PROJECTS
Here's a list of research and teaching outcomes that the IRLab@AmherstCollege has been involved in.
Mattiacci, Eleonora “Volatile States in International Politics,” Oxford University Press, 2023
Volatile States in International Politics (Oxford University Press, 2023) recasts canonical, timeless debates on how states’ behaviors change.
Conventionally, scholars explore changes that make states progressively more conflictual (escalation) or less conflictual (reconciliation) toward other states.
Volatile States in International Politics shows the limits of this practice. It demonstrates that states’ behaviors are instead often volatile, twisting and turning between cooperation and conflict in a way that appears inconsistent to their counterparts. Since observers cannot accurately predict what volatile states will do next, volatility often stifles trust and ignites conflict.
Leveraging statistical techniques and archival data in a probing analysis of rivals and allies since the end of World War II, this book rejects attempts at dismissing volatility as reflecting mercurial leaders or intractable issues. Instead, it explains, a state acts in a volatile manner when its clashing domestic interests leverage power to achieve their goals on the international arena.
Through real-life anecdotes and compelling data visualizations, this book explains where volatility comes from. Its findings renew key debates on the role of trust, escalation, reputation, audience costs, and treaty compliance in international politics.
Mattiacci and Jones, “Restoring Legitimacy: Public Diplomacy Campaigns in Civil Wars” International Studies Quarterly, Online First. DOI: 10.1093/isq/sqaa065.
Governments involved in civil wars often gain a strategic advantage from intentionally killing civilians. However, targeting civilians might also tarnish perceptions of the government’s legitimacy abroad, increasing the risk of foreign actors punishing the government. How can governments attempt to navigate this dilemma? Focusing on the United States as one of the most frequent interveners in civil wars after the Cold War, we examine one particular strategy governments might employ: public diplomacy campaigns (PDCs) targeting both the public and elites in the United States. PDCs can help governments restore perceptions of their legitimacy abroad in the face of civilian targeting by mobilizing coalitions of support and undermining critics. When governments can achieve plausible deniability for civilian deaths via militias, PDCs enable governments to reduce the damage to foreign perceptions of their legitimacy. When rebels engage in civilian targeting, PDCs allow governments to publicize these actions. We compile data PDCs in the United States by governments engaged in civil wars. Our results have important implications for current understandings of civil war combatant foreign policies, foreign interventions, and international human rights laws and norms.
POSC 130: IR vs the World, Spring 2021
The recent COVID-19 pandemic has ignited fierce debates on the state of international relations. Pundits and occasional observers have debated on what international relations have become in the past decades---on how freely people and goods can or should move across borders, on what organizations such as WHO can really achieve, on which countries are truly powerful, on the real reasons why countries can or cannot cooperate on global challenges such as COVID-19 or climate change, and so on. In each of these debates, evidence, either qualitative or quantitative, counts. But what, exactly, counts as evidence? Diving into recent debates in international relations emerging from COVID-19, the class will evaluate the evidence used to support such claims. We will focus in particular on the political origins of most of the evidence used in these debates, explaining why such origins matter and how they can shape debates. The goal of the class is for students to become literate about the ways in which data is used and to begin leveraging evidence to engage in their own story-telling. This class will leverage inter-disciplinary partnerships with other classes. This class fulfills requirements 1 and 2 of the 5 College IR Certificate.
POSC 216: IR Gone Viral, Fall 2020
This class offers an introduction to the study of international relations in the age of a pandemic. In its exploration of both classic and cutting-edge research, the class sheds light on enduring debates in studies of global politics. Thus, this class will address foundational puzzles in international relations while tracing the unfolding of the recent pandemic, including: when are countries more likely to cooperate while facing global crises? When do crises ignite nationalism, thus pushing countries to compete for resources? When is global trade more likely to come to a halt, and why? How do major crises proliferate across issue areas, affecting cooperation on other areas such as climate change? What is the origin and the purpose of multilateral international organizations such as the World Health Organization? When do such organizations fail or succeed? What are the implications of framing the COVID-19 pandemic as a “war”? This class fulfills requirements 1 or 2 for the IR Five-College Certificate.