Pub Date : 2020-12-11DOI: 10.1017/S0043887120000246
Robert Jervis, Keren Yarhi-Milo, Don Casler
ABSTRACT A wave of recent scholarship has breathed new life into the study of reputation and credibility in international politics. In this review article, the authors welcome this development while offering a framework for evaluating collective progress, a series of related critiques, and a set of suggestions for future research. The article details how the books under review represent an important step toward consensus on the importance of reputation in world politics, elucidating scope conditions for when reputational inferences are likely to be most salient. The authors argue that despite the significant accomplishments of recent studies, the scholarly record remains thin on the psychology of the perceiver and is instead focused on situational factors at the expense of dispositional variables and is rather myopically oriented toward reputation for resolve to the exclusion of other important types. Despite its contributions, the new literature still falls short of a full explanation for how actors draw inferences about reputation. These remaining theoretical challenges demand scholarly attention and suggest a role for psychology in filling some of the gaps.
{"title":"Redefining the Debate Over Reputation and Credibility in International Security","authors":"Robert Jervis, Keren Yarhi-Milo, Don Casler","doi":"10.1017/S0043887120000246","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887120000246","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT A wave of recent scholarship has breathed new life into the study of reputation and credibility in international politics. In this review article, the authors welcome this development while offering a framework for evaluating collective progress, a series of related critiques, and a set of suggestions for future research. The article details how the books under review represent an important step toward consensus on the importance of reputation in world politics, elucidating scope conditions for when reputational inferences are likely to be most salient. The authors argue that despite the significant accomplishments of recent studies, the scholarly record remains thin on the psychology of the perceiver and is instead focused on situational factors at the expense of dispositional variables and is rather myopically oriented toward reputation for resolve to the exclusion of other important types. Despite its contributions, the new literature still falls short of a full explanation for how actors draw inferences about reputation. These remaining theoretical challenges demand scholarly attention and suggest a role for psychology in filling some of the gaps.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"73 1","pages":"167 - 203"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0043887120000246","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47386917","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-10DOI: 10.1017/S0043887120000222
Anoop Sarbahi
ABSTRACT This article problematizes the social structure of ethnic groups to account for variation in insurgent mobilization within and across ethnic groups. Relying on network-based approaches to social structure, it argues that insurgent mobilization is constrained by the structural connectivity of the ethnic group, a measure of the extent to which subethnic communities—neighborhoods, villages, clans, and tribes—are socially connected internally and with each other. In agrarian societies, structural connectivity is traced to religion. On the basis of unique data on rebel recruitment from the Mizo insurgency in India and microlevel variations in changes associated with the spread of Christianity among Mizos, the author demonstrates that enhanced structural connectivity resulting from a network of highly centralized churches and institutions under the Welsh Presbyterian Mission significantly bolstered insurgent recruitment. Semistructured interviews of Mizo insurgents and ethnographic evidence from the neighboring Meitei and Naga ethnic insurgencies further support the argument and the casual mechanism.
{"title":"The Structure of Religion, Ethnicity, and Insurgent Mobilization","authors":"Anoop Sarbahi","doi":"10.1017/S0043887120000222","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887120000222","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article problematizes the social structure of ethnic groups to account for variation in insurgent mobilization within and across ethnic groups. Relying on network-based approaches to social structure, it argues that insurgent mobilization is constrained by the structural connectivity of the ethnic group, a measure of the extent to which subethnic communities—neighborhoods, villages, clans, and tribes—are socially connected internally and with each other. In agrarian societies, structural connectivity is traced to religion. On the basis of unique data on rebel recruitment from the Mizo insurgency in India and microlevel variations in changes associated with the spread of Christianity among Mizos, the author demonstrates that enhanced structural connectivity resulting from a network of highly centralized churches and institutions under the Welsh Presbyterian Mission significantly bolstered insurgent recruitment. Semistructured interviews of Mizo insurgents and ethnographic evidence from the neighboring Meitei and Naga ethnic insurgencies further support the argument and the casual mechanism.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"73 1","pages":"82 - 127"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0043887120000222","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49660571","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-12-07DOI: 10.1017/S0043887120000180
Sarah E. Parkinson
Abstract Ideology shapes militant recruitment, organization, and conflict behavior. Existing research assumes doctrinal consistency, top-down socialization of adherents, and clear links between formal ideology and political action. But it has long been recognized that ideological commitments do not flow unaltered from overarching cleavages or elite narratives; they are uneven, contingent, fraught with tension, and often ambivalent. What work does ideology do in militant groups if it is not deeply studied, internalized, or sincerely believed? How can scholars explain collective commitment, affinity, and behavioral outcomes among militants who clearly associate themselves with a group, but who may not consistently (or ever) be true believers or committed ideologues? I argue that practical ideologies—sets of quotidian principles, ideas, and social heuristics that reflect relational worldviews rather than specific published political doctrines, positions, platforms, or plans—play a key role in militant socialization through everyday practices. Ethnographic evidence gained from fieldwork among Palestinians in Lebanon demonstrates how militants and affiliates render ideas about ideological closeness and distance accessible through emotional, intellectual, and moral appeals. This approach reaffirms the role of discourse and narrative in creating informal mechanisms of militant socialization without expressly invoking formal doctrine.
{"title":"Practical Ideology in Militant Organizations","authors":"Sarah E. Parkinson","doi":"10.1017/S0043887120000180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887120000180","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Ideology shapes militant recruitment, organization, and conflict behavior. Existing research assumes doctrinal consistency, top-down socialization of adherents, and clear links between formal ideology and political action. But it has long been recognized that ideological commitments do not flow unaltered from overarching cleavages or elite narratives; they are uneven, contingent, fraught with tension, and often ambivalent. What work does ideology do in militant groups if it is not deeply studied, internalized, or sincerely believed? How can scholars explain collective commitment, affinity, and behavioral outcomes among militants who clearly associate themselves with a group, but who may not consistently (or ever) be true believers or committed ideologues? I argue that practical ideologies—sets of quotidian principles, ideas, and social heuristics that reflect relational worldviews rather than specific published political doctrines, positions, platforms, or plans—play a key role in militant socialization through everyday practices. Ethnographic evidence gained from fieldwork among Palestinians in Lebanon demonstrates how militants and affiliates render ideas about ideological closeness and distance accessible through emotional, intellectual, and moral appeals. This approach reaffirms the role of discourse and narrative in creating informal mechanisms of militant socialization without expressly invoking formal doctrine.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"73 1","pages":"52 - 81"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0043887120000180","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42549409","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-26DOI: 10.1017/S0043887120000179
David De Micheli
Abstract This article leverages a phenomenon of racial reclassification in Brazil to shed new light on the processes of identity politicization. Conventional wisdom tells us that race mixture, fluid racial boundaries, and stigmatized blackness lead Brazilians to change their racial identifications—to reclassify—toward whiteness. But in recent years, Brazilians have demonstrated a newfound tendency to reclassify toward blackness. The author argues that this sudden reversal is the unintended consequence of state-led educational expansion for the lower classes. Educational expansion has increased the exposure of newly mobile citizens to information, social networks, and the labor market, leading many to develop racialized political identities and choose blackness. The author develops and tests this argument by drawing on in-depth interview data, systematic analyses of national survey and longitudinal census data, and original survey experiments. This article contributes a novel account of identity politicization and emphasizes the interaction between social structures and citizenship institutions in these processes.
{"title":"Racial Reclassification and Political Identity Formation","authors":"David De Micheli","doi":"10.1017/S0043887120000179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887120000179","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article leverages a phenomenon of racial reclassification in Brazil to shed new light on the processes of identity politicization. Conventional wisdom tells us that race mixture, fluid racial boundaries, and stigmatized blackness lead Brazilians to change their racial identifications—to reclassify—toward whiteness. But in recent years, Brazilians have demonstrated a newfound tendency to reclassify toward blackness. The author argues that this sudden reversal is the unintended consequence of state-led educational expansion for the lower classes. Educational expansion has increased the exposure of newly mobile citizens to information, social networks, and the labor market, leading many to develop racialized political identities and choose blackness. The author develops and tests this argument by drawing on in-depth interview data, systematic analyses of national survey and longitudinal census data, and original survey experiments. This article contributes a novel account of identity politicization and emphasizes the interaction between social structures and citizenship institutions in these processes.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"73 1","pages":"1 - 51"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0043887120000179","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44069513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-11-23DOI: 10.1017/S0043887120000192
Ryan Brutger
Abstract In an era of increasingly public diplomacy, conventional wisdom assumes that leaders who compromise damage their reputations and lose the respect of their constituents, which undermines the prospects for international peace and cooperation. This article challenges this assumption and tests how leaders can negotiate compromises and avoid paying domestic approval and reputation costs. Drawing on theories of individuals’ core values, psychological processes, and partisanship, the author argues that leaders reduce or eliminate domestic public constraints by exercising proposal power and initiating compromises. Employing survey experiments to test how public approval and perceptions of reputation respond to leaders’ strategies across security and economic issues, the author finds attitudes toward compromise are conditioned by the ideology of the audience and leader, with audiences of liberals being more supportive of compromise. In the US case, this results in Republican presidents having greater leeway to negotiate compromises. The article’s contributions suggest that leaders who exercise proposal power have significant flexibility to negotiate compromise settlements in international bargaining.
{"title":"The Power of Compromise","authors":"Ryan Brutger","doi":"10.1017/S0043887120000192","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887120000192","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract In an era of increasingly public diplomacy, conventional wisdom assumes that leaders who compromise damage their reputations and lose the respect of their constituents, which undermines the prospects for international peace and cooperation. This article challenges this assumption and tests how leaders can negotiate compromises and avoid paying domestic approval and reputation costs. Drawing on theories of individuals’ core values, psychological processes, and partisanship, the author argues that leaders reduce or eliminate domestic public constraints by exercising proposal power and initiating compromises. Employing survey experiments to test how public approval and perceptions of reputation respond to leaders’ strategies across security and economic issues, the author finds attitudes toward compromise are conditioned by the ideology of the audience and leader, with audiences of liberals being more supportive of compromise. In the US case, this results in Republican presidents having greater leeway to negotiate compromises. The article’s contributions suggest that leaders who exercise proposal power have significant flexibility to negotiate compromise settlements in international bargaining.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"73 1","pages":"128 - 166"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0043887120000192","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43170491","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-10-01DOI: 10.1017/s0043887120000167
S. Guriev, D. Treisman
How do citizens in authoritarian states feel about their leaders? While some dictators rule through terror, others seem genuinely popular. Using the Gallup World Poll’s panel of more than one hundred-forty countries in 2006–2016, the authors show that the drivers of political approval differ across regime types. Although brutal repression in overt dictatorships could cause respondents to falsify their preferences, in milder informational autocracies, greater repression actually predicts lower approval. In autocracies as in democracies, economic performance matters and citizens’ economic perceptions, while not perfectly accurate, track objective indicators. Dictators also benefit from greater perceived public safety, but the authors find no such effect in democracies. Covert censorship of the media and the Internet is associated with higher approval in autocracies—in particular, in informational ones—but ratings fall when citizens recognize censorship. In informational autocracies, executive elections trigger a ratings surge if there is leader turnover, but, unlike in democracies, reelected autocrats enjoy little honeymoon.
{"title":"The Popularity of Authoritarian Leaders","authors":"S. Guriev, D. Treisman","doi":"10.1017/s0043887120000167","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/s0043887120000167","url":null,"abstract":"How do citizens in authoritarian states feel about their leaders? While some dictators rule through terror, others seem genuinely popular. Using the Gallup World Poll’s panel of more than one hundred-forty countries in 2006–2016, the authors show that the drivers of political approval differ across regime types. Although brutal repression in overt dictatorships could cause respondents to falsify their preferences, in milder informational autocracies, greater repression actually predicts lower approval. In autocracies as in democracies, economic performance matters and citizens’ economic perceptions, while not perfectly accurate, track objective indicators. Dictators also benefit from greater perceived public safety, but the authors find no such effect in democracies. Covert censorship of the media and the Internet is associated with higher approval in autocracies—in particular, in informational ones—but ratings fall when citizens recognize censorship. In informational autocracies, executive elections trigger a ratings surge if there is leader turnover, but, unlike in democracies, reelected autocrats enjoy little honeymoon.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"72 1","pages":"601-638"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/s0043887120000167","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43424599","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
abstract:The state often struggles to meet citizens' demands but confronts strong public pressure to do so. What does the state do when public expectations exceed its actual governing capacity? This article shows that the state can respond by engaging in performative governance—the theatrical deployment of language, symbols, and gestures to foster an impression of good governance among citizens. Performative governance should be distinguished from other types of state behavior, such as inertia, paternalism, and the substantive satisfaction of citizens' demands. The author illustrates this concept in the realm of environmental governance in China. Given the severity of China's environmental pollution, the resulting public outcry, and the logistical and political challenges involved in solving the problem, how can the state redeem itself? Ethnographic evidence from participant observation at a municipal environmental protection bureau reveals that when bureaucrats are confronted with the dual burdens of low state capacity and high public scrutiny, they engage in performative governance to assuage citizens' complaints. This study draws attention to the double meaning of "performance" in political contexts, and the essential distinction between the substantive and the theatrical.
{"title":"Performative Governance","authors":"Iza Ding","doi":"10.2139/ssrn.3255736","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3255736","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The state often struggles to meet citizens' demands but confronts strong public pressure to do so. What does the state do when public expectations exceed its actual governing capacity? This article shows that the state can respond by engaging in performative governance—the theatrical deployment of language, symbols, and gestures to foster an impression of good governance among citizens. Performative governance should be distinguished from other types of state behavior, such as inertia, paternalism, and the substantive satisfaction of citizens' demands. The author illustrates this concept in the realm of environmental governance in China. Given the severity of China's environmental pollution, the resulting public outcry, and the logistical and political challenges involved in solving the problem, how can the state redeem itself? Ethnographic evidence from participant observation at a municipal environmental protection bureau reveals that when bureaucrats are confronted with the dual burdens of low state capacity and high public scrutiny, they engage in performative governance to assuage citizens' complaints. This study draws attention to the double meaning of \"performance\" in political contexts, and the essential distinction between the substantive and the theatrical.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"72 1","pages":"525 - 556"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.2139/ssrn.3255736","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45528608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-09-09DOI: 10.1017/S0043887120000118
P. Beramendi, Daniel Stegmueller
abstract:The European Union provided a mixed response to the 2008 financial crisis. On the one hand, it refused to pursue fiscal integration through a common budget; on the other, it introduced significant transfers between countries that were designed to produce financial stabilization. The authors analyze this response as the outcome of democratic constraints on EU leaders. Given the EU's current institutional structure, citizens' preferences pose a binding constraint on what leaders can do as these preferences limit the scope of riskpooling among members and the degree of political tolerance for different courses of action. The authors show that citizens' preferences reflect differences in the geography of income, production regimes, and institutional organization. The heterogeneity of constituencies' redistribution preferences combined with a diverse economic geography helps to explain why political constraints on national governments prevent them from engaging in further fiscal integration. By contrast, externalities among member states shift the preferences of citizens who may experience negative effects and make international redistribution politically feasible. The authors analyze these two mechanisms and present novel empirical results on the determinants of preferences for fiscal integration and international redistribution in the aftermath of the eurocrisis.
{"title":"The Political Geography of the Eurocrisis","authors":"P. Beramendi, Daniel Stegmueller","doi":"10.1017/S0043887120000118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1017/S0043887120000118","url":null,"abstract":"abstract:The European Union provided a mixed response to the 2008 financial crisis. On the one hand, it refused to pursue fiscal integration through a common budget; on the other, it introduced significant transfers between countries that were designed to produce financial stabilization. The authors analyze this response as the outcome of democratic constraints on EU leaders. Given the EU's current institutional structure, citizens' preferences pose a binding constraint on what leaders can do as these preferences limit the scope of riskpooling among members and the degree of political tolerance for different courses of action. The authors show that citizens' preferences reflect differences in the geography of income, production regimes, and institutional organization. The heterogeneity of constituencies' redistribution preferences combined with a diverse economic geography helps to explain why political constraints on national governments prevent them from engaging in further fiscal integration. By contrast, externalities among member states shift the preferences of citizens who may experience negative effects and make international redistribution politically feasible. The authors analyze these two mechanisms and present novel empirical results on the determinants of preferences for fiscal integration and international redistribution in the aftermath of the eurocrisis.","PeriodicalId":48266,"journal":{"name":"World Politics","volume":"72 1","pages":"639 - 678"},"PeriodicalIF":5.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1017/S0043887120000118","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47461346","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}