“Anchors of the Alliance: How Advisors Steady Cooperation Among Allies” Job Market Paper
This paper investigates the microfoundations of how publics in countries with a U.S. mutual defense treaty calibrate their perceptions of U.S. reliability, and therefore preferences on how to adjust their own foreign policy. The results of my four-country survey experiment reveal that counterintuitively, mixed messages from the President and cabinet members need not automatically be assumed to irreparably hurt perceptions of U.S. reliability and willingness for cooperation with the United States. I show that the reality is more nuanced - elite networks play an important role in moderating how allies react to American foreign policy, and are a factor that should be more widely considered in the literature on hedging and middle powers navigating great power competition.
“Networks and Alignment Choices: How Alliances are Shaped by Ties Among Foreign Policy Elites”
Book Project. My dissertation examines how U.S. treaty allies in Asia form their views of U.S. reliability, and in turn, how changes in these views may translate into altered strategic postures. This book project uses interviews and survey experiments to illuminate the role of networks in shaping these assessments.
“Minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific”
with Matthew Fleming, Kester Abbott, Hideki Tomoshige, Suhyeon Kim, Shizuka Kuramitsu, Dongkeun Lee, and Kenji Nagayoshi. Part of the 2026 Indo-Pacific Minilateral Cooperation Working Group, in the The Indo-Pacific Minilateral Cooperation Ideas Lab at Northeastern University’s Center for International Affairs and World Cultures.
Graham T. Allison, Charlotte Fitzek, and Nathalie Kiersznowski, "The Great Economic Rivalry: China vs the U.S." Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. 2022.
Charlotte Fitzek, "How British Trainers Quietly Help Shape North Korean Education," The Diplomat, 2017.
Charlotte Fitzek and Victor Cha, "Stock Markets Yawn at North Korea’s Nukes," Foreign Policy, 2016.