Research

Table of Contents:

Does Affective Empathy Capacity Condition Individual Variation in Support for Military Escalation? Evidence from a Survey Vignette.

Published in Research & Politics.

Abstract: 

Does individual variation in affective empathetic capacity systemically condition a person’s willingness to support pre-emptive military action? In this note I theorize that individuals who are more prone to feeling affective or emotional empathy are less likely to support conflict escalation. To evidence this theory, I conduct a survey asking individuals about their willingness to support a military attack against a non-specific rogue state that is on the verge of acquiring nuclear weapons. The results demonstrate that the probability of an individual supporting such a strike is strongly conditioned on their affective empathetic capacity. This finding holds regardless of model specification and controlling for rational beliefs about material outcomes. Affective empathy may, therefore, have a powerful palliating effect upon the processes that contribute to conflict escalation.

Testing Power Transition Theory Using Time Series Trends in Chinese Diplomatic Event Data. (with Bruce Ming Fuong Tsai.)

Presented at the Western Political Science Association's annual conference (2022), Loyola Marymount University's Faculty Speaker Series (2022), George Mason University's Institute for Humane Studies conference (2023), & UCLA's Internal Speakers Series (2023).

Abstract: 

China’s rapid rise, concurrent with the erosion of the U.S. unipolar moment, has motivated arenaissance in the study of Power Transition Theory (PTT). Yet modern PTT scholars still rely largely on traditional formal and qualitative methods, limiting their ability to perform rigorous statistical tests of their hypotheses. By harnessing 52,189 separate observations of Chinese actions directed towards the U.S. and its allies since 1994, we break from this traditional orthodoxy and construct a novel time series dataset of mean weekly Chinese-initiated interactions with the U.S. Analysis of this dataset identifies trends in Chinese behavior consistent with those of a dissatisfied challenger. In fact, the data demonstrates that Chinese-initiated interactions with the U.S. took on a significant negative trajectory when China reached power “parity,” confirming PTT scholars’ expectations. This finding and the time series methodology harnessed to arrive at it have significant empirical and methodological implications for the study of U.S.-China relations narrowly and PTT broadly.

Building Trust in a Burning Theater: The Ability of Images to Defuse Public Opinion in a Crisis.

Presented at the University of California San Diego's IGCC Workshop (2020) & the Midwestern Political Science Association's annual conference (2022).

Abstract: 

In recent years, a scholarly renaissance has taken place at the intersection of diplomatic studies and security. A large literature now exists on how public diplomacy, emotions and private face-to-face meetings shape security outcomes. Yet proportionally less attention has been invested into studying how routine summit rituals such as staged photographic opportunities can contribute towards international security. This article thus examines the potential for the occurrence of joint photo ops to reduce the public mistrust that contributes to security crises’ escalation. It evidences, in a pair of survey experiments, that joint photographs of the American President and a foreign leader will decrease the American public’s tendency toward (what we term) ”crisis escalation thinking” via a trust-building mechanism. This finding is robust to multiple model specifications and has significant implications for our understandings of diplomatic photo ops, rituals and summits in the modern security context.

How Robust Is the Fox News Effect? A Sensitivity-Based Analysis of DellaVigna and Kaplan (2007). (with Soonhong Cho, Bradley Mankoff, & Zhiqian Wu.)

Working Paper (Early Stage).

Abstract: 

DellaVigna and Kaplan’s 2007 piece identifying the “Fox News effect” holds an extremely prominent place among works on elections and media bias. Despite this, its causal identification strategy which relies on an assumption of zero bias naturally elicits skepticism. This manuscript thus employees a sensitivity-based approach to understanding what degree of confounding would be needed to alter the study’s conclusions. It finds that the relatioship between the entry of Fox News into a cable market and the Republican share of the Presidential vote is robust even to the strongest of confounders. Yet it also find that the Fox News effect could be easily trivialized were evidence to emerge that Fox’s expansion was not “as if” random. The manuscript concludes by discussing our findings’ implications and their significance.

The Effect of Commodity Prices in Global Interstate Disputes. (with Bruce Fuong Ming Tsai.)

Presented at the Western Political Science Association's annual conference (2023).

Abstract: 

Within the existing Comparative Politics literature, commodity prices’s influence over the occurrence of civil conflict has been well established. At the same time, many International Relations scholars believe that domestic instability increases the risk of interstate disputes and diversionary wars. Yet despite the evident relationship between these two theories, outside of the study of oil prices, proportionally little effort has been made to bridge the gap between them. This raises an obvious puzzle: Have fluctuations in commodity prices empirically influenced the prevalence of inter-state disputes? If so, what commodities (other than oil) played a role? And how often did such disputes escalate to full-scale conflicts? 

To answer these questions, we utilize the Correlate of War’s Militarized Interstate Disputes (MIDs) data, publically available commodity price datasets, existing protest count figures, and a zero-inflated Poisson sequential stage regression model. Our analysis yields two significant findings. First, an increase in the price of inconsumable agricultural products (cash crops), exceptionally among non-petroleum commodities, is associated with the occurrence of MIDs. From this we can infer that cash crops are unique in that they provide both the means and motive for conflict initiation. Essentially, rising cash crop profits can be captured by the state easily, and that rising cash crop prices undermine a society’s domestic stability. Second, commodity price shock-induced unrest does in fact demonstrate a nontrivial association with the occurrence of interstate war. This has significant theoretical implications bridging the gap between the literatures on commodity prices, civil conflict and diversionary war.