Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Sarah Palin Did What? The Importance Of Redundancy, G. R. Boynton

G. R. Boynton

It was but a drop in a roiling stream of 50 million messages a day. Three hundred and sixty seven times the word went out: "Sarah Palin Crossed Border For Canadian Health Care: http://bit.ly/cRRdAU". From time to time the basic messages was either adapted slightly or augmented with commentary by the tweeter, but the basic message was always the same. While living in Alaska Sarah Palin had regularly crossed into Canada for healthcare.

Why more than once? The same question could be asked about all communication utilizing Twitter. The Twitter stream is full of repetition. A power blackout in Chile …

Io Mediation Of Interstate Conflicts: Moving Beyond The Global Vs. Regional Dichotomy, Holley Hansen, Sara Mclaughlin Mitchell, Stephen C. Nemeth

Sara McLaughlin Mitchell

Regional and global intergovernmental organizations have grown both in number and scope, yet their role and effectiveness as conflict managers is not fully understood. Previous research efforts tend to categorize organizations solely by the scope of their membership, which obscures important sources of variation in institutional design at both the regional and global levels. International organizations will be more successful conflict managers if they are highly institutionalized, if they have members with homogeneous preferences, and if they have more established democratic members. These hypotheses are evaluated with data on territorial (1816-2001), maritime (1900-2001), and river (1900-2001) claims from the Issue …

Reducing The Effects Of Moral Hazard: Institutional Designs Within International Alliances, Brian Lai

Brian Lai

What explains the level of commitment within an international military alliance? Specifically, when do alliances choose to adopt active military support for offensive uses of force versus lower levels of commitment? Drawing on the rational design of international institutions literature, this paper argues that the choice of commitment is a conscious effort to address two competing problems. The first is the potential for entrapment. Allies worry that commitments may lead other member states to act in a risky fashion, creating unnecessary conflict. The other problem is the need to demonstrate commitment in order to maximize the bargaining power of the …