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My research focuses on what can broadly be considered ‘emerging threats’. In particular, I study both the effects of domestic institutions, characteristics, and events on both the onset and targeting variation of terrorist groups. Secondly, I study the role of the environment on conflict and cooperation between states. This particular area concerns not only the role of resources on the ways states interact but also the role of the environment in both shaping and constraining state actions. Lastly, linking both these fields; I have a broad interest in conflict dynamics. Below are some examples of published and unpublished work, a copy of my prospectus, and my statement of research interests.
DISSERTATION: My dissertation focuses on the choices that terrorists make in the selection of their targets. I argue that this is determined largely by the distribution of the public between the terrorist group and the government. The government acts to gain or lose public support by its economic performance, its repression of its people, and its domestic attributes. Groups gain or lose public support by its targeting portfolio: non-civilian targets color the group as responsible political adversaries while civilian targets characterize groups as barbaric. The interplay of these two actors determines the distribution of the public. Groups, as part of this dynamic process, select their targets based on how the distribution affects its political and organizational goals. Situations of reduced civilian support force groups to abandon political goals and choose non-civilian targets; this allows it to recruit the few acceptable recruits and change public perceptions of the group, thus better positioning it for future interactions with the government. When the populace supports the terrorist group, the group has the opportunity to attain its political goals and, as a result, it selects civilian targets. This occurs because it has a large number of potential supporters and a high number of quality recruits that allow it to weather the backlash associated with attacks against civilian targets. To test these assertions, I develop a cross-national domestic terrorism dataset for the years 1970-1997 from the GTD (Global Terrorism Database) and TOPS (Terrorist Organizational Profiles) databases.
PUBLICATIONS: In Journal of Conflict Resolution 52(2): IO Mediation of Interstate Conflicts: Moving Beyond the Global vs. Regional Dichotomy Abstract: Regional and global intergovernmental organizations have grown both in number and scope, yet their role and effectiveness as conflict managers is not fully understood. Previous research efforts tend to categorize organizations solely by the scope of their membership, which obscures important sources of variation in institutional design at both the regional and global levels. International organizations will be more successful conflict managers if they are highly institutionalized, if they have members with homogenous preferences, and if they have more established democratic members. These hypotheses are evaluated with data on territorial (1816- 2001), maritime (1900-2001), and river (1900-2001) claims from the Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) project in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and the Middle East. Empirical analysis suggests that international organizations are more likely to help disputing parties reach an agreement if they have more democratic members, if they are highly institutionalized, and when they employ binding management techniques.
In Political Research Quarterly 61(3): The Impact of the Australian Ballot on Member Behavior in the U.S. House Abstract: Katz and Sala link the development of committee property rights in the late nineteenth century U.S. House of Representatives to the introduction of the Australian ballot. If, as Katz and Sala posit, members of Congress were motivated to seek personal reputations to carry them to reelection in the new Australian ballot environment, we argue behaviors with more immediate political payoffs also should have changed in ways their theory would predict. We examine whether three different sorts of everyday member behavior—committee assignments, floor voting behavior, and the distribution of pork barrel projects—changed in ways consistent with the Katz and Sala theory. We find outcomes supportive of the theory, but usually only when the office bloc ballot variant of the Australian ballot, and not the Australian ballot more generally, was in use.
WORKING PAPERS: UNCLOS and the Management of Maritime Conflicts Abstract: Events such as the UK-Iceland "Cod Wars" and the Peruvian and Chilean seizure of American tuna boats brought fishery and maritime issues to international prominence in the 1960s and 1970s. More recently, armed conflicts have erupted over maritime issues between such advanced industrialized democracies as Canada and Spain. Several solutions have been proposed to manage the increasingly contentious world of maritime claims. Stemming from the literature on common property resources, solutions focus on authority, privatization, and institutions. Two primary mechanisms for resolving competing maritime claims are evaluated in this paper: 1) the creation of private ownership of maritime zones in the form of Economic Exclusive Zones (EEZs), and 2) the creation of an institution, the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), to establish standards for maritime claims and resolve disputes. Privatization may promote long-term cooperation and more efficient extraction of maritime resources, but may be suboptimal if the creation of private property rights for maritime areas generates distributional conflict. Similarly, the institutional approach to managing resources of the seas offers many advantages for resolving competing maritime claims and providing explicit mechanisms for dispute resolution, but may be problematic if distributional conflicts arise and/or institutional design is suboptimal. We evaluate the effects of UNCLOS and EEZs on the peaceful and militarized management of maritime claims in the Western Hemisphere and Europe (1900-2001). Our analyses suggest that declared EEZs work more efficiently for helping parties reach equitable agreements in bilateral negotiations, although membership in UNCLOS promotes more frequent third party conflict management efforts. Adaptive Tactics: Terrorist Targeting and Regime Type Abstract: Most work on terrorism has focused on the propensity of different regime types to become targets of terrorist attacks. Some studies claim that democracies are safe because their institutions and norms largely negate the need for political violence, while others claim that democracies are more likely to be targeted because they are open and accommodate diverse political views . However, these studies do not evaluate how the target state’s regime type affects the terrorists’ selection of targets within that state. I use the ITERATE dataset and Bueno de Mesquita et al’s (2005) “selection institutions” argument to demonstrate that the targets terrorists select differ by regime type. I find that in democratic states terrorists target the general population while in autocratic states terrorists target institutions, like the military, that keep the leader in power. Good Fences Make for Good Enemies: The Enclosure of Common Property Resources and Abstract: I adopt Vasquez and Mansbach's (1981) argument that resources have been prone to certain allocation mechanisms within their respective interaction games. The interaction game regarding private goods has been long associated with conflictual allocation mechanisms; two primary examples are territory and access to oil and minerals. This analysis posits that the common remedy to collective goods dilemmas (or Tragedies of the Commons) – privatization – is, at best, a solution that creates more conflict than it resolves. In particular, I seek to show that the creation of interaction games such as the United Nation Convention on the Laws of the Sea (UNCLOS) which has privatized portions of the world’s oceans has made the resource more similar to that of private goods. The implications are important, while privatizing the sea may have made for more responsible use, disagreements over the resource have potentially been made more conflictual; the sea may now be more salient, less divisible, and more zero sum. Birds of a Feather Revisited: Domestic Legal Systems and Alliance Behavior Abstract: Over the past several years, scholars have sought to ascertain the role of regime type on international behavior. Both democratic and autocratic states have institutional and normative characteristics that encourage cooperative behavior, such as alliance formation. Scholars have found that politically similar states are more likely to form and comply with alliances. However, little attention has been focused on understanding how legal institutions impact alliance behavior. Expanding on the work of Leeds (1999) and Werner (2000), I show that states with similar legal systems are more likely to form alliances and remain committed to them over time. Moreover, I find that the major legal systems – Islamic, Common, and Civil law – differ in their degree of alliance formation and compliance, with Islamic law states demonstrating the highest degree of alliance compliance. International Crises and Domestic Interest Group Activity Abstract: The role of the political environment on interest groups has been an area of focus for a variety of interest group scholars. The environment in which interest groups operate determines to a great extent their viability, their tactics, and the amount of resources at their disposal. On the domestic level, this has been well documented. However, little has been done to assess the impact of the international environment on interest group mobilization. In regards to the United States, our role in the world system makes our country particularly sensitive to international events. Using the ESA model developed by Gray and Lowery (1996), I test the theory that international events such as crises provide “energy” that allow interest groups to have higher levels of contributions than in times of low salience. Results indicate that interest groups increase their contributions in response to international events, even when controlling for election years. |
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Stephen Nemeth |
