Bottom-Up and Top-Down Approaches to Political Economy of Interstate Conflict (Pre-Recorded)

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

How does interstate conflict affect the power, resources, and preferences of domestic economic and political actors? How, in turn, do these actors affect the course of interstate conflict? This panel builds on a growing body of research on the political economy of security by bringing together papers that emphasize two distinct theoretical lenses on how conflict processes shape—and are shaped by—domestic economic and political actors.

The first, or “bottom-up” lens looks at how domestic economic and political actors can affect wartime policy and foreign security policy more generally. Alexander Kirss’ paper examines wartime commercial policy, arguing that a government’s decision to declare certain goods contraband of war or not is affected as much by the demands of domestic economic actors as national security concerns. Leah Matchett looks at the domestic politics of military procurement in the United States, arguing that the role of congressional committees in determining the allocation of procurement funds is overstated. Neither committee authority over defense allocation nor committee membership appears to play an important role in where defense money goes.

The second, or “top-down” lens looks at how interstate conflicts, or the threat of conflict, can shuffle domestic political coalitions and domestic and international institutions. Specifically, Emma Campbell-Mohn’s paper analyzes five key moments in the history of post-World War II European integration to assess the interactive effect of security and economic concerns on multinational institutional development. Roya Izadi also analyzes the effect of interstate conflict on domestic politics through a novel empirical examination of military involvement in the economy. International relations scholars have long been interested in how the military intervenes in wartime economies, and Izadi’s paper notes how this involvement oftentimes predates conflicts or is maintained after conflict.

Sub Unit

• Division 21: Conflict Processes

Individual Presentations

• The Political Economy of Trading with the Enemy - Alexander Kirss, George Washington University

• Committees Without Influence: Rethinking the Politics of Defense Acquisition - Leah Matchett

• For Security or Money?: The EU's Relation to International Security - Emma Campbell-Mohn, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• The Politics of Military Intervention in the Economy - Roya Izadi, University of Rhode Island

Chair

• Kaija E. Schilde Boston University

Discussant

• Jonathan D. Caverley Naval War College