Browsing by Author "Gelpi, Christopher F"

My dissertation, Critical Realism: An Ethical Approach to Global Politics, investigates two strands of modern political realism and their divergent ethics, politics, and modes of inquiry: the mid- to late 20th century realism of Hans Morgenthau and E.H. Carr and the scientific realism of contemporary International Relations scholarship. Beginning with the latter, I engage in (1) immanent analysis to show how scientific realism fails to meet its own explanatory protocol and (2) genealogy to recover the normative origins of the conceptual and analytical components of scientific realism. Against the backdrop of scientific realism's empirical and normative shortcomings, I turn to Morgenthau and Carr to appraise what I term their critical realism. I map out the constellation of their political thought by reconstructing the interrelations between (1) the historical crises motivating their writings, (2) their philosophical and methodological criticisms and commitments, (3) their political prescriptions and ethics. My dissertation demonstrates how reading realist texts through the lens of contemporary methodological conventions decisively shapes our theoretical purview, empirical knowledge, and political judgments. Beyond illuminating the underappreciated radical, critical, and historical dimensions of political realism, my dissertation has implications for contemporary debates on international ethics and foreign policy as well as research in political science and political theory.

Counterterrorism, much like terrorism itself, is often a "battle of ideas." Yet, in the fight against al-Qaeda, the U.S. is currently losing this battle. This paper argues that the implementation of a counter-narrative strategy is crucial to the overall fight against al-Qaeda. It begins by discussing the importance of narratives, both to human cognition and international relations in general. It then explores al-Qaeda's narrative and the reasons for its success. After detailing the U.S.'s failure to develop its own counter-narrative against al-Qaeda, it ends with a strategy for a potential U.S. counter-narrative moving forward.

Abstract

Neither technological nor numerical superiority accounts for the outcome of most battles. Instead, some intangible factor has historically mattered more. The political science literature has termed this factor `military effectiveness', yet using this phrase to refer solely to efficiency in one of the many tasks militaries are asked to perform can be dangerous. Armies which are good at conventional combat may be less effective at internal security, for instance. I therefore propose a new term `destructivity' to refer exclusively to military effectiveness in high intensity, conventional warfare.

Previous literature has suggested a number of factors which may account for variation between states in their levels of destructivity. Wealth, human capital, regime type, ethnic heterogeneity, culture and the external pressures of the international system have all been suggested by past scholars. Quantitative literature has uncovered many broad level correlations which could map onto numerous plausible causal mechanisms, while the qualitative literature has pointed to numerous theories which have remained untested outside the small number of cases which motivated them.

My dissertation puts forward a unified theory of destructivity based on the recognition that armies are not unitary actors but must be understood in light of the motivations and interactions of the individual officers and men which comprise them. Borrowing a concept from organizational economics, I suggest that an Army is a large scale `rank order tournament' in which individuals enter in the hope of advancement through mastering military skills and performing well in battle. The broader the funnel of entry into these tournaments, the stiffer is competition for advancement and hence the higher the Army's level of skill. It follows from this that whatever restricts entry into the tournament - low literacy, politically motivated restrictions from coup vulnerable leaders and poor prospects for post service employment - reduces destructivity.

Motivating troops to fight is a complex undertaking. The broader goals of the war by themselves are insufficient as any given soldier's marginal contribution to the outcome of the war is minute. Regrettable though it is to concede, harsh negative punishments such as the death penalty can be effective in deterring the most obvious and observable forms of military shirking. In situations where soldiers' actions are hard to observe, however, negative sanctions are less effective. Here, the concept of peer monitoring, taken from microfinance, is more important - soldiers are deterred from shirking by the prospect of censure from other members of their small groups.

I first test my theory on a dataset of battles taken from Biddle and Long, Pilster and Boehmelt and Clodfelter. I then proceed to use four case studies to illustrate my causal mechanisms. Using original archival material and interviews with retired Iraqi military personnel, I show how both low literacy and coup proofing undermined Iraq's destructivity relative to the United States. I then examine the British and German cases to answer the question - what happens when two states of equal literacy, with no history of coups, fight one another? I suggest that market structure, by affecting the relative opportunities for military recruits inside and outside the service, is the key factor in providing a marginal advantage to one side relative to the other.

This dissertation explains the influence of ethnic non-state actors on the management of International Crises. I begin by arguing that when actively engaged in a crisis, ethnic actors contribute to; crisis violence, indecisive outcomes, and the escalation of interstate tensions. They do so because their more robust sponsorship allows them to drive relatively hard bargains with the state they are in conflict with. The analysis contributes to the development of theory by filling a gap in the literature and helping to resolve an important debate. Here I consider the entire population of non-state actors as a topic for analysis. This is in contrast to the general trend, which is to treat non-state actors as part of the landscape in studies that are otherwise concerned with ethnic conflict, terrorism or nation-building. In addition, the analysis here helps resolve a debate between bargaining theorist and ethnic conflict scholars concerning the relevance of ethnicity for our understanding of (both interstate and intrastate) conflict. In particular it identifies mechanisms specifically associated with ethnic rebel groups and demonstrates that ethnicity has an influence on interstate conflict through the actions of violent non-state actors. In the analysis I build on the logic above to develop a series of testable hypotheses. I then collect a new data-set of crisis-dyad-years and identify each crisis with a participating non-state actor (NSA-Crises) as well as those with ethnic non-state actors. Next I conduct a series of quantitative test of the relationship between ethnic actor participation and crisis management. The results demonstrate that ethnically mobilized rebel groups influence crises in unique ways, causing higher levels of violence and a higher incidence of stalemate. These findings are robust to various model specifications and the relationship between ethnic actors and crisis management is not conditioned by state-based sponsorship. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of this analysis for both theory and policy-making.

Scholarship on ethnic conflict and civil war has often examined the role of geographic factors, such as rough terrain and exploitable natural resources, in either prolonging or even initiating the conflict. However, many of these studies focus upon the material/tactical advantages that geography provides to the rebels. I argue that analysis of geography and civil war must account for the effects of geography upon the insurgency's identity (ethnic, religious, ideological), which is the most decisive factor in the rebels' ability to galvanize popular support. Using regression analysis and case studies, I demonstrate that while the geographic distance between rebel territory and the capital city in a war-afflicted country is of great importance, the presence of identity can compensate for the lack of favorable geography.

In this work, I use case study analysis to examine the response by states to exogenous shifts in international norms. Specifically, I examine the behavior of states when unforeseen technological advances make the norm previously established between states insufficient to ensure the security needs that were the onus for creating the original norm. I argue that altering the specific clauses of the norm to honor the intention of the norm maintains the habit of compliance and international credibility of the norm, yielding a greater level of acceptance and rate of compliance than if the norm is either discarded and a new norm is sought or if the norm retains in place without being renegotiated.

The goal of this dissertation is to inquire into how states balance economic motivations and security concerns when pursuing sovereignty at borders. More precisely, the dissertation examines tradeoffs between interdependence sovereignty -control over transborder flows--and Westphalian sovereignty defined as exclusion of external actors from states' authoritative space. Focusing on control over cross-border human mobility as the issue area, I put forward the securitized interdependence framework as a theory that encompasses economic and security logics of policy-making. Because migration control rests at the nexus of economic/material and geopolitical/military dimensions of state security, it provides an ideal testing ground for observing the interaction of economic and security motives. The theoretical framework draws on the literature on complex interdependence and the logic of the trading state to postulate empirically verifiable propositions on migration control policies.

The central claim of the dissertation is that human mobility is conditionally securitized and that security logics are modulated by material/economic incentives. Facing informational asymmetries vis-à-vis transnational terrorists, states rely on migration and border control strategies to screen and deter non-state threats to security. However, economic interdependence--trade and capital ties--mitigates fears over transnational terrorism by reconfiguring state preferences, bolstering the relative salience of material concerns in policy-making, tempering perceptions of threat, and creating vested interests at the domestic level.

To test the theory I have collected and compiled data on i)visa restrictions for pairs of 207 X 207 directed dyads ii)visa rejection rates for European Union and/or Schengen member countries for the period 2003-2007, and iii)asylum recognition rates for 20 select OECD recipient states for the period 1980-2007. I then use this data to test the implications of the theory by distinguishing between economic/voluntary and political/involuntary migration. Additionally, I tease out the distinct effects of two different types of security concerns over transnational terrorism: a reputational effect that considers origin country citizens' involvement in terrorism incidents worldwide and a targeted/directed impact through which states take into account past experience as targets of terrorism. To illustrate the effect of economic interdependence, I analyze trade and capital flows separately and illustrate that both types of commercial ties facilitate liberalization of controls over human mobility through direct and indirect mechanisms.

I employ a variety of statistical techniques to study the effect of economic and security concerns including several cross-sectional time series techniques, structural break and recursive residual tests for temporal change, and maximum likelihood. Furthermore, I complement my quantitative empirical analysis with an in-depth process tracing approach that traces the evolution of Turkey's migration policies in the context of Turkey's post-1980 economic liberalization. The qualitative analysis makes use of primary and secondary resources obtained from archival field work in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey.

The dissertation demonstrates that the impact of security concerns over transnational terrorism is contingent on the type of migration policy under consideration. In particular, policies of control over involuntary/political migration are guided by humanitarian and normative motives, limiting the effect of security concerns. Furthermore, the securitization of visa policies is strongest if recipient states are directly targeted by incidents of transnational terrorism perpetrated by origin country nationals. While states take into account incidents of global terrorism ---attacks against other country nationals or territories by origin country citizens-- this channel of impact is more modest. Additionally, empirical results show that economic interdependence effectively undercuts the effect of global terrorism, driving migration control policies towards liberalization. In sum, the dissertation demonstrates that ways in which states assert interdependence sovereignty exhibit temporal and cross-sectional variation as well as functional differentiation across types of border and migration control policies.

This study investigates the interaction between political influences of Islamic fundamentalist parties and the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. The author selects four salient actors, based on five characteristics of contemporary Islamic fundamentalist groups: the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, the Palestinian Hamas, the Lebanese Hezbollah, and the Iranian conservatives. With evidences of intertwined supports among them, the author analyzes the cooperative bloc between a state and non-state groups. After Iranian conservatives came to power, Iran's political supports enhanced influences of Hezbollah and Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, and then helped Hamas seize power finally. Their radical foreign policies intend to end Israeli occupation in the Palestinian territories. The theoretical model generates two predictions about strategies of the bloc. First, high political influence in each government is expected to worsen the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts. Second, due to Israel's strong military power, the expected strategy of the bloc is a symbolic war that more rhetoric and less Israeli casualties. Using cross-tabulation model, the author finds that the attack numbers are alone increased along with the high political influences, during the given period between 2000 and 2009. Their strong political power and secure cooperative bloc impede democratizing and promoting peace in the Middle East.