CIDCM / IR Workshop on Peace and Conflict
At the CICDM/IR Workshop on Peace and Conflict, researchers present work-in-progress focused on the causes and prevention of conflict between and within states as well as how such conflicts interact with state development.
The CICDM/IR Workshop particularly focuses on research crossing traditional political science boundaries and prides itself on providing insight and comments from a wide range of perspectives. In addition to the University of Maryland community, the CICDM/IR Workshop welcomes papers from other scholars investigating topics relevant to conflict and development.
Workshops are open to all who are interested in International Relations, especially fellow members of the GVPT department. They are generally held five times a semester, on Mondays, from 11:00 - 12:15 p.m., in Chincoteague Hall.
See the schedule below for specific details of a presentation.
Spring 2013 Schedule:
-- Chincoteague 1109 (first floor conference room)
Quddus Z. Snyder, "The Bipolarity of a Unipolar World: Why Secondary Powers Will Stand by America"
Scholars and policymakers have begun to debate the implications of America's eroding relative power position. The conventional wisdom suggests that as the US declines and is unwilling or unable to perform hegemonic functions then systemic instability will follow as security competition intensifies. The nature of a post-hegemonic international order depends on how secondary powers will respond to a weakened US. The conventional wisdom suggests that they are likely to turn on a declining US and oppose and weaken her. This perspective ignores the extent to which secondary powers have come to depend on the US. This article makes the case that secondary powers will increasingly turn to a declining US. They will be more willing to accommodate and cooperate. And can be expected to assume a more significant role in managing world order.
(Postponed from January 28, 2013.)
Download associated paper -- Chincoteague 1109 (first floor conference room)
Mark Shirk, "Beyond Pirates, Terrorists, and Mercenaries: Towards A Relational Typology of Non-State Violence"
Why do actors practicing non-state violence with similar tactics, motivations, structures, or actions still pose different sorts of threats to states? These variations in threat -- their nature, their impact, and their causes -- are still not satisfactorily understood in mainstream IR or security studies. One reason for this shortfall is that most studies essentialize the actors involved, focusing on group attributes at the expense of context. However, the types of threats posed to states vary widely among actors with similar attributes. For instance 'terrorism' can threaten a particular state, be used by a state, or threaten the entire state system. This study focuses on context by typologizing the ways in which violence relates to one or more systemic norms or practices. For the purposes of this study, the practice of sovereignty is foregrounded, creating four ideal-typical relationships between the boundaries of sovereign authority and non-state violence: revisionist, criminal, status quo, and resource. Each presents a different short of threat to the states of their time. The usefulness of this approach is then demonstrated by looking at piracy in the Atlantic from 1650-1730, tracking how a change in threat was caused by a change in context, not the attributes of the pirates.
Jacob Aronson will be the discussant.
-- Chincoteague 1109 (first floor conference room)
Leslie Johns, UCLA, "Fear of Crowds in WTO Disputes: Why Don't More Countries Join as Third Parties?"
WTO members that are affected by a trade dispute can join litigation as a third party and gain access to otherwise private negotiations. Participation has a negligible cost. Yet states rarely join cases as third parties, even when they have a material interest at stake. We construct a formal model of strategic third party participation in the WTO, and arrive at two testable implications. First, participants receive higher utility from dispute outcomes than nonparticipants. Second, despite this apparent advantage, the decision to participate raises the total number of third parties, which lowers the likelihood of early settlement. This creates strategic interdependence: as more states become third parties, the marginal benefit of participation decreases and each state becomes less likely to join. We test our theoretical model by examining each country's decision to participate or not in every WTO dispute since 1995. The findings offer strong support for our model: states shy away from joining when it's too crowded.
-- Chincoteague 1109 (first floor conference room)
Kenneth Schultz, "Are Border Treaties Enforced? Third Party Intervention in Interstate Territorial Conflicts, 1946-2000"
This paper examines whether the generally high rate of compliance with legal agreements over territory can be explained by third-party enforcement. Do third party states, either individually or through organizations, intervene in disputes in such a way that enforces compliance with past treaties? Using data on third-party conflict management efforts in disputes over homeland territory and an empirical estimator that takes into account the possible deterrent effects of such efforts, I show that third parties are less likely to intervene in militarized disputes that violate prior treaties than in disputes that have never been previously resolved. Third party involvement tends to be directed toward the most serious disputes that have the potential to escalate and/or recur -- precisely those disputes in which leaders find it hardest to sign treaties in the first place. Furthermore, an analysis of United Nations Security Council resolutions passed in the context of territorial disputes shows that the organization has never articulated a norm of enforcing past border treaties; rather, its involvement is justified by general norms against the use of force and acquiring territory through violence. As a result, when the Security Council acts, it does so to protect the territorial status quo, regardless of it legal origin. Thus, the association between border treaties and a reduction in subsequent violence cannot be explained by this mechanism.
Bill Reed will be the discussant.
-- Chincoteague 1109 (first floor conference room)
Marianne Dahl, "Why Waves? Global Patterns of Democratization, 1820-2008"
Using a more refined measure of democracy and of political system change we find substantial support for Samuel Huntington's (1991) thesis of democratic waves. Democratic transitions do tend to cluster. After demonstrating that political transitions follow a global wave pattern, we explain why they occur in waves. Reformulating and expanding Huntington's thesis, we hypothesize that a combination of the "stickiness" of certain institutional configurations, the influence of neighboring countries, and shocks to the interstate system such as the world wars are the main explanation of waves, in combination with the slow but certain impact of economic development. Using multinomial logit analyses of political transitions, we find considerable support for these hypotheses.
Kathleen Cunningham will be the discussant.
If you have questions, or would like to present a paper, please e-mail Prof. Scott Kastner.