about protection and participation
of women—after war begins but is also used to prevent conflict before
it turns violent. In this regard, gender-related early warning indicators
214 S. BASU AND M. EICHLER
CONCLUSION
Key concepts in IR such as the state, sovereignty, citizenship, power, and
anarchy are based on a particular kind of experience, one that gives pri-
macy to masculine traits, the stereotyped experience of being a man. As
the discussion on the Russian-Chechen wars in this chapter suggest, ste-
reotypical masculine values that celebrate militarism draw upon a partial
understanding of male behavior. Robert Connell’s (1995) influential work
on masculinities points out that such partial understanding does not cor-
respond to any generalizable behavior of men; it is a construct of an ideal
dominant force that seeks to subordinate the mixed archetypes of mascu-
linities and femininities that operate in society, including in IR practices.
The dominant voices in IR, however, have used limited and selected read-
ings of political theorists such as Hobbes and Rousseau, and adapted, for
instance, elements of competitiveness and struggle for autonomy in poli-
tics, without acknowledging that the only gender role under discussion
is the male one (Grant 1991: 10). Instead, as Rebecca Grant points out,
“separating women from the public realm has led to suspicions … [that]
social relations on which the state is based are not pure types; they are
products of gender bias” (1991: 14). As such, while feminist IR scholars
tend to be associated with bringing attention to women’s marginalization
in the study and practice of IR, they have also used gender as a category of
GENDER IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: INTERDISCIPLINARITY... 215
NOTES
1. Craig N. Murphy (1998) traces this “first” in the US IR literature to a 1972
article by Bernice Carroll in the Journal of Conflict Resolution although the
article was not self-identified as a feminist piece. He notes, however, that the
Millennium Special Edition had the most visible impact in the study of
IR. Annick T.R. Wibben notes three conferences, and the publications of
their proceedings, as having “completed the launch of feminist thought
onto the IR scene” (2004: 98). The conferences were held at the London
School of Economics (1988), the University of Southern California (1990),
and Wellesley College (1990); and the publications were the Millennium
Special Edition, noted above, Gender and International Relations (1991)
edited by Rebecca Grant and Kathleen Newland, and Gendered States
(1992) edited by V. Spike Peterson (Wibben 2004: 98–99).
2. Masculinism refers to “not questioning the elevation of ways of being and
knowing associated with men and masculinity over those associated with
women and femininity” (Hooper 1998: 31).
3. The sections draw on the authors’ respective areas of research: Eichler has
published on militarized masculinities (2011, 2012, 2014) and Basu focuses
on UN Security Council resolutions on Women and Peace and Security
(2010, 2016).
4. See Enloe (1993) on the Cold war and its aftermath; Niva (1998) on the
first Gulf war; Zalewski (1995) on the war in Bosnia; Cockburn (1999) on
women’s peace activism across ethnic/national boundaries.
5. Notably, the UN Security Council adopted UNSCR 2272 in March 2016
that considers the specific issue of sexual exploitation and abuse by UN
peacekeepers and makes recommendations to address the same.
6. The suggestion in UNSCR 2242 (2015) to involve more women in coun-
tering terrorism and violent extremism has received a somewhat mixed
response (see Ní Aoláin 2016: 285).
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CHAPTER 8
Tadeusz Kugler
T. Kugler ()
Politics and International Relations, Roger Williams University,
Bristol, RI, USA
e-mail: tkugler@rwu.edu
This chapter strongly suggests the pressing need for further development
of the field of political demography with a special emphasis on its influence
in the field of conflict studies. As such, it aims to sketch a truly interdisci-
plinary approach to the study of IR, with some focus on conflict dynamics.
Consider first the discipline of demography. Broadly defined, demog-
raphy is “the study of the size, territorial distribution, and composition
of population, changes therein, and the components of such changes”
(Hauser and Duncan 1959: 31). Births, deaths, and mobility are its pri-
mary research questions. The ubiquity of these topics and their impor-
tance to all aspects of human life link the study of demography to a variety
of disciplines, including IR.
Despite its relevance to multiple fields, it is important to remember that
demography comprises its own distinct discipline, not simply a method. It
deals mainly with creation of census, development of data collection, and
specification of sub-components of population. The study of this field,
though, is not always treated institutionally as a separate discipline. Within
academia, only a handful of specialized centers—often under the aspects of
quantitatively minded sociologists—have made a concerted effort to link
demographic variations with economic and social changes.
Creation of fields within an academic framework allows for the blos-
soming of research agendas. Parallel development and isolation decrease
the overall effectiveness and efficiency of development as each group
moves without a shared framework of past study. This limitation reduces
the advantage of knowing what works and what should be improved
upon. Creation of a standardized canon of literature, and most impor-
tantly methods, provides the knowledge necessary for expanded opportu-
nities to broaden our understanding about the effects of demography on
politics and reverberation of those influences on history.
As this chapter will show, politics and demographics are synergistic. In
political demography, a particular focus of this chapter, the interdisciplinary
drive originates from the belief that knowledge of demography can shape
institutional and non-institutional change and outcomes in world affairs
ranging from inequality to domestic and international conflict. Weiner
(1971) points out that this area of study “is concerned with the political
consequences of population change, especially the effects of population
change on the demands made upon governments, on the performance
of governments, on the distribution of political power within states, and
on the distribution of national power among states” (1971: 597). The
importance of political demography, he notes, goes beyond governmental
DEMOGRAPHY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ECONOMICS, POLITICS... 231
concerns and statistical data: “in the study of political demography it is not
enough to know the facts and figures of population—that is fertility, mor-
tality, and migration rates; it is also necessary to consider the knowledge
and attitudes that people and their governments have toward population
issues.”
Currently a variety of detailed breakdowns and multiple data sources
are available both nationally and most importantly cross-nationally.
Table 8.1 helps to illustrate only a few of the possible sources of national
and cross-national, complex demographic information. Data collec-
tion is both by the states themselves and then often compiled by inter-
national organizations but can also be collected directly at the local
level. Combination of the three methods means that it is common for
the primary variables, births and deaths, to be reasonably supported
or supported at a higher level than other traditional cross-national
measurements.
Births and deaths, moreover, are a cornerstone of interdisciplinary
health public policy. Early cross-national results are associated, unexpect-
edly, with a higher likelihood of birth-related deaths with choices and
length of garments,7 creating some of the first connections between and
among sociality, politics, and the study of public health (Graunt 1665).
In many ways, the central concerns of birth, death, and lifespan have per-
sisted in demographic studies from the early analysis of the seventeenth-
century English statistician, John Graunt, to today. The state of one sex
significantly outnumbering the other, for example, remains a concern for
demographers and the policy-makers who rely on their work. This was
a concern for Graunt’s early demographic studies, which, among other
things, attempted to track the number of European males taking monastic
could compare: “one Year, Season, Parish, or other Division of the City,
with another, in respect of all the Burials, and Christenings, and of all the
Diseases, and Casualties, happening in each of them respectively.” The
study of demographic data allowed him to “begin not only to examine the
conceits, opinions, and conjectures which upon view of a few scattered
Bills I had taken up; but did also admit new ones, as I found reason, and
occasion from my Tables” (Graunt 1665: 3, capitalization and spelling
original). More than information on the spread and fatality of one dis-
ease could be gleaned from Graunt’s tables. Graunt also used his tables
to raise questions about overall fertility and health in the British Isles. He
grouped individuals by sex and age, as well as whether they lived in the
country or city and, and thus allowed for differences to be measured and
then studied.
By accurately assessing population sizes, their growth and decline, and
importantly, the demographic attributes of sex, age, and occupation (celi-
bate orders, for example, could affect population grown), Graunt asserted
that governments could allocate needed resources for recovery better,
tradesmen would make better business decisions, and individuals perhaps
could prevent losses of life. Even this first crude attempt at analysis shows
the interconnections between and among politics, policy, and economics.
In short, demographic information becomes relevant.
Though the methods of gathering data and analyzing have grown in
their sophistication, demography still is concerned most directly with
measuring births, deaths, and the quality of life in between those events.
Insights from the data allow for the first attempts to modify the behav-
ior of populations as a means to decrease mortality. Accumulated power
of multiple individual and governmental decisions possesses the ability
to alter future demographic dynamics that, in turn, affect the wealth of
nations and well-being of societies. The trend toward gathering policy-
relevant data becomes clearly visible over a century after Graunt’s first
study. Starting with the USA in 1790 and England in 1801, nations began
regularly and systematically running national censuses. These first steps
created the need for more advanced methods of analysis (Spiegelman
1973).
Table 8.2 helps to illustrate the traditional research agendas of the most
common disciplines interacting with demography.
Many of these core topics have been studied by three major social sci-
ences: sociology, economics, and political science. However, such efforts
frequently are carried out semi-independently from each other. With
DEMOGRAPHY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ECONOMICS, POLITICS... 235
highly intense conflicts. Unlike the previous cases based upon femicide,
these instances are most likely due to concentrated casualties in male pop-
ulations during wars.
Revised theory supported by new empirical assessments indicates that
such forecasts were well off the mark (Lam 2011). Generally, birth rates
fell as politically capable societies reduced infant mortality, increased
education, and incorporated females into the workforce. Such politi-
cal decisions, in turn, prompted income increases without the need for
authoritarian measures. Fertility declined. Basic connections established
by Malthus as preconditions for a population bomb proved incorrect.
Women, with limited regard to class, choose to produce fewer chil-
dren when given a reason and an assurance of longevity. Declining birth
rates started in the early nineteenth century, but tended to be ignored
due to fixation on the Malthusian thesis. Subsequent research, however,
tends to show the near universality of fertility decline. This profoundly
important issue has led to decades of research about causal structure, with
women’s rights being a key consideration. For example, Jejeebhoy (1995)
creates a framework for the empirical study of the complex relationship
between fertility and development and shows that this most important,
and nuanced, development comes from choice as opposed to policy. This
is further evaluated at the international policy level by Halfon (2007) who
considers the ramifications of changing doctrine within the Cairo con-
sensus, which is a set of best practices and an attempt to move away from
more aggressive policies like the one child per family policy.
National implications of demographic change, particularly fertility
change, became quickly understood as a relative evaluative variable in an
age of national competition. Tilly (1978) linked changes in fertility to
economic success, with Wrigley (2004) attempting to link all aspects of
demography to overall evaluation of ‘by whom and why?’ the industri-
alization of cities was accomplished and how the modern world was cre-
ated. Security concerns caused by changing economic success and then
demographical dynamics is a common topic of discussion. In his seminal
work World Population Carr-Saunders helped propel the discipline for-
ward by investigating the population pressures within great power states,
resulting movements to colonies, and the possibility of war caused by
those pressures. In effect, he claimed that much of global conflict was
between high or low fertility states with migration pressures helping to
incentivize countries toward warfare. Even in this early work many of the
same foundational research agendas of our day are evaluated.
238 T. KUGLER
Fertility, longevity, and the quality of life combine to form central issues
within demographic study. Life expectancies are increasing. Consistent
with the Demographic Transition proposed by Thompson (1919),
Omran (1981) identifies three epidemiologic stages that later researchers,
such as Lee (2003), have linked to economic and political development.
The first stage, found in the least developed societies, is associated with
both pestilence and famine; this creates lower life expectancies (30–40
years) and high infant mortality. The second stage, associated with more-
developed societies, is characterized by continued decline of infant mortal-
ity and increase in life expectancy primarily due to increased organization
and civic infrastructure, causing population growth. The third stage is
the transition itself, in which the largest cohort of the total population
is the oldest, having undergone declines in fertility but also increases in
life expectancy; the population is thereby proportionally weighted to the
elderly. The demographic transition is the outcome of success: increased
life expectancy, declines in mortality of all types, and also likely decreased
fertility rates. This is the common set of characteristics for the developed
world and soon the future of most of the developing.
In terms of political demography, policies to increase life expectancy
can be seen in global efforts. Practical realities of disease control within
one nation, for instance, often are tied to larger efforts through interna-
tional aid policies. Attempts to eradicate diseases—HIV/AIDS, malaria,
tuberculosis, or venereal diseases—are designed to reduce mortality as well
as improve the quality of these extended lives. Numerous international
attempts—led by the UN or bilaterally supplied by large national donors
including the USA, Europe, Russia, Japan, and recently China—provide
populations in developing societies with drugs and care available in the
more-developed societies. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)
of the UN range from halving extreme poverty rates to halting the spread
of HIV/AIDS and providing universal primary education. These goals,
set for 2015, provide the motivation for one of the largest multinational
efforts in history that aims to extend the quality of life.
Political policy, a sub-field of political demography, re-emerged in
the past ten years as a key area of study. In the early twentieth century,
demographic research maintained the underlying belief in eugenics—ideas
hijacked by the Nazis in their unspeakable atrocities in the Holocaust
(Galton 1883; Barrett and Kurzman 2004). The popularity of that perspec-
tive provided the foundational drive for research and did much to distort
DEMOGRAPHY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ECONOMICS, POLITICS... 239
the economy is a major priority to reconcile the costs of health with the
productivity of aging populations.
Investment incentives change with increased life expectancy. The sec-
ond driver is gender equality, as demands for increased women’s equality
in the workplace and social environment change the size of active popula-
tions. Thus, the very popular policy to decrease mortality has implications
that fundamentally alter the basis of states and the international system.
Aftereffects often are not considered when the policy is originally imple-
mented, but the underlying and frequently unexpected process driven by
such decisions generates much of the basic challenge from modernization.
Research should expand upon the dynamics that follow from expansion
of life expectancy and integration of all members into the socioeconomic
fabric that generates economic opportunities but also inequalities. Such
patterns seemingly underlie what could be the cause for a rise of civil war
in developing societies (Urdal 2006, 2012). Massive migrations within
and across societies are associated with instability as a cause and effect.
Death and Longevity
Life expectancy is increasing rapidly. Even limited amounts of pub-
lic health expenditure correlate with economic growth and sharp drops
in infant mortality. Birth rates are not a constant and do decrease pre-
dominantly after economic growth and possibly due to declines in infant
moralities. Fertility rates may have been historically high due to the under-
standing that many of those children would perish due to the complexities
of human health, something that modern policy can elevate. The conse-
quences are a lagged decrease in birth rates and that delay of onset creates
a baby boom and a youth surge. Simply, an unexpectedly large number
of children survive, grow, and reduce the average age of the country. The
unexpected bounty is the outcome of public health successes.
Closely related to the issue of extended longevity patterns are temporal
distortions in the relative size of age cohorts. In the developing world, the
youth bulge can be turned into an economic dividend when a dispropor-
tionate percentage of the population enters the workforce simultaneously,
which reduces total dependency ratios and increases the possibility of eco-
nomic growth. Concurrently, if this large bulge is unemployed or under-
employed, the possibility of civil war rises as frustrated youth challenge the
established rights of the aging working sectors—a phenomenon that we
DEMOGRAPHY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ECONOMICS, POLITICS... 243
have witnessed with the Arab Spring and the rise of both democratic and
radical Islamic uprisings.
An example of longer-scaled issues resulting from unexpected reality is
the demographic transition from declining births and deaths. Simply put,
most countries in the world are aging. Each generation is smaller than the
one that came before and this causes a bulge often aggravated by conflict
and creation of baby booms. Equally important is rapidly rising life expec-
tancy and resulting years of retirement that require support from family,
society, and states.
All Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD) and most non-OECD states have created social programs in
which elderly populations obtain access to continued social welfare. These
programs, however, operate under the assumption of life expectancies
beyond retirement that are close to 20 years in error. People are living
longer and becoming more expensive each year with the most expensive
year of life likely to be the last. This stresses the smaller labor force to pro-
vide for both them but also the resulting generation. Research questions
raised by this problem are vast. Politically speaking, the older you are, the
more you vote, causing possible stagnation in the system. Additionally, a
smaller labor force creates the need to be more efficient on a per person
basis. With human capital and innovation being profoundly important,
the need for labor causes additional incentives for women to enter the
labor force. The resulting sociological implications are still under evalua-
tion. A country whose average age is 40 has never been seen in the mod-
ern era but is something that soon will emerge as a common cross-national
characteristic.
The unexpected nature of demographic reality is profoundly important
as both factors, declining death and reduced birth rates, were and are the
goals of decades of policy. Declines in births mean more money per child,
or more disposable income, with more life being self-explanatory. The
unexpected outcome is what happens when success is achieved.
Considering that much of European and North American demographic
roots come from late seventeenth-century statistics about the plague, much
of the field until recently has focused primarily on the need to extend lives
and improve living standards. The focus on infant mortality, for instance,
remains an area of public concern, but also points to what has been the
central problem policy-makers have used demographic studies to combat:
the need to keep people alive. Now, at the transnational level, there is the
244 T. KUGLER
Migrations and Refugees
First off, it is important to distinguish between a refugee and a migrant. A
refugee has similar characteristics as a migrant but importantly has specific
international laws pertaining to expectations of host countries’ political
246 T. KUGLER
This suggests that refugees must be protected not simply for humanitarian
reasons in order to perpetuate the policies of peace.
Assimilation itself would seem to be nothing more than a question of
trust, but the causal relationship has not yet been studied. Starting with
limits on religious attire and a process of both self-isolation and state iso-
lation, the story of assimilation does not need to end in a multiethnic
melting pot. Assimilation may not be a universally feasible policy due to
the degree of social isolation, yet homogenization is popular. Recently the
likelihood of increased social pressure and even the possibility of more
aggressive policies toward already existing immigrants could be increasing
in Europe. The popularity of anti-immigration policy even after successful
assimilation is a complex but interesting topic (Dancygier 2010).
States with future generations limited in size can be expected to allow
immigration as a means of stabilizing the labor force. It has been sug-
gested that creation of the unified labor market in the EU is due to this
very reason. Older developed states have allowed immigrants that they
assumed would be easiest to assimilate (fellow Europeans) into their labor
markets. Issues relating to the “brain drain,” shifting definitions of multi-
culturalism, along with the rise of right-wing parties and anti-immigration
groups, provide fruitful avenues for future research. Increasing xenopho-
bia would seem to be a real problem in the EU and some of this is due to
increased immigration without thought to assimilation.
Environmental Influences
Changes in water access, desertification, natural disasters, and other aspects
of climate change are increasingly popular topics, but they are not yet
clearly linked to conflict. They may have an influence on demographical
characteristics of the underlying populations or perpetuate the influences
leading to migration, and those characteristics then could have an influ-
ence on migration flows. Part of this could be in the common movement
of agriculture population to cities due primarily to technological improve-
ments in agriculture (urbanization effects in general) but that same flow
can likely be exasperated by aspects of climate change. This may increase
or otherwise influence already existing demographical changes in urban-
ization (as in this example) or even migration. The agendas linking vari-
ous different versions of an environmental shock are wide from changes
in rainfall, to desertification, and possibly increased variation within sea-
sons. Consensus on the effects themselves, or which aspects are the most
DEMOGRAPHY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ECONOMICS, POLITICS... 255
important, has not yet been agreed upon in terms of how they influence
conflict or at what level (Salehyan 2008).
Bhavnani and Lacina (2015) provide a good example of this new type
of investigation using India as the basis for investigation. In it they study
first the effects of short-term environmental disasters causing temporary
migrations and then the possibly of riots. Importantly they further the
study by evaluating the preexisting political issues between the regions
within India and support for the central government. Allow a discus-
sion of the importance of the environmental issue and more importantly
leading to the possibly that if future climate crises increase so too will
its positive effect on internal violence and domestic migrations. Hendrix
and Salehyan (2012) working within Africa investigate the complex rela-
tionship between rain fall (or lack) and increased domestic conflicts.
Although not directly discussing the likelihood of a demographic causal
structure (principally using population growth as a control variable) and
having difficulty generalizing the curvilinear outside of Africa itself, the
possibly of less reliable rainfall suggests the likelihood of increased social
unrest that could be exasperated by demography. This subject is of great
interest to many and one that will be developed to a greater extent in the
coming years.
CONCLUSION
Demography is the foundation of humanity and a veritable fountain
of research agendas, all of which illuminate the key questions regard-
ing human existence. The importance of population movements and the
structures of population itself, be it gender or age, are remarkably impor-
tant for the understanding of both the futures of nations themselves and
the potential possibilities of conflict. Why are we alive, how can we stay
alive, what do we do to each other, and where we can live are basic ques-
tions for shaping the agenda of demographic studies. Each of these ques-
tions needs to be answered within an international and interdisciplinary
agenda. The research potential of direct demographic studies is growing
and should be at the core of IR. The study of population is the study of
us all, what we do, can do, have done, and will do—in short, the study
of humanity.
256 T. KUGLER
NOTES
1. Demographic Transition: Declines in death rates and later in birth rates. This
causes first rapid growth and then later aging as following generations are
smaller than the previous ones. See Kirk (1996) and Dyson (2010) for a more
detailed explanation of this phenomenon.
2. Youth Bulges: The lag between declines in death rates to birth rates can
cause disproportionate population structures. These can radically decrease
the overall age of the society.
3. Migrations: Movement of population from geographic location to loca-
tion. This increasingly also refers to refugees.
4. Gender Imbalance: With no selection bias, human births are slightly higher
in males at 1.06 to 1, with increased mortality rates in males decreasing this
ratio by year. Imbalance is when either gender is radically higher or lower
than the natural state.
5. Population Size: Total population of the location in question.
6. Density: Population location by area. Often associated with urbanization.
7. The query was simply “why did both mothers and infants have a higher
level of mortality in childbirth in a select few wealthier nations?” The likely
cause is the complexity of the maternal garments, with highly restricted
mobility being the consequence of social norms on isolation and the physi-
cal complexity of the clothing itself. Poor, non-isolated, and mobile moth-
ers had higher survival rates.
8. A poverty trap occurs when population growth is greater than economic
growth. As a result, each subsequent generation is, per capita, poorer than
the previous generation.
9. Iversen and Rosenbluth (2010) is a practically good example of the intrica-
cies between and among women’s rights, labor, and fertility.
10. Increased economic potential is due to a temporarily disproportionately
young labor force. Simply put, after major wars the elderly and the very
young have a tendency to have higher mortality rates. At the end of a war
the labor force is a higher percentage of the total population and can be an
economic engine. Additionally, the resulting baby boom can further this
economic potential to the resulting generations.
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DEMOGRAPHY AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS: ECONOMICS, POLITICS... 261
Kyungkook Kang and Tadeusz Kugler
K. Kang (*)
Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida,
Orlando, FL, USA
e-mail: kyungkook.kang@ucf.edu
T. Kugler
Politics and International Relations, Roger Williams University, Bristol, RI, USA
e-mail: tkugler@rwu.edu
disasters. The focus is on foreign aid. Keynes (1920) gave a major impe-
tus to the generalized provision of foreign aid, arguing that without such
action recovery was unlikely and depression rather than recovery would
follow. His cogent argument prompted the Marshall Plan, subsequently
reinforced by the successful recovery record of advanced economies fol-
lowing World War II. However, the recovery miracles of Germany, Italy
or Japan have not been reproduced consistently elsewhere. Following
natural or war-related disasters, many developing societies had only mixed
successes in spite of massive foreign aid. Indeed, failed states such as
Mozambique, Haiti or Somalia—despite long-term foreign assistance that
far exceeded the per capita aid provided to Japan after World War II—con-
tinue to linger in the poverty trap (Organski and Kugler 1980).
We propose that economic and demographic recovery from disaster can
be examined best from an interdisciplinary perspective. A useful approach
is to apply the tools of international political economy (IPE). They com-
bine economic and political considerations and PD in the analysis of
disasters. Even though IPE today mainly focuses on interactions among
states—such as trade, monetary exchange and globalization—recovery
from disasters is now gaining traction. From a demographic perspective,
PD is generally concerned with consequences of the ongoing demo-
graphic transition and migration. Assessments of disaster loss are common
but understanding how to enhance the effectiveness of fertility recovery
following disasters is again not central in that agenda.
Refocusing on theory and assessment about recovery from disaster is
important because understanding that process would help desperate and
frustrated victims of disasters restore their lives and that of the following
generations. Here we explore how domestic and foreign actors can alter
recovery dynamics and propose ways to advance this important theoretical
and policy field with an interdisciplinary perspective. Doing so can give us
a different perspective on change in world affairs, which is central to the
type of broader understandings that IR theory wishes to achieve—a subject
that is addressed in Chap. 10—as well as virtually all disciplines c onnected
with IR. Effective recovery from events such as conflict, in turn, impacts
the historical process thereafter and causes the type of changes that are not
understood well enough, even at the intersection of history and IR as laid
out by Yetiv (Chap. 2). Such changes influence subsequent events includ-
ing future conflict, as suggested for example by the interwar period after
the Treaty of Versailles.
266 K. KANG AND T. KUGLER
severe disasters but effects linger in the age cohort structures (Frumkin
1951; United Nations 1971).
Systemic understanding of the underlying mechanism of economic
and demographic recovery from disasters is in its infancy. Scholars and
policy-makers still propose and pursue diverse and frequently contradic-
tory doctrines (Keynes 1920; Angell 1933; Kuznets 1973). There is little
agreement over how nations can escape from the poverty trap, recover
population and pursue sustained egalitarian development on their own
(Sachs 2006; Bowles et al. 2006; Boussalis 2011).
Due to the multifaceted characteristics of recovery, the task of integrat-
ing comprehensive mechanisms within a single framework is challenging.
Most observers acknowledge that political, economic and demographic
factors are intertwined throughout the entire recovery path. Yet, few agree
on what these interactions are and even fewer attempt to test the propo-
sitions that they advance. The difficulty is compounded because of the
sharp separation of disciplines within the social sciences. Lack of a com-
mon paradigm and language is one of the most serious obstacles to estab-
lishing a unified explanation of how recovery can be optimized. Once the
parameters of post-disaster actions are established, one can provide effec-
tive policy prescriptions based on theoretical regularities. The objective is
to account for economic processes in post-disaster periods and achieve a
reduction of inequality in the affected societies.
Mainstream economic development studies generally explore the eco-
nomic growth using the neoclassical growth model (NCGM) (Barro 1996;
Jones 1995, 2002; Weil 2008). The reason for this choice is that theoreti-
cal implications of NCGM are consistent with the empirical record of eco-
nomic recovery in the western advanced economies. Indeed, after both
World War I and II, recovery in developed economies followed the paths
predicted by NCGM. The succession of recovery miracles supports the
fundamental implication of NCGM. Specifically, “convergence” among
post-war economies took place and the belligerents involved in war did
rapidly catch up to their pre-war productivity. Above all, levels of destruc-
tion from war, as theoretically anticipated, are associated with accelerating
economic growth.
This implication was first systematically reported and explored by
Organski and Kugler (1980). The empirical “Phoenix Factor” path pre-
sented a very optimistic assessment of post-war recovery. According to
their findings, the consequence of severe war is only temporary. In a bit
more than one generation, the enormous losses incurred by belligerents
268 K. KANG AND T. KUGLER
engage in efficient economic exchanges that minimize costs for all trans-
actions. In the absence of effective governance, all exchanges are inher-
ently risky and inefficient. Thus, if economic growth can be sustained only
through secure exchanges within polities that can reduce overall socio-
economic uncertainty, then politics plays a critical role in the process of
post-disaster recovery. The connection between politics and economics
has been made theoretically but not effectively implemented. Ordeshook
(1990) correctly points out “it is impossible to predict market outcomes
without also predicting the political responses that alternative outcomes
engender (1990: 9).”
Except for a few systematic but still partial attempts at theory (Organski
and Kugler 1980; Koubi 2005; Kugler et al. 2013; Fisunoglu 2014), polit-
ical scientists have described serious disasters as unique events. Normative
and historical approaches point in the right direction of inquiry. Traditional
approaches suggest that to understand recovery, enriched information is
required regarding value judgments about human rights, and income dis-
tribution along with detailed assessments of real cases. They also detect
that, based on case studies and reports of experienced practitioners, societ-
ies differ; these differences frequently affect the optimal design of strate-
gies and prevent implementation of common policies (Lancaster 2006;
Riddell 2008). Their work identifies the limitations of existing theoretical
approaches. To obtain a more powerful and persuasive framework, how-
ever, it is crucial to integrate the fragmented elements derived from case
studies and empirical observations into a unified research agenda.
To take a first step, we first should distinguish fundamental elements
that need to be included in the research. Once identified, those elements
can construct a more general and malleable theoretical structure that treats
different issues of politics, economics and demography simultaneously (Alt
and Shepsle 1990). This interdisciplinary theoretical perspective perhaps
can motivate scholars in other disciplines to be aware and advance other
aspects of the complex social phenomena that affect economic recovery
and growth patterns in general.
The next section puts forward an analytical framework that provides
alternate interdisciplinary answers to central questions of economic recov-
ery. Specifically and comparatively, we examine theoretical and empirical
advantages of the OLG model over the traditional neoclassical macroeco-
nomic approach.
270 K. KANG AND T. KUGLER
simply about fixing an economy derailed from the normal growth track
after external shocks, but rather identifying the conditions that can lead to
success or failure in the post-disaster enterprise.
The most promising theoretical approach that provides both outcomes
is Samuelson-Diamond’s OLG model. This perspective specifically iden-
tifies several kinds of pathologies caused by market failure, contrary to
the Solow-Swan NCGM. This workhorse model of “disequilibrium”
captures clear linkages between distorted sociopolitical environments
and the malfunctioning of a market system. From a recovery perspective,
the OLG model makes three fundamental assumptions that differ from
Solow-Swan’s treatment. First, it assumes that demographic evolution is
generated by a continuous turnover in younger and older generations,
which eventually constrains aggregate economic activity. Second, OLG
postulates intertemporal decision-making of individuals under uncertainty
where every forward-looking agent makes economic decisions—such as
saving for future consumption or hiring workers for more production—as
part of plans for all conceivable events under uncertainty. Consequently,
economic growth is conditioned by such decisions that are in turn affected
by the levels of security and stability in a society.
Third, and finally, the OLG model incorporates political constraints
imposed by institutional arrangement for transactions between multiple
markets. It assumes that the labor, goods and capital markets are connected
to each other via intermediary political institutions that either secure or
distort economic exchanges via contract enforcement or the credit market.
These assumptions produce complex nonlinear dynamics that differen-
tially affect recovery patterns. Add technology into the mix—a priority for
the study of change identified by Fritsch in Chap. 6—and the situation
becomes even more complex to consider.
The variant of the OLG growth model introduced here, in the spirit
of Samuelson (1958) and Diamond (1965), adds political factors to this
theoretical framework. We further add insights from economists including
Galor and Ryder (1989), Azariadis and Drazen (1990) and Galor and Weil
(1996), who elaborate more general specifications of the OLG model by
permitting the existence of multiple equilibrium points. The main political
elements incorporated have been added more recently into the framework
by Feng et al. (2000) and World Bank (2009). Our proposed approach is
based on and extends these works.
Let us now outline the core argument accounting for recovery alterna-
tives formally constructed (for complete derivations see Appendix 1). By
272 K. KANG AND T. KUGLER
solving for the optima from the equations of (A1) and (A2) in Appendix
and plugging the solutions to the market clearing condition, we derive a
nonlinear difference equation3:
AH χγβ kt
kt +1 = ln (1 + kt ) −
1+ n 1 + kt
relatively close to the threshold on the 45 degree line (k**) prior to war, are
expected to enter a protracted period of decline and fall into the poverty
trap denoted by the shaded gray area. Note that even nations that perform
very well prior to a disaster may fall into this trap in the aftermath if the
massive and devastating event places them below the threshold (e.g., as
one would anticipate following a nuclear exchange).
Let us clarify these implications a bit more by analytically exploring
the two alternate recovery trajectories. Analytical solutions in Fig. 9.1
indicate that the speed of recovery (defined by the slope of trajectory)
is determined by political performance. High-performance societies will
recover faster (reflected by a steeper slope of S-curve) and will have a lower
likelihood of falling into the poverty trap (reflected by a smaller sized
gray colored region) than low-performance societies. Developed societ-
ies devastated by disaster will recover regardless of low or high political
274 K. KANG AND T. KUGLER
losses but will not suffer additional costs, supporting Keynes’ (1920) argu-
ment that war losses are sustained without foreign aid. However, develop-
ing belligerents with low political performance, which endure devastation
severe enough to fall below the critical threshold, will descend into a pro-
tracted poverty trap, as Angell (1933) suggests. Thus, application of OLG
perspective provides a more general assessment of how and why nations
differentially recover from equivalent devastating events.
In sum, the perspective proposed implies that multiple sociopolitical
factors can either drive or inhibit the process of economic recovery. A
number of testable hypotheses about recovery flow from this interdisci-
plinary model; the most direct is that states recover differently from disas-
ters depending on the level of economic pre-disaster success and political
performance.
Table 9.1 summarizes the main argument. Above the threshold, the
rate of recovery increases with devastation, and foreign aid further accel-
erates recovery because a technically advanced productive population is
employed at low wages. Fertility rates temporarily increase but then reduce
to pre-disaster levels. Below the threshold, however, the rate of recovery
becomes increasingly negative with distance to the threshold. Foreign
aid alleviates suffering momentarily but does not sustain the long-term
recovery because such economies are constrained by chronic sociopolitical
obstacles that hinder continuous employment based on high productivity.
Indeed, the proposed interdisciplinary model based on the OLG frame-
work shows that the relationship between economic recovery and political
performance is nonlinear, dynamic and multifaceted. If these mechanics
find support from empirical assessments, this research can provide policy-
makers with a rough road map to successful post-disaster recovery.
Developed Rapid recovery with full Less rapid recovery with limited
economy convergence convergence
Developing Rapid or tenuous recovery No recovery or decline into a
economy (political choices important) poverty trap
276 K. KANG AND T. KUGLER
10
War Period
5
Population Loss
-5
War Loss Time
-10
-15
-25
-35
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005
Year
Conclusion and Implications
The interplay between political economy and demography allows us to
understand the mechanism behind economic and population recovery
in the aftermath of disasters such as wars. Consistent with IPE insights,
political performance is a critical element in the economic and population
recovery process, suggesting that individuals are fundamentally germane
not only to the onset of conflict as suggested by Renshon and Kahneman
in Chap. 3, as well as Kugler and Zak in Chap. 4, but also to how states
recover from it. These intertwined interdisciplinary factors are connected
to sustained post-disaster recovery. The formal model proposed and its
empirical implications can perhaps help scholars build a more effective
approach within IR as a whole.
Further research may in time allow decision-makers to choose policy alter-
natives that most effectively can combat the effects of disasters, which not
only will benefit the post-recovery period but may well place states on a
more peaceful path. Indeed, it is well understood that the way by which a
war ends and recovery is conducted can be linked to future conflicts. One
war can become a partial cause of another.
We show that policy outcomes will differ across levels of development
and political performance. Moreover, arrays of sociopolitical factors are
needed to understand the process of recovery. Foreign aid is important,
but its effectiveness in advancing recovery will depend on the constellation
of socioeconomic factors that differ fundamentally with each situation.
Put simply, allocation of aid to support recovery of advanced nations is
relatively straightforward; allocation of aid supporting recovery in less and
least developed societies is far more complex, and less likely to succeed.
Empirical interdisciplinary research on recovery from disasters has focused
mainly on wars, yielding some insight into the question of the effects of
conflict which is tied to one of the broad themes of this book—the dynamics
of conflict and cooperation. Future research, however, following Boussalis
(2011), should expand to natural disasters. Human losses from tsunamis in
Asia and Japan, for example, far exceed casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Historical records suggest that plagues devastated European, American
and Asian populations. While in the short term natural disasters may still
fall short of the costs of World War II—estimated at 50 million casual-
ties—recovery from such disasters is not well understood.5 As conflict is
reduced, other disasters may take prominence but the process of recovery
should be similar. We are confident that viable estimates of recovery pat-
terns can be obtained with interdisciplinary efforts in IR and beyond. We
INTERNATIONAL POLITICAL ECONOMY AND POLITICAL DEMOGRAPHY:... 281
are convinced that successful recovery strategies will vary but systematic
analysis can identify optimal paths to recovery for each type of disaster in
each level of socioeconomic development. Among all, government actions
will be critical to success. Clarifying what is politically feasible could mini-
mize human suffering and make human security choices more rational.
Finally, a closely related issue is the problem of inequality exacerbated by
disasters (Boussalis et al. 2012). The goal of this research is to formu-
late and develop mechanics of recovery that can provide effective policy
prescriptions to reduce vast differences in standard of living within and
across nations. The UN Millennium Declaration led to an unprecedented
commitment to build a more equal world society. The record shows, how-
ever, very slow progress or even growing disparities across sub-national
populations (UN System Task Team on the Post-2015 UN Development
Agenda 2012). The next interdisciplinary exploration of recovery in our
view should perhaps focus not only on absolute recovery but also on ways
to minimize inequality and overcome the devastating effects of various
man-made or natural disasters.
max
c1t , ct2+1
( ) ( )
E (1 − β ) ln ct1 + β ln ct2+1 s.t.c1t = wt − at +1 c t2+1 = Rt +1 at +1 (A1)
where 0 < β < 1 is the rate of time discount factor relevant to an agent’s
saving propensity.
282 K. KANG AND T. KUGLER
max AH χ ⋅ f ( kt ) − Rt +1 kt − wt (A2)
kt
AH χγβ kt
kt +1 = ln (1 + kt ) − (A3)
1+ n 1 + kt
284 K. KANG AND T. KUGLER
Notes
1. One academic response emerging from human security and normative new
humanitarianism analysis tackles recovery problems with the aim to protect
and promote human dignity (Fox 2001; Bellamy and McDonald 2002;
Wibben 2008). Many insights emerge from such studies but a systematic
paradigm has not been agreed upon.
2. The overlapping generation model was originally introduced by Samuelson
(1958) and elaborated by Diamond (1965). The Solow-Swan model was
introduced by Solow (1956) and Swan (1956) independently.
3. The first order condition shows the optimal level of the yield on capital Rt +
1 = f (kt) and wage wt = AHχ ⋅ [f(kt) − ktf (kt)]. To simplify the derivation
′ ′
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CHAPTER 10
Carolyn C. James and Patrick James
any discipline that borrows nothing from, and gives nothing in return to, other
disciplines is worthless (Bunge 1996: 267).
C.C. James
International Studies, Pepperdine University, Malibu, CA, USA
P. James ()
School of International Relations, USC, Los Angeles, CA, USA
e-mail: patrickj@usc.edu
“black box” of decision-making (Hudson and Vore 1995: 211). For such
reasons, FPA tends toward interdisciplinary and multicausal explanations
as its theory and research accumulate over time (Breuning 2007: 6, 15;
Hudson 2007: 6; Neack 2008: 6, 19–25; Hill 2010: 2576). FPA is a vital
source of insights with regard to cooperation and conflict among states.
FPA’s agent-centered approach explains why, in a post–Cold War world
with an increasingly diverse set of actors and conflicts, it is gaining atten-
tion once again. Within IR, FPA is “becoming more theoretically impor-
tant” (Hudson 2007: 185; see also Kaarbo 2015) after a phase in which
large-scale paradigm wars primarily involving realism and liberalism had
taken center stage. FPA can be traced back to the mid-1950s, with the
exegesis of decision-making put forward by Snyder et al. (1954) often
cited as the foundational text (Kesgin 2011: 336, 338).2 Thus FPA’s ori-
gins, which shaped its trajectory, go back to the era of systems theory
and behaviorism. The initial decades of FPA therefore tended toward the
assembling of variables into increasingly intricate frameworks.
Like other sectors in IR, however, FPA moved away from grand the-
orizing emphasized in that era and toward “finding theories that work
under certain conditions” (Kesgin 2011: 336). The result is a long-term
trend toward “midrange theories that are empirically grounded, culturally
sensitive, and often issue- or domain-specific” (Gerner 1995: 30; see also
Hermann 1995: 248; Breuning 2007: 170; Hill 2010: 2573; Alden and
Aran 2012; 119). As a result of the emphasis on middle-range theorizing,
any number of interesting propositions have emerged and gained favor—
see, for instance, the vast inventory and comparative analysis from Mintz
and DeRouen (2010)—but “there is not much work yet on integrating
different factors influencing foreign policy into a comprehensive frame-
work” (Kesgin 2011: 341). Thus, the whole of insights about cooperation
and conflict from FPA may be at risk of becoming less than the sum of its
parts.
This chapter unfolds in five additional sections. The second section
provides the intellectual foundation for systemism, which is descended
from systems analysis. Section three presents systemism. Section four
focuses on systemism and IR in terms of the record of accomplishment
so far. The fifth section applies systemism to assess progress in the field of
FPA at two points in time approximately a decade apart. Sixth and final
among the sections is a summary of findings that also includes ideas for
further application of systemism within FPA in particular and IR’s study
of conflict in general.
292 C.C. JAMES AND P. JAMES
major parts” (Easton 1990: 6). This would not mean “throwing the baby
out with the bathwater,” in that a focus on individual action would need
to be sustained. Theorizing would continue to be individualistic in terms
of social behavior being “reducible to the activities of persons and their
empirically traceable connections with each other” (Easton 1990: 257).
However, Easton (1990: 257) added soon after that emergent properties
“may be accessible only if dealt with at the collective level.” Individual
actions matter but constraints imposed by overarching structures “are very
real, even though they are invisible and seldom identified and recognized
for what they do” (Easton 1990: 280). His exposition, from the stand-
point of a systems approach as it might be applied today, anticipates the
need to combine levels of action into a single frame of reference.
Offered three decades ago, Green’s assessment of systems analysis as
Easton had put it forward rings true today: systems theory is “nearly
friendless among political scientists” (1985: 127). Declining and even
vanishing interest in systems analysis can be traced to characteristics that
systemism, as will become apparent, seeks to avoid. Quite recently, Fisher
(2011: 74) produced a valuable review that sums up the multifaceted criti-
cism of systems analysis that caused it to go out of favor: methodologi-
cal weakness (i.e., how to incorporate all events); difficulty in specifying
boundaries and variables in a system; and problems with the operational
meaning of equilibrium.
So, in light of those shortcomings, who needs systems theory? Perhaps
it should go into a pile with other obsolete things from the twentieth
century. Put systems theory next to the VCR and forget about it, right?
While on the surface that might seem justified, it is not the right deci-
sion. Consider the assessment from Pickel (2007: 392): “abandoning
conceptions of systems has imposed a high price on the social sciences: a
lack of ontologies and methodologies that are both philosophically pro-
found and scientifically defensible.” The key concern becomes success-
fully identifying and explaining mechanismic causation. Without a system
orientation, a mechanismic account cannot be achieved; instead, research
becomes an exercise in increasingly sophisticated empirical research that
cannot depict cause and effect directly.7 In particular, the nexus of foreign
policy and international conflict must be studied in a way that identifies
causal mechanisms and thereby obtains practical value.
Correlation does not equate with causation and that is the point of
departure for systemism as it seeks to incorporate mechanisms. Consider
the adage about storks and birth rates as a simple illustration of what is
294 C.C. JAMES AND P. JAMES
at issue here. The correlation is there, but not because storks, as parents
might tell their young children, are bringing the babies. Instead, a causal
mechanism involving rural areas is at work. The degree to which an area
is rural will explain both the frequency of storks being observed and the
birth rate. Something more FPA-related to consider might be a fanciful
(or perhaps even observed) connection involving the number of letters in
a state’s name and the frequency of its involvement in Cold War conflict.
This might be a simple artifact of the USA and USSR when fully spelled
out. The underlying causal mechanism is that the superpowers became that
way through federation—voluntary or otherwise—and thus also had very
long names as a by-product of their history. In sum, systemism does not
focus on obtaining ever-larger coefficients from regression-style research
or accumulation of case studies that show association between variables.
Instead, systemism goes beyond debates over qualitative or quantitative
methods to focus explicitly on explanation.
The quest for causal mechanisms demands a return to system-oriented
thinking. The ontology and method of systems analysis open up new vis-
tas to research. With respect to existence, a system orientation reminds
us that causal effects often may be nonlinear or disproportionate; regard-
ing method, such thinking reminds us that causal relationships “cannot
be inferred from linear correlations” (Pickel 2007: 394). Furthermore,
systems analysis offers a way beyond the increasingly tedious debate over
material versus ideational analysis. As Pickel (2007: 404) asserts, “social
systems cannot be directly observed” and therefore any exposition that is
thorough must include composition, structure, environment, and causal
mechanisms. For such reasons, any ensuing argument about whether idea-
based or material explanations are paramount is rendered irrelevant.8
Easton’s vision of system-oriented theorizing from the era of the
behavioral revolution, nearly lost in the mists of academic time, creates a
context within which to introduce and evaluate systemism. To what extent
is systemism similar to Easton’s formulation? How is it different? Does sys-
temism represent an improvement over what Easton proposed long ago?
And most germane of all, does this improvement result in theoretical and
explanatory power that can enhance the ability to explain IR phenomena?
SYSTEMISM
Systems analysis from the high behavioral era focused on regulative
responses to stress in the quest for system persistence (Easton 1965a:
124). In that sense it can be interpreted as exhibiting a status quo-oriented
SYSTEMISM AND FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS: A NEW APPROACH... 295
For example, Africa might be regarded as one such system, with the
environment corresponding to the world beyond its boundaries.14 Inputs
from the environment might include actions by international organiza-
tions or states from outside, along with human immigration into Africa.
A particularly intense example is the injection of European conflicts into
Africa as a by-product of nineteenth century colonialism. Outputs might
include the foreign policies of states in Africa and their actions within
regional or global organizations, along with emigration to the rest of the
world. Turbulence that began in Tunisia, for purposes of simplification
labeled as the Arab Spring, eventually set in motion huge and contro-
versial movements of people out of the African system and contributed
to various regional conflicts. The preceding examples deliberately include
both macro- and micro-oriented variables, referring to international orga-
nization and state activity on one hand and human migration on the other.
Within a system as depicted by Fig. 10.1, four basic types of linkages
are possible: macro-macro (X → Y), macro-micro (X → x), micro-macro
(y → Y) and micro-micro (x → y). In addition, the effects may go back
and forth with the environment, such as E → X or y → E. Note that in
this figure, and in the subsequent diagrams that focus on FPA, upper-
and lower-case characters correspond to macro- and micro-level variables,
respectively.
Of interest as well is functional form for the relationship X → Y, where
X is put forward as a cause of Y; what, for example, is the nature of
Y = F(X) (i.e., read as “Y is a function of X”)? Is the function incremental
or something else? This question must be answered for all connections
identified between variables in the system. Assessment of Y as a function
of X, by intuition, begins with an incremental or linear relationship, with
complexity added as necessary. For example, some linkages may be incre-
mental, such as water cooling down or heating up, and then step level,
with temperatures of 0 and 100 Celcius resulting in freezing and boiling,
respectively. Functional form is also important in strengthening the falsifi-
ability of a theory by increasing the specificity of its causal mechanisms.
Figure 10.1 is generic and may apply to any social system. Its basic con-
tents will be elaborated through illustrations from FPA. The linkages con-
veyed by Fig. 10.1—(a) between the environment and the system and (b)
within the system itself—will be covered in turn. This process will reveal
how, in principle, the contents of any theoretical exposition can be trans-
lated into the language of systemism, which in turn facilitates comparison.
SYSTEMISM AND FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS: A NEW APPROACH... 299
this book, but within a broader mechanism for assessing the gravity of
competing variables that can explain crucial phenomena such as interna-
tional conflict.
Systemism has been used to create a model that facilitates compara-
tive foreign policy studies (James and Özdamar 2009). Based upon an
expanded version of McGowan and Shapiro’s original foreign policy
model (1973), Turkey’s foreign policy toward Syria takes into account the
often-troubled micro-level influence of Turkey’s internal Kurdish popula-
tion. Macro-macro level links, in this case relations between Turkey and
Syria, are expanded to include macro-micro links (e.g. Syrian support for
the PKK, the Kurdistan Worker’s Party within Turkey), micro-micro links
(rising Turkish nationalism in response to PKK terrorism), and micro-
macro links (domestic demands from ethnic Turks for a more hawkish
foreign policy toward Syria). Such systematic analyses underscore the role
of domestic and individual factors as causes of conflict.
Rather than attempting to discern patterns of cooperation and conflict
between states based primarily on domestic actors and structures, other
internal variables, including ethnic minorities as well as the behavior and
intentions of individual leaders, yield a more complete understanding of
Turkey’s relationship with Syria. This implementation of systemism also
allows for incorporation of a broad variety of methodological approaches
to form a more coherent and comprehensive set of studies amenable to
further criticism and development individually and as a whole.
Systemism has been applied most recently to conflict processes in IR
through a study of how deterrence and compellence operate, with par-
ticular attention to the case of Iraq (James 2012). A study from Harvey
and James (2009), which tracked six deterrence exchanges involving the
US–Iraqi conflict from 1991 through the outbreak of war in 2003, is
used in James (2012) to reveal the value added from systemism. First, the
diagrammatic exposition reveals a difference in degree rather than kind in
the practice of deterrence and compellence under conditions of post–Cold
War complexity. The six exchanges over Iraq show that basic traits of tradi-
tional deterrence—rationality, state-centrism, and rivalry conditions—are
maintained in the era of complex deterrence. Second, the series of figures
reveals the importance of domestic sources for security policy; numer-
ous and significant micro-macro linkages appear. Third, the one exchange
leading to deterrence failure and subsequent war in 2003 contains sig-
nificantly more linkages than the other five exchanges, which may help
thinking about what to watch for in the future. We stress that the failure
SYSTEMISM AND FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS: A NEW APPROACH... 303
How does one create an interactive theory that takes the perspective of an
actor in the system, rather than that of the system itself, while at the same
time taking into account that the actor is constantly responding to per-
ceived external feedback to its prior actions, new initiatives of others, dif-
fering situations, and shifts in the international structure? We must address
the question.
both diachronic and synchronic analysis will be carried out. Studies from
1995 and 2007 will be assembled into diagrammatic expositions based
on systemism to assess the state of FPA. The first set of studies includes
Gerner (1995), Hermann (1995), and Hudson and Vore (1995), while
the second consists of Breuning (2007) and Hudson (2007). While other
valuable studies exist, the preceding sets are selected for comparison
because (a) each attempts to assess FPA in an overall sense in the same
year of publication, with attention to causal linkages at varying levels of
analysis; and (b) two time intervals, separated by more than a decade, are
sufficient for the purpose of this chapter.18
What is the state of FPA in 1995, about four decades after its inception?
A first generation of research, up to approximately the mid- to late 1970s,
is identified by Hudson and Vore (1995) and Gerner (1995). Figure 10.2
shows four sets of variables combined from the preceding studies in a
simple visual presentation: national and societal characteristics; organiza-
tional process and bureaucratic politics; small group dynamics; and indi-
vidual characteristics.19 Note the relatively sizeable number of variables
grouped together under the first category as compared to the others. One
arrow leads from each set of factors over to foreign policy, which reflects
the narrative available in Gerner (1995) and Hudson and Vore (1995).
Put differently, the vision is of assembling a wide range of factors with
an interdisciplinary flavor (e.g., demographics, culture, geography, opera-
tional code, etc.) into a unidirectional model of foreign policy.
Pause now to consider a problem for integration of theory that comes
out when looking more closely at the contents of the preceding figure.
Small group dynamics and individual characteristics in Fig. 10.2 really
mean government or macro-level as designated by systemism. Put differ-
ently, language from the first level of Waltz (1959) is used to label these
categories, but they really pertain to how individuals and small groups
operate in a government context. This needs more clarity as work moves
forward on how foreign policy leads to cooperation or conflict. In addi-
tion, note that items in the same category change at vastly different rates;
an obvious comparison would be political issues at time ‘t’ versus national
character under the heading of national and societal characteristics.
This kind of diagrammatic presentation also readily points out the omis-
sion of a feedback loop. Unpacking the categories from Fig. 10.2 in this
way draws attention to the need for dynamic modeling that moves beyond
comparative statics. Take, for example, World War I as an outcome that
SYSTEMISM AND FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS: A NEW APPROACH... 305
feeds back into the system in a wide range of ways that contribute to the
outbreak of World War II. Revanchism took hold in Germany as an ideol-
ogy, eventually manifested in its most virulent form as National Socialism.
Transforming demographic changes occurred; for instance, huge losses in
World War I left France in a greatly weakened state in both material and
psychological terms during what became the interwar years. These and
various other factors included in Fig. 10.2 could be put together into a
comprehensive account for World War II as a product of the experience in
World War I—that is, an explanation based on the dynamics of conflict. Of
course, an a priori question is whether Adolph Hitler could have arisen to
play a crucial role in the absence of these developments.
Consider Fig. 10.3, which provides a systemist reinterpretation of the
first generation of scholarship conveyed by Fig. 10.2. Several properties of
the systemist-inspired figure stand out.
306 C.C. JAMES AND P. JAMES
First, note that causal mechanisms are identified within as well as across
the prior groupings of variables. For example, geography now stands as
the first “domino” in a much more intricate sequence than before. This
shift increases the framework’s degree of falsifiability through a more pre-
cise statement of presumed causal mechanisms.
Second, some items are reclassified in terms of placement at the
macro- versus micro-levels within the system. (Recall that macro- and
micro-variables are distinguished in the figure through use of upper- and
lower-case characters, respectively.) Elite perception of national role, elite
and mass public opinion, and particular political issues at time ‘t’ are moved
to the micro-level in Fig. 10.3; in Fig. 10.2, these items had appeared
as national and societal characteristics. As per the example of President
Mandela above, which focused on his classification as a macro-level actor
during time in office and a micro-level actor otherwise, formal processes in
government such as a leader(s)’ degree of dominance in decision-making
are subsumed within official state policy and therefore are presented at the
macro-level. Thus systemism’s macro-level placement of what primarily had
been labeled “individual characteristics” in a Waltzian frame of reference
facilitates a more transparent process of integration for causal mechanisms.
prevent confusion, it should be noted that the variables all appear in upper
case, that is, operating at the macro-level. This is because individual and
group-level linkages are functioning at the level of formal processes in
national government as opposed to within society. This point returns to
the observation about Waltzian terminology and the difficulties it can pose
for efforts to integrate theorizing; the language of systemism, by contrast,
promotes clarity.
Figure 10.5’s model of individual decision-making provides a sense of
accomplishment through its elaboration of linkages that begin from mul-
tiple locations—motivation/emotion/state of the body, character, per-
ceptions, and the situation—and continue through all the way to behavior
and speech acts. Note in particular the double-headed arrow connecting
cognitions with mental models and problem representation. Collectively
speaking, the full set of linkages on the left-hand side of the page repre-
sents the value of constructive borrowing from the discipline of psychol-
ogy that had accumulated over decades. (The potential to continue such
borrowing is established in Chap. 3 from Renshon and Kahneman, which
reveals important effects from cognitive biases on decision-making in gen-
eral.) Group-level linkages on the right-hand side of Fig. 10.5 also reveal
progress as manifested through a multifaceted range of factors identified
through the study of individual and social psychology, organizational
behavior, and so on. Routine and nonroutine pathways, for instance, are
identified. Crisis emerges as a special instance of the latter type of situation
and is associated with a specific kind of small group dynamics.
Figure 10.6 displays a full-fledged systemist reinterpretation of the two
lists of factors, international and domestic, from Fig. 10.4. These factors
are re-aggregated into the categories of environment and state and then
depicted according to the rules conveyed by systemism. Assembled from
Breuning (2007) and Hudson (2007), the diversity of these factors reveals
the progress made in FPA. (Once again disregard, for now, the boxes and
arrows with broken lines.) Note the presence of the environment and, as
mentioned earlier, the more elaborate treatment of the micro-level in Fig.
10.6. Beyond the national system (which is contained within the larger
box), effects reverberate between and among macro-variables in the envi-
ronment such as treaty alliances, foreign media, and micro-factors like
epistemic communities. All of this combines as an input into the national
system. At the micro-level inside the national system, a parallel process
occurs involving the many actors who comprise civil society (e.g., unions),
media, and local government. At the macro-level, a familiar sequence from
SYSTEMISM AND FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS: A NEW APPROACH... 313
Fig. 10.6 Model for the environment and state: A systemist reinterpretation
Moving further across the page, given the two possible routes for group
decision-making—routine and nonroutine—foreign policy is achieved at
either the bottom (far) right or top (center) right of Fig. 10.5. Foreign
policy exits the national system, into the environment, and then re-enters
the system after being filtered through the environment. In the case of
foreign policy, for example, the environment often includes the reactions,
or inaction, of international actors such as states or international organiza-
tions. This is the connection depicted by the box with broken lines and
an interrogation point at the upper left of Fig. 10.6. History accumulates
in this manner.
When summing up progress in FPA, the vision from 2007 is quite
encouraging relative to 1995. A wider range of variables, recognition of
feedback mechanisms, and growing sense of consciousness about the need
for theoretical integration characterize the later reviews. Still lacking, how-
ever, is movement forward in terms of identifying functional form; FPA
continues to be incremental and linear in putting forward causal mecha-
nisms. But even there it is possible to see some degree of progress in think-
ing about a new generation of theory; Hudson (2007: 32), for instance,
calls for attention to “nonarithmetic ways to relate variables.” While indi-
vidual scholars often become experts in small corners or specific paths
within the larger domain of FPA, systemism revisits how all these pieces fit
together and to what it all adds up. All things considered, the two stages of
analysis are sufficient to reveal consensus on FPA’s standing at each time,
along with strengths upon which to build and weaknesses to counteract.
NOTES
1. For reviews of FPA, see Gerner (1995), Hermann (1995), Hudson and
Vore (1995), Breuning (2007), Hudson (2007), Hill (2010), Kesgin
(2011), Alden and Aran (2012) and Kaarbo (2015).
2. Hudson and Vore (1995: 212), among others, add the works of Sprout
and Sprout (1956) and Rosenau (1966) as milestones that shaped FPA for
decades to come. Sprout and Sprout (1956) are credited with initiating a
sustained emphasis on the psychological environment of decision-makers,
while Rosenau (1966) is recognized for emphasizing the intellectual value
of a comparative approach.
3. Although the description and analysis that follow rely on Easton (1965a),
it just as easily could proceed on the basis of his other two works noted,
which also convey basic concept formation and arguments from systems
analysis. For an excellent summary of Easton’s exposition on systems anal-
ysis, see Green (1985: 131–132).
4. For what may be the most prominent exposition in the social sciences from
that era on systems, complexity and related concepts, see Simon (1969).
5. In a prominent review of system-level theorizing, Young (1968: 37)
observes that Easton created “one of the few systemic frameworks origi-
nally developed by a political scientist rather than adapted for political
analysis from some other discipline.”
6. Jervis (1998) makes an impressive case for a system orientation by showing
how unintended consequences from actions are an important part of what
is observed at the international level. His work takes the form of a critique
of holistic approaches such as structural realism and the point of view con-
veyed about social theory is quite consistent with systemism.
7. For a recent effort to integrate individualism and holism from a perspective
built upon studies in philosophy, see List and Spiekermann (2013).
8. This conclusion is anticipated in the philosophical exposition from
Collingwood (1946).
SYSTEMISM AND FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS: A NEW APPROACH... 317
stream of feedback to the environment that may result in the alteration and
creation of inputs that keep cycling into the system” (Choi 2011: 30–32).
17. A realist-based answer to this question is worked out through the example
of the European Monetary Union (EMU), specifically, in which German
self-sacrifice within the region facilitated competition with an actor, Japan,
outside of its boundaries (Grieco 1995). This instance regarding German
conduct related to creation of the EMU underlies the following, more
encompassing analysis based on systemism.
18. Other studies, such as Hill (2010), Kesgin (2011), Alden and Aran (2012),
and Kaarbo (2015) are referenced in this chapter but not included in the
diagrammatic exposition that follows because their mandates do not cor-
respond fully with assessment of causal mechanisms within FPA. Alden and
Aran (2012: 3), for example, eschew the focus of “classical FPA” and
instead explore engagement with globalization and articulation of a theory
of the state.
Neack (2008) reviews causal factors comprehensively, but does so in the
context of foreign policy in substantive terms, with coverage of subjects
ranging from public opinion and media to great powers.
19. The single arrow that appears leading to foreign policy has been inserted
because it is implied fully within these studies.
20. As with Fig. 10.2, the arrow leading over to foreign policy has been added
because it is implied fully by the studies under review.
21. The original diagrams in Hudson (2007), of course, do not have the same
appearance as Fig. 10.5. The contents of Fig. 10.5 are adapted from arrow-
style diagrams in Hudson (2007) that had not been constructed under the
rules imposed by systemism.
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SYSTEMISM AND FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS: A NEW APPROACH... 321
Patrick James and Steve A. Yetiv
P. James ()
School of International Relations, USC, Los Angeles, CA, USA
e-mail: patrickj@usc.edu
S.A. Yetiv
Department of Political Science and Geography, Old Dominion University,
Norfolk, VA, USA
It has been long recognized that sharing ideas across disciplinary fields
can be very fruitful. While our effort here is obviously more humble, we
hope that we have brought new ideas to bear in understanding complex
realities. Multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity can enhance empiri-
cal and theoretical explanations; they are increasingly possible given the
expansion of outlooks, techniques, and knowledge across disciplines, and
they are more vital given the increasing complexity of world affairs.
Each chapter of this book has provided insight and approaches into
how to advance multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in IR from dif-
ferent fields and sub-fields: history, political science, psychology, neuro-
science, anthropology, gender studies, technology studies, demography,
and systems analysis. This chapter draws on these different insights to
illuminate further for students and scholars the types of links among and
between disciplines and sub-fields that may enhance understanding; to
inform further the study of conflict; and to point to some fruitful areas for
future research.
well have a greater impact on how human beings interact than we could
imagine.
Future work on this subject looks promising in the effort to see how
chemical factors impact conflict outcomes in IR. We could, for example,
hypothesize that the greater the level of OT released, the greater the like-
lihood of cooperation among actors and that the less released, the more
likely is conflict. Further, if high stress or other mental dynamics inhibit
OT release and trust, we could hypothesize that to be harder in crises for
leaders to trust each other and reach compromise. In any case, accounting
for the role of OT could provide a different angle of insight. Doing so
might also illuminate high-stress situations.
For example, take the case of September 11 in which Al-Qaeda ter-
rorists murdered nearly 3000 people in New York City. We do know that
9/11 must have created serious stress in the US government because
it raised the prospect that terrorists could also deliver weapons of mass
destruction to the American homeland. The attack initially even forced
the President to leave Washington. What role did stress play in decision-
making during and after the crisis? We will not find an answer in this case,
but further work on stress and conflict may yield insights that can be used
to understand real-world cases better.
At a broader level, the approach from Kugler and Zak provides insight
into trust and cooperation, which, as they note, lies at the heart of realist
versus liberal views. Vehicles that can enhance trust, based on such find-
ings, may be a pathway to joint-sum approaches in world politics, while
diminishing prisoners’ dilemma dynamics.
For their part in Chap. 3, Renshon and Kahneman approach conflict
from a different angle but one that still emphasizes the individual and in
particular, mental processes. They point to the cognitive dimensions that
can shape hawkish attitudes, push decisions toward conflict, and thereby
make cooperative outcomes harder to achieve. Renshon and Kahneman
argue that cognitive biases make it more likely that “agents will act more
hawkishly than an objective observer would deem appropriate.” Thus,
cognitive biases will tend to make a decision-maker more likely to follow
the advice of a hawk than a dove; they will make the hawk’s arguments
more persuasive than they deserve to be.
At an interdisciplinary level, we also can ask how such cognitive work
relates to that of neuroscience. Might it be, for instance, that cognitive
biases also generate greater hawkishness in part because they induce stress
326 P. JAMES AND S.A. YETIV
similar past situations and their outcomes (Coates 2012). Scholars have
found that inaccurate projections of costs, demand, and other impacts of
plans, collectively speaking, are a major problem. Errors stem from opti-
mism bias and strategic misrepresentation; reference class forecasting helps
to achieve accuracy in projections by basing them on actual performance
in a reference class of comparable actions and thereby bypassing both opti-
mism bias and strategic misrepresentation (Flyvberg 2008). In 2005, the
American Planning Association endorsed reference class forecasting and
asserted that planners should use it in addition to traditional methods as
a way to improve accuracy. Furthermore, in his book, Thinking, Fast and
Slow, Kahneman (2011: 251) called Flyvberg’s counsel to use reference
class forecasting where possible “the single most important piece of advice
regarding how to increase accuracy in forecasting.” At the same time, we
can also draw from history to understand when planning failed in various
cases and how we might induce broader ideas from this exploration.
Cognitive and neuroscience studies, and various other fields, can also
yield insights into rationality—critical to any potential understanding of
conflict. Rational actors are usually presumed to weigh options in terms
of costs and benefits. While it is sometimes useful in developing models to
assume that actors are rational, it is also important to evaluate how human
beings actually think. Interdisciplinary analysis may offer some value
added. It provides a more complete idea of rationality than we can achieve
with non-disciplinary analysis. For example, as suggested by Renshon and
Kahneman in Chap. 3, cognitive biases often challenge individual rational-
ity, as do dynamics such as groupthink which prevent a clear assessment of
options, as Yetiv underscores in Chap. 2 in exploring foreign policy from
multiple perspectives (also, see Yetiv 2011). And neuroscience suggests
that chemical factors in our brain may sometimes hamper an accounting
of options. Do lower levels of OT produce greater mistrust that precludes
a systematic evaluation of options and makes conflict seem to be a bet-
ter alternative than it is? Will a particularly strong historical analogy, if
misused, undermine planning, especially when combined with overconfi-
dence? Such questions are anchored in interdisciplinary thought and are
intended to spur it.
Meanwhile, even fields that are not regularly associated with concern
about rationality such as anthropology can inform it. As Scupin discussed in
Chap. 6, anthropologists who do research on “globalization from below”
have interests that overlap with behavioral economics, cognitive psychol-
ogy, and social psychology. Generally, these anthropologists, like many
CONCLUSION: INTERDISCIPLINARY LINKS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS 329
macro level, but feminist IR can offer both macro and micro-level insights
into how they are linked to conflict.
For its part, anthropological research can help to develop a more con-
textualized and evolutionary understanding of many core concepts in
IR. Examples are national identity, culture, religion, and secularization;
anthropology also can help to account for broader sources of conflict.
Anthropology has already established strong interdisciplinary links with
neuroeconomics and could develop further connections with political sci-
ence, history, demography, and psychology. Research on individual and
collective memory has already resulted in some ties with psychology.
Anthropological work can also contribute to a better understanding of
the distribution of beliefs and ideologies among individuals, groups, and
states that animate conflict. For instance, conflict studies can gain better
insights into the social construction of “us versus them” dichotomies and
how these differences impact issues such as terrorism or ethnic or religious
conflicts. Certainly, the social construction of identity is not a subject area
suited for disciplinary-bound analyses. Feminist studies, among others, can
intersect with anthropology more profitably to elucidate how such social
constructed identities can become causes of conflict under certain con-
ditions. If demographic shifts analyzed in demographic studies alter the
gender balance, and in turn that influences the balance of ideas and nature
or intensity of social construction of identities, we can find one intellectual
intersection of demographic studies, feminist IR, and anthropology.
Studies on nationalism, state building, or minority issues gain a more
nuanced understanding of how identities are formed, reproduced, or
changed and how cognitive processes on the individual and group level
influence the interpretation of “reality” as a result of engagement with
anthropology. Anthropological research and feminist IR also counter the
still prevalent state-centrism in IR by pointing to the strategies developed
and adopted by individuals to cope with a wide range of political, socio-
economic, environmental and cultural challenges in an increasingly inter-
dependent world.
Increasingly, domestic conflicts have gained attention in global studies.
As Chap. 8 from Kugler explains, demographic changes not only affect
economic development, with implications for international conflict, but
also connect to civil war, national instability, and the related development
of democratic change—which, in turn, feeds into the global system. Such
unrest is observable throughout the Middle East where youthful popu-
lations face myriad problems including limited economic opportunities.
CONCLUSION: INTERDISCIPLINARY LINKS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS 333
CONCLUSION
Opportunities for multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity research are
equal to the challenges. Done well, such approaches can launch new “cot-
tage industries” and research programs with exciting results and in some
fields, have already done so. Disciplinary-based approaches often yield
useful specialized knowledge and cuts on reality, and sometimes they are
the best approach to take. However, unlike multidisciplinary and inter-
CONCLUSION: INTERDISCIPLINARY LINKS AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS 337
NOTES
1. Cited in Discover, July/August 2014: 33.
2. It the most expensive natural disaster recorded thus far. The Indian Ocean
2004 tsunami produced about 250,000 deaths and approximately $14 bil-
lion in property loss.
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INDEX1
1
Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to foot notes.
positivists, 22–4, 156, 194, 216, 336 reputation, 37, 57, 92, 106n4, 167
postmodernists, 4, 23, 43n1, 156 Ripsman, Norrin, 29
poverty trap, 236, 241, 256n8, 264, risk-taking, 98, 329
265, 267, 273–5, 279, 333 robot, 122, 141
power, 4, 5, 12n10, 20, 22, 26, 27, Russett, Bruce, 30, 102
29, 31, 32, 39, 42, 57, 58, 60, Russia, 85, 95, 127, 203, 206, 207,
69, 72, 84, 86–8, 95, 102, 103, 209, 238
105, 107, 119, 123–5, 128–31, Russian-Chechen wars, 203–9, 214, 215
133, 135, 139, 140, 163, 169,
173, 177, 190, 193, 195,
197–201, 203, 204, 208, 209, S
214, 230, 234, 237, 269, 274, Schroeder, Paul W., 19, 27
294, 299–301, 303, 307, Schweller, Randall, 22
318n18, 330, 333, 334 Sjoberg, Laura, 193, 194, 197, 198,
power transition, 32, 86, 87, 95, 102, 200, 204
107 social constructivism, 131–3
Primordialism, 161, 178, 180n7 Social Identity Theory, 57
process tracing, 22 Solomon, Ty, 30, 31
prosocial norms, 169 sovereignty, 85, 87, 119, 130, 131,
prospect theory, 38, 57, 64, 65, 68, 214
75n9, 75n10 status quo, 66–8, 86, 106n1, 107,
pseudo-certainty, 53, 70–2 123, 245, 294
systemism, 11, 177, 179, 235, 266,
289–318, 324, 334
Q systems theory, 11, 289, 291, 293
qualitative IR, 21, 25
T
R Taylor, A. J. P , 19, 27, 59
Radical Historicism, 22, 24, 336 technological determinism, 131–3,
rational actor model, 36–9, 41, 44n8, 135, 136, 139
105 technology, 8–10, 115–42, 164, 170,
rational choice theory, 159, 175, 329 176, 177, 239, 266, 271, 272,
rationality, 55, 68, 134, 135, 158–61, 274, 282, 315, 324, 331, 333, 334
175, 180n6, 190, 193, 302, telegraph, 120
327–9 telephone,
reactive devaluation53, 72–3 territory, 29, 67, 71, 75n8, 85, 130,
reference class forecasting, 327, 328 131, 167
reference points, 66, 67 terrorism, 2, 6, 10, 29, 125, 128, 156,
refugees, 28, 239, 245–9, 250, 252, 164, 168, 170–3, 176, 178, 179,
254, 256n3 193, 203, 206, 207, 217n6, 302,
representativeness, 55 332, 337
344 INDEX
Y
U Yetiv, Steve, 7, 9, 11, 35, 40, 41,
United Nations, 64, 125, 174, 44n9, 58, 265, 290, 296, 315,
192, 198–200, 202, 203, 328, 331, 333
209–14, 216, 217n3, 217n5, youth bulges, 229, 232, 235, 239–42,
231, 238, 251, 267, 277, 256n2
281, 299
UNSCR 1325, 202, 210–13, 216
UN Security Council, 174, 202, 203, Z
209–14, 216, 217n3, 217n5 Zelikow, Philip, 35, 36, 44n8