Conference Presentations by Benjamin Denison
What role do regime security dilemma dynamics play in understanding challenges to American hegemo... more What role do regime security dilemma dynamics play in understanding challenges to American hegemony? In this paper, I argue that one under examined piece of modern great power relations is the regime security dilemma and the regime change anxieties it produces. Using the case of American-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War, I contend that the post-Cold War foreign policy of the United States focused on democratic enlargement has produced anxieties in potential peer rivals that drive their foreign policy decision-making and defense posture towards the United States. Anxiety over security of the regime due to increased capabilities that can help foment regime change and increasingly unclear intentions over American willingness to pursue regime change has produced a regime security dilemma that pushes targeted regimes to resist broad swaths of American foreign policy to ensure their own regime security. These anxieties have manifested themselves in various foreign policy venues, including nuclear politics, NGOs and civil society programs, human rights missions, international institutions, and military alliances. Thus, I contend that the regime change anxiety produce by the United States' post-Cold War foreign policy has directly contributed to the rise of competitive behavior by peer challengers to resist the American-led liberal order.
What role do regime security dilemma dynamics play in understanding challenges to American hegemo... more What role do regime security dilemma dynamics play in understanding challenges to American hegemony? In this paper, I argue that one under examined piece of modern great power relations is the regime security dilemma and the regime change anxieties it produces. Using the case of American-Russian relations since the end of the Cold War, I contend that the post-Cold War foreign policy of the United States focused on democratic enlargement has produced anxieties in potential peer rivals that drive their foreign policy decision-making and defense posture towards the United States. Anxiety over security of the regime due to increased capabilities that can help foment regime change and increasingly unclear intentions over American willingness to pursue regime change has produced a regime security dilemma that pushes targeted regimes to resist broad swaths of American foreign policy to ensure their own regime security. These anxieties have manifested themselves in various foreign policy venues, including nuclear politics, NGOs and civil society programs, human rights missions, international institutions, and military alliances. Thus, I contend that the regime change anxiety produce by the United States' post-Cold War foreign policy has directly contributed to the rise of competitive behavior by peer challengers to resist the American-led liberal order.
ISA Annual Meeting - Toronto, 2019
What effect does uncertainty over the capacity of local political institutions in a foreign terri... more What effect does uncertainty over the capacity of local political institutions in a foreign territory have on armed intervention outcomes and armed intervention strategy? While traditional theories of uncertainty and conflict tend to focus on uncertainty over capabilities, resolve, or other factors, I argue that uncertainty over local institutions and local contexts is crucial to understanding many seemingly puzzling decisions over armed intervention. In this paper, I theorize about the conditions through which uncertainty over local institutions and local contexts can impact armed intervention decisions and outcomes, specifically highlighting how it helps explain traditional theories of poor postwar planning and how interveners can often end up in lengthy institution-building missions they did not intend to engage in prior to the initial intervention. Using the case of the American occupation of the Dominican Republic, this paper highlights the inherent problems of planning for prospective armed intervention, and re-evaluates the capacity to accurately predict the likely strategy required prior to a military arriving in a foreign territory. 1
While many have illustrated the poor track record of armed institution-building projects abroad, ... more While many have illustrated the poor track record of armed institution-building projects abroad, few have asked why powerful states choose to employ this costly strategy given its inherent drawbacks. If institution-building strategies frequently fail to achieve their objectives, why do powerful states ever engage in the calamitous practice? This article answers this question by exploring the determinants of a foreign ruler’s choice of strategy following armed intervention. I argue that pre-existing institutional strength of local territories largely guides major powers’ strategic choices following armed intervention, regardless of the foreign ruler's prior goals and preferences. Only once the foreign ruler's military intervenes into the foreign territory can the foreign ruler assess the strength of the local institutions in the territory and their suitability for meeting their goals. Using a integrative mixed-method research design combining original data gathered on 160 cases of foreign rule since 1898 and an in-depth case study of Wilsonian foreign rule in Mexico, this article illustrates the crucial importance local institutional strength plays in determining an intervening power's foreign rule strategy.
Numerous studies have reported that countries tend to become more similar to their immediate geog... more Numerous studies have reported that countries tend to become more similar to their immediate geographic neighbors with respect to democracy. We show that a similar process of mutual adjustment can be found within another major international network: military alliances. The
causal mechanisms for the diffusion of democracy are notoriously vague, but the existence of diffusion within alliance networks helps narrow the possibilities. Where these relationships are significant, the net tendency is overwhelmingly convergence. Allies have tended to become more similar to one another in their levels of electoral democracy, especially immediately prior to the onset of a formal military alliance.
Drafts by Benjamin Denison
I argue that a new conceptualization of foreign rule should serve as a unifying concept to aid ou... more I argue that a new conceptualization of foreign rule should serve as a unifying concept to aid our understanding of relationships of coercively-imposed international hierarchy. Throughout various literatures, military occupations, foreign regime change, statebuilding, peacebuilding, and stability operations are frequently treated as unique concepts, based largely on unit-level characteristics. Scholars examine the conditions that lead to success in each these sub-concept, but rarely branch to examine commonalities across concepts. This leads to inaccurate case comparisons, mistaken policy recommendations, and the loss of local populations in discussions of foreign rule. I argue that the relational approach implicit once treating these concepts as forms of international hierarchy shows commonalities among each and the problems of separating each concept as a unique concept to study, rather than as a variation of the same phenomena. Treating each as unique has allowed valuable knowledge of the determinants of success and failure in foreign rule and establishing political order to disappear as scholars and states seek to define their operations as new and unique. Overall, I argue foreign rule encourages more sound inferences about the effects and problems of coercively-imposed international hierarchy to be drawn.
Papers by Benjamin Denison
Democratizing the dispute: democratization and the history of conflict management
International Interactions, 2021
What explains the complex processes of democratization and conflict management? Are new democraci... more What explains the complex processes of democratization and conflict management? Are new democracies more likely to use peaceful means or engage in militarized means when presented with opportunities to resolve their territorial disputes? In this paper, we hypothesize that democratizing states still engaged in territorial disputes are more likely to attempt conflict management following the transition to democracy to remove flashpoints that the military and other former autocratic regime elements can use to discredit democracy and prevent consolidation of democracy. Depending on the history of past conflict management attempts, newly democratic leaders either continue or break with the past policies of non-democratic leaders, indicating a degree of interdependence in the conflict management process. Using multinomial logistic regression on claim-year dyad data from the Issues Correlates of War project, we find that previous management attempts and democratization interact to make pea...
Strategies of Domination: Uncertainty, Local Institutions, and the Politics of Foreign Rule
The other chapters of this book, like the majority of quantitative analyses of democratization, e... more The other chapters of this book, like the majority of quantitative analyses of democratization, examine domestic determinants: geography, economic factors, institutions, and civil society. In this chapter we develop and test hypotheses about possible causes that lie outside national borders. There are many good reasons to expect that domestic factors are not the sole determinants. We lay out a theoretical framework that systematically catalogues most of the possible international hypotheses. Although some of the hypotheses have been tested repeatedly, very few of the tests have employed the best available methods from spatial econometrics. We use the best currently available methods to test a handful of hypotheses about international sources of democratization and erosion. We show that international war and global economic expansions affect levels of electoral democracy, changes in democracy, and upturns, but not downturns. We also show that all of the four networks that we test – c...
Numerous studies have reported that countries tend to become more similar to their immediate geog... more Numerous studies have reported that countries tend to become more similar to their immediate geographic neighbors with respect to democracy. We show that a similar process of mutual adjustment can be found within a very different international network: military alliances. The causal mechanisms for the diffusion of democracy are notoriously vague, but the existence of diffusion within alliance networks helps narrow the possibilities. Where these relationships are significant, the net tendency is overwhelmingly convergence: Allies have tended to become more similar to one another in their levels of electoral democracy, especially immediately prior to the onset of a formal military alliance.
Advocates tout regimechange operations as a vital tool for promoting American security and foreig... more Advocates tout regimechange operations as a vital tool for promoting American security and foreign policy inter ests.
International Influence: The Hidden Dimension
SSRN Electronic Journal
Is America Prepared for Great- power Competition?
Survival
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Conference Presentations by Benjamin Denison
causal mechanisms for the diffusion of democracy are notoriously vague, but the existence of diffusion within alliance networks helps narrow the possibilities. Where these relationships are significant, the net tendency is overwhelmingly convergence. Allies have tended to become more similar to one another in their levels of electoral democracy, especially immediately prior to the onset of a formal military alliance.
Drafts by Benjamin Denison
Papers by Benjamin Denison