The Duck of Minerva

Phil Arena

I am an assistant professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. I mostly write here about "rational choice" and IR theory. I also maintain my own blog, fparena.blogspot.com.

Recent Posts

Thursday Linkage

by Phil Arena | 8 May, 2014 |

Editor's note: this post first appeared on my personal blog. 1. Tensions in the South China Sea are rising. Exhibit A (h/t Sean B. Rogers), exhibit B (h/t Jay Ulfelder). Right now, all eyes are on Ukraine. And rightfully so. But this is one to watch too. 2. Speaking of Ukraine, the National Interest wonders if that crisis could spark a world war (h/t Charli Carpenter). The article is a bit sensationalistic, and I doubt anyone would have written it if all this had happened in 2013 ("99 years ago" just doesn't have the same ring to it), but there are some good points here. I wouldn't put the...

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Classroom Activity: Shared Threat and Delayed Elections

by Phil Arena | 30 April, 2014 |

This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) about domestic politics helps us understand variation in the likelihood of international conflict. I focused particularly on whether the spread of democracy explains Europe's transformation from one of the most violent parts of the world to one of the most peaceful and how the the fear of coups and rebellion in Sub-Saharan Africa helps explain why there have been so few interstate wars there. I closed out the portion focusing on the democratic peace by discussing how territorial disagreements both promote war and...

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Wednesday Linkage

by Phil Arena | 30 April, 2014 |

Editor's note: this post originally appeared on my personal blog. It contains some links to posts that appeared here at the Duck. 1. An interview with Jim Fearon about Ukraine. Lots of good stuff here, both about Ukraine and in general. As you'd expect. 2b. Some thoughts from Branislav Slantchev about Russia's Cold War Syndrome. c. Anna Pechenkina reacts. d. Slantchev responds. 3. Still want to read more about Ukraine? Okay, check out Taylor Marvin on why it doesn't make much sense to use force in Syria in order to signal resolve. I agree. Using force in one crisis to influence perceptions...

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Sadly for Ukraine, The West Does Not Have Important Interests There

by Phil Arena | 25 April, 2014 |

Editor's note: this is a guest post by Anna O. Pechenkina, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Dept of Social and Decision Sciences, Carnegie Mellon University. It is primarily a response to an essay Branislav Slantchev recently posted on his personal website. Branislav Slantchev advocates for NATO troops to be stationed in Eastern Ukraine to preserve western strategic interests in the region. The logic is that if NATO troops establish a "tripwire" in Ukraine,  Russia will face a choice of whether to attack western troops and will (most likely) back down. While this describes the world in which I...

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Classroom Activity: When Silence Says a Lot

by Phil Arena | 23 April, 2014 |

This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on international institutions, specifically the impact they have on patterns of armed conflict. The first half focused on peacekeeping, which works better (under some conditions) than many appreciate, while the latter focused on how international institutions can deter bad behavior even if they lack enforcement power. The argument, which I previously laid out (in a somewhat different form) here, is that international institutions need not have the power to punish so long as the statements they make have an impact...

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Tuesday Linkage

by Phil Arena | 22 April, 2014 |

Editor's note: this post previously appeared on my personal blog. I've been doing links posts on Tuesdays over there for a while now, so I guess I might as well start cross-listing them. 1. Excellent post by Reed Wood on targeting civilians in war. In it, he discusses two recent papers (one by himself and my colleague Jake Kathman, another by fellow PSU PhD Jakana Thomas) showing that insurgents who kill civilians—who resort to terrorism—do better than those who don't. All standard caveats about correlation and causation apply, of course, but bear in mind that there's good reason to...

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Sanction Threats, Imposition, and Protest

by Phil Arena | 18 April, 2014 |

Editor's note: a more detailed version of this post previously appeared on my personal blog. If sanctions are to succeed as a tool of coercive diplomacy, they must impose real costs on the target. Yet, in most cases, they fail to do this—at least, directly. The economic costs tend to fall disproportionately on the average person, while the regime and its elite supports often find ways to benefit from newly emergent black markets. But might sanctions put pressure on the regime through some other channel? Say, by increasing protests? There have been many attempts at answer this question, all...

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Classroom Activity: Gambling Over War

by Phil Arena | 18 April, 2014 |

This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on information problems as an explanation for war—which I'd say is the most useful explanation we've got. The broad contours of the argument are pretty straightforward, but the full implications are not. (That's something of an understatement. As I've discussed a few times before, a lot of very smart people have made incorrect statements about what this argument implies. In fact, while I'll gladly admit we've hit the point of diminishing marginal returns, I still think there's a lot we've yet to learn from this way...

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Classroom Activity: Commitment Problems

by Phil Arena | 11 April, 2014 |

This activity comes after students are to have listened to a lecture (slides) on commitment problems. The lecture focused in particular on how the anticipation of future shifts in power can create incentives for preventive war. After walking them through a formal model fleshing out the argument, I then discussed the role of preventive motives in the US Civil War and showed them that interstate wars have occurred more often historically when there was reason to believe that war in the current year would have a significant impact on the distribution of military capabilities in the subsequent...

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Social Media and Protests

by Phil Arena | 3 April, 2014 |

[Note: A more detailed version of this post appeared at my personal blog.] The Cairo protests that ultimately led to the ouster of Hosni Mubarak received a great deal of attention on Twitter—the most used hashtag in 2011 was #egypt—leading much discussion over whether we were seeing  "a Twitter revolution." But the mere fact that protests occurred at the same time as an increase in calls for regime change on social media does not establish that the latter in any way fueled the former. The same factors that lead people to take to the streets might drive behavior online. Absent a credible...

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