bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Derogatory Group Labeling
Authors: Carnaghi Andrea , Bianchi Mauro
Published: September 2017

Intergroup relations shape group members’ linguistic choices, and group members’ language molds the quality of intergroup relations. Indeed, intergroup relations are often connoted by conflict, asymmetrical status, and prejudice, and the quality of intergroup relations dramatically affects the manner in which people speak about individual members and groups as a whole. Conversely, the language people rely on to address individual members and groups contributes to maintain—and in certain cases even enhances—intergroup conflict and discrimination.

Among the different forms of biased language and derogatory group labels are epithets, short tags that convey negative attitudes, and dehumanizing representations of the members or groups they address. Racial slurs, homophobic epithets, and sexist labels can be interpreted by addressing the perspective of the users, the audience, and the victim. Taking into account the user perspective, derogatory group labels express discriminatory and negative attitudes toward specific groups and communicate that the targeted individual is deviating from what is normatively expected. As far as the audience is concerned, the incidental overhearing of these labels affects the cognitive accessibility of semantic knowledge associated with the targeted group, influences the perception of the targeted individual, and strengthens intergroup biases. Finally, being the victim of these labels can negatively affect the well-being of the targeted individual by eliciting negative affect, self-directed prejudice, and worries of non-conformity. The discussion and analysis of the relation between intergroup dynamics and labeling provide the reader with crucial information to handle the current debate on politically correct speech.
Linguistic Bias
Authors: Beukeboom Camiel J. , Burgers Christian
Published: September 2017

Social categorization and stereotypes play a pervasive and fundamental role in social perception, judgment, and interaction. Although stereotypes are functional by allowing us to make sense of our complex social environment, their use can promote prejudice and discrimination when individuals are treated based on generic stereotypic expectancies, rather than on available individuating information. Prejudice and discrimination emerge from generalized (negative) stereotypic associations that people hold about social categories. These stereotypes become socially shared within (sub)cultures through communications about categorized people and their behavior. Research on biased language use reveals the communicative and linguistic processes through which stereotypes are formed and maintained. When communicating about other people and their behavior, our language echoes the existing stereotypic expectancies we have with categorized individuals (often without our conscious awareness). A linguistic bias is defined as a systematic asymmetry in word choice that reflects the social-category cognitions that are applied to the described group or individual(s). Three types of biases are distinguished in the literature that reveal, and thereby maintain, social-category cognitions and stereotypes.

First, when labeling individuals, the types of category labels that we choose reflect existing social category cognitions. Second, once target individuals are labeled as members of a category, people tend to communicate predominantly stereotype-congruent information (rather than incongruent information). Third, research has revealed several biases in how we formulate information about categorized individuals. These formulation differences (e.g., in language abstraction, explanations, use of negations, irony) subtly reveal whether a target’s behavior was stereotypically expected or not. Behavioral information that is in line with social-category knowledge (i.e., stereotype-consistent) is formulated differently compared to incongruent information (i.e., stereotype-inconsistent).

In addition, when communicating with individuals we have categorized in a given social category, our language may subtly reveal the stereotypic expectancies we have about our conversation partners. It is important to be aware of these stereotype maintaining biases as they play an important role in consensualizing both benevolent and harmful stereotypes about social categories.
Dress Style Code and Fashion
Authors: Keblusek Lauren , Giles Howard
Published: September 2017

Forms of dress, ranging from runway fashions and sports jerseys to traditional cultural apparel and religious garb, are central to contemporary social life and are intimately connected to issues of personal and social identity, communicating to others who we are or who we would like to be. Given this, dress style is a subject worthy of serious scholarly inquiry, particularly within the field of intergroup communication. Dress style—as well as other bodily accoutrements—has received some attention in disciplines across the social sciences, but has received less attention among those studying intergroup relations and communication. Prominent intergroup communication theories, such as social identity, uncertainty identity, and communication accommodation theories, teach us that clothing choices can reflect actual or desired group affiliations, demarcating group boundaries, shaping and reinforcing social identities, and influencing our perceptions of others. Dress style can also stem from a desire to reduce identity uncertainty, serving as a conduit for personal expression and self-discovery. Overall, intergroup dynamics play a prominent role in shaping dress style and body adornment practices across the globe.
Seeking and Avoiding Media: Intergroup Approaches
Authors: Johnson Benjamin K.
Published: September 2017

Media users exercise control over their information and entertainment environments. Selective exposure to media allows individual to choose channels and messages that satisfy their interests and motivations. A variety of selective exposure studies have assessed selective exposure to messages about ingroup versus outgroup members. Relevant theoretical perspectives include information seeking, confirmation bias, informational utility, self and affect management, reinforcing spirals, boundary expansion, exemplification, and social comparison. Each of these theories of selective exposure identifies an attitudinal or self-conceptual basis for media use yet also allows for the role of social identity or beliefs about intergroup members and interactions. In addition, the distinction between selective exposure and selective avoidance is critical for understanding intergroup media contact, as is the distinction between positive and negative portrayals of relevant social groups. Applicable findings from survey and experimental studies illustrate that age identity, sex and gender identity, and race and ethnicity all produce patterns of selective exposure in which ingroups are generally favored. Information about outgroups is more likely to be selected if it suits the situational or dispositional needs of the individual. Partisan selective exposure is also examined from an intergroup perspective, as is selective exposure to information about aspirational future selves and self-expansion. Depictions of persons that exemplify social groups or allow for social comparison are also discussed, yet little direct evidence exists about exposure to outgroup members in these processes. Finally, interpersonal new media are considered with regard to intergroup contact. Immersive media such as virtual reality provide interactive contact with outgroups, and social identity plays an important role in the distribution of user-generated content, the cultivation of online social networks, and the ongoing convergence between mass and social media. Selective exposure researchers are increasingly considering intergroup contact as an important type of media content relevant to their theories, and intergroup contact researchers are increasingly accounting for the selectivity factor in media processing and effects. Integrating key findings and building a more programmatic approach to this topic will enhance the understanding of individuals’ self-selected exposure to media about (and produced by) outgroups. Indeed, for intergroup media contact to be successful in producing less stereotyping, more positive attitudes, and more intergroup harmony, media users must first choose to come into contact with messages about outgroup members, specifically messages that can convey and produce beneficial effects for intergroup relations.
Media Portrayals and Effects: Latinos
Authors: Sink Alexander , Mastro Dana
Published: September 2017

The media have long been criticized for the manner in which racial and ethnic groups have been (and continue to be) represented in its content. Characterizations of Latinos are no exception. Issues regarding portrayals of Latinos in the media have garnered considerable attention over the decades, prompting the establishment of the National Latino Media Council in 1999. The self-stated mission of this conglomeration of 12 Latino civil rights and advocacy groups has been to increase Latino employment in media industries and reduce the stereotypical depictions that harm Latino communities. If current social scientific evidence is any indication, the objectives of this organization remain as timely and socially important today as they were when the organization was formed. Existing quantitative research concerning the prevalence and quality of portrayals of Latinos in the media, as well as studies examining the effects of exposure to this content, reveal predominately harmful patterns of results (which, of course, depend on the quality and nature of the content). Content analyses that have documented representations of Latinos in media across various platforms conclude that Latinos are underrepresented in the media and frequently presented in stereotypical ways, though blatant stereotypes appear to be declining in the most recent examinations of these portrayals. Empirical investigations into the effects of exposure to these characterizations (on both Latino and non-Latino audiences) demonstrate that media images can influence audience members in terms of numerous cognitive, attitudinal, and behavioral outcomes. Importantly (and unsurprisingly), there appear to be substantive differences in how Latino and non-Latino audiences react to such messages. Although many studies of media effects in this context are focused on the harmful implications of exposure (e.g., stereotyping, discrimination, the exacerbation of interethnic tensions), a small body of work also demonstrates that pro-social outcomes can emerge based on media exposure, especially (but not exclusively) in the contexts of health, education, and political decision-making.
Weight and Weightism
Authors: Arroyo Analisa , Andersen Kristin
Published: September 2017

Weight-based stigma is pervasive and is propagated via sociocultural and interpersonal messages that influence individuals’ identity. The ideals communicated in these messages place disproportionate value on appearance and have made weight an important component of attractiveness. Some cultures, particularly Western culture, hold a bias toward thin bodies and promote a bias against those who do not fit cultural ideals of slender or lean body shapes. This bias, judgment, stigma, prejudice, and discrimination toward individuals based on their size, shape, or weight is known as weightism. Most of the research regarding weightism has been conducted on obesity and overweight individuals because of the related public health concerns. However, because weight is a continuum on which individuals are frequently evaluated, stigmatization is experienced by individuals who are either over or under cultural norms for appropriate weight and toward those who engage in deviant weight-control behaviors (e.g., purging). Thus, because individuals with eating disorders are often underweight and have deviant eating behaviors, they also experience weight-based stigma and discrimination. There are a multitude of negative effects associated with being a part of these stigmatized weight groups, including lower self-esteem, less social confidence, greater body dissatisfaction, poorer mental health, and increased substance use and self-harm behaviors. These negative outcomes create a social divide between the stigmatized weight groups and others, wherein stigmatized individuals turn to negative health behaviors (e.g., bingeing and purging) in an effort to cope with their negative social experiences. Subsequently, they perpetuate their affiliation with their stigmatized weight group and the related health conditions.
Deception in Intergroup Communication
Authors: Dunbar Norah E.
Published: September 2017

Deception is the act of knowingly leading another person or persons to hold a false belief. Deception researchers have examined deception primarily as an interpersonal action between one person and another in an interpersonal context. The focus has been on the detectability of deception through verbal or nonverbal cues and the relational consequences of discovered deception in myriad situations. Rarely has deception been explored at the intergroup level. Intergroup deception consists of one group (or a representative of a group) lying to another during a situation in which social categories are highly salient. The primary difference between intergroup deception and interpersonal deception is to be found in the identity for each actor. Interpersonal deception suggests a shared underlying identity, while intergroup deception implies divergent identities. Politicians who lie to their constituents, a union representative lying to the management during a labor negotiation, or two ambassadors lying to each other while attempting to resolve a conflict between their two nations each would be considered intergroup lies if actors see themselves as primarily representing their larger social group rather than themselves as individuals. While studies of intergroup deceptions are relatively rare, there has been important work done in at least three different contexts: in communication between members of different cultures, communication between political or military factions, and communication between corporate entities where each actor represents not only their personal interests, but also those of their organization. In these cases, the communicators each represent a potentially hostile “other.” Earning trust in a situation of out-group engagement is a difficult endeavor, and the study of intergroup deception explores how trust is earned in such situations and how deceptive communication is judged when the parties represent opposing forces.
Vitality Theory
Authors: Smith Benjamin King , Ehala Martin , Giles Howard
Published: September 2017

Group vitality is a widely invoked construct in the study of minority language maintenance and interethnic relations. Per the original framework introduced 40 years ago, the more vitality an ethnolinguistic group perceives itself to have, the more likely that it will thrive as a collective entity in an intergroup context. Consequently, research adopting this paradigm—herein termed vitality theory—has studied ways in which objective and subjective group vitality has manifested itself in the endurance of ethnolinguistic groups. The notion of objective vitality includes the factors of demographics, institutional support, and status that characterize the strength of a group in comparison to others present in an intergroup setting. Contrastively, subjective vitality was introduced to highlight how groups may cognitively and affectively perceive these same factors.

A large body of empirical research has been conducted within the vitality theory framework that has resulted in several stages of development. Evidence has shown that while the components of objective vitality (demographics, institutional support, status) do not typically manifest themselves as distinct components in the structure of subjective vitality, they do form a single component reflecting the perceived strength of the group. In addition, several other social psychological factors, such as perception of the legitimacy of intergroup relations, the level of ethnocentrism, and perception of intergroup distance, were incorporated into models of subjective vitality. Relatedly, these factors are shaped into group members’ discourse of vitality, which is a highly dialogical process of negotiation of subjective vitality of the groups engaged in intergroup contact.

The vitality framework has been usefully invoked beyond ethnolinguistic groups, embracing several intergroup settings including age, gender, and sexual orientation. Vitality, which has provoked some controversy in the literature, has also been widely adopted by very different approaches as an umbrella term to denote the long-term sustainability of a group. Scholars in linguistics, sociology, psychology, education, anthropology, and beyond have contributed much to the concept, helping to educate and raise awareness as to why languages die out and the effects of such languages dying out.
Health Care Teams as Agents for Change in Health and Risk Messaging
Authors: Real Kevin , Pilny Andy
Published: September 2017

Effective communication in health care teams is central to the delivery of high-quality, safe, dependable, and efficient patient care. Understanding how health care team communication operates within healthcare systems is important. Viewing health care teams in hospital settings as creators and channels for diffusions of health and risk messages is an important contribution to health communication scholarship. Health care teams are essential elements of healthcare systems. In many instances, they are components of multiteam systems embedded within larger network ecosystems. These teams are not identical, thus, considering how team type (e.g., unidisciplinary, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary) shapes distinct communication processes offers a better understanding of how these teams facilitate health and risk message diffusion. TeamSTEPPS is an important framework for essential teamwork behaviors that facilitate team processes in healthcare systems. Significantly, we develop specific communication competencies drawn from observation work that facilitate health care team effectiveness. Ideas developed by Kurt Lewin are utilized to consider how different types of multiteam systems can be effective as channels and facilitators of health and risk messages. We end the chapter with examples from field research. A set of hospital nursing unidisciplinary teams comprise a network of teams that form a heterarchical structure with important messages flowing between teams. An innovative form of hospital interdisciplinary rounds relies on specific communication practices to create and exchange health and risk messages to patients, families, health care team members, and other healthcare stakeholders.
Active Involvement Interventions in Health and Risk Messaging
Authors: Greene Kathryn , Banerjee Smita C. , Ray Anne E. , Hecht Michael L.
Published: September 2017

Results of national epidemiologic surveys indicate that substance use rates among adolescents remain relatively steady or even show slight declines; however, some substance use rates, such as electronic cigarettes, are actually rising. Thus, the need for efficacious drug prevention efforts in the United States remains high. Active Involvement (AI) interventions are a promising avenue for preventing and reducing adolescent substance use, and they create opportunities for adolescents to experience a core feature of engagement that is common to these interventions, such as producing videos, posters, or radio ads; or generating themes and images for messages such as posters.

Existing interventions grounded in theories of Active Involvement include programs delivered face-to-face and via e-learning platforms. Narrative Engagement Theory and the Theory of Active Involvement guide the components of change in AI interventions. Youth develop message content during participation in Active Involvement interventions. Advanced analytic models can be applied to address new research questions related to the measure of components of AI interventions.
Mental Models of Risk
Authors: Bostrom Ann
Published: September 2017

Mental models of health risks are the causal beliefs that comprise one’s inference engines for the interpretation and prediction of health and illness experiences and messages. Mental models of health risks can be parsed into a handful of common elements, including beliefs about causes, consequences, and cures as well as identifying information such as symptoms and timing. Mental models research deriving from a risk and decision analysis framework emphasizes exposure sources and pathways as part of causal thinking as well as how interventions may reduce or increase the risk. Mental models can be developed as a function of one’s goals or the problem in a specific context, rather than as coherent, stable knowledge structures in long-term memory. For this reason they can be piecemeal and inconsistent in the absence of expertise or experience with the risk. Derived often by analogy with more familiar risks, mental models of health risks can lead to effective health behaviors but also to costly inaction or misplaced action. Assessing mental models of hazardous processes can contribute to the design of effective risk communications by identifying the concrete information message recipients need to cope with health risks, thereby making or strengthening common-sense links between risk and action representations. Although a wide variety of research methods are used to investigate mental models, achieving this level of specificity requires attention to substantive details. Researchers are beginning to better understand the interactions between mental models of risk and their social, cultural, and physical contexts, but much remains to explore.
Absent Information in Integrative Environmental and Health Risk Communication
Authors: Lyytimäki Jari , Assmuth Timo
Published: September 2017

Communication is typically understood in terms of what is communicated. However, the importance of what is intentionally or unintentionally left out from the communication process is high in many fields, notably in communication about environmental and health risks. The question is not only about the absolute lack of information. The rapidly increasing amount and variability of available data require actors to identify, collect, and interpret relevant information and screen out irrelevant or misleading messages that may lead to unjustified scares or hopes and other unwanted consequences. The ideal of balanced, integrative, and careful risk communication can only rarely be seen in real-life risk communication, shaped by competition and interaction between actors emphasizing some risks, downplaying others, and leaving many kinds of information aside, as well as by personal factors such as emotions and values, prompting different types of responses. Consequently, risk communication is strongly influenced by the characteristics of the risks themselves, the kinds of knowledge on them and related uncertainties, and the psychological and sociocultural factors shaping the cognitive and emotive responses of those engaged in communication. The physical, economic, and cultural contexts also play a large role. The various roles and factors of absent information in integrative environmental and health risk communication are illustrated by two examples. First, health and environmental risks from chemicals represent an intensively studied and widely debated field that involves many types of absent information, ranging from purposeful nondisclosure aimed to guarantee public safety or commercial interests to genuinely unknown risks caused by long-term and cumulative effects of multiple chemicals. Second, light pollution represents an emerging environmental and health issue that has gained only limited public attention even though it is associated with a radical global environmental change that is very easy to observe. In both cases, integrative communication essentially involves a multidimensional comparison of risks, including the uncertainties and benefits associated with them, and the options available to reduce or avoid them. Public debate and reflection on the adequacy of risk information and on the needs and opportunities to gain and apply relevant information is a key issue of risk management. The notion of absent information underlines that even the most widely debated risk issues may fall into oblivion and re-emerge in an altered form or under different framings. A typology of types of absent information based on frameworks of risk communication can help one recognize its reasons, implications, and remediation.
Health-Related Warning Message Processing
Authors: Mayhorn Christopher B. , Wogalter Michael S.
Published: September 2017

Warnings are risk communication messages that can appear in a variety of situations within the healthcare context. Potential target audiences for warnings can be very diverse and may include health professionals such as physicians or nurses as well as members of the public. In general, warnings serve three distinct purposes. First, warnings are used to improve health and safety by reducing the likelihood of events that might result in personal injury, disease, death, or property damage. Second, they are used to communicate important safety-related information. In general, warnings likely to be effective should include a description of the hazard, instructions on how to avoid the hazard, and an indication of the severity of consequences that might occur as a result of not complying with the warning. Third, warnings are used to promote safe behavior and reduce unsafe behavior. Various regulatory agencies within the United States and around the globe may take an active role in determining the content and formatting of warnings.

The Communication-Human Information Processing (C-HIP) model was developed to describe the processes involved in how people interact with warnings and other information. This framework employs the basic stages of a simple communication model such that a warning message is sent from one entity (source) through some channel(s) to another (receiver). Once warning information is delivered to the receiver, processing may be initiated, and if not impeded, will continue through several stages including attention switch, attention maintenance, comprehension and memory, beliefs and attitudes, and motivation, possibly ending in compliance behavior. Examples of health-related warnings are presented to illustrate concepts. Methods for developing and evaluating warnings such as heuristic evaluation, iterative design and testing, comprehension, and response times are described.
Constitutional Law
Authors: Tschentscher Axel
Published: September 2017

Research on constitutional law has come in different waves mirroring the development of states in recent decades. While the decolonization period of the 1960s still kept the old ties of constitutional “families,” comparison based on such ties has become ever less persuasive since the 1980s wave of constitution making following the fall of the Berlin Wall. Research about de facto and de jure constitutional law now tends to embrace institutional details like judicial review powers and procedures of direct democracy. The field of comparative constitutional law is controversial both in methods and substance. It still lacks a consistent framework of comparative tools and is criticized as illegitimate by scholars who insist on the interpretive autonomy within each constitutional system.

Research in the area of fundamental rights has to deal with long-lasting controversies like the constitutionality of the death penalty. Bioethical regulation is another new field where constitutional positions tend to diverge rather than converge. Embryonic stem cell research, therapeutic cloning, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, and surrogate motherhood are examples from biotechnology and reproductive medicine where constitutional scholars disagree about what, if anything, constitutional law can contribute to provide a basis or limit for regulation. With the worldwide rise of constitutional courts and judicial review, the standards for the interpretation of fundamental rights become more important. Legal scholarship has worked out the differences between the rule-oriented approach associated with Anglo-American legal systems versus the principle-based approach common to continental Europe.
More Than Mixed Results: What We Have Learned From Quantitative Research on the Diversionary Hypothesis
Authors: Fordham Benjamin O.
Published: September 2017

In the three decades since Jack Levy published his seminal review essay on the topic, there has been a great deal of quantitative research on the proposition that state leaders can use international conflict to enhance their political prospects at home. The findings of this work are frequently described as “mixed” or “inconsistent.” This characterization is superficially correct, but it is also misleading in some important respects. Focusing on two of Levy’s most important concerns about previous research, there has been substantial progress in our understanding of this phenomenon.

First, as Levy suggests in his essay, researchers have elaborated a range of different mechanisms linking domestic political trouble with international conflict rather than a single diversionary argument. Processes creating diversionary incentives bear a family resemblance to one another but can have different behavioral implications. Four of them are (1) in-group/out-group dynamics, (2) agenda setting, (3) leader efforts to demonstrate competence in foreign policy, and (4) efforts to blame foreign leaders or perhaps domestic minorities for problems. In addition, researchers have identified some countervailing mechanisms that may inhibit state leaders’ ability to pursue diversionary strategies, the most important of which is the possibility that potential targets may strategically avoid conflict with leaders likely to behave aggressively.

Second, research has identified scope conditions that limit the applicability of diversionary arguments, another of Levy’s concerns about the research he reviewed. Above all, diversionary uses of military force (though not other diversionary strategies) may be possible for only a narrow range of states. Though very powerful states may pursue such a strategy against a wide range of targets, the leaders of less powerful states may have this option only during fairly serious episodes of interstate hostility, such as rivalries and territorial disputes. A substantial amount of research has focused exclusively on the United States, a country that clearly has the capacity to pursue this strategy. While the findings of this work cannot be generalized to many other states, they have revealed some important nuances in the processes that create diversionary incentives. The extent to which these incentives hinge on highly specific political and institutional characteristics point to the difficulty of applying realistic diversionary arguments to a large sample of states. Research on smaller, more homogenous samples or individual states is more promising, even though it will not produce an answer to the broad question of how prevalent diversionary behavior is. As with many broad questions about political phenomena, the only correct answer may be “it depends.” Diversionary foreign policy happens, but not in the same way in every instance and not in every state in the international system.
Rediscovering Reputation Through Theory and Evidence
Authors: Crescenzi Mark J. C. , Donahue Bailee
Published: September 2017

Reputation as it applies to the arena of international relations is information adhering to a state or its leaders about behavioral or intentional characteristics relating to cooperation or conflict. The study of reputation in world politics has waxed and waned in recent decades, but is enjoying a renaissance both in terms of theoretical and empirical analysis. We review the origins of the study of reputation in world politics, as well as the post-Cold War context that contributed to reputation’s apparent demise. We then focus on the recent rediscovery of reputation through the development of new theoretical and empirical analyses. These works have overcome earlier challenges to the conceptualization and measurement of reputation to improve our understanding of how this phenomenon affects coordination, cooperation, and conflict among and between states in the international arena.
Constructing a General Model Accounting for Interstate Rivalry Termination
Authors: Thompson William R.
Published: September 2017

Unlike many topics in international relations, a large number of models characterize interstate rivalry termination processes. But many of these models tend to focus on different parts of the rivalry termination puzzle. It is possible, however, to create a general model built around a core of shocks, expectation changes, reciprocity, and reinforcement. Twenty additional elements can be linked as alternative forms of catalysts/shocks and perceptual shifts or as facilitators of the core processes. All 24 constituent elements can be encompassed by the general model, which allows for a fair amount of flexibility in delineating alternative pathways to rivalry de-escalation and termination at different times and in different places. The utility of the unified model is then applied in an illustrative fashion to the Anglo-American rivalry, which ended early in the 20th century.
Multiple Streams in Foreign Policy
Authors: Zahariadis Nikolaos
Published: September 2017

The Multiple Streams Approach (MSA) builds on the organizational process tradition by (1) unpacking the organizational process “paradigm,” (2) maintaining emphasis on “governmental action as organizational output,” and (3) stressing the importance of ambiguity and temporal sorting as essential blocks of policy making. Operating at the systemic level, it is an actor-centered approach. It conceptualizes foreign policy choice as being made at the system—government—level and is the result of coupling three streams by policy entrepreneurs—policies, problems, and politics—during open policy windows. It differs from traditional models of foreign policy making by stressing process over outcome and stands between the rational and cognitive schools of foreign policy making. The empirical literature finds the MSA is a good candidate to bridge the divide between domestic and foreign policy, shedding light on debates of small versus large state foreign policy behavior by utilizing both qualitative and quantitative techniques.
Arms Buildups and the Use of Military Force
Authors: Mitchell David F. , Pickering Jeffrey
Published: September 2017

The empirical literature on arms buildups and the use of interstate military force has advanced considerably over the last half century. Research has largely confirmed that a relationship exists between arms buildups and the subsequent use of force, although it is historically contingent. The relationship seems to have existed in some earlier historical periods but has not been a feature of international politics since 1945. Broader work such as the steps-to-war model brings understanding to such variation by demonstrating how arms races are interrelated with other causes of conflict, such as territorial disputes and alliances. Still, many important dimensions of the arms race–conflict connection remain to be explored. Differences between qualitative and quantitative arms races, for example, have not received sufficient empirical scrutiny. Precise theory also needs to be developed on direct and indirect relationships between arms races and conflict, and such theory requires empirical investigation.
Multilateralism, Bilateralism, and Unilateralism in Foreign Policy
Authors: Tago Atsushi
Published: September 2017

International relations scholars have long been working on how diplomacy can be understood by distinguishing diplomatic interactions in terms of multilateralism, bilateralism, and unilateralism. The so-called quantity-based approach focuses on the numbers of countries involved. Applying this framework, multilateralism needs more than three states in interactions; bilateralism needs two states; and unilateralism can be pursued by only a single state. However, there are more quality-based approaches to distinguish these interactions. Multilateralism requires states to follow international norms and pay more respect to international institutions; this is contrasted with unilateralism, where a single state can influence how international relations can be conducted. To understand multilateralism in foreign policy, it is crucial to understand how international society has developed institutions, norms, and regimes. By contrast, studies of unilateralism and bilateralism tend to focus on how a powerful state conducts its foreign policy by neglecting international institutions and legal constraints. This article introduces some recent evidence-based research on how multilateralism, bilateralism, and unilateralism are selected in a particular foreign policy area such as alliance formation, mediation, and international aid. The article covers how scholars frame research questions in each issue area and analyzes whether there are similarities or differences in research methods, data, and theoretical frameworks.
The “Rally-'Round-the-Flag” Phenomenon and the Diversionary Use of Force
Authors: Murray Shoon
Published: September 2017

The observation that groups unify in the face of common threats is long-standing. At the level of the nation-state, this is called the “rally-'round-the-flag” phenomenon. In the case of the United States, the rally phenomenon is measured as a surge of public approval for the president when the nation is involved in an international crisis.

Two hypotheses have been offered for why this surge of support occurs: (1) patriotism, as individuals respond to a threat by identifying with an in-group, in this case the nation and its president; and (2) opinion leadership, as the information environment changes because opposition leaders fall silent or support the president during a crisis and a portion of the public follows those elite partisan cues.

Through three waves of scholarship, empirical evidence has cumulated about whether, when, why, and how much people rally in response to international crises (although much of the evidence is based on dynamics within the United States). The public’s reaction to a crisis is not automatic; sometimes public approval for the president goes up; other times the president’s approval ratings go down. A positive rally effect is associated with a variety of conditions, such as how prominently the event is reported, whether the White House actively frames the issue, the amount of criticism from opposition elites, and whether the country is at war or has recently concluded a war. The sizes of such rallies are variable, but on average, rallies in response to the deployment of force or international crises are small. Only wars (or other spectacular events like a large-scale terrorist attack) consistently provoke sizable rallies and these big events elicit an emotional reaction from citizens and a self-identification with the nation. Both hypotheses—patriotism and opinion leadership—are helpful in explaining why rallies occur and why they taper off over time.

The “diversionary theory of war” or the “diversionary use of force” is, for obvious reasons, a companion literature to the scholarship on rally effects. The logic is simple: if the public rallies around its leader in the face of external threats, then the possibility exists that politicians will intentionally create crises or deploy military forces or start wars to enhance their own political fortunes. Scholars have spent much effort trying to locate patterns of diversionary behavior by American presidents and other world leaders with inconsistent and inconclusive results.

But the cumulative findings from the rally-'round-the-flag scholarship show that leaders can’t expect much of a public rally from any but the most spectacular of international crises, such as full-scale war. These findings from the rally literature help to explain the lack of consistent empirical support for diversionary theory.
Arms Races: An Assessment of Conceptual and Theoretical Challenges
Authors: Rider Toby J.
Published: September 2017

An “arms race” is a competition over the quality or quantity of military capabilities between states in the international system. The arms race phenomenon has received considerable attention from scholars over many decades because of the ubiquity, throughout history, of states building arms as a means of deterring enemies, but disagreement persists over whether that policy is effective at avoiding war.

The Latin phrase si vis pacem, para bellum, meaning “if you want peace, prepare for war,” dates back to the Roman Empire but the sentiment is likely much older. That states should rapidly build up their militaries in the face of potential threats is a common thread that runs through much of the modern international relations scholarship influenced by realism and deterrence theory. Meeting force with force, the logic went, was the only way to ensure the security or survival of the sovereign state. These states faced a paradox, however, best articulated by the “security dilemma.” Anything a state does in the name of defense, like a rapid military buildup, decreases the security of other states and will be viewed with hostile intent. This set up a debate over competing expectations regarding the relationship between arms races and war (peace). On one hand, deterrence theory posits that rapid arming is necessary to raise the cost of an adversary attacking and, consequently, preserves peace. On the other hand, the spiral model argues that the reality of the security dilemma means that arming produces mistrust, hostility and, thus, increases the likelihood of war. Scholars set out to test these competing hypotheses using large data sets and statistical techniques, but there was widespread disagreement on how to measure arms races, appropriate research design, and the statistical findings were somewhat mixed.

Critics of this approach to studying arms races note a number of important weaknesses. First, scholars primarily focus on the consequences of arms races—whether they lead to war or peace—at the expense of understanding the causes. Those who advance this position believe that a theory of arms race onset might well inform our understanding of their consequences. Second, security dilemma, taken as the primary motivation for arms races, suffers from significant logical flaws. Third, assessment of the arms race-war relationship consists of comparative theory tests of deterrence theory and spiral model, yet these ideas are underdeveloped and expectations oversimplified. More recently, scholarship has shifted the focus from the consequences of arms races to developing theories and empirical tests of their causes. These efforts have been informed by insights from bargaining models of war, and their application to this context holds promise for better future understanding of both the causes and consequences of arms races.
Power Shifts and War
Authors: Souva Mark
Published: September 2017

A large body of theoretical work posits that power shifts or expected power shifts cause war. Power transition theory, cyclic theories of war, preventive war arguments, and the bargaining model of war are discussed in this article. Indeed, shifting power is one of the most popular and venerable explanations for war. Its origins go at least as far back as Thucydides, who famously wrote, “What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta.” Two major points must be discussed. First, there is an impressive correlation between major power war and shifting power, a correlation consistent with the arguments of several systemic theories of war. Second, much of the empirical research examining power shifts and war suffers from endogeneity and model specification concerns. Regarding endogeneity, more effort should be placed on identifying valid instruments and conducting experiments. Regarding model specification, more attention needs to be paid to scope conditions. Shifting power is not expected to cause war in all contexts. Precisely defining the relevant contexts and modeling them empirically is necessary to evaluate the shifting power and war hypothesis.
What Do We Know About Global Financial Crises? Putting IPE and Economics in Conversation
Authors: Lee Michael J.
Published: September 2017

Since the 1970s, financial crises have been a consistent feature of the international economy, warranting study by economists and political scientists alike. Economists have made great strides in their understanding of the dynamics of crises, with two potentially overlapping stories rising to the fore. Global crises appear to occur highly amid global imbalances—when some countries run large current account deficits and others, large surpluses. A second story emphasizes credit booms—financial institutions greatly extend access to credit, potentially leading to bubbles and subsequent crashes.

Global imbalances are, in part, the product of politically contested processes. Imbalances would be impossible if states did not choose to liberalize (or not to liberalize) their capital accounts. Global political structures—whether international institutions seeking to govern financial flows, or hierarchies reflecting an economic power structure among states—also influence the ability of the global system to resolve global imbalances. Indeed, economists themselves are increasingly finding evidence that the international economy is not a flat system, but a network where some states play larger roles than others.

Credit booms, too, and the regulatory structures that produce them, result from active choices by states. The expansion of the financial sector since the 1970s, however, took place amid a crucible of fire. Financial deregulation was the product of interest group knife-fights, states’ vying for position or adapting to technological change, and policy entrepreneurs’ seeking to enact their ideas.

The IPE (international political economy) literature, too, must pay attention to post-2008 developments in economic thought. As financial integration pushes countries to adopt the monetary policies of the money center, the much-discussed monetary trilemma increasingly resembles a dilemma. Whereas economists once thought of expanded access to credit as “financial development,” they increasingly lament the preponderance of “financialized” economies. While the experimentalist turn in political science heralded a great search for cute natural experiments, economists are increasingly turning to the distant past to understand phenomena that have not been seen for some time. Political scientists might benefit from returning to the same grand theory questions, this time armed with more rigorous empirical techniques, and extensive data collected by economic historians.