Changing national identities have transformed the China-Taiwan and Korean conflicts. Democratizat... more Changing national identities have transformed the China-Taiwan and Korean conflicts. Democratization in Taiwan and South Korea and liberalization in China have forced leaders to compete for popular legitimacy by appealing to national identities. Along with the collapse of the Soviet Union, these contested national identities have been the main factors driving change in the conflicts, pushing China and Taiwan apart, while propping up what appeared to be a mortally wounded North Korea.
In bargaining models of internal ethno-territorial conflicts, variation in leadership preferences... more In bargaining models of internal ethno-territorial conflicts, variation in leadership preferences has a significant impact on expected conflict outcomes. Relative power has an impact conditional on leadership preferences. Conflict among cost-conscious narrow nationalists is expected to be relatively peaceful and episodic - in a manner that is weakly but not perfectly correlated with variation in relative power. Conflict involving cost-flouting extremists is likely to be protracted, irrespective of relative power. Conflict involving power-seekers that care only about internal political effects of conflict may mimic either or both of the other two outcomes. Bargaining outcomes are further constrained by the relative indivisibility of contested homeland territory. A resulting four-fold typology of conflicts is then applied to case studies from Russia and the former Yugoslavia. The case studies illustrate the expected variation in conflict types - including the conditional effects of re...
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, serious ethnic conflicts erupted in Azerbai... more With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, serious ethnic conflicts erupted in Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, and Tajikistan. In these conflicts, three political factors facilitated and worsened military defeat. First, governments were sometimes unnecessarily entangled in conflicts. In some cases, such entanglement might have been avoided or minimized by making early autonomy concessions to ethnic minorities. Once wars were underway, entanglement could sometimes be minimized by agreeing to cease-fires, rather than by risking premature efforts at a military solution. Second, post-communist countries did not typically inherit professional armed forces, and were bedeviled by internal military division. Military operations against ethnic separatist forces were often conducted before central military control was consolidated, fostering military disarray and defeat. Finally, political rhetoric and military tactics often unnecessarily alienated powerful third parties. The resulting external intervention also contributed to military defeat. These political factors frequently reinforced one another. Predictably, internal division and adverse external intervention were correlated with lower levels of economic development.
What are the most important causes of variation in human rights practices in the post-communist w... more What are the most important causes of variation in human rights practices in the post-communist world? It is hypothesised that political institutions, cultures and national identities, economic development, and ethnic conflict should have significant impacts. These hypotheses are tested statistically for the 28 post-communist countries, at three different time intervals following the collapse of the old regimes. Economic development has a relatively weak positive influence, and war a relatively strong negative influence. Culture defined in terms of ‘frustrated’ national identities has by far the strongest and most consistent impact. Cultures and national identities are here not analyzed for their intrinsic value-content and traditional institutions. Rather, they are distinguished in terms of their forward-looking tactical compatibility, in a specific historical context, with stronger human rights practices. This way of interpreting the influence of culture may be a promising addition to existing approaches to explaining human rights practices in other regions of the world, for example, in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
ABSTRACT In internal ethno-territorial conflicts, what explains why state or rebel group leadersh... more ABSTRACT In internal ethno-territorial conflicts, what explains why state or rebel group leaderships use civilian-targeting strategies—expulsion or mass killing strategies designed to punish enemy civilians or to decimate the enemy civilian presence on contested territory? One argument is that those living under the worst initial conditions—defined in terms of collective goods such as weak collective autonomy, policy outcomes, and material conditions—are most likely to target enemy group civilians. Another approach focuses on relative power—arguing that the enemy civilian population is targeted either because of weaker or stronger relative power. A third approach argues that differences in leadership preferences—in particular, more ideologically extreme or power-seeking preferences—are likely to drive direct assaults on enemy civilians. We examine these proposed mechanisms in terms of expected effects on benefits and costs in a simple ethno-territorial bargaining framework. We argue that relative power advantages and more extreme nationalist preferences seem most likely to predict decisions to target enemy civilian populations. We expect strongly power-seeking preferences to lead to civilian targeting more conditionally—where there is a greater internal political threat along with either greater relative power or a more moderate enemy. Last, we do not expect that variation in initial conditions will have a significant direct effect. We apply the framework to explain patterns of civilian targeting following the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991.[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism for the following free supplemental resource: online appendix.]
South Korea’s April 2000 congressional elections saw large numbers of incumbent candidates defeat... more South Korea’s April 2000 congressional elections saw large numbers of incumbent candidates defeated. The South Korean mass media attributed considerable importance to the activities of a public interest umbrella organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for the 2000 General Elections (CA). CA ‘blackballed’ 86 candidates of all parties as corrupt, unqualified, or otherwise unsuited for office, and 59 of these candidates lost. After controlling for a variety of other factors—characteristics of districts, candidates, and parties, and campaign spending—we find that CA did indeed exert a remarkably strong influence on electoral outcomes. Being blackballed was most damaging to independent candidates. Blackballing had the greatest impact on the probability of winning in districts with weaker party loyalties, and, somewhat ironically, for candidates of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party—the party most closely identified with the issue of clean government.
What are the causes of party system consolidation in the post-communist democracies? It is freque... more What are the causes of party system consolidation in the post-communist democracies? It is frequently hypothesized that differencesin electoral systems and presidential powers help to explain variationinparty system consolidation. In addition, it can be argued that thenumbers and support levels of political parties should be affected by theideological peculiarities of different countries’ voting publics. Popu-lation size might also be expected to affect the ease with whichadditionalpartyorganizationscanbedevelopedandmaintained.Asfar as the availability of data permit, we construct relevant institutionaland ideological measures for all 23 post-communist democracies.Regression analysis shows that ideological concentration of electoratesis the most consistent and powerful determinant of party system con-solidation. Proportionality of electoral systems has a weaker tendencyto reduce party system consolidation, while strength of the presidencyand population size appear to have little or no impact. Future researchshould explore whether ideology has played a similar role in otherregions. It might also examine the policy consequences of party systemconsolidation.
A more recent theoretical school in international relations, constructivism, adds strong contribu... more A more recent theoretical school in international relations, constructivism, adds strong contributions to the traditional insights of neo-realism and neo-liberalism. Constructivism focuses on national and state identities and their impacts on preferences and strategies, and on how the resulting international strategic interactions can feed back to influence the evolution of national and state identities. For the China-Taiwan conflict, constructivism calls attention to China’s presently vague state identity, and to how strategic interaction with China’s legitimacy-oriented Communist Party elites is likely to accelerate the development of Taiwan’s “islander” national identity. For the Korean conflict, on the other hand, the stability and strength of a united Korean identity in both North and South facilitates the South’s conciliatory stabilizing policy towards the North’s insecure elites.
Two dominant literatures explain violent ethnic conflict. One emphasizes objective antecedents: e... more Two dominant literatures explain violent ethnic conflict. One emphasizes objective antecedents: ethnic minorities’ historical and contemporary conditions and opportunities; the balance of power between dominant ethnic groups and ethnic minorities; and the political demands of ethnic minorities. Another debates whether nationalism and national movements represent genuine popular awakenings, or whether they are instruments used by elites to seize and keep power. It is argued that regime type can be examined to determine whether elite or mass interests lie behind national movements, and that this distinction is the key to determining the relative importance of objective antecedents. This argument is applied to the four major post-Soviet ethnic conflicts, in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Tajikistan. The conclusion discusses how the approach can be used in statistical tests.
What factors best explain post-communist transitions to democracy, and following such transitions... more What factors best explain post-communist transitions to democracy, and following such transitions, survival and fuller implementation of democratic rules of the game? Plausible approaches include economic structure, political culture, political institutions, and involvement in large-scale military conflict. Political culture and war are found to be much more powerful predictors than economic structure and political institutions. Although political culture is usually thought of in terms of broad traditions such as religion, it is shown that the alternative category of “frustrated national ideals” has comparable explanatory power. These results merit further investigation and refinement in case studies of the post-communist countries, and in statistical analysis of democratization in other regions and time-periods.
The extensive theoretical and quantitative literature on the origins of ethnic conflict has not d... more The extensive theoretical and quantitative literature on the origins of ethnic conflict has not developed much systematic theory or refined quantitative research on the role played by Islam. In much research, Islam is assumed to be a marker of ethnic and national identity that is no different from others. Where Islam is quantitatively analyzed as a specific constituent of ethnic and national identity, it is usually coded as either-present-or-not or as a population share. This paper constructs more detailed hypotheses on Islam and ethnic conflict. It examines the main types of influence on ethnic conflict onset—characteristics of ethnic and national identities and associated histories, disputes, and preferences; political institutions; international influence and intervention; and economic development and structure—and discusses whether and how Islam might function distinctively in each area. The resulting hypotheses are illustrated with examples from the post-communist world. Here it seems that secular-national territorial and self-determination disputes, exacerbated by histories of intense conflict, were more important sources of ethnic conflict than Islamic political ideology per se. Under the secular authoritarian regimes in Central Asia, however, weak secular nationalist and civic ideologies and movements, combined with rising international Islamist influence and involvement, make Islamic political ideology and Islamism more significant risk factors for future ethnic conflict.
A game-theoretic model is used to show that the balance-of-power mechanism has much greater forma... more A game-theoretic model is used to show that the balance-of-power mechanism has much greater formal power than hitherto understood. Under the strong assumption that all threatened countries must be able to function as crucial coalition partners in deterring any threat,all members of minimum winning coalitions are guaranteed not to lose any resources. Under the traditional, weaker assumption that some coalition must be available to deter any threat, even countries that are not members of minimum winning coalitions are guaranteed against losing any resources.These formal results are significant in two ways. First, they make it possible to reconcile apparently contradictory views in the literature,and to offer a satisfying intuitive interpretation of the balance-of-power mechanism. Second, they point to a variety of factors--operating both separately and interactively--that may cause the balance-of-power mechanism to fail. Examples are uncertainty combined with risk-loving preferences, conflict-averse preferences, offensive technological advantages, economic growth, and technological and political rigidities in the formation of alliances and rivalries. It is argued that efforts to test balance-of-power theory should focus on assessing the relative importance of such factors.
How did war affect political and economic reform efforts across the post-communist world? War is ... more How did war affect political and economic reform efforts across the post-communist world? War is hypothesized to have a negative political impact through three main mechanisms: distraction from any peacetime political and economic reform agenda; military defeat and disruption, and associated weakening or militarization of state authority; and postwar economic isolation. After controlling for cultural, economic, and institutional factors, statistical analysis confirms the negative effects of war on political and economic reform. The negative effect of war is robust across a range of model specifications and time periods, but is estimated to be stronger or the subgroup of initially democratic countries. The cultural variable of 'frustrated national ideals' is the most important control variable. There follow brief case studies of the eight post-communist countries torn by protracted, large-scale military conflict - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The case studies focus on how initial conditions - particularly he cultural variable of frustrated national ideals - interact with longer-term effects of war to influence postwar revival of reform efforts. Among the subgroup of initially democratic countries, the dominant pattern is not one of democracy unleashing diversionary war, as it did in Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia. Rather, reform nationalist governments typically wanted to avoid war. But their political constituencies and ideological commitments typically prevented them from making concessions that might have avoided war, or at least stopped it more quickly. This entangled their countries in longer-term conflicts, with correspondingly greater adverse impacts on political and economic reform.
Existing models of international financial liberalization tend to understate the economic and pol... more Existing models of international financial liberalization tend to understate the economic and political importance of related policies governing domestic financial markets. Further, these models often fail to specify fully the links between the international economy and domestic politics. Initial financial liberalization is often “domestic bank-centered,” i.e. it preserves a privileged position for weakly regulated domestic banks as the capital account is opened. On the other hand, there is much greater variation in later-stage financial policy developments. Adequate explanations should be able to explain, not just the initial pattern of financial liberalization, but also subsequent policy developments. The framework advanced here includes (1) dispersed as well as concentrated interest groups, in the context of (2) variation in regime type and political institutions. It is also argued that the policy preferences of relevant actors—particularly of dispersed interest groups and politicians—can be affected by ideology. The framework is applied to explain financial sector policy in South Korea, Mexico and Hungary.
Why did some post-communist countries implement more thorough market reforms than others? Four di... more Why did some post-communist countries implement more thorough market reforms than others? Four different structural explanations are considered: (1) relative size of economic interest group coalitions hurt by market reform; (2) predominant religious traditions, which may incorporate norms and institutions more or less favorable to market reform; (3) variation in historically based national economic and political expectations, in which greater pre-communist political and economic achievements may create collective rationales for more aggressive institutional and policy reforms; and (4) duration of large-scale military conflict, which may distract and undermine reformist governments. These explanations are tested both directly, and mediated through plausible process predictors: democratization, party ideological moderation or extremism, strength of the presidency, and party system concentration. The 28 post-communist countries are examined over shorter and longer time spans: two years after the fall of the old regime and a decade or so after the fall. The two political culture variables--predominant religious tradition and national economic and political expectations--provide the most statistically significant and powerful predictors. War is also a significant and powerful predictor. Relative size of economic interest group coalitions is estimated to have little impact. Among the process variables, democratization and party ideological moderation have the most consistently significant and powerful impacts. One implication is that middle-range theories of political culture, which can be more firmly grounded in rational calculation and historical context, may be a promising way to remedy the weaknesses of political culture theories operating at the broader level of religion or civilization.
How did World War I reverse decades of apparently irresistible economic globalization? Why, in pa... more How did World War I reverse decades of apparently irresistible economic globalization? Why, in particular, did World War I produce a worldwide surge in international trade protection? Three mechanisms are investigated: (1) The War diverted production and international trade in a way that strengthened protectionist coalitions of industries relative to free-trading coalitions. (2) The War reduced financial interdependence and altered exchange rates in a manner that advantaged protectionist coalitions. (3) The War altered military alliances and rivalries such that stronger national interests in trade protection developed. These mechanisms are examined for the five largest trading economies — Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. There is evidence of all three mechanisms operating. The first — involving war-induced diversion of production and international trade — appears to have had the largest and most consistent impact.
Recent quantitative studies of ethnic conflict tend to have characteristic strengths and weakness... more Recent quantitative studies of ethnic conflict tend to have characteristic strengths and weaknesses. Strengths are typical of sophisticated statistical work: the influence of many explanatory variables is examined across large datasets. Weaknesses are largely traceable to shortcomings of theory and measurement. Territorial and other ethnic conflicts are sometimes pooled with other types of internal conflict, which seem likely to have a different range of causes. Also, theory indicates that different conflict pathways have varying probabilities of giving rise to territorial ethnic conflict. These pathways involve different types of elite-level preferences, for either the outsider ethnic group or state side of a potential conflict, and for either incumbent or challenger elites. The pathways are also likely to be conditioned by different constraints. Yet little effort has been made to measure variation along these discrete pathways. More readily measurable variables, such as economic development and dependence on oil exports, often pick up predicted variation from multiple theoretical pathways. Regressions including such broad dependent and independent variables may deflate the estimated impact of discrete-pathway variables on ethnic conflict onset, and hence must be interpreted with care. There are significant practical barriers to measuring variation along the different conflict pathways; but further effort is necessary if the quantitative literature is to become more robust, easily interpreted and helpful in understanding specific cases.
Failed banking sector policies and weak regulatory policies are the keys to the collapse of the C... more Failed banking sector policies and weak regulatory policies are the keys to the collapse of the Czech economic “miracle.” Why were these policy errors made? Why has it taken so long to correct them? We examine the roles of economic interest groups, political institutions, technocratic economic ideology, and political leadership. Initially, economic interest group support provided broad liberal constraints on economic policy making. Within this context, neither political institutions nor technocratic economic ideology prevented political leaders from making the key early policy errors. A change in technocratic ideology made eventual error correction difficult to avoid. But stable economic interest group support and institutional divisions made it possible for responsible leaders to delay the corrections.
The 1997 financial crisis exposed serious weaknesses in South Korea’s economy, with its heavy rel... more The 1997 financial crisis exposed serious weaknesses in South Korea’s economy, with its heavy reliance on large conglomerates (chaebol). During the late authoritarian period, the chaebol arose through state guidance and subsidies, becoming the central players in South Korea’s export-led growth boom. The early democratic period saw limited efforts toward economic liberalization. But these measures reduced state oversight while actually expanding the privileged access to credit enjoyed by the chaebol. The resulting investment distortions and financial weaknesses were the most important root causes of the 1997 crisis. The 1997 presidential election brought the outsider Kim Dae-jung to power. Kim launched an unprecedented assault on the credit privileges and corporate governance structures of the chaebol. However, the reforms have been compromised by measures to prevent a large transitional recession. It is argued that the overall pattern of ambitious but compromised reform is explained by two main considerations. First, Kim did not want to alienate “dispersed interest groups” (the urban service sector and agriculture). These want to conserve the favorable elements of South Korea’s economic model while purging the dross. And at the same time, Kim wanted to focus transitional restructuring costs on the most hostile “concentrated interest group” constituencies (the chaebol and government sectors) of the opposition Grand National Party.
Changing national identities have transformed the China-Taiwan and Korean conflicts. Democratizat... more Changing national identities have transformed the China-Taiwan and Korean conflicts. Democratization in Taiwan and South Korea and liberalization in China have forced leaders to compete for popular legitimacy by appealing to national identities. Along with the collapse of the Soviet Union, these contested national identities have been the main factors driving change in the conflicts, pushing China and Taiwan apart, while propping up what appeared to be a mortally wounded North Korea.
In bargaining models of internal ethno-territorial conflicts, variation in leadership preferences... more In bargaining models of internal ethno-territorial conflicts, variation in leadership preferences has a significant impact on expected conflict outcomes. Relative power has an impact conditional on leadership preferences. Conflict among cost-conscious narrow nationalists is expected to be relatively peaceful and episodic - in a manner that is weakly but not perfectly correlated with variation in relative power. Conflict involving cost-flouting extremists is likely to be protracted, irrespective of relative power. Conflict involving power-seekers that care only about internal political effects of conflict may mimic either or both of the other two outcomes. Bargaining outcomes are further constrained by the relative indivisibility of contested homeland territory. A resulting four-fold typology of conflicts is then applied to case studies from Russia and the former Yugoslavia. The case studies illustrate the expected variation in conflict types - including the conditional effects of re...
With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, serious ethnic conflicts erupted in Azerbai... more With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, serious ethnic conflicts erupted in Azerbaijan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia, and Tajikistan. In these conflicts, three political factors facilitated and worsened military defeat. First, governments were sometimes unnecessarily entangled in conflicts. In some cases, such entanglement might have been avoided or minimized by making early autonomy concessions to ethnic minorities. Once wars were underway, entanglement could sometimes be minimized by agreeing to cease-fires, rather than by risking premature efforts at a military solution. Second, post-communist countries did not typically inherit professional armed forces, and were bedeviled by internal military division. Military operations against ethnic separatist forces were often conducted before central military control was consolidated, fostering military disarray and defeat. Finally, political rhetoric and military tactics often unnecessarily alienated powerful third parties. The resulting external intervention also contributed to military defeat. These political factors frequently reinforced one another. Predictably, internal division and adverse external intervention were correlated with lower levels of economic development.
What are the most important causes of variation in human rights practices in the post-communist w... more What are the most important causes of variation in human rights practices in the post-communist world? It is hypothesised that political institutions, cultures and national identities, economic development, and ethnic conflict should have significant impacts. These hypotheses are tested statistically for the 28 post-communist countries, at three different time intervals following the collapse of the old regimes. Economic development has a relatively weak positive influence, and war a relatively strong negative influence. Culture defined in terms of ‘frustrated’ national identities has by far the strongest and most consistent impact. Cultures and national identities are here not analyzed for their intrinsic value-content and traditional institutions. Rather, they are distinguished in terms of their forward-looking tactical compatibility, in a specific historical context, with stronger human rights practices. This way of interpreting the influence of culture may be a promising addition to existing approaches to explaining human rights practices in other regions of the world, for example, in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.
ABSTRACT In internal ethno-territorial conflicts, what explains why state or rebel group leadersh... more ABSTRACT In internal ethno-territorial conflicts, what explains why state or rebel group leaderships use civilian-targeting strategies—expulsion or mass killing strategies designed to punish enemy civilians or to decimate the enemy civilian presence on contested territory? One argument is that those living under the worst initial conditions—defined in terms of collective goods such as weak collective autonomy, policy outcomes, and material conditions—are most likely to target enemy group civilians. Another approach focuses on relative power—arguing that the enemy civilian population is targeted either because of weaker or stronger relative power. A third approach argues that differences in leadership preferences—in particular, more ideologically extreme or power-seeking preferences—are likely to drive direct assaults on enemy civilians. We examine these proposed mechanisms in terms of expected effects on benefits and costs in a simple ethno-territorial bargaining framework. We argue that relative power advantages and more extreme nationalist preferences seem most likely to predict decisions to target enemy civilian populations. We expect strongly power-seeking preferences to lead to civilian targeting more conditionally—where there is a greater internal political threat along with either greater relative power or a more moderate enemy. Last, we do not expect that variation in initial conditions will have a significant direct effect. We apply the framework to explain patterns of civilian targeting following the collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991.[Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism for the following free supplemental resource: online appendix.]
South Korea’s April 2000 congressional elections saw large numbers of incumbent candidates defeat... more South Korea’s April 2000 congressional elections saw large numbers of incumbent candidates defeated. The South Korean mass media attributed considerable importance to the activities of a public interest umbrella organization, the Citizens’ Alliance for the 2000 General Elections (CA). CA ‘blackballed’ 86 candidates of all parties as corrupt, unqualified, or otherwise unsuited for office, and 59 of these candidates lost. After controlling for a variety of other factors—characteristics of districts, candidates, and parties, and campaign spending—we find that CA did indeed exert a remarkably strong influence on electoral outcomes. Being blackballed was most damaging to independent candidates. Blackballing had the greatest impact on the probability of winning in districts with weaker party loyalties, and, somewhat ironically, for candidates of the ruling Millennium Democratic Party—the party most closely identified with the issue of clean government.
What are the causes of party system consolidation in the post-communist democracies? It is freque... more What are the causes of party system consolidation in the post-communist democracies? It is frequently hypothesized that differencesin electoral systems and presidential powers help to explain variationinparty system consolidation. In addition, it can be argued that thenumbers and support levels of political parties should be affected by theideological peculiarities of different countries’ voting publics. Popu-lation size might also be expected to affect the ease with whichadditionalpartyorganizationscanbedevelopedandmaintained.Asfar as the availability of data permit, we construct relevant institutionaland ideological measures for all 23 post-communist democracies.Regression analysis shows that ideological concentration of electoratesis the most consistent and powerful determinant of party system con-solidation. Proportionality of electoral systems has a weaker tendencyto reduce party system consolidation, while strength of the presidencyand population size appear to have little or no impact. Future researchshould explore whether ideology has played a similar role in otherregions. It might also examine the policy consequences of party systemconsolidation.
A more recent theoretical school in international relations, constructivism, adds strong contribu... more A more recent theoretical school in international relations, constructivism, adds strong contributions to the traditional insights of neo-realism and neo-liberalism. Constructivism focuses on national and state identities and their impacts on preferences and strategies, and on how the resulting international strategic interactions can feed back to influence the evolution of national and state identities. For the China-Taiwan conflict, constructivism calls attention to China’s presently vague state identity, and to how strategic interaction with China’s legitimacy-oriented Communist Party elites is likely to accelerate the development of Taiwan’s “islander” national identity. For the Korean conflict, on the other hand, the stability and strength of a united Korean identity in both North and South facilitates the South’s conciliatory stabilizing policy towards the North’s insecure elites.
Two dominant literatures explain violent ethnic conflict. One emphasizes objective antecedents: e... more Two dominant literatures explain violent ethnic conflict. One emphasizes objective antecedents: ethnic minorities’ historical and contemporary conditions and opportunities; the balance of power between dominant ethnic groups and ethnic minorities; and the political demands of ethnic minorities. Another debates whether nationalism and national movements represent genuine popular awakenings, or whether they are instruments used by elites to seize and keep power. It is argued that regime type can be examined to determine whether elite or mass interests lie behind national movements, and that this distinction is the key to determining the relative importance of objective antecedents. This argument is applied to the four major post-Soviet ethnic conflicts, in Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, and Tajikistan. The conclusion discusses how the approach can be used in statistical tests.
What factors best explain post-communist transitions to democracy, and following such transitions... more What factors best explain post-communist transitions to democracy, and following such transitions, survival and fuller implementation of democratic rules of the game? Plausible approaches include economic structure, political culture, political institutions, and involvement in large-scale military conflict. Political culture and war are found to be much more powerful predictors than economic structure and political institutions. Although political culture is usually thought of in terms of broad traditions such as religion, it is shown that the alternative category of “frustrated national ideals” has comparable explanatory power. These results merit further investigation and refinement in case studies of the post-communist countries, and in statistical analysis of democratization in other regions and time-periods.
The extensive theoretical and quantitative literature on the origins of ethnic conflict has not d... more The extensive theoretical and quantitative literature on the origins of ethnic conflict has not developed much systematic theory or refined quantitative research on the role played by Islam. In much research, Islam is assumed to be a marker of ethnic and national identity that is no different from others. Where Islam is quantitatively analyzed as a specific constituent of ethnic and national identity, it is usually coded as either-present-or-not or as a population share. This paper constructs more detailed hypotheses on Islam and ethnic conflict. It examines the main types of influence on ethnic conflict onset—characteristics of ethnic and national identities and associated histories, disputes, and preferences; political institutions; international influence and intervention; and economic development and structure—and discusses whether and how Islam might function distinctively in each area. The resulting hypotheses are illustrated with examples from the post-communist world. Here it seems that secular-national territorial and self-determination disputes, exacerbated by histories of intense conflict, were more important sources of ethnic conflict than Islamic political ideology per se. Under the secular authoritarian regimes in Central Asia, however, weak secular nationalist and civic ideologies and movements, combined with rising international Islamist influence and involvement, make Islamic political ideology and Islamism more significant risk factors for future ethnic conflict.
A game-theoretic model is used to show that the balance-of-power mechanism has much greater forma... more A game-theoretic model is used to show that the balance-of-power mechanism has much greater formal power than hitherto understood. Under the strong assumption that all threatened countries must be able to function as crucial coalition partners in deterring any threat,all members of minimum winning coalitions are guaranteed not to lose any resources. Under the traditional, weaker assumption that some coalition must be available to deter any threat, even countries that are not members of minimum winning coalitions are guaranteed against losing any resources.These formal results are significant in two ways. First, they make it possible to reconcile apparently contradictory views in the literature,and to offer a satisfying intuitive interpretation of the balance-of-power mechanism. Second, they point to a variety of factors--operating both separately and interactively--that may cause the balance-of-power mechanism to fail. Examples are uncertainty combined with risk-loving preferences, conflict-averse preferences, offensive technological advantages, economic growth, and technological and political rigidities in the formation of alliances and rivalries. It is argued that efforts to test balance-of-power theory should focus on assessing the relative importance of such factors.
How did war affect political and economic reform efforts across the post-communist world? War is ... more How did war affect political and economic reform efforts across the post-communist world? War is hypothesized to have a negative political impact through three main mechanisms: distraction from any peacetime political and economic reform agenda; military defeat and disruption, and associated weakening or militarization of state authority; and postwar economic isolation. After controlling for cultural, economic, and institutional factors, statistical analysis confirms the negative effects of war on political and economic reform. The negative effect of war is robust across a range of model specifications and time periods, but is estimated to be stronger or the subgroup of initially democratic countries. The cultural variable of 'frustrated national ideals' is the most important control variable. There follow brief case studies of the eight post-communist countries torn by protracted, large-scale military conflict - Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Georgia, Moldova, Tajikistan, and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The case studies focus on how initial conditions - particularly he cultural variable of frustrated national ideals - interact with longer-term effects of war to influence postwar revival of reform efforts. Among the subgroup of initially democratic countries, the dominant pattern is not one of democracy unleashing diversionary war, as it did in Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia. Rather, reform nationalist governments typically wanted to avoid war. But their political constituencies and ideological commitments typically prevented them from making concessions that might have avoided war, or at least stopped it more quickly. This entangled their countries in longer-term conflicts, with correspondingly greater adverse impacts on political and economic reform.
Existing models of international financial liberalization tend to understate the economic and pol... more Existing models of international financial liberalization tend to understate the economic and political importance of related policies governing domestic financial markets. Further, these models often fail to specify fully the links between the international economy and domestic politics. Initial financial liberalization is often “domestic bank-centered,” i.e. it preserves a privileged position for weakly regulated domestic banks as the capital account is opened. On the other hand, there is much greater variation in later-stage financial policy developments. Adequate explanations should be able to explain, not just the initial pattern of financial liberalization, but also subsequent policy developments. The framework advanced here includes (1) dispersed as well as concentrated interest groups, in the context of (2) variation in regime type and political institutions. It is also argued that the policy preferences of relevant actors—particularly of dispersed interest groups and politicians—can be affected by ideology. The framework is applied to explain financial sector policy in South Korea, Mexico and Hungary.
Why did some post-communist countries implement more thorough market reforms than others? Four di... more Why did some post-communist countries implement more thorough market reforms than others? Four different structural explanations are considered: (1) relative size of economic interest group coalitions hurt by market reform; (2) predominant religious traditions, which may incorporate norms and institutions more or less favorable to market reform; (3) variation in historically based national economic and political expectations, in which greater pre-communist political and economic achievements may create collective rationales for more aggressive institutional and policy reforms; and (4) duration of large-scale military conflict, which may distract and undermine reformist governments. These explanations are tested both directly, and mediated through plausible process predictors: democratization, party ideological moderation or extremism, strength of the presidency, and party system concentration. The 28 post-communist countries are examined over shorter and longer time spans: two years after the fall of the old regime and a decade or so after the fall. The two political culture variables--predominant religious tradition and national economic and political expectations--provide the most statistically significant and powerful predictors. War is also a significant and powerful predictor. Relative size of economic interest group coalitions is estimated to have little impact. Among the process variables, democratization and party ideological moderation have the most consistently significant and powerful impacts. One implication is that middle-range theories of political culture, which can be more firmly grounded in rational calculation and historical context, may be a promising way to remedy the weaknesses of political culture theories operating at the broader level of religion or civilization.
How did World War I reverse decades of apparently irresistible economic globalization? Why, in pa... more How did World War I reverse decades of apparently irresistible economic globalization? Why, in particular, did World War I produce a worldwide surge in international trade protection? Three mechanisms are investigated: (1) The War diverted production and international trade in a way that strengthened protectionist coalitions of industries relative to free-trading coalitions. (2) The War reduced financial interdependence and altered exchange rates in a manner that advantaged protectionist coalitions. (3) The War altered military alliances and rivalries such that stronger national interests in trade protection developed. These mechanisms are examined for the five largest trading economies — Britain, France, Germany, Japan, and the United States. There is evidence of all three mechanisms operating. The first — involving war-induced diversion of production and international trade — appears to have had the largest and most consistent impact.
Recent quantitative studies of ethnic conflict tend to have characteristic strengths and weakness... more Recent quantitative studies of ethnic conflict tend to have characteristic strengths and weaknesses. Strengths are typical of sophisticated statistical work: the influence of many explanatory variables is examined across large datasets. Weaknesses are largely traceable to shortcomings of theory and measurement. Territorial and other ethnic conflicts are sometimes pooled with other types of internal conflict, which seem likely to have a different range of causes. Also, theory indicates that different conflict pathways have varying probabilities of giving rise to territorial ethnic conflict. These pathways involve different types of elite-level preferences, for either the outsider ethnic group or state side of a potential conflict, and for either incumbent or challenger elites. The pathways are also likely to be conditioned by different constraints. Yet little effort has been made to measure variation along these discrete pathways. More readily measurable variables, such as economic development and dependence on oil exports, often pick up predicted variation from multiple theoretical pathways. Regressions including such broad dependent and independent variables may deflate the estimated impact of discrete-pathway variables on ethnic conflict onset, and hence must be interpreted with care. There are significant practical barriers to measuring variation along the different conflict pathways; but further effort is necessary if the quantitative literature is to become more robust, easily interpreted and helpful in understanding specific cases.
Failed banking sector policies and weak regulatory policies are the keys to the collapse of the C... more Failed banking sector policies and weak regulatory policies are the keys to the collapse of the Czech economic “miracle.” Why were these policy errors made? Why has it taken so long to correct them? We examine the roles of economic interest groups, political institutions, technocratic economic ideology, and political leadership. Initially, economic interest group support provided broad liberal constraints on economic policy making. Within this context, neither political institutions nor technocratic economic ideology prevented political leaders from making the key early policy errors. A change in technocratic ideology made eventual error correction difficult to avoid. But stable economic interest group support and institutional divisions made it possible for responsible leaders to delay the corrections.
The 1997 financial crisis exposed serious weaknesses in South Korea’s economy, with its heavy rel... more The 1997 financial crisis exposed serious weaknesses in South Korea’s economy, with its heavy reliance on large conglomerates (chaebol). During the late authoritarian period, the chaebol arose through state guidance and subsidies, becoming the central players in South Korea’s export-led growth boom. The early democratic period saw limited efforts toward economic liberalization. But these measures reduced state oversight while actually expanding the privileged access to credit enjoyed by the chaebol. The resulting investment distortions and financial weaknesses were the most important root causes of the 1997 crisis. The 1997 presidential election brought the outsider Kim Dae-jung to power. Kim launched an unprecedented assault on the credit privileges and corporate governance structures of the chaebol. However, the reforms have been compromised by measures to prevent a large transitional recession. It is argued that the overall pattern of ambitious but compromised reform is explained by two main considerations. First, Kim did not want to alienate “dispersed interest groups” (the urban service sector and agriculture). These want to conserve the favorable elements of South Korea’s economic model while purging the dross. And at the same time, Kim wanted to focus transitional restructuring costs on the most hostile “concentrated interest group” constituencies (the chaebol and government sectors) of the opposition Grand National Party.
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Papers by Shale Horowitz