Though scholars widely claim that issue linkage—the simultaneous negotiation of multiple issues for joint settlement—can help states conclude international agreements, there exist some notable ...skeptics. Resolving this debate requires empirical evidence. However, beyond a few case studies, there exists no direct and systematic evidence that issue linkages actually increase the probability of agreement. I address this lack of direct and systematic evidence by combing original data on failed alliance negotiations with data from the Alliance Treaty Obligations and Provisions (ATOP) database. Using matching techniques, I find that, for alliance negotiations between 1860 to 1945, offers of trade linkage did substantially increase the probability of agreement. Besides confirming issue linkage's ability to help clinch an agreement, this article's research design and evidence have far-reaching implications for the study of negotiations and alliances. The research design illustrates the value of considering the “dogs that didn't bark” as it identifies both successful and failed negotiations. The article's evidence explains the high rate of alliance compliance identified by previous scholars and highlights a need to rethink the alliance formation process.
Why do some attempts to conclude alliance treaties end in
failure? From the inability of European powers to form an alliance
that would stop Hitler in the 1930s, to the present inability of
Ukraine ...to join NATO, states frequently attempt but fail to form
alliance treaties. In Arguing about Alliances , Paul Poast
sheds new light on the purpose of alliance treaties by recognizing
that such treaties come from negotiations, and that negotiations
can end in failure.
In a book that bridges Stephen Walt's Origins of
Alliance and Glenn Snyder's Alliance Politics , two
classic works on alliances, Poast identifies two conditions that
result in non-agreement: major incompatibilities in the internal
war plans of the participants, and attractive alternatives to a
negotiated agreement for various parties to the negotiations. As a
result, Arguing about Alliances focuses on a group of
states largely ignored by scholars: states that have attempted to
form alliance treaties but failed. Poast suggests that to explain
the outcomes of negotiations, specifically how they can end without
agreement, we must pay particular attention to the wartime planning
and coordinating functions of alliance treaties. Through his
exploration of the outcomes of negotiations from European alliance
negotiations between 1815 and 1945, Poast offers a typology of
alliance treaty negotiations and establishes what conditions are
most likely to stymie the attempt to formalize recognition of
common national interests.
Why do some attempts to conclude alliance treaties end in failure? From the inability of European powers to form an alliance that would stop Hitler in the 1930s, to the present inability of Ukraine ...to join NATO, states frequently attempt but fail to form alliance treaties. In Arguing about Alliances, Paul Poast sheds new light on the purpose of alliance treaties by recognizing that such treaties come from negotiations, and that negotiations can end in failure. In a book that bridges Stephen Walt's Origins of Alliance and Glenn Snyder's Alliance Politics, two classic works on alliances, Poast identifies two conditions that result in non-agreement: major incompatibilities in the internal war plans of the participants, and attractive alternatives to a negotiated agreement for various parties to the negotiations. As a result, Arguing about Alliances focuses on a group of states largely ignored by scholars: states that have attempted to form alliance treaties but failed. Poast suggests that to explain the outcomes of negotiations, specifically how they can end without agreement, we must pay particular attention to the wartime planning and coordinating functions of alliance treaties. Through his exploration of the outcomes of negotiations from European alliance negotiations between 1815 and 1945, Poast offers a typology of alliance treaty negotiations and establishes what conditions are most likely to stymie the attempt to formalize recognition of common national interests.
Audience costs theory posits that domestic publics punish leaders for making an external threat and then backing down. One key mechanism driving this punishment involves the value the public places ...on consistency between their leaders' statements and actions. If true, this mechanism should operate not only when leaders fail to implement threats, but also when they fail to honor promises to stay out of a conflict. We use a survey experiment to examine domestic responses to the president's decision to "back down" from public threats and "back into" foreign conflicts. We find the president loses support in both cases, but suffers more for "backing out" than "backing in. " These differential consequences are partially explained by asymmetries in the public's treatment of new information. Our findings strongly suggest that concerns over consistency undergird audience costs theory and that punishment for inconsistency will be incurred, regardless of the leader's initial policy course.
Since at least Cicero, we have known that "money is the sinew of war." Is it possible for a political economy of security (PES) subfield to contribute knowledge beyond Cicero's claim? This article ...aims to delineate the boundaries of a PES subfield by using the classic "guns versus butter" trade-off to define the existing literature within the subfield. Thinking seriously about this trade-off, including conditions under which a trade-off may not exist, raises a host of questions. The two most direct questions are: How does consuming "guns" influence the consumption of "butter"? And how does using "guns" influence the consumption of "butter"?
Central Banks at War Poast, Paul
International organization,
01/2015, Volume:
69, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
War is expensive—troops must be equipped and weapons must be procured. When the enormous borrowing requirements of war make the sovereigns' credibility problem more difficult, central banks enhance a ...government's ability to borrow. By being the sole direct purchaser of government debt, the central bank increases the effective punishment that can be imposed on the government for defaulting on the marginal lender. This increases lenders' confidence that the government will be punished in case of default, making lenders willing to purchase the debt at a lower rate of interest. The sovereign, dependent on the low borrowing costs offered by the central bank, has an incentive to retain the bank. Data covering the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries reveal that possessing a central bank lowers the sovereign's borrowing costs, particularly during times of war.
Time and again, methodologists wrote papers with the potential to kill off dyadic designs in international relations research, only to pull back and—so long as one adopted the appropriate ..."tweak"—grant dyads a reprieve. Depending on the research question under consideration and the theoretical claims being evaluated, dyadic designs can provide valuable empirical insights. But these insights remain contingent on the researcher attempting to account for the limitations of dyadic data. To make this point, I concentrate on two difficulties for dyadic designs: the problem of interdependence and the problem of multilateral events. Drawing from empirical research on treaties and international organizations, I argue that a researcher need not abandon dyadic data so long as the researcher faces the former problem.
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