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 paper shows that elites are vested in the pacification of memory—careful management of the perceived threatening aspects of memory—rather than in its emancipatory potential, with profound implications for everyday material and physical security. People’s production and consumption of memorialization in context of securitized memory reproduce forms of insecurity—in material sense of extractive labor when producing witness testimony or research on memory, in the sense of physical threats when probing silences or challenging hegemonic narratives of the past, and in the form of retraumatization during memorialization. These everyday insecurities constrict the emancipatory and peacebuilding potential of postatrocity memory initiatives, as evidenced by very different types of war–peace transition, mass violence, and political regime. The paper contributes to debates on critical security and everyday IR by theorizing the memory-security nexus as a domain of lived experience in conflict-affected contexts.
{"title":"Does Memory Make Safe in the Wake of Atrocity? Pacification of Violent Pasts, Memory Labor, and Everyday Security","authors":"Andrea Purdeková","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf011","url":null,"abstract":"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 paper shows that elites are vested in the pacification of memory—careful management of the perceived threatening aspects of memory—rather than in its emancipatory potential, with profound implications for everyday material and physical security. People’s production and consumption of memorialization in context of securitized memory reproduce forms of insecurity—in material sense of extractive labor when producing witness testimony or research on memory, in the sense of physical threats when probing silences or challenging hegemonic narratives of the past, and in the form of retraumatization during memorialization. These everyday insecurities constrict the emancipatory and peacebuilding potential of postatrocity memory initiatives, as evidenced by very different types of war–peace transition, mass violence, and political regime. The paper contributes to debates on critical security and everyday IR by theorizing the memory-security nexus as a domain of lived experience in conflict-affected contexts.","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"8 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143744981","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}
Jessica Di Salvatore, Kseniya Oksamytna, Katharina P Coleman
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 reform, strategic communications, and information analysis, among others. Our coding of almost three hundred UN budget documents reveals what kinds of civilian posts member states agree to fund. UNCIPPO data also permit more nuanced analyses of the impact of civilian personnel on mission effectiveness. We illustrate this by re-examining Blair, Di Salvatore, and Smidt's (2023) study of the effect of civilian staff on host country democratization, showing that the observed effect is driven by international staff—countering a surprising negative national staff effect—and that staff in units with democracy-related tasks contribute more significantly to this effect than staff in other units. The dataset opens new avenues for research on peacekeeping operations (for example, on peacekeeping resourcing and effectiveness) and IOs more generally (for instance, on the politics of budgeting, the growth of transnational expertise, and the profiles of international bureaucrats).
{"title":"Introducing the UNCIPPO (UN Civilian Posts in Peacekeeping Operations) Dataset","authors":"Jessica Di Salvatore, Kseniya Oksamytna, Katharina P Coleman","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf021","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf021","url":null,"abstract":"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 reform, strategic communications, and information analysis, among others. Our coding of almost three hundred UN budget documents reveals what kinds of civilian posts member states agree to fund. UNCIPPO data also permit more nuanced analyses of the impact of civilian personnel on mission effectiveness. We illustrate this by re-examining Blair, Di Salvatore, and Smidt's (2023) study of the effect of civilian staff on host country democratization, showing that the observed effect is driven by international staff—countering a surprising negative national staff effect—and that staff in units with democracy-related tasks contribute more significantly to this effect than staff in other units. The dataset opens new avenues for research on peacekeeping operations (for example, on peacekeeping resourcing and effectiveness) and IOs more generally (for instance, on the politics of budgeting, the growth of transnational expertise, and the profiles of international bureaucrats).","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143744960","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}
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 institutions aim to minimize costs, accommodating challenges when cooperation losses are high, and resisting when the risk of contagion is significant. When both risks are large, they face an “accommodation dilemma” and politically charged negotiations with the challenging country. We evaluate this framework with a comparative case study of fourteen referendum-endorsed challenges to international institutions, analyzing cases that varied in cooperation gains at risk and contagion risks. The analysis shows that across a range of different issues and institutions, the framework helps us better understand why member states respond differently to such challenges and why some challenges are resolved easily whereas others become conflictual. By developing a widely applicable theoretical framework and a versatile coding scheme, the paper contributes to a better understanding of how international institutions respond to contestation and the populist and nationalist backlash against global governance.
{"title":"Responding to Unilateral Challenges to International Institutions","authors":"Stefanie Walter, Nicole Plotke-Scherly","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf022","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf022","url":null,"abstract":"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 institutions aim to minimize costs, accommodating challenges when cooperation losses are high, and resisting when the risk of contagion is significant. When both risks are large, they face an “accommodation dilemma” and politically charged negotiations with the challenging country. We evaluate this framework with a comparative case study of fourteen referendum-endorsed challenges to international institutions, analyzing cases that varied in cooperation gains at risk and contagion risks. The analysis shows that across a range of different issues and institutions, the framework helps us better understand why member states respond differently to such challenges and why some challenges are resolved easily whereas others become conflictual. By developing a widely applicable theoretical framework and a versatile coding scheme, the paper contributes to a better understanding of how international institutions respond to contestation and the populist and nationalist backlash against global governance.","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"103 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143744959","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}
Mirko Heinzel, Andreas Kern, Saliha Metinsoy, Bernhard Reinsberg
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 Pakistan. We show that support for IMF programs increases by approximately 24 percent compared to traditional programs when the IMF includes good governance, anti-poverty, climate change, and gender equality measures in its programs. Our results imply that people do not uniformly reject the imposition of policies of global governance institutions but have well-defined preferences over policy measures. Our findings contribute to debates on the backlash against international institutions by highlighting that citizens are willing to accept sovereignty intrusion when they push for policy goals aligned with their policy preferences.
{"title":"Public Support for Green, Inclusive, and Resilient Growth Conditionality in International Monetary Fund Bailouts","authors":"Mirko Heinzel, Andreas Kern, Saliha Metinsoy, Bernhard Reinsberg","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf018","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf018","url":null,"abstract":"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 Pakistan. We show that support for IMF programs increases by approximately 24 percent compared to traditional programs when the IMF includes good governance, anti-poverty, climate change, and gender equality measures in its programs. Our results imply that people do not uniformly reject the imposition of policies of global governance institutions but have well-defined preferences over policy measures. Our findings contribute to debates on the backlash against international institutions by highlighting that citizens are willing to accept sovereignty intrusion when they push for policy goals aligned with their policy preferences.","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"56 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143665846","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}
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. We argue that exit clauses in BITs depend on both domestic uncertainty and international commitment issues. Capital-exporting countries aim to lock in importers to protect their firms, while maintaining withdrawal flexibility to adapt to domestic politics. This trade-off is pressing for governments accountable for public demands. They prefer longer commitments with importers having weak property rights and shorter ones with those having strong protections. Analyzing original dataset of 2,500 BITs, we find that democratically accountable governments adjust BIT duration based on partner states’ credibility. This research enhances understanding of international institutions' durability and negotiations of economic agreements.
{"title":"Balancing International Commitments and Democratic Accountability: Exit Clauses in Investment Agreements","authors":"Tuuli-Anna Huikuri, Sujeong Shim","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf012","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf012","url":null,"abstract":"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. We argue that exit clauses in BITs depend on both domestic uncertainty and international commitment issues. Capital-exporting countries aim to lock in importers to protect their firms, while maintaining withdrawal flexibility to adapt to domestic politics. This trade-off is pressing for governments accountable for public demands. They prefer longer commitments with importers having weak property rights and shorter ones with those having strong protections. Analyzing original dataset of 2,500 BITs, we find that democratically accountable governments adjust BIT duration based on partner states’ credibility. This research enhances understanding of international institutions' durability and negotiations of economic agreements.","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"183 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143641063","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}
Jonathan D Moyer, Collin J Meisel, Adam Szymanski-Burgos, Andrew C Scott, Matteo C M Casiraghi, Alexandra Kurkul, Marianne Hughes, Whitney Kettlun, Kylie X McKee, Austin S Matthews
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 leaders, the Country and Organizational Leader Travel (COLT) dataset, which allows us to present descriptive analysis and assess the monadic and dyadic drivers of foreign travel by HOGS. We find evidence consistent with previous literature explaining the motives of leader travel: development, trade, conflict, institutional co-membership, and regime type. In addition, we show a potential further application of the dataset, presenting original results on the relation between diplomatic visits and international trade. Overall, these data represent a unique indicator of international interaction that cuts across levels of analysis.
{"title":"When Heads of Government and State (HOGS) Fly: Introducing the Country and Organizational Leader Travel (COLT) Dataset Measuring Foreign Travel by HOGS","authors":"Jonathan D Moyer, Collin J Meisel, Adam Szymanski-Burgos, Andrew C Scott, Matteo C M Casiraghi, Alexandra Kurkul, Marianne Hughes, Whitney Kettlun, Kylie X McKee, Austin S Matthews","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf013","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf013","url":null,"abstract":"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 leaders, the Country and Organizational Leader Travel (COLT) dataset, which allows us to present descriptive analysis and assess the monadic and dyadic drivers of foreign travel by HOGS. We find evidence consistent with previous literature explaining the motives of leader travel: development, trade, conflict, institutional co-membership, and regime type. In addition, we show a potential further application of the dataset, presenting original results on the relation between diplomatic visits and international trade. Overall, these data represent a unique indicator of international interaction that cuts across levels of analysis.","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"14 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143635545","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}
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 challenges that undermine their ability to succeed in their roles. This article employs a feminist institutionalist lens to investigate the disconnect between policy and practice, and draws from empirical qualitative data gathered from in-depth interviews with serving and former military GENADs and other stakeholders across twenty-one countries. The article argues that despite strong rhetorical support and a visible global policy framework underpinning the work of GENADs, institutional practices informed by normative assumptions about gender, women, and militaries undermine the effectiveness of the GENAD capability. Through this investigation, this article contributes to conceptual and theoretical understandings around gender-responsive transformation within the organizational and cultural practices of militaries.
{"title":"Military Gender Advisors, Organizational Change, and Transformational Opportunities: The Discrepancy between Policy and Practice","authors":"Eleanor Gordon, Katrina Lee-Koo","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf015","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf015","url":null,"abstract":"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 challenges that undermine their ability to succeed in their roles. This article employs a feminist institutionalist lens to investigate the disconnect between policy and practice, and draws from empirical qualitative data gathered from in-depth interviews with serving and former military GENADs and other stakeholders across twenty-one countries. The article argues that despite strong rhetorical support and a visible global policy framework underpinning the work of GENADs, institutional practices informed by normative assumptions about gender, women, and militaries undermine the effectiveness of the GENAD capability. Through this investigation, this article contributes to conceptual and theoretical understandings around gender-responsive transformation within the organizational and cultural practices of militaries.","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"212 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143576203","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}
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 internal “criticism culture”—the way IOs deal with criticism from their own employees—is an overlooked but crucial variable that can help us explain the lack of learning in IOs. To illustrate this argument, I draw on an in-depth case study of the UN Secretariat and more than 50 interviews with UN staff members. First, I show that the internal criticism culture in the UN Secretariat’s Peace and Security Pillar is repressive and self-restrained. Second, I demonstrate that this criticism culture leads to a double blockade that prevents the organization’s formal learning infrastructure from performing as intended: UN employees do not dare to voice criticism in official formats, and “learning products” are glossed over as they move up the ranks. As a consequence, the IO lacks a necessary stimulus for learning, which results in performance problems.
{"title":"Why International Organizations Don’t Learn: Dissent Suppression as a Source of IO Dysfunction","authors":"Ben Christian","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf008","url":null,"abstract":"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 internal “criticism culture”—the way IOs deal with criticism from their own employees—is an overlooked but crucial variable that can help us explain the lack of learning in IOs. To illustrate this argument, I draw on an in-depth case study of the UN Secretariat and more than 50 interviews with UN staff members. First, I show that the internal criticism culture in the UN Secretariat’s Peace and Security Pillar is repressive and self-restrained. Second, I demonstrate that this criticism culture leads to a double blockade that prevents the organization’s formal learning infrastructure from performing as intended: UN employees do not dare to voice criticism in official formats, and “learning products” are glossed over as they move up the ranks. As a consequence, the IO lacks a necessary stimulus for learning, which results in performance problems.","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"32 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143546346","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}
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 micro-factors feeding into this paradox by analytically disentangling domain-specific personality traits. To explore whether populist leaders’ individual characteristics vary or remain stable in domestic politics and foreign policy, we conduct a novel domain-specific leadership trait analysis of eleven populist chief executives around the globe. On the one hand, we find limited and rather heterogeneous variation in most individual characteristics, including need for power and conceptual complexity. On the other hand, the great majority of profiled leaders display higher foreign self-confidence and higher domestic distrust. We conclude that particular tendencies toward fearful blanket suspicions of other powerful internal actors and more self-assured case-by-case judgments of external counterparts matter to understand why populist decision-makers often produce confrontational domestic but relatively cooperative foreign policy records. These personality-level inferences support recent IR scholarship about the international opportunities for populist leadership, personalistic foreign policy decision-making, and the primarily domestic logic of intermestic “people-versus-elite” politicization.
{"title":"Distrustful in Domestic Politics, Self-Confident in Foreign Policy: The Populist Paradox, Domain-Specific Attention, and Leadership Trait Analysis","authors":"Stephan Fouquet, Klaus Brummer","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf007","url":null,"abstract":"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 micro-factors feeding into this paradox by analytically disentangling domain-specific personality traits. To explore whether populist leaders’ individual characteristics vary or remain stable in domestic politics and foreign policy, we conduct a novel domain-specific leadership trait analysis of eleven populist chief executives around the globe. On the one hand, we find limited and rather heterogeneous variation in most individual characteristics, including need for power and conceptual complexity. On the other hand, the great majority of profiled leaders display higher foreign self-confidence and higher domestic distrust. We conclude that particular tendencies toward fearful blanket suspicions of other powerful internal actors and more self-assured case-by-case judgments of external counterparts matter to understand why populist decision-makers often produce confrontational domestic but relatively cooperative foreign policy records. These personality-level inferences support recent IR scholarship about the international opportunities for populist leadership, personalistic foreign policy decision-making, and the primarily domestic logic of intermestic “people-versus-elite” politicization.","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143547069","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}
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. Firms invest abroad through intermediate shell companies to access the bilateral tax treaty network, reducing their withholding taxes. Because the tax and investment treaty networks overlap extensively, these “tax-planning” firms often gain investment treaty coverage as a side benefit, enabling them to file proxy arbitration in the event of a dispute. Using novel, fine-grained data on the ownership structures of multinational firms, I find evidence in support of the spillover effects theory. The results shed new light on the costs of corporate tax planning, and inform ongoing policy debates about reforming the international investment regime; moreover, they make clear that understanding the true effects of global governance institutions requires attention to how firms strategically change their legal forms to access or avoid them.
{"title":"Spillover Effects in International Law: Evidence from Tax Planning","authors":"Calvin Thrall","doi":"10.1093/isq/sqaf006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/isq/sqaf006","url":null,"abstract":"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. Firms invest abroad through intermediate shell companies to access the bilateral tax treaty network, reducing their withholding taxes. Because the tax and investment treaty networks overlap extensively, these “tax-planning” firms often gain investment treaty coverage as a side benefit, enabling them to file proxy arbitration in the event of a dispute. Using novel, fine-grained data on the ownership structures of multinational firms, I find evidence in support of the spillover effects theory. The results shed new light on the costs of corporate tax planning, and inform ongoing policy debates about reforming the international investment regime; moreover, they make clear that understanding the true effects of global governance institutions requires attention to how firms strategically change their legal forms to access or avoid them.","PeriodicalId":48313,"journal":{"name":"International Studies Quarterly","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.6,"publicationDate":"2025-03-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143546345","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}
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