Local Politics, Global Consequences: How Structural Imbalance in Domestic Political Networks Affects International Relations
Journal: The Journal of Politics
Year: 2022

When do domestic events affect international relations? Our answer to this puzzle emphasizes patterns of interaction in domestic networks. Leaders depend on coalitions of subnational actors—civilians, parties, militaries, and so on—for political survival. Structural imbalance emerges when the higher-order relations of subnational actors contradict their revealed preferences, such as when actors cooperate with enemies of friends or conflict with friends of friends. Imbalance generates uncertainty