What makes a human rights argument effective? When challenging a state's human rights practices, actors can draw on a range of discursive options and frames. Current research on human rights argumentation highlights the strategic use of different rhetorical frames by actors to create political outcomes on a case-by-case basis. This analysis, however, is the first to measure the determinants of effective

Data estimates suggest that up to half of all migrants return to the country of origin within 5 years of leaving. Return migration is known to be a boon for the local economy and a catalyst for political reform. However, these effects are conditional on successful reintegration, which is dependent on the preferences of nonmigrants. What causes negative attitudes towards return migration, given its

Nonstate actors play powerful roles in global governance institutions (GGIs) as advocates, experts, representatives, regulators, monitors, and implementing agents. However, the extent to which their inclusion affects the degree to which citizens find GGIs more legitimate has not been systematically investigated, nor have the conditions under which citizens might do so. In this contribution, we theoretically

s This research note introduces a new dataset—the Governmental Incompatibilities Data Project (GIDP) 2.0—which identifies the presence of incompatibilities over governments for all countries in the world from 1960 to 2020. Incompatibilities over government involve organizations making maximalist claims related to the legitimacy of elections, the composition of the national government, or regime change

Extant scholarship on embedded liberalism (EL) emphasizes whether governments keep their promises to protect the risk-bearers of economic liberalization but overlooks its liberalization effect. In particular, scholars rarely explore how EL solves the time-inconsistency problem plaguing economic liberalization, i.e., governments may ex post renege on their policy promises made prior to the liberalization

s US foreign policy observers have noted a decline in the frequency of expert witnesses appearing before congressional committees, while congressional scholars have documented changes in committee practices that have led to fewer and shorter hearings. These trends interact in systematic ways, although their relationship has never been tested empirically. Using original data and micro-level measures

s Using a dyadic approach to explore voting behavior of European Union (EU) member states in the Council of the EU, we investigate the similarity in voting behavior of governments on three policy dimensions: left-right, authoritarian-libertarian, and pro-/anti EU. These policy dimensions are of interest also in other contexts, such as decision-making in international or regional organizations other

Technological breakthroughs carry great promise but often escalate economic competition and heighten public anxiety, creating new challenges for governments. We argue that breakthroughs trigger two distinct mechanisms that reshape regulatory politics: (1) accelerated incentives for regulatory arbitrage and (2) the potential for controversies to spark international public backlash. First, technological

Gender mainstreaming—the incorporation of a gender equality perspective into the design, implementation, and evaluation of all aid projects—has become a signature policy tool among Western donors. However, advancing gender equality can be politically contentious and lead to backlash, particularly in autocratic regimes where women’s socioeconomic status is low. We argue that donors’ desire for recipient

Can international law protect abortion rights? Drawing from past work on domestic mechanisms that give international law teeth, we argue that a strong civil society composed of women's groups and groups concerned with women's rights leads the government to comply with its international human rights commitments to women, specifically their right to abortion. Unlike that past work, though, we draw attention

s How has central bank independence (CBI) changed over time and across countries? This paper introduces the most comprehensive dataset on de jure CBI, including country-year observations covering 192 countries between 1970 and 2023. The dataset identifies statutory reforms affecting CBI, their direction, and codes four dimensions of CBI (personnel independence, central bank's objectives, policy formulation

Many international phenomena, from complex, interconnected processes to specific catastrophes, have been deemed “inevitable” by elites, policymakers, and scholars. Yet existing scholarship treats “inevitability” as an objective fact to be assessed retrospectively, rather than an expression of politics and contestation. To see the “politics of inevitability,” we argue, requires attention to the underlying

s How do international institutions respond to unilateral challenges by its member states, such as non-compliance, blocking of reforms, renegotiation requests, or withdrawal? This paper argues that this response depends on a trade-off between the risks of not accommodating the challenge, which could disrupt cooperation gains, and the risks of accommodating, which may embolden future challengers. International

This research note presents a dataset on budgeted civilian personnel posts in UN peacekeeping operations by mission, unit, rank, and staff category in the 1991–2020 period: the UNCIPPO (UN Civilian Posts in Peacekeeping Operations) Dataset. Civilian staff in UN peacekeeping operations include specialists in political affairs, human rights, gender, child protection, electoral support, security sector

Does commemoration of violence enhance or undermine everyday security? Whilst memorialization has become a staple of peacebuilding processes, the everyday security dimensions of memory remain understudied. Drawing on three case studies of recent transitional justice memory initiatives in Eastern and Central Africa—Rwanda, Burundi, and Kenya– and on qualitative fieldwork in all three countries, the

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has recently expanded its policy scope to include a broader set of policies to promote green, inclusive, and resilient growth. How does this expansion affect the support for the IMF and its loans among the populations of borrowing countries? We conducted a pre-registered survey experiment with 2,694 respondents from three borrower countries—Argentina, Kenya, and

Why do states sign international agreements with varying commitment lengths? Growing literature examines when states exit international institutions. However, international agreements differ in how long a state must commit before it is legally free after a withdrawal decision. Notably, bilateral investment treaties (BITs) exhibit significant variation in commitment periods even in the same issue area

Despite representing a crucial day-to-day diplomatic tool, travel by heads of government and state (HOGS) has remained an under-investigated topic in international relations, inhibiting our ability to better understand how these visits change foreign aid, interstate conflict, diplomatic affinities, and more. Here, we fill that gap by introducing the first global dataset on the foreign visits of state

Military Gender Advisors (GENADs) are an increasingly common feature in global armed forces and military operations. Their role is designed to operate at the strategic level of military organizations to the facilitate implementation of the United Nations Women, Peace, and Security agenda. Despite an overarching policy framework and official discourse that value and support their work, GENADs face significant

Paradoxically, research on the international dimensions and effects of populism finds that populist leaders’ politicization frequently portrays domestic and foreign “elites” as intertwined—but that their decision-making tends to be considerably more antagonistic vis-à-vis internal opponents than established external actors. Combining structural and agential perspectives, this paper unboxes the individual

International organizations (IOs) need to learn from their mistakes in order to improve their performance. Over the past decades, IOs have therefore invested significantly in building a professional learning infrastructure. However, as recent studies show, many IOs still struggle to learn from their mistakes. Why do IOs not learn despite all these formal learning processes and tools? I argue that the

Multinational firms frequently route their foreign investments through intermediate shell companies. Increasingly, firms engage in proxy arbitration, using these shell companies to access other states’ bilateral investment treaties and file investor–state disputes against their host states. I argue that proxy arbitration is actually a spillover effect of firms’ efforts to reduce their tax burdens.

Initiatives by agents in a favorable contingency can reshuffle transnational areas of practice and show how fields shape communities of practice (CoPs). The article examines how CoPs emerge and develop and why this happens in some areas and not others. It also explores whether CoPs should be situated within conflictual theories of the international, like field theory. The article argues that CoPs emerge

s The Russian invasion of Ukraine has escalated geopolitical rivalry and debate about the demise of the liberal international order and the changing distribution of power within the international system. Peacekeeping has been a key component of the liberal international order at least since the end of the Cold War, if not before. Peacekeeping boomed in the era of US unipolarity, with twenty new United

How do countries narrate their values and priorities in artificial intelligence infrastructures in comparative national and global contexts? This paper analyzes the policies governing national and regional artificial intelligence infrastructures to advance an understanding of “entangled narratives” in global affairs. It does so by utilizing artificial intelligence techniques that assist with generalizability

The study of international organizations’ (IOs) peer review systems has focused largely on their efficacy in disseminating best practices, with mixed results. This paper informs the debate from a new angle: We evaluate the extent to which decisions about who reviews whom and where result from bureaucratic guidelines, or whether these decisions are shaped by the particularistic interests of member states

s While states are not human beings, they are institutionalized social groups. It is humans who constitute and run them. Consequently, it is argued that countries can be interviewed. This claim is based on in-depth interviews with seventy Israeli and British officials, which “captured” states’ anxiety. In ontological security studies, countries’ anxieties are typically inferred from historical and

s The number of preferential trade agreements signed among non-democratic states (autocratic PTAs) has grown significantly over the last decades. Trade policy scholarship remains silent on the institutional design of these autocratic economic arrangements. In this paper, we explore the core institutional characteristic of autocratic PTAs—their depth. It has been shown that many North–South and, increasingly

s International human rights institutions impose obligations on their member states that extend long past the ratification stage. Each year, states receive tens, or even hundreds, of recommendations from international human rights bodies. These recommendations demand that states change their human rights policies and practices. While recent scholarship has emphasized the important role of domestic

Does public opinion on international affairs affect elites’ policy preferences? Most research assumes that it does, but this key assumption is difficult to test empirically given limited research access to elite decision-makers. We examine elite responsiveness to public opinion on sanctioning Russia during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. We fielded a preregistered experiment within the 2022 TRIP

Does the intervention of an international organization in domestic politics render policy change more popular? While voters may ultimately care only about policy outcomes, the involvement of international actors often seems to lead to resentment. Still, citizens may have greater faith in the wisdom of international actors than in their own government. As others have argued, a well-respected international

Materially powerful states tend to dominate both the creation of international organizations (IOs) as well as subsequent IO policymaking. Materially weak states are nevertheless expected to participate in IOs since it is generally assumed that they will still profit from cooperation and prefer power to be exercised through institutions. Yet, we know surprisingly little about how exactly institutional

How does rebel news affect the way civilians perceive the balance of power during conflict? While media campaigns are a common tactic during conflict for both insurgents and governments, there is very little empirical research that explores their effect on civilians. I argue that these campaigns play an important role in the construction of a rebel group’s reputation during conflict and the perception

As a rising India has sought both standing and recognition in the international system, observers have debated whether revisionist or status quo tendencies have characterized the country’s engagement with the outside world since the end of the Cold War. One way to gain insight into such issues is to study the behavior of its apex leaders. Face-to-face diplomacy and high-level visits are an increasingly

Do International Monetary Fund (IMF) lending programs increase repression in borrowing countries? We argue that repression worsens when autocratic governments enter conditional lending arrangements with the IMF. Autocracies are likelier than democracies to harshly crackdown during episodes of heightened protest and unrest triggered by IMF-mandated adjustment and structural reform programs. But harsh

This research note introduces new global data on self-coups—rapid moves by sitting executive leaders to “overthrow” their own governments and illegitimately maintain or extend power. Self-coups are distinct from ordinary coups (sudden illegal attempts by other elites to topple the sitting executive) and overlap with incumbent takeovers (incremental quasi-legal steps by the sitting executive to amass

What are the causal pathways through which natural resources are linked to civil conflict? Ross evaluates ten causal pathways across thirteen conflicts to offer the most comprehensive answer to date. However, nearly 20 years later, all thirteen conflicts have ended, and more sources are available, motivating the question: Would the findings hold if replicated today? We employ a new explicit standards

Generalized trust has attracted attention as a non-material disposition that affects risk perception in political and economic international cooperation. However, its effect on public support for free trade or trade agreements has been debated. This debate centers on whether the economic impacts of trade are evident or uncertain to ordinary citizens because generalized trust operates only when trade

Political lending is problematic for the operations of multilateral development banks (MDBs) since politically motivated aid has a greater default risk than other aid projects. MDB bureaucrats, therefore, face a dilemma. On the one hand, they want to please major shareholders by engaging in political lending. On the other hand, they want to mitigate their MDB's exposure to excessive risk. One way to

Studies of migration-related security concerns have focused on the emergence of these concerns through securitization or their potential dissolution through desecuritization. This paper challenges the conventional view of these processes—securitization and desecuritization—as oppositional and mutually exclusive. Instead, it argues that they are imbricated in complex ways in an arena of contestation

For years, scholars in international relations have addressed questions related to regime complexity and its effects. However, there is a lack of understanding of how individuals react to clashes of international law obligations when assessing domestic policies. In this article, we study the extent to which citizens are concerned with compliance and noncompliance with international law when their governments

Ethnic groups employ different strategies to pursue demands for self-determination. While some act within conventional channels of political contestation, others choose non-conventional strategies, including violence and rebellion. We conceive of this as a result of bargaining between group and state and argue that both sides’ institutions affect the likelihood of escalation. Specifically, groups with

s How does military experience change individual foreign policy preferences? Prior research on military service focuses on the effects of combat experience on political participation and policy preferences, but combat is not the only military experience that influences attitudes. Living overseas is a common military experience with the potential to shape foreign policy preferences. Using observational

Many types of civil unrest, including protest, violent conflict, and rebellion, have been found to be subject to both inter- and intra-state contagion. These spillover effects are conventionally tested through the application of parametric structural models that are estimated using observational data. Drawing on research in methods for network analysis, we note important challenges in conducting causal

One of the most fundamental economic policy choices a society makes is how to order its global economic relations. What models do states use to structure this multifaceted decision, and how do they choose among these alternatives? We combine data on trade policies, foreign investment, exchange rates, capital flows, and international treaties to discover states’ strategies of global economic engagement

Governments have a number of structural advantages over rebel groups in civil wars, one of which is their greater ability to make credible international commitments. Governments can use foreign policy commitments to incentivize other states to provide them military support or deny support to their rebel groups. We analyze international intervention in civil conflicts between 1975 and 2017 and find

Processes that occasionally, but not always, produce extreme values are notoriously difficult to model, as a small number of extreme observations may have a large impact on the results. Existing methods for handling extreme values are often arbitrary and leave researchers without guidance regarding this problem. In this paper, we propose an extreme value and zero-inflated negative binomial (EVZINB)

s Do military alliances promote human rights? Scholars and practitioners generally believe they do not because states form alliances largely to advance their strategic interests and thus are not interested in members' domestic policies. I claim that some states may care about their allies' human rights practices. Specifically, democracies are concerned that alliance relationships with rights-abusing

Are more aid-dependent and indebted countries more likely to include women in their cabinets? Several studies have suggested that such countries seek to please donors and lenders. Focusing on Africa, we test whether leaders respond to international incentives and, specifically, signal donors and lenders that they value gender equality in political decision-making. Although leaders have more direct

Offshore finance allows foreign banks to create US dollars under the laws of an offshore jurisdiction. How and why does this affect international monetary power? Conceptually, I argue that offshore finance bifurcates across borders the shared power of the state and banks to create money, combining the US dollar with mostly English law. Empirically, I demonstrate that more US dollars are created offshore

This article introduces a new phenomenon in the study of civil war: tribal wartime social order. The proposed theory of tribalocracy, or tribal rule, integrates insights from civil war studies, anthropology, and sociology to provide a nuanced account of social order and its transformation in tribal warzones. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the Hauran region in southern Syria, the proposed theory

Institutions are not created in a vacuum—but how do extant institutions influence design choices? Leveraging fragmentation in the global trade order, this paper stresses the relevance of experience and argues that the institutional influence of the World Trade Organization (WTO) extends beyond its jurisdiction through its centrality as multilateral diffusion hub: When states negotiate preferential

s The growth and success of right-wing populist movements globally has been remarkable since the early 2010s. Indeed, populist parties in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and North America have received tremendous electoral success, shaping a movement for the people and by the people within the political sphere. To what extent do populist movements influence other such programs across national borders

Many theories attempt to explain the determinants of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) and their design. Existing accounts, however, focus almost exclusively on structural or domestic factors and ignore individual leaders. In this paper, I develop and test novel theoretical claims regarding executive leaders’ prior career in business and their trade cooperation policy once in office. I construct

Why are some international systems characterized by stable multipolarity while elsewhere conquest produces universal empires? We explain this variation through contrasting the conventional story of the consolidation of multipolar anarchy in Europe against the Ottoman conquest of the Near East and the Manchu conquest of greater China. Both the Ottomans and the Manchus developed the capacity for systemic

Since the end of the Cold War, the United Nations has increasingly used peacekeeping operations (PKOs) to manage crises between and within states. The mandates of contemporary PKOs are demanding, calling on peacekeeping personnel to separate belligerent parties, enforce ceasefire agreements, and protect the physical security of civilians. The pursuit of these distinct objectives presents a unique challenge

Why does contentious history play such an outsized role in some international relationships? Why do these “history wars” endure, overriding incentives to reconcile? Despite their demonstrable importance, history wars have generally been neglected by conventional conflict and security literature; and, while scholarship concerning the international politics of memory has expanded significantly, overarching

We are encouraged to think of refugees as resilient people with agency and capacity for flourishing, rather than passive victims needing help. This framing purports to uphold and celebrate refugees’ humanity. But some scholars worry that it problematically serves to demand resilience from refugees, normalize their displacement, and legitimate state bordering practices. This article builds on this critique

Previous work in International Studies Quarterly shows higher levels of humanitarian aid prolong civil conflicts. It also finds, among conflict–years in which aid is received, that this conflict-prolonging effect is more acute in insurgency-based civil conflicts, albeit with weaker supporting evidence. However, I show this work accidentally generated its conflict duration variable incorrectly, with

Amidst multiple transnational crises, global governance has retaken center stage in academic and public debates. While previous generations of thinkers and citizens vigorously discussed the perennial idea of a world government, such proposals are nowadays often discarded quickly among scholars and practitioners. However, we know little about citizens’ present-day attitudes toward world government proposals