New explorations into international relations : democracy, foreign investment, terrorism, and conflict / Seung-Whan Choi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Choi, Seung-Whan, author.

Series:

Studies in security and international affairs

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

International relations.

World politics.

Democracy.

Investments, Foreign.

Terrorism.

Physical Description:

xxxiii, 310 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens : The University of Georgia Press, [2016]

Summary:

This book addresses a range of issues surrounding the search for scientific truths in the study of international conflict and international political economy. Unlike empirical studies in other disciplines, says Seung-Whan Choi, many political studies seem more competent at presenting theoretical conjecture and hypotheses than they are at performing rigorous empirical analyses. When we study global issues like democratic institutions, flows of foreign direct investment, international terrorism, civil wars, and international conflict, we often uncritically adopt established theoretical frameworks and research designs. The natural assumption is that well-known and widely cited studies, once ingrained within the tradition of the discipline, should not be challenged or refuted. However, do such noted research areas reflect scientific truth? Choi looks closely at ten widely cited empirical studies that represent well-known research programs in international relations. His discussions address such statistical and theoretical issues as endogeneity bias, model specification error, fixed effects, theoretical predictability, outliers, normality of regression residuals, and choice of estimation techniques. In addition, scientific progress made by remarkable discoveries usually results from finding a new way of thinking about long-held scientific truths, so Choi also demonstrates how one may search for novel ideas at minimal cost by developing new research designs with original data. Here is a valuable resource for students, scholars, and policy makers who want to quickly grasp the evolutionary pattern of scientific research on democracy, foreign investment, terrorism, and conflict; build their research designs and choose appropriate statistical techniques; and identify their own agendas for the production of cutting-edge research. Book jacket.

Contents:

Part I Double Take

Chapter 1 Democracy, Ethnicity, Religion, and Civil War: Endogeneity Bias 3

Chapter 2 Capitalist Peace, Democratic Peace, and International War: Model Specification Errors 28

Chapter 3 A Reanalysis of the Selectorate Model: Fixed Effects, Heteroskedasticity, and Autocorrelation 42

Chapter 4 Examining the Predictability of the Selectorate Theory: Which Aspect of Democracy Explains Better, the Winning Coalition or Civil Liberties? 53

Chapter 5 Democracy, Foreign Direct Investment, and Outliers 74

Chapter 6 Explaining the Foreign Direct Investment-Democracy Controversy: Normality of Regression Residuals 90

Chapter 7 Terrorism and Zero-Inflated Negative Binomial Regression: A Mismatch between Theory and Statistical Model 112

Chapter 8 Democracy and Transnational Terrorism Revisited: Rule of Law 119

Part II Searching for New Ideas and Empirical Evidence

Chapter 9 Old Habits Die Hard: Leaders' Prior Military Experience, Repression, and Civil War 145

Chapter 10 Democracy, Status Quo, and Military Manpower Systems 174

Chapter 11 Selectorate Theory, Democracy, and Terrorism: Null Results 187

Chapter 12 The Political Economy of Foreign Direct Investment Democracy, Economic Crisis, and Domestic Audience Benefits 203

Chapter 13 The United States' Use of Military Force and Terrorism 218.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780820349077

0820349070

9780820349084

0820349089

OCLC:

922631012