Research
Research
The Interplay of Military Intervention and Peacemaking
Status: under review
Abstract: This article addresses the question of when a powerful third party has incentives to combine military intervention with peacemaking measures. Developing a formal model in which a foreign actor decides (1) whether to provide military support to its protégé and (2) whether to facilitate a peace settlement through security guarantees, I show that the two instruments can be either complementary or contradictory to each other, depending on the relative strength of the. If the protégé is relatively weak, the two instruments are complementary: security guarantees lock the protégé's gains from military support into a settlement, and military support improves the protégé's welfare in the settlement. A foreign actor who sufficiently values its protégé will combine these two instruments. Conversely, if the protégé is strong, the two instruments are contradictory: a settlement wastes the benefits of military support, while military support renders peacemaking efforts ineffective. The foreign actor will use at most one of the two instruments. The theory identifies conditions under which it is in the interest of a biased foreign actor to act as a neutral peacemaker. It also highlights the importance of introducing a second source of leverage beyond the mere manipulation of battlefield power in achieving meaningful peacemaking.
Misaligned Interests and the Credibility of Alleged Support Paper
Status: forthcoming in Journal of Theoretical Politics
Abstract: When can a third party manipulate the bargaining dynamics between its protégé and its adversary through diplomacy? I develop a formal model in which (1) the third party and its protégé have misaligned interests, and (2) the disputants bargain simultaneously over two issue dimensions---one capturing common interests, the other capturing misaligned interests between the allies. The results show that when the protégé and its patron have heterogeneous preferences for the disputed issues, the protégé will not necessarily use the patron's support in the way the patron wants. Patron's support increases the protégé's bargaining leverage, and how the protégé will use this increased leverage at the negotiating table directly affects the way the patron communicates. The existence of misaligned interests will increase the credibility of the patron's alleged support for its protégé and thus benefit the allies if the signal can potentially improve the protégé's gains over both shared and misaligned interests with its patron.
Observing Allies: The Advantage of Limited Information
Status: working paper
Abstract: Uncertainty about a strategic partner is as common as uncertainty about a rival. This article argues that a state's knowledge of its friend affects the aggression of its rival. I develop a formal model in which a Target and its Ally form a military coalition against a Challenger. Challenger and Target are uncertain about Ally's willingness to support Target in the event of war, and Target can choose its ability to obtain this information. The results show that a stronger intelligence capability of Target can make Challenger more or less aggressive, depending on their prior beliefs about Ally's willingness to support Target. If Target is confident about Ally's support, it will invest more in gathering information about Ally. If Target is pessimistic, it will benefit from investing less and letting Challenger know that it has limited information. In addition, the probability of war is highest when the common prior is in the intermediate range, i.e., when the conflict parties are neither too optimistic nor too pessimistic about Ally's willingness to intervene.
Leader-Contingent Sanctions as a Cause of Violent Political Conflict. 2025. Political Science Research and Methods, 13(1): 36-55. link
Abstract: Economic sanctions are a policy tool that great powers frequently use to interfere with domestic politics of another state. Regime change has been a primary goal of economic sanctions over the past decades. This article studies the relationship between leader-contingent sanctions---sanctions that are designed to impede the flow of revenue to a specific leader---and violent political conflict in target countries. I build a theoretical model to illuminate two mechanisms by which leader-contingent sanctions destabilize a regime---the Depletion Mechanism and the Instigation Mechanism. The Depletion Mechanism works when sanctions mechanically deplete the government's resources so that it becomes unable to buy off domestic opposition even by making the largest possible offer. The Instigation Mechanism implies that as sanctions decrease the benefit of negotiated settlement relative to war, the government may strategically choose to repress rather than buy off the opposition even when it is able to do so. Leader-contingent sanctions lead to bargaining failure by rewarding the opposition for revolt while reducing the government's ability and willingness to appease the opposition.
Intervention in the Shadow of Leadership Turnover (with Liqun Liu)
Status: work in progress
Abstract: We develop a dynamic model to study how a patron state's leadership turnover affects its protégé's war decision against a common aggressor. Anticipating future reduced support from her successor, the incumbent leader of the patron state is incentivized to increase support to encourage the protégé to escalate. A successful escalation improves the issue's division for both the patron and the protégé, while a failure worsens the status quo, pressuring the successor to provide support they might otherwise withhold. We illustrate this theory with the Biden administration's landmark decision to allow Ukraine to attack Russian territory with U.S. weapons following Donald Trump's election as president.
The Presidential and Congressional Politics of US Foreign Aid
Status: work in progress
Abstract: This project explores how US presidents might use foreign aid budget proposals as a tool to pursue their foreign policy objectives. Empirical evidence shows that the amount of foreign aid requested by US presidents is significantly higher in presidential election years than in non-election years, while the amount of aid appropriated by Congress is not affected by election years. The effect of election years on presidential budget requests exists across different types of aid, such as security assistance, economic development assistance, and democracy and human rights assistance. In addition, the effect of election years on presidential budget requests is greater for states without formal alliance treaties with the US than for states with formal alliance treaties. Moreover, there is sometimes a gap between presidential budget proposals and congressional commitments, and this gap is significantly larger in presidential election years. This project seeks plausible explanations for these empirical patterns and provides insights into the nuanced relationship between presidential budget proposals and congressional commitments.
Status: working paper
Abstract: This article argues that the United States' influence over the United Nations' Peacekeeping Operations (UN PKOs) manifests through two closely related effects---Substitution Effect and Dominance Effect. The Substitution Effect implies that the US only delegates to the UN in crises in which the US has a lower stake, as the benefits associated with delegation outweigh the costs. The Dominance Effect implies that conditional on delegation, the UN will respond to US interests by allocating more resources in crises in which the US has a higher stake. The empirical results provide evidence in support of both effects in UN PKOs.
Democracy, Development, and Multilateralism: A Strategic Model of Vote Buying in the UN Security Council (with Jacque Gao)
Status: working paper
Abstract: This article examines the United States vote buying strategy in the UN Security Council by estimating a strategic statistical model. The results demonstrate that the United States is more willing to both punish democracies by withholding foreign aid for their opposition and reward democracies by increasing foreign aid for their support in the Security Council. However, the United States is much less willing to punish less developed countries for their opposition in the Security Council, even though coercion is a more effective strategy against poorer countries due to their vulnerabilities. Our results reveal the dualism in the United States aid’s purposes, and offer a mix of blessings and disappointments for the United States moral leadership.