Why do some economic shocks have political consequences, upturning elections and ushering in radical candidates, while others are brushed off as structural change? We address this puzzle by looking to geographically concentrated industries, and how they relate to regional identity. While most often presented as a source of regional strength, we show that industrial hubs in the United States have accounted for more job losses than gains over the last twenty years. We then show how this matters through three original survey studies. Workers in geographically concentrated industries belong to denser, more deeply-rooted peer networks; these are associated with a stronger view that politicians are responsible for preventing layoffs. Those same individuals also perceive economic shocks of equal magnitude as more damaging to their region’s standing, compared to the rest of the country. Perceptions of lost regional standing, in turn, are associated with greater demand for populist leadership traits. Finally, we show how these individual attitudes translate into aggregate political behavior. Employment losses in industrial hubs are tied to greater support for Republican candidates, while equivalent losses in non-hubs show no analogous effect. Our account presents a competing picture to the dominant narrative of industrial hubs as founts of innovation and productivity. When threatened by structural forces, such hubs can turn instead into founts of political resentment.

Despite their significant influence on the development trajectories of recipient nations, we know little about the lending strategies of international financial institutions (IFIs) dominated by authoritarian regimes. In this paper, we provide new evidence that autocratic IFIs are not merely neutral economic actors. Our findings suggest that these institutions provide financial support to authoritarian governments facing acute threats to their survival. We introduce an original data set tracking the lending behavior of eighteen autocratic IFIs across 143 recipient countries from 1967 to 2021. Our findings uncover that aid flows from autocratic IFIs increase precisely when authoritarian regimes are most vulnerable. By situating these insights within the broader aid allocation literature, we provide a fresh perspective on the political calculus of international development lending, with profound implications for understanding global power dynamics.

Scholars and policymakers have argued that territorial revisionism is dangerous because it risks setting off a cascade of claims by states dissatisfied with their borders. This Pandora’s box logic suggests that states that are vulnerable to an unraveling of the status quo have incentives to restrain their territorial ambitions to preserve stability. This paper explores this claim theoretically and empirically. It provides descriptive evidence to determine whether vulnerability to territorial threats has historically been associated with a lower likelihood of initiating territorial disputes. We find some evidence of such an effect in postindependence Africa, where this logic is most frequently invoked, and to some extent in Asia, but not in other regions. To help explain these empirical observations, we develop a multistate model of territorial conflict that identifies the conditions under which cooperation to preserve the territorial status quo can be sustained. The model shows that while an equilibrium of mutual restraint can exist, the necessary conditions are quite restrictive, and this cooperative equilibrium is never unique. Thus while a Pandora’s box of potential claims can provide the basis for a norm of restraint, the emergence of such a norm is neither straightforward nor guaranteed.

How does racism structure the patterns of cooperation and contestation in international relations? We propose a theory of institutional racism in international relations, examining how international organizations perpetuate racial disparities despite their nominally race-neutral principles. Based on our original data, language in the founding charters of international organizations has shifted from open expressions of racism to the espousal of antiracism. However, membership patterns suggest a persistent bias in favor of white-majority countries: (1) such countries remain overrepresented as inception members of newly formed organizations, and (2) even after accounting for a variety of potential confounders, organizations that overrepresent white-majority countries tend to disproportionately draw new members from other white-majority countries. International organizations that explicitly profess antiracist principles, such as the International Criminal Court, exhibit similar bias. The findings suggest that understanding the structure and biases of the international order requires careful attention to the role of race.

We argue that transboundary pollution can simultaneously undermine domestic accountability processes and heighten international tensions. We examine this empirically in the context of South Korea, notorious for severe air pollution that partly originates from China. We first show that most media stories and popular public petitions on air pollution emphasize China’s responsibility. We then combine data on daily air quality with survey data (2015–2022) and use instrumental variable regressions to show that on bad air days, South Koreans’ assessments of their own government’s environmental efforts remain consistent but their opinions of China’s leadership worsen. We thus find causal evidence that transboundary pollution contributes to growing public hostility between China and Korea. The findings may also help explain why Korea ranks lowest among OECD countries on air pollution and climate change policies. The research note concludes with broader implications for studying transboundary environmental issues.

Are nuclear weapons useful for coercion, and, if so, what factors increase the credibility and effectiveness of nuclear threats? While prominent scholars like Thomas Schelling argue that nuclear brinkmanship, or the manipulation of nuclear risk, can effectively coerce adversaries, others contend nuclear weapons are not effective tools of coercion, especially when designed to achieve offensive and revisionist objectives. Simultaneously, there is broad debate about the incorporation of automation via artificial intelligence into military systems, especially nuclear command and control. We develop a theoretical argument that nuclear threats implemented with automated nuclear launch systems are more credible compared to those implemented via non-automated means. By reducing human control over nuclear use, leaders can more effectively tie their hands and thus signal resolve, even if doing so increases the risk of nuclear war and thus is extremely dangerous. Preregistered survey experiments on an elite sample of United Kingdom Members of Parliament and two public samples of UK citizens provide support for these expectations, showing that in a crisis scenario involving a Russian invasion of Estonia, automated nuclear threats can increase credibility and willingness to back down. From a policy perspective, this paper highlights the dangers of countries adopting automated nuclear systems for malign purposes, and contributes to the literatures on coercive bargaining, weapons of mass destruction, and emerging technology.

A growing body of work suggests that authoritarian regimes can enhance their external legitimacy by undertaking reform—from democratic or “pseudodemocratic” institutional changes at the domestic level to participation in international efforts to mitigate climate change. Yet the shared theoretical logic underlying this work has received surprisingly little empirical attention. This research contributes by offering findings from an iterative series of original survey experiments conducted over nationally representative samples of US citizens. Study 1 tested the foundational hypothesis—that reforms build external legitimacy—by adopting a simple independent groups design. Studies 2 and 3 subjected that hypothesis to harder tests via conjoint designs, and also evaluated extension hypotheses about when and in what sense “legitimacy” is gained. Across studies, the results consistently demonstrate that reforms (of a variety of types) do generate external legitimacy, offering both positive benefits as well as shielding benefits in keeping with theoretical arguments. The results also provide support for several new and previously undocumented findings concerning the role of reform type, type of legitimacy-derived gain, and the conditions under which such gains are more or less likely to accrue.