Publications by Type: Working Paper

Since the late 1990s, the relative weight of ultra–nationalist parties in Russian parliamentary and extra–parliamentary politics has, after reaching a certain peak in the mid–1990s, declined. The paper argues that this trend can, for a number of reasons, not be taken as proof for a lasting evaporation of right–wing extremist ideas from high politics in Russia. In particular, parallel developments within the voluntary sector, namely the emergence of a multifaceted uncivil society, suggest that Russian right–wing extremism may currently experience a period of transition rather than decay. The example of the rise of the notorious neo–fascist Alexander Dugin from a lunatic fringe publicist to a highly placed political advisor with close links to both, the legislative and executive branches of the Russian state, in 1998–2001, is used as an illustration that radically anti-Western ideas will continue to have an impact on Russia's elite thinking, and policies.

This paper — a revision of an earlier draft that was entitled "When Do Special Interests Run Rampant? Disentangling the Role of Elections, Incomplete Information and Checks and Balances in Banking Crises" — develops and tests a model of the effect of political checks and balances on the incentives of elected veto players to cater to special interests. A larger number of veto players reduces political incentives to make deals with special interests, but the effect is declining in the rents available from such deals. Evidence from country responses to banking crises supports these conclusions: governments make smaller fiscal transfers to the financial sector and are less likely to exercise forbearance in dealing with insolvent financial institutions the larger the number of political veto players, conditional on the value of rents at stake. This simple explanation for special interest influence is robust to controls for more subtle institutional effects that are prominent in the literature, including the competitiveness of elections, regime type (presidential versus parliamentary) and electoral rules (majoritarian versus proportional).

To what extent has globalization been a factor in Indonesia's economic turmoil? This essay addresses the question by reviewing the experience of the Indonesian economy as it evolved in the decade before the crisis and since the crisis hit. It starts by reviewing the policies adopted by the Indonesian government as it sought to integrate the economy more closely into the global market place and reviews the outcome of this earlier policy shift. The paper then turns to assess the impact of the Asian financial crisis but broadens the scope to include a review of domestic political and social stability. It traces the country's slow and halting movement towards recovery highlighting the major reasons why the economic collapse was so severe and why the recovery process has been slower than in neighboring countries. It also briefly reviews "pro" and "con" globalization arguments, and assesses the role globalization played in Indonesia's economic collapse, before concluding with lessons that can be drawn from the Indonesian experience. The author also looks at the role of the IMF in managing the crisis drawing upon his own role negotiating with the IMF during the critical period in Indonesia's economic and political history.

This article introduces a theory of ethnic war. It argues that the likelihood of ethnic violence is largely a function of how the principal antagonists—a state and its dissatisfied ethnic minority—think about territory. Attempts to negotiate a resolution short of war will fail when: (1) the ethnic minority demands sovereignty over the territory it occupies, and (2) the state views that territory as indivisible. Ethnic war is less likely to break out if only one of these conditions is met, and very unlikely if neither condition is met. The article first introduces a theory to explain ethnic war. It then presents a statistical analysis of the theory's key variables and tests the theory's causal logic by comparing Moscow's interactions with Tatarstan and with Chechnya. The article concludes with three implications: ethnic groups are rational; that certain settlement patterns will not be amenable to outside intervention; and partition may not be a good policy option to end violence.

This paper, part of a multi–author project evaluating the evolution of theoretical paradigms in international relations (IR), evaluates the Liberal paradigm form a Lakatosian perspective. There is a distinct "Liberal" Scientific Research Program (SRP) in the study of international relations, based on three core assumptions. These Assumptions are shared by Ideational, Commercial and Republican variants of Liberal theory. The Liberal SRP is clearly progressive in the Lakatosian sense, that is, it explains a broad and expanding domain of empirical phenomena more accurately than competing research programs – and does so in such a way as to meet the specific Lakatosian criteria of "heuristic", "temporal" and "background theory" novelty. Liberal theory is thus among the most promising, perhaps the most fruitful and promising, of contemporary paradigms in IR theory. Yet legitimate doubts can be raised about the utility of Lakatosian theory as a means to evaluate research in IR. In particular, one might question its view that theories from competing paradigms are mutually excusive, which encourages one–on–one testing of unicausal theories, rather than estimation of the proper (and sometimes overlapping) scope of paradigms, or the construction of multi–paradigmatic syntheses. Given the current stage of IR theory, these two tasks may offer greater explanatory insight into world politics than unicausal theory testing. This conclusion does not undermine, however, the positive assessment of Liberal theory, which both supports clear empirical scope conditions and can play a foundational role in fruitful multi-theory syntheses.

In a comparative study of Japanese and European trade policy, this paper explains how the institutional context of negotiations affects political outcomes. I examine two pathways by which negotiation structure promotes liberalization: issue linkage and legal framing. Broadening stakes through issue linkage mobilizes domestic lobbying for liberalization. Use of GATT/WTO trade law in dispute settlement legitimizes arguments favoring liberalization. This study on international institutions addresses the theoretical debates in the field regarding how interdependence and the legalization of international affairs change the nature of state interaction.

I test my argument in the sensitive area of agricultural trade policy. Statistical analysis of U.S. negotiations with Japan and the EU from 1970 to 1999 indicates that an institutionalized issue linkage makes liberalization more likely for both Japan and Europe. This is the most important source of leverage for bringing major policy reform. However, the effect of GATT/WTO legal pressure interacts with the political context. I conclude that domestic political processes make Japan more responsive to pressure from trade rules than the European Union.

Coercion is as normal a part of life as is exchange; what matters is not its presence or magnitude but rather its structure and form. Violence can take the form of predation; it then results in mere redistribution. But violence can be rendered socially productive; it can be employed to defend property rights, thereby strengthening the incentives to engage in productive activity. To explore how violence can be rendered a source of increased welfare, we develop a model of a stateless society and then introduce a specialist in violence. Using the model and case materials, we explore the conditions under which the specialist will utilize her coercive capabilities not to engage in predation but rather to strengthen the incentives to engage in productive effort.

To discern the public and private motivations behind the establishment and continuance of the Bank of England, we analyze the timing of legislation that renewed the Bank’s charter. The Bank’s original 1694 charter specified a life of only eleven years; at the end of that time, the government could exercise an option to repay its loan to the Bank and dissolve the charter. In fact, the government did not exercise the option, and the Bank’s charter was periodically renewed. We argue that the rechartering process reflected the needs of the government to respond to unforeseen contingencies. The government initiated new charters when budgetary circumstances–shaped largely by wars–required new loans, and when the monopoly value of the Bank’s charter rose. The Bank gained from renegotiating its contract with the government when it faced new and unforeseen competition.

Formal international human rights regimes differ from most other forms of international cooperation in that their primary purpose is to hold governments accountable to their own citizens for purely domestic activities. Why would governments establish an arrangement that invades domestic sovereignty in this way? Current scholarship suggests two explanations. A realist view asserts that the most powerful democracies seek to externalize their values, coercing or enticing weaker and less democratic governments to accept human rights regimes. A ideational view argues that the most established democracies externalize their values, setting in motion a transnational process of diffusion and persuasion that socializes less democratic governments to accept such regimes. I propose a third, institutional liberal view. Drawing on theories of administration and adjudication developed to explain rational delegation in domestic politics, I maintain that governments delegate for a self–interested reason, namely to combat future domestic political uncertainty.