Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve

International Organization, Volume 62, Issue 01, pp 35-64.

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replication files

Abstract: Scholars of international relations usually argue that democracies are better able to signal their foreign policy intentions than non-democracies, in part because they have an advantage in generating audience costs that make backing down in international crises costly to the leader. This article presents evidence that the conventional hypothesis underestimates the extent to which non-democratic leaders can be held accountable domestically, allowing them to generate audience costs.

Dissertation/Book Project: Leaders, Accountability, and Foreign Policy in Non-Democracies

What explains differences in international behavior across non-democratic regimes? I argue that domestic elites can hold autocrats accountable when the costs of coordination are low, and when their political futures are not linked to the fate of the incumbent. This is more likely in regimes in which the leader does not control private security forces that can monitor regime insiders, and does not determine access to high office. The theory generates a variety of testable predictions on subjects such as war and dispute initiation, war outcomes, crisis bargaining, and punishment after foreign policy failures. I assess support for each of these implications using a combination of statistical methods (using a rich new dataset of authoritarian regime characteristics) and a wide range of qualitative historical evidence.

Please contact me for the latest version of the manuscript.

Awarded 2007-2008 NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant for data collection and research support

War and Domestic Accountability in Authoritarian Regimes

Working paper

MID Narratives+ Project (with Michael Tomz)

The Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) dataset is an invaluable data source for scholars studying international conflict. We are working with a team of over 20 student researchers to make the dataset even more useful, accurate, and accessible to scholars. The project features:

Narratives for each dispute

Full citations for every source uncovered for each MID (including the original sources used by the authors of the dataset)

New variables allowing researchers to select samples of MIDs appropriate to their particular research question

An internet wiki allowing researchers to amend and improve narratives and citations for each dispute

Red Herrings: Fishing Disputes, Regime Type, and the Militarized Interstate Disputes Dataset (with Dara Kay Cohen)

Abstract: A large body of international relations research has studied the effects of regime type on patterns of militarized conflict, relying heavily on the Militarized Interstate Disputes (MID) data set. However, our project finds that the MID data set contains a set of disputes whose inclusion distorts inferences about the relationship between regime type and conflict. Specifically, the MID dataset includes disputes in which the primary threat or use of force by one state is targeted at a private, non-state actor rather than another state’s government or territory. Examples of such MIDs include fishing disputes, attacks on shipping vessels and oil rigs, and, less frequently, MIDs involving sub-state rebel groups.

Based on our original recoding of the MID dataset, we have found that non-state actor MIDS are both more likely to occur between democracies and more likely to be resolved peacefully than other MIDS. Therefore, we argue that the inclusion of these non-state-actor-MIDs may lead to inaccurate inferences about the relationship between democracy and state behavior in interstate disputes.

U.S. Military Interventions and the Promotion of Democracy: An Analysis Using Matching pdf

Project Description: Is the use of US military force an effective tool for promoting democratic political institutions abroad? Scholars have yet to reach a consensus about this important question. This project addresses the methodological issues inherent in drawing inferences about the effects of US military interventions since 1945, and argues in favor of a propensity score matching approach to improve causal inference.

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