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"Political alliance"
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Deflecting economic sanctions: do trade and political alliances matter?
Success of economic sanctions hinges on their impact on sanctioned countries’ trade. This, in turn, depends on the sanctioned country’s opportunity to divert trade to a third party (a country not involved in sanctions). History is witness to third parties facilitating trade diversion, thus busting sanction. Nonetheless, literature does not present conclusive evidence on trade diversion or on motivation for busting sanctions. Therefore, in this paper, we address the following: What bearing do sanctions have on bilateral trade flows and trade diversion? Is diversion dependent on the political and trade alliance third-party shares with the sanctioned and/or the sanctioning countries? We estimate a structural gravity model for globally representative country-dyads, during 1990–2019, using inter-alia the Global Sanctions Database. We find that sanctions depress bilateral trade between sanctioned and sanctioning nations and cause trade diversion via third party. The existence of trade alliance between third party and country involved in sanction has an additional impact on trade diversion. Furthermore, a political alliance between third party and sanctioned country heightens trade between them. However, political alliance between third party and sanctioning country does not explain trade between them. Our findings offer insights into India’s trade relations with Russia, since 2022, when Russia was subject to US-led sanctions.
Journal Article
China's strategic partnerships in Latin America
This study examines how China has developed a diplomatic mechanism to expand its international influence through the establishment of strategic partnerships. These strategic partnerships have sparked a debate among analysts. On the one hand, some optimistic studies applaud the win-win objective of China’s foreign policy and portray China as a successful model for developing countries. On the other hand, more skeptical studies depict China as a rising imperial power that represents a competitive threat to Latin America. This book focuses on China’s strategic partnerships with Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela within the oil sector. It stresses how Chinese strategic partnerships with each of these four countries have diverged across cases over time (1991–2015). The study finds that the strategic partnerships are asymmetrical in which China benefits more than four Latin American countries in a variety of aspects. I suggest Latin American countries to push for greater diversification of export agenda toward China, to develop new productive partnerships beyond traditional sectors and to increase the competitiveness of firms. Meanwhile, China’s diplomatic actions toward Latin America are more than likely to result in forms of change, particularly across my four country cases, and where strategic partnerships are concerned.
eBook
Commitment Problems in Alliance Formation
If military alliances cause significant shifts in the distribution of power, why does anticipation of their formation or expansion provoke hostility from adversaries in some cases and not others? We develop a theory to explain this variation, advancing three arguments about the connection between alliances, commitment problems and war. First, we show that prospective allies can avoid provoking a common enemy by offering concessions to offset losses from an anticipated power shift from an alliance. Second, limits to an alliance’s power or implementation speed may make such bargains possible. Allies manipulate these factors to set the terms of cooperation to avoid provoking a shared enemy. Finally, when such bargains are not possible, incentives for preventive war exist but the outbreak of such wars may be avoided. Although preventive war cannot be ruled out altogether, the conditions that make it most attractive also make it unlikely to be carried out.
Journal Article
Signaling Alliance Commitments: Hand-Tying and Sunk Costs in Extended Nuclear Deterrence
How can states signal their alliance commitments? Although scholars have developed sophisticated theoretical models of costly signaling in international relations, we know little about which specific policies leaders can implement to signal their commitments. This article addresses this question with respect to the extended deterrent effects of nuclear weapons. Can nuclear states deter attacks against their friends by simply announcing their defense commitments? Or must they deploy nuclear weapons on a protégé's territory before an alliance is seen as credible? Using a new dataset on foreign nuclear deployments from 1950 to 2000, our analysis reveals two main findings. First, formal alliances with nuclear states appear to carry significant deterrence benefits. Second, however, stationing nuclear weapons on a protégé's territory does not bolster these effects. The analysis yields new insights about the dynamics of \"hand-tying\" and \"sunk cost\" signals in international politics.
Journal Article
Elite Change without Regime Change: Authoritarian Persistence in Africa and the End of the Cold War
Because the end of the Cold War failed to produce widespread democratic transitions, it is often viewed as having had only a superficial effect on Africa’s authoritarian regimes. We show this sentiment to be incorrect. Focusing on the elite coalitions undergirding autocracies, we argue that the end of the Cold War sparked profound changes in the constellation of alliances within regimes. It was an international event whose ripple effects altered the domestic political landscape and thereby enticed elite coalitions to transform and meet the new existential threat they faced. We demonstrate our argument using cabinets as a proxy for elite coalitions, showing that their composition drastically changed at the end of the Cold War. Africa’s authoritarian leaders dismissed many of the core members of their cabinets and increasingly appointed members of opposition parties to cabinet portfolios. Such changes, we argue, represent the dynamic responses that enabled autocracies to persist.
Journal Article
Going global? CEO political ideology and the choice between international alliances and international acquisitions
Drawing on upper echelons theory and political science research, we investigate how CEO political ideology influences a firm’s choice between international alliances and international acquisitions as an entry mode into foreign markets. Due to their ideological differences, we find that firms led by more liberal CEOs are more likely to use international alliances when entering a foreign market while firms led by more conservative CEOs are more likely to use international acquisitions as an entry mode choice. We also examine how these political preferences of CEOs can be mitigated by more vigilant boards. We find that the effect of CEO political ideology on the choice between international alliances and international acquisitions is mitigated by greater board independence and greater independent director shareholdings in the firm. However, contrary to our expectations, we find that separating the CEO and board chair positions has no effect on this relationship, suggesting that CEOs’ political preferences shape such choices regardless of whether CEOs are also the chair of the board. In general, our findings indicate the importance of CEO political values as a predictor of a firm’s approach to foreign market entry strategies.
Journal Article
NETWORKS IN CONFLICT: THEORY AND EVIDENCE FROM THE GREAT WAR OF AFRICA
We study from both a theoretical and an empirical perspective how a network of military alliances and enmities affects the intensity of a conflict. The model combines elements from network theory and from the politico-economic theory of conflict. We obtain a closed-form characterization of the Nash equilibrium. Using the equilibrium conditions, we perform an empirical analysis using data on the Second Congo War, a conflict that involves many groups in a complex network of informal alliances and rivalries. The estimates of the fighting externalities are then used to infer the extent to which the conflict intensity can be reduced through (i) dismantling specific fighting groups involved in the conflict; (ii) weapon embargoes; (iii) interventions aimed at pacifying animosity among groups. Finally, with the aid of a random utility model, we study how policy shocks can induce a reshaping of the network structure.
Journal Article
Ethnic Politics and Women's Empowerment in Africa: Ministerial Appointments to Executive Cabinets
Under what conditions do women participate in executive power in multiethnic societies? Previous research has examined how political institutions, socioeconomic factors, and cultural norms affect the appointment of women as cabinet ministers. However, no study has assessed the extent to which the politicization of ethnicity—a cleavage that shapes political life in many countries—affects women's cabinet appointments. Focusing on sub-Saharan Africa, we argue that women are less likely to become cabinet ministers where incumbents use such appointments to build patronage-based alliances with politicians who act as advocates for ethnic constituencies. Using an original dataset on the composition of cabinets in 34 African countries from 1980 to 2005, we show that women's share of cabinet appointments is significantly lower in countries where leaders must accommodate a larger number of politicized ethnic groups, but it rises with higher levels of democracy and greater representation of women in parliament.
Journal Article
Choosing an appropriate alliance governance mode: The role of institutional, cultural and geographical distance in international research & development (R&D) collaborations
We identify a variety of R&D alliance modes in a knowledge-intensive industry (e.g., Pharmaceuticals), and classify them into four ordered categories which go beyond the traditional binary equity vs non-equity alliance classification. This enriches our understanding of alliance governance structures and broadens the application of alliance modes in what is today a more complicated international R&D collaboration setting. We then explore national, industry and firm factors that determine the selection of an appropriate R&D alliance governance mode, using a sample of 237 international alliance deals. The likelihood of using a more-integrated alliance governance mode decreases as the difference or \"distance\" between nations of the partner firms increases in terms of human capital and cultural distance. On the other hand, a greater geographic and institutional difference is positively associated with the selection of more integrated alliance governance modes. Furthermore, firms in the research stage are more likely to use a more-integrated governance mode, as opposed to firms in the development stage. These findings advance research on alliance governance structure. They reveal the factors affecting the R&D alliance governance mode choice.
Journal Article