BOOK PROJECT
DECISION BY DESIGN: NATIONAL SECURITY INSTITUTIONS & INTERSTATE CRISIS
Do domestic bureaucracies affect interstate conflict behavior? One school of thought argues that military, diplomatic, and intelligence actors possess unique preferences, leading to inefficient group decision-making that increases the propensity for miscalculation, risk acceptant bargaining, and interstate violence. Another school of thought argues that chief executives possess a set of management tools that attenuate bureaucratic preference divergence and ensure efficient group decision-making. Despite the availability of these tools, however, political science observes wide variation in the performance of national security decision-making groups. This yields a puzzle: why do chief executives sometimes choose management strategies that lead to inefficient group decision-making?
This book project makes three contributions to address this puzzle. First, applying concepts from economics, social psychology, and comparative politics, this project introduces a new framework for thinking about the relationship between bureaucracy and international relations: national security institutions, which are defined as the rules and procedures that regulate relationships between chief executives and their military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers. The first half of the book project argues that states can design national security institutions featuring strong decision-making and coordination bodies, such as the U.S. National Security Council, that improve vertical and horizontal information flow between actors. The central argument is that these informational efficiency gains within states improve signaling between states, thereby decreasing the propensity for interstate crisis. Second, I test the argument through statistical analyses that introduce and employ an original cross-national time series dataset on national security institutions across the world from 1946 to 2015. These data include 857 unique decision-making and coordination bodies, as well as 5,339 chief executives, defense ministers, foreign ministers, and senior intelligence advisers. Critically, they describe all known instances of national security councils across the world since World War II. The findings demonstrate a strong, negative relationship between the strength of national security institutions and propensity for interstate crisis. Subsequent qualitative analysis illustrates the proposed mechanisms of the theory, leveraging a wealth of new archival and interview evidence from China, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States. Third, the second half of the book project explores the incentives that encourage and constrain state leaders from reforming their national security institutions. Heterogeneity in the political environment helps to explain why some state leaders rationally resist efficiency-improving reforms.
The book project has theoretical implications for the domestic origins of international conflict, as well as how institutions aggregate actor preferences and enhance group performance. Finally, through its case selection, the project makes a contribution to the study of Chinese foreign policy, offering the first look inside critical government bodies that currently remain a black box to academic and non-academic worlds alike. In so doing, the analysis connects the presently disparate sub-fields on China's foreign policy bureaucracy and its international behavior.
This book project makes three contributions to address this puzzle. First, applying concepts from economics, social psychology, and comparative politics, this project introduces a new framework for thinking about the relationship between bureaucracy and international relations: national security institutions, which are defined as the rules and procedures that regulate relationships between chief executives and their military, diplomatic, and intelligence advisers. The first half of the book project argues that states can design national security institutions featuring strong decision-making and coordination bodies, such as the U.S. National Security Council, that improve vertical and horizontal information flow between actors. The central argument is that these informational efficiency gains within states improve signaling between states, thereby decreasing the propensity for interstate crisis. Second, I test the argument through statistical analyses that introduce and employ an original cross-national time series dataset on national security institutions across the world from 1946 to 2015. These data include 857 unique decision-making and coordination bodies, as well as 5,339 chief executives, defense ministers, foreign ministers, and senior intelligence advisers. Critically, they describe all known instances of national security councils across the world since World War II. The findings demonstrate a strong, negative relationship between the strength of national security institutions and propensity for interstate crisis. Subsequent qualitative analysis illustrates the proposed mechanisms of the theory, leveraging a wealth of new archival and interview evidence from China, Taiwan, India, Pakistan, Russia, and the United States. Third, the second half of the book project explores the incentives that encourage and constrain state leaders from reforming their national security institutions. Heterogeneity in the political environment helps to explain why some state leaders rationally resist efficiency-improving reforms.
The book project has theoretical implications for the domestic origins of international conflict, as well as how institutions aggregate actor preferences and enhance group performance. Finally, through its case selection, the project makes a contribution to the study of Chinese foreign policy, offering the first look inside critical government bodies that currently remain a black box to academic and non-academic worlds alike. In so doing, the analysis connects the presently disparate sub-fields on China's foreign policy bureaucracy and its international behavior.
NATIONAL SECURITY INSTITUTIONS DATASET, 1946-2015
ARCHIVAL & INTERVIEW RESEARCH
- Center for International Security Studies, Islamabad | Fall 2017
- Hoover Institution Archives, Palo Alto | Fall 2017
- Academia Historica - 國史館, Taipei | Summer 2017
- Institute of Modern History at Academia Sinica - 中研院近史所, Taipei | Summer 2017
- Ministry of Foreign Affairs Archives - 外交部档案馆, Beijing | Spring 2017
- Peking University Library - 北京大学图书馆, Beijing | Spring 2017
- Nehru Memorial Library and Museum, Delhi | Winter 2017
- National Archives of India, Delhi | Winter 2017
- National Archives and Records Administration, College Park | Fall 2016
- National Security Archive, Washington DC | Fall 2016
- Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence | Fall 2016
- Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene | Fall 2016
- William J. Clinton Presidential Library, Little Rock | Fall 2016
- National Archives Administration - 國家發展委員會檔案管理局, Taipei | Summer 2016
CHINESE FOREIGN POLICY
DELEGATED DIPLOMACY: WHY CHINA USES THE MILITARY FOR FACE-TO-FACE EXCHANGES (Under Review)
with Austin Strange
APSA & ISA Annual Conferences | 2016 & 2017
THE DICTATOR'S EAR: ADVICE AND POLITICAL ACCOUNTABILITY IN CHINA (In Progress)
CHINA DIPLOMATIC EXCHANGE DATASET, 1949-2015 (In Progress)
with Austin Jordan
BUREAUCRACY, INSTITUTIONS & GROUP DECISION-MAKING
SOCIALIZED HAWKS? HOW SELECTION EXPLAINS MILITARY ATTITUDES ON THE USE OF FORCE (Under Review)
with Kaine Meshkin and Robert Schub
APSA & ISA Annual Conferences | 2017 & 2018
HOW NATIONAL SECURITY INSTITUTIONS AFFECT INTERSTATE CRISIS (Working Paper)
APSA & ISA Annual Conferences | 2018 & 2019
ARMIES AND INFLUENCE: PUBLIC DEFERENCE TO FOREIGN POLICY ELITES (Working Paper)
with Josh Kertzer
APSA & ISA Annual Conference | 2019
HOW MILITARIZED CYBER TECHNOLOGY AFFECTS INTERSTATE BARGAINING (In Progress)
with Heidi Demarest and Robert Schub
APSA Annual Conference | 2019
Image: Photo of Watercolor by Tanconville, 1911