A belief in alien abduction is an emotional belief, but so is a belief that Iran intends to build nuclear weapons, that one's country is good, that a sales tax is unjust, or that French decision makers are irresolute. Revolutionary research in the brain sciences has overturned conventional views of the relationship between emotion, rationality, and beliefs. Because rationality depends on emotion, and because cognition and emotion are nearly indistinguishable in the brain, one can view emotion as constituting and strengthening beliefs such as trust, nationalism, justice or credibility. For example, a belief that another's commitment is credible depends on one's selection (and interpretation) of evidence and one's assessment of risk, both of which rely on emotion. Observing that emotion and cognition co-produce beliefs has policy implications: how one fights terrorism changes if one views credibility as an emotional belief.

The results of deliberations in multilateral fora are often considered ineffective. Decision making in the European Union (EU) and in particular its key intergovernmental body, the European Council, poses no exception. Especially in the domain of EU foreign and security affairs, the unanimity requirement governing this institution allegedly allows nationalist governments to torpedo any attempt to build up a credible European defense force and a unified foreign policy stance. In this article, we take issue with the claim that multilateral summits merely result in “hot air” by looking at whether and how decisions made during EU summit meetings affect the European defense industry. We argue that investors react positively to a successful strengthening of Europe's military component—a vital part of the intensified cooperation within the European Security and Defense Policy (ESDP)—since such decisions increase the demand for military products and raise the expected profits in the European defense industry. Our findings lend empirical support to the view that financial markets indeed evaluate the substance of European Council meetings and react positively to those summit decisions that consolidate EU military capabilities and the ESDP. Each of the substantial council decisions studied increased the value of the European defense sector by about 4 billion euros on average. This shows that multilateral decisions can have considerable economic and financial repercussions.

The dominant narrative of the politics of redistribution in political science and economics highlights the signature role of the rise of electoral democracy and the development of political parties that mobilize working-class groups. We argue in this article that this narrative ignores the critical role played by mass warfare in the development of redistributive public policies. Focusing attention on the determinants of progressive taxation, we argue that mobilization for mass warfare led to demands for increased taxation of the wealthy to more fairly distribute the burden for the war effort. We then show empirically that during the past century, mass mobilization for war has been associated with a notable increase in tax progressivity. In the absence of war, neither the establishment of universal suffrage, nor the arrival of political control by parties of the left is systematically associated with large increases in tax progressivity. In making these arguments, we devote particular attention to a “difference-in-differences” comparison of participants and nonparticipants in World War I.

In typical crisis bargaining models, strong actors must convince the opponent that they are not bluffing and the only way to do so is through costly signaling. However, in a war, strong actors can benefit from tactical surprise when their opponent mistakenly believes that they are weak. This creates contradictory incentives during the pre-war crisis: actors want to persuade the opponent of their strength to gain a better deal but, should war break out, they would rather have the opponent believe they are weak. I present an ultimatum crisis bargaining model that incorporates this dilemma and show that a strong actor may feign weakness during the bargaining phase. This implies that (1) absence of a costly signal is not an unambiguous revelation of weakness, (2) the problem of uncertainty is worse because the only actor with incentives to overcome it may be unwilling to do so, and (3) because of the difficulty with concealing resolve, democracies might be seriously disadvantaged in a crisis.

The creation of an International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute war crimes poses a real puzzle. Why was it created, and more importantly, why do states agree to join this institution? The ICC represents a serious intrusion into a traditional arena of state sovereignty: the right to administer justice to one's one nationals. Yet more than one hundred states have joined. Social scientists are hardly of one mind about this institution, arguing that it is (alternately) dangerous or irrelevant to achieving its main purposes: justice, peace, and stability. By contrast, we theorize that the ICC is a mechanism to assist states in self-binding, and draw on credible commitments theory to understand who commits to the ICC, and the early consequences of such commitments. This approach explains a counterintuitive finding: the states that are both the least and the most vulnerable to the possibility of an ICC case affecting their citizens have committed most readily to the ICC, while potentially vulnerable states with credible alternative means to hold leaders accountable do not. Similarly, ratification of the ICC is associated with tentative steps toward violence reduction and peace in those countries precisely least likely to be able to commit credibly to foreswear atrocities. These findings support the potential usefulness of the ICC as a mechanism for some governments to commit to ratchet down violence and get on the road to peaceful negotiations.

Are international courts power-seeking by nature, expanding the reach and scope of international rules and the courts' authority where permissive conditions allow? Or, does expansionist lawmaking require special nurturing? We investigate the relative influences of nature versus nurture by comparing expansionist lawmaking in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) and the Andean Tribunal of Justice (ATJ), the ECJ's jurisdictional cousin and the third most active international court. We argue that international judges are more likely to become expansionist lawmakers where they are supported by substate interlocutors and compliance constituencies, including government officials, advocacy networks, national judges, and administrative agencies. This comparison of two structurally identical international courts calls into question prevailing explanations of ECJ lawmaking, and it suggests that prevailing scholarship puts too much emphasis on the self-interested power-seeking of judges, the importance of institutional design features, and the preferences of governments to explain lawmaking by international courts.

Existing research on foreign direct investment (FDI) focuses on how politics influences the supply of FDI inflows. In this article I shift focus to the demand for FDI inflows within recipient countries by examining individual preferences for FDI. I argue that FDI preferences are largely a function of FDI's effects on income. FDI raises wages, especially those of skilled labor because foreign firms require more highly skilled labor than their local counterparts. Accordingly, support for FDI should increase with respondents' skills. Using three years of extensive public opinion data from eighteen Latin American countries, I provide robust evidence that preferences are consistent with FDI's effects on income. There is relatively little support for alternate explanations including concerns about job security, opposition to privatization, and the socializing effects of higher education on economic policy preferences.

Studies of terrorism in general and suicide terrorism in particular tend to view terrorist groups independently. However, what if the propensity for a terrorist group to adopt suicide tactics depends in part on its external linkages and the relationship between the organizational capabilities required to adopt the innovation and the organizational capabilities of the group? This article shows that the organizational change requirements for adopting an innovation significantly influence the overall adoption pattern, along with interlinkages between groups. Additionally, evaluating the universe of terrorist groups, not only those groups that adopted suicide terrorism but those that did not, shows that Pape's key variable of interest, occupation, does not significantly predict the adoption of suicide terrorism. Thinking about suicide terrorism as a special case of diffusion in the military area—an innovation for nonstate groups—can help bring the study of suicide terrorism further into the mainstream and highlight how the phenomenon has not just differences, but similarities, to other innovations.

Theory and empirical evidence show that low inflation is a precondition for economic growth. Independent central banks and fixed exchange rates are institutional mechanisms that help keep inflation low by lending monetary policy credibility to governments. However, the two institutions are commonly analyzed as substitutes that tie the hands of inflation prone governments. Thus, the literature has difficulties describing why governments would adopt both institutions and the interaction between them. This paper presents a model that allows policymakers the simultaneous choice of monetary institutions and shows that imperfectly credible institutions will overlap: when exchange rates are fixed but adjustable and central bank independence is not fully ascertainable, governments choose both institutions. More generally, the paper generates hypotheses about the conditions that make fixed exchange rates and independent central banks complements or substitutes, thus contributing to an explanation of the diversity of global monetary institutions in the post–Bretton Woods period.

The role of legitimacy in international relations is a topic of much debate, yet there is little understanding of the mechanism behind it. Here I address this discrepancy by asking: are state threats perceived as (il)legitimate more or less likely to be successful? By operationalizing illegitimacy as unilateral action in the presence of a multilateral option, I consider the variation in the success of U.S. trade measures from 1975 to 2000. As I show, the (il)legitimacy of threats modifies the nature of the signal sent by concessions to those threats, and this effect can be measured and predicted. I find that, controlling for material pressure, perceived illegitimacy of U.S. trade threats decreases the likelihood of a target conceding by over 34 percent. Moreover, it pays to resist: targets that resist illegitimate unilateral measures from the United States are 25 percent less likely to encounter similar unilateral measures over the following five years.

Scholars have found an association between membership in regional intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and democracy, and IGO enforcement is often credited as an important factor explaining this link. But empirical evidence reveals great variation in whether these organizations actually respond to violations of democratic norms, even in democratic regions. Why do IGOs punish some norm-violating countries but not others? What does this variation imply for theories about how IGO membership helps states make credible commitments? This article presents a theoretical framework for understanding variation in multilateral norm enforcement. It identifies two obstacles to enforcement—the presence of competing geopolitical interests and uncertainty about the nature and scope of norm violations—and it argues that international monitoring can help mitigate these obstacles by revealing and publicizing information that pressures reluctant member states to support enforcement. An original data set of democracy enforcement in Latin America and postcommunist countries is used to examine regional IGO enforcement in response to one prevalent type of democratic norm violation: electoral misconduct. I find that enforcement is less likely in countries of high geopolitical importance, but the presence of election observers increases the probability of enforcement, and the content of observers' reports influences the type of enforcement that is imposed. These findings suggest that the link between IGO membership, credible commitments, and democracy should be theorized and tested as a conditional relationship, depending on country- and incident-specific factors that influence the likelihood of enforcement.

International institutions often moderate the legal decisions they render. World Trade Organization (WTO) panels do this by exercising judicial economy. This practice, which is evident in 41 percent of all rulings, involves the decision not to rule on some of the litigants' arguments. The constraint is that it can be appealed. We argue that panels exercise judicial economy when the wider membership is ambivalent about the future consequences of a broader ruling. This is proxied by the “mixed” (that is, nonpartisan) third-party submissions, which are informative because they are costly, jeopardizing a more decisive legal victory that would benefit these governments too. We empirically test this hypothesis, and find that mixed third-party submissions increase the odds of judicial economy by upwards of 68 percent. This suggests that panels invoke judicial economy to politically appease the wider WTO membership, and not just to gain the litigants' compliance in the case at hand.

Contrary to the general trend of trade liberalization, specific goods—such as small arms, drugs, and antiquities—have come under increasing international control in recent decades through a set of international regulatory agreements. This article offers a theoretical framework of government preferences on the international regulation of these goods. Departing from conventional models of trade policy, the theoretical framework introduces negative externalities, rather than protection, as the motivation for restricting trade; it also takes moral concerns into account. I test this framework empirically through an original survey of government views on international small-arms regulation. Based on interviewing officials from 118 countries, the survey reveals a large variation in government preferences that conforms to the theoretical expectations. I employ this variation to explain why the international regulation of small arms is weak, despite the fact that these are the deadliest weapons of all in terms of actual death toll.

This article explores the strategic problems that arise when a state seeks to use military force to compel changes in another state's policies. Although the costs associated with military action mean that there generally exist compromises that both sides prefer to conflict, bargaining may fail if such deals are not enforceable in the face of temptations to renege on policy concessions. This study develops a model that shows that inefficient conflict can occur when states bargain over policies that one of them can change unilaterally and covertly. I then show that this theory is useful for understanding a common source of international conflict: conflicts that arise when one state supports rebel groups engaged in a civil war with another state. Episodes of rebel support are associated with a substantial increase in the risk of interstate militarized disputes, the lethality of these disputes, and the likelihood of repeated violence. Agreements to limit rebel support are unlikely to reduce interstate violence unless they are coupled with concessions by the target state and/or monitoring mechanisms, both of which are shown theoretically to mitigate the enforcement problem.

Prevailing theories hold that U.S. public support for a war depends primarily on its degree of success, U.S. casualties, or conflict goals. Yet, research into the framing of foreign policy shows that public perceptions concerning each of these factors are often endogenous and malleable by elites. In this article, we argue that both elite rhetoric and the situation on the ground in the conflict affect public opinion, but the qualities that make such information persuasive vary over time and with circumstances. Early in a conflict, elites (especially the president) have an informational advantage that renders public perceptions of “reality” very elastic. As events unfold and as the public gathers more information, this elasticity recedes, allowing alternative frames to challenge the administration's preferred frame. We predict that over time the marginal impact of elite rhetoric and reality will decrease, although a sustained change in events may eventually restore their influence. We test our argument through a content analysis of news coverage of the Iraq war from 2003 through 2007, an original survey of public attitudes regarding Iraq, and partially disaggregated data from more than 200 surveys of public opinion on the war.

States typically issue compellent threats against considerably weaker adversaries, yet their threats often fail. Why? Expanding on a standard model of international crisis bargaining, I argue that a theory of reputation-building can help shed light on this puzzle. The model casts reputation as a strategic problem, showing that challengers issuing compellent threats have incentives to anticipate the reputation costs that target states incur when appeasing aggressors. If challengers can recognize these costs and offset them with side payments or smaller demands, then even reputation-conscious targets will acquiesce. I argue, however, that military strength contributes to information problems that make challengers more likely to underestimate their targets' reputation costs and insufficiently compensate them. In this way, military power can undermine the effectiveness of compellent threats. The logic is illustrated by the 1939 Russo-Finnish crisis, and the argument's implications for the study of coercive diplomacy are explored.