Peer-Reviewed Publications
"The Politics of Promotion Inside China's Foreign Policy Bureaucracy." The China Quarterly (June 2025). Early view.
with Yucong Li
A robust literature on the professional advancement of Chinese officials has paid comparatively little attention to an important elite group: the foreign policy bureaucracy. We introduce original data documenting over 11,000 career assignments of 1,357 senior officials in the foreign ministry from 1949 to 2023 and leverage these data to offer the first systematic analysis of who rises to the top of China’s foreign affairs system. We find that diplomats who spend a greater share of their careers in postings abroad are less likely to promote to higher ranks than diplomats who remain at home — and that these patterns persisted even after the professionalization of the foreign affairs bureaucracy. Meanwhile, the analysis finds only mixed evidence that diplomatic performance assists promotion. The data and analysis draw attention to the unique challenges of professional advancement in bureaucracies charged with managing China’s foreign relations.
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
"Decision by Design: Leaders, Bureaucracy, and International Crisis Performance." Forthcoming at International Studies Quarterly.
When do leaders initiate international crises in which they fail to achieve their goals? I argue that poor crisis performance is more likely when a state’s bureaucracy provides incomplete or inaccurate information to leaders. Two characteristics of a state’s national security institutions — capacity for information search and inter-bureaucratic information sharing — shape the quality of information provision. Leaders are thus less likely to initiate international crises that fail to advance their goals when they sit atop institutions that ease transaction costs of relaying information to leaders and that allow bureaucracies to competitively evaluate each other’s information. To test my argument, I leverage data measuring bureaucratic institutions across the globe from 1946 to 2015. The analysis finds that crisis performance depends on institutional design, suggesting that some leaders are more prone that others to exhibit poor judgment in high-stakes international crises because of institutional constraints on their information. Collectively, the theory and findings contest canonical views of how bureaucracy degrades judgment in international crises.
"Networks of Coercion: Military Ties and Civilian Leadership Challenges in China." American Journal of Political Science (April 2025). Early View.
with Daniel C. Mattingly
Civilian-led coups are one of the most common routes to losing power in autocracies. How do authoritarian leaders secure themselves from civilian leadership challenges? We argue that autocrats differentiate civilian rivals in part by their social ties to the military. To reduce the threat of coup, leaders buy off civilians with strong military ties by promoting them to lower-tier institutions --- but isolate these same civilians by denying them promotion to higher-tier institutions that afford opportunities to challenge the leader. We introduce an original dataset of over 145,000 postings of 41,603 Chinese military officers and map ties between the entire civilian and military elite between 1927 and 2014. We find that civilian leaders with strong ties to the military improve prospects for promotion to the Central Committee --- but degrade the likelihood of promotion to the apex Politburo Standing Committee, particularly for civilians outside the leader's social network.
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
"Lost in Translation: Bureaucracy, Noise, and Communication in International Politics." International Security 49:4 (Spring 2025).
with Don Casler
Effective communicate is often the difference between whether states go to war or remain at peace. Yet decision-makers in one state frequently fail to understand what decision-makers in another are trying to say. Under what conditions do international communications fail? We argue that division of labor within government can degrade international communication by introducing transmission noise, whereby bureaucracies dispatch signals to foreign countries that deviate from the political leadership’s intended meaning. The structure of bureaucratic institutions—the formal and informal rules and procedures defining how leaders and bureaucrats interact—shapes the severity of transmission noise. Open institutions reduce transmission noise by improving information sharing between leaders and bureaucrats and enabling bureaucratic oversight of bureaucratic signaling. Closed institutions increase transmission noise by impeding information sharing and bureaucratic oversight. In short, institutions shaping patterns of communication within states shapes the effectiveness of communication between states. We evaluate the theory by analyzing signaling processes before and after institutional reforms in India in the mid-1960s. Leveraging primary source materials collected from six different countries detailing India’s negotiations with China in 1962 and Pakistan in 1965, the cases illustrate how sender-side institutions can degrade communications. The theory and findings emphasize the important, but relatively overlooked, roles that transmission noise and bureaucracy play in international communication.
"Advisers and Aggregation in Foreign Policy Decision-Making." International Organization 78:1 (Winter 2024).
with Joshua Kertzer, Eric Min and Robert Schub
Do advisers affect foreign policy and, if so, how? Recent scholarship on elite decision-making prioritizes leaders and the institutions that surround them, rather than the dispositions of advisers themselves. We argue that despite the hierarchical nature of foreign policy decision-making, advisers' predispositions towards the use of force shape state behavior through the counsel advisers provide in deliberations. To test our argument, we introduce an original dataset of 2,685 foreign policy deliberations between US presidents and their advisers from 1947 to 1988. Applying a novel machine learning approach to estimate the hawkishness of 1,134 Cold War-era foreign policy decision-makers, we show that adviser-level hawkishness affects both the counsel advisers supply in deliberations, and the decisions leaders make: conflictual policy choices grow more likely as hawks increasingly dominate the debate, even when accounting for leader dispositions. The theory and findings enrich our understanding of international conflict by demonstrating how advisers' dispositions, which aggregate through the counsel advisers provide, systematically shape foreign policy behavior.
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
"The Institutional Origins of Miscalculation in China's International Crises." International Security 48:1 (Summer 2023).
When is China prone to miscalculate in international crises? National security institutions—the rules shaping the flow of information between leaders and their diplomatic, defense, and intelligence bureaucracies—offer one important answer to this question. A theoretical framework differentiates between three institutional types. Integrated institutions reduce the risk of miscalculation both by building capacity to relay bureaucratic information to the leader, and by fostering a competitive dialogue between bureaucracies that improves the quality of information they provide. In contrast, miscalculation is more likely under two types of pathological institutions. Fragmented institutions reduce capacity to relay bureaucratic information to leaders and encourage bureaucrats to manipulate information to conform with the leader’s prior beliefs. Siloed institutions restrict information sharing between bureaucracies, which degrades the evaluation of information and encourages bureaucracies to manipulate information to suit their organizational interests. A medium-N analysis of China’s international security crises from 1949 to 2012 demonstrates that national security institutions help to explain the majority of its crisis miscalculations. Case studies on the 1962 Nationalist invasion scare, 1969 Sino-Soviet border conflict, and 2001 EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft incident illustrate the mechanisms by which national security institutions shape the risk of miscalculation in international crises.
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
"Armies and Influence: Public Deference to Foreign Policy Elites" Journal of Conflict Resolution 68:9 (October 2024).
with Joshua Kertzer
When is the public more likely to defer to elites on foreign policy? Existing research suggests the public takes its cues from co-partisans, but what happens when co-partisans disagree? We argue that the public defers to elites whose prior experiences signal expertise and favorable intentions. Elites with backgrounds in socially esteemed institutions are thus especially powerful cue-givers, even when the core competencies of those institutions are not directly related to the issue at hand. Using two conjoint experiments, we find that the American public defers to more experienced elites generally, but is especially deferential toward elites with experience in trusted institutions: the public defers more to elites with military backgrounds, even when considering non-military issues. The theory and findings suggest that where elites sat in the past shapes how much power they wield once standing in office.
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
"Bureaucracy and Cyber Coercion" International Studies Quarterly, 68:1 (March 2024).
with Heidi Demarest and Robert Schub
States are increasingly incorporating militarized cyber technologies, or cyber weapons, into their defense arsenals, but there is vigorous debate about their coercive utility. Existing scholarship often adjudicates the debate by parsing technical differences between cyber and conventional weapons. This technical approach overlooks a critical consideration: bureaucrats who inform state assessments may hold unique perspectives on coercion due to their organizational affiliation. We make an empirical intervention by fielding a survey experiment on bureaucrats inside US Cyber Command, offering a rare glimpse into elite perceptions. We find little evidence that technical differences between weapons yield systematically different assessments. Bureaucrats perceive that conventional and cyber weapons have statistically indistinguishable coercive utility and battlefield effects. Replicating the study on a public sample, we find that bureaucrats are more optimistic about coercion across all domains and their optimism stems from organizational culture, rather than parochial interests or technical expertise. The findings show how who is responsible for assessing a technology’s coercive value can shape estimates even more than which technology is being assessed. Unique perspectives clustered within influential bureaucracies may shape state assessments and policies in ways that diverge from the expectations of analyses that emphasize technical characteristics of military capabilities.
Article | Supplementary Appendix | Data
Article | Supplementary Appendix | Data
"The Character and Origins of Military Attitudes on the Use of Force" International Studies Quarterly 66:2 (June 2022).
with Kaine Meshkin and Robert Schub
Do military and civilian attitudes on the use of force differ and, if so, why? Past scholarship is divided not only on whether decision-makers with military experience are more hawkish but also in whether differences stem from organizational selection or socialization. We contribute to these debates through a unique opportunity to survey incoming military officers at the US Military Academy before and after basic training--and pair the results with simultaneous surveys of a nationally representative sample. We find that future military elites are more hawkish than civilians, the gap is evident upon arrival, and initial socializing experiences cannot explain the gap. Numerous tests addressing potential socialization effects over a longer period reveal that experience may attenuate hawkishness but that it is insufficient to offset initial differences. The results indicate that preexisting attitudes shape the groups into which elites select as much as experiences in those groups shape attitudes.
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
Article | PDF | Supplementary Appendix | Data
Working Papers
"Advisory Influence and Foreign Policy Decision-Making" (invited to revise and resubmit at American Political Science Review)
with Joshua Kertzer, Eric Min and Robert Schub
"Bureaucratic Influence in International Politics" (invited for the Annual Review of Political Science)
with Richard Clark and Lindsay Dolan
"Perception, Institutions, and Theories of Chinese Foreign Policy" (under review)
"Protecting the Messenger: Patrons and Foreign Policy Reporting in China" (under review)
with Eric Min
"The Non-American Moment? International Origins of the Evolving Global Order" (under review)
with Susan Colbourn and Rachel Myrick
Works in Progress
"Regime Security and the Origins of China's Military Modernization"
"The Regime Security Dilemma in International Politics"
"Repression and Promotion in Coercive Organizations: Evidence from China"
with Daniel C. Mattingly
"Spotlight Effects in International Politics"
with Kathleen E. Powers
"What Makes Face-to-Face Diplomacy Work: Evidence from Five Major Power Archives"
with Eric Min
Selected Book Chapters and Reviews
"The Role of Advisors: How Ideas Shape International Crises." In Inside the Situation Room: The Theory and Practice of Crisis Decision Making, eds. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Keren Yarhi-Milo (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). With Joshua D. Kertzer, Eric Min, and Robert Schub.
"Review of The Insider's Game: How Elites Make War and Peace." H-Diplo ISSF Roundtable, forthcoming.
"Autocratic Institutions and Foreign Policy" in Oxford Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis, eds. Cameron Thies and Juliet Kaarbo (New York: Oxford University Press, 2024).
Image: Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Beijing - 2017