Book Project: Uncertainty, Policy Flexibility, and International Resource Management in Post-Soviet Central Asia
Description:
In just the eleven years between January 2000 and December 2010, different combinations of the five Central Asian countries signed or reinstated 120 international agreements concerning water and energy management. The majority caused significant shifts in country behavior. However, despite these short-term adjustments, cooperation often lasted just a few months before a signatory defected. This poses a puzzle. Why would the Central Asian leaders continually forgive defections by their partners, knowing that any new agreement might also be short-lived? Faced with repeated failures, why did they not simply give up and pursue unilateral resource management as best they could?
The answers to these questions hinge on the key role of uncertainty in policy choice. As nondemocratic leaders, the Central Asian presidents possessed poor information about potential threats to their power. Furthermore, the costs and benefits of different resource management regimes depended heavily on exogenous factors, such as river flow levels and energy prices, further magnifying the uncertainty over which management regime to pursue. Political leaders who face uncertainty may select flexible policies that can be updated as they gather new information or as their circumstances change. As a result, these countries jointly preferred a flexible form of international cooperation in which defections were forgiven as a matter of course and renegotiation was always possible.
Political leaders adopt flexible policies because they fear uncertainty; they utilize that flexibility as their fears are realized and the incentives they face change. Using original data on relationships among the Central Asian countries, evidence from a national survey of Kyrgyz citizens, and qualitative interviews conducted during nine months of field research, I demonstrate that the leaders of these countries used the flexibility of their resource management in a very rational way. Building on insights from the Central Asian case, I then generate predictions about the inclusion of flexibility provisions in international water management treaties more generally. I demonstrate that such provisions are more likely when treaties involve both nondemocratic signatories, who prioritize flexibility, and democratic ones, who prefer flexibility to be formal rather than informal.
The book challenges the prevailing assumption that political actors always strive to solve the “problem” of credible commitment through the institutions they choose and the strategies they pursue. Instead, I demonstrate that they sometimes choose flexibility, even if doing so undermines their ability to make such commitments. In such cases, observed policy volatility may reflect an underlying process of flexible goods provision decisions that is a source of regime stability, rather than evidence of a government’s weakness. More practically, the book has implications for both the design of international agreements and the kinds of domestic policies different political leaders are likely and/or willing to pursue. Authoritarian leaders, in particular, may be reluctant to sign treaties or adopt policies that lack flexibility, be it formal or informal. This reluctance, which is a rational response to the uncertainty they face, must be taken seriously by anyone trying to influence the policies or agreements such countries implement.
Peer-Reviewed Publications:
How do countries that share cross-border rivers respond to periods of abnormally low water availability? Existing research concerning water scarcity focuses on how cross-basin differences in absolute availability influence relations between countries. I argue that understanding whether countries react cooperatively or conflictually to within-basin shortages is equally important. I use the case of two major cross-boundary rivers in the Aral Sea basin of Central Asia to study the effects of within-basin, relative scarcity. Employing original data on interactions among the Central Asian countries over the issue of water management, I find an association between, on the one hand, relative water scarcity and, on the other hand, an increased likelihood of both cooperative and conflictual interactions. By showing that relative scarcity affects when cooperative and conflictual events occur, my analysis highlights the fact that absolute scarcity is not the only type of water scarcity that influences international relations on cross-boundary rivers.
International Studies Quarterly, 2017
Works in progress:
Sideways concessions to protests are policy reforms that increase the satisfaction of potential protestors, without being directly linked to the stated demand of the protests. By avoiding both the potential backlash effect of repression and the inspirational effects of direct concessions, they can be powerful tools for leaders attempting to quell societal unrest. However, for this to be true, individuals must actually take sideways concessions into account when deciding whether or not to protest. This article evaluates the effectiveness of sideways concessions at reducing individual mobilization potential using a survey experiment conducted in Kyrgyzstan in October 2015. The evidence suggests that sideways concessions do, in fact, decrease the propensity of certain individuals to protest. In particular, sideways concessions are most effective among respondents who expressed dissatisfaction with the government and are not optimistic about the future of the country.
Currently R&R at Comparative Politics
Granting direct concessions to protests sometimes causes mass movements to escalate rather than deescalate. Given this risk, governments may employ concessions that are “sideways” to the central issues of the protest. Sideways concessions are policy accommodations that are substantively unrelated to the narrative of the ongoing protest. They help deescalate movements by reducing the level of grievance among potential protesters, while their indirect nature minimizes the likelihood of any escalatory effects. The article illustrates the use of sideways concessions in post-Soviet Central Asia during the 2000s, demonstrating that the Central Asian governments used international cooperation over resource management as a sideways concession to protest in specific subnational regions. This finding implies that sideways concessions are an important part of the protest-and-response story.
Currently under review.
Does political reform follow the death of dictators? Although death presents a potential opportunity for liberalization, this potential is rarely realized and only under very particular circumstances. Regime elites, wishing to regain power in the aftermath of death, work to engineer smooth transitions from one leader to the next, by force if necessary. Consequently, transitions following the natural death of dictators rarely generate much political change. I use cross-national data to demonstrate that the relationship between dictator death and political liberalization is remarkably weak, even under the most favorable circumstances. Indeed, leader death only correlates positively with political liberalization in economically developed countries with older dictators. The rarity of post-death reform implies that waiting for dictators to die is not an effective strategy for promoting political liberalization.
Currently under review
- Protester Identity and Government Response to Initial Protest
Does the identity of protesting groups influence whether governments respond with repression or not? This paper examines how different features of protest- ing groups combine with country-level characteristics to determine government response. Using a formal model, it identifies several testable hypotheses. Intuitively, factors that make repression more costly to use also make it less likely to be used. However, features of the initial group of protestors also play an important role in determining the equilibrium level of repression. In particular, protests by well-informed groups send a strong signal about the government’s type and are more likely to be met by more repression. Governments are also more likely to repress initial protests by groups who might pose a threat to the regime even if escalation does not occur. I use global event data to provide preliminary evidence in support of these hypotheses.
- Buying the People or the Purse-Strings? The Allocation of Housing Projects in Turkey
If politicians are primarily motivated by their desire to remain in office, then they will distribute economic benefits in a way that maximizes the expected electoral return on their investment. In this paper, I focus on whether politicians accomplish this by appealing directly to citizens or, instead, focus on gaining the support of key financial actors in important electoral districts. To answer this question, I utilize data from the centrally-administered TOKI project on the allocation of housing projects in modern Turkey. I examine whether electoral considerations better explain the geographic location of the housing projects themselves or the geographic location of the construction firms hired to fulfill these contracts.
- Political Selection Procedures, Executive Constraints, and Idiosyncratic Leadership Effects
Like the citizens they represent, political leaders have both preferences and capabilities, which are informed by their personal characteristics, histories, and biases. Different leaders will therefore act differently, even if they face very similar situations. In this paper, I argue that both political selection procedures and institutional constraints moderate these idiosyncratic leadership effects. Political selection procedures affect how similar a new leader will be, on average, to his or her predecessor. Institutional constraints either help or hinder leaders seeking to express their idiosyncrasies. Therefore, idiosyncratic leader effects are most likely when political selection is irregular and institutional constraints are low.
- Saying No: Understanding Dissent Among Kyrgyz Legislators
What does dissent among Kyrgyz legislators tell us about the role of the legislature in modern Kyrgyzstan? Despite the post-2010 reforms, votes in the Kyrgyz legislature continue to be noncompetitive, casting doubt on its identity as an institution of representative democracy. I analyze the voting patterns of Kyrgyz legislators from the perspective of lingering authoritarianism and present evidence that some legislators are motivated by goals other than personal gain.