2016-17 Mershon Center Speakers and Conferences
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Item Democracy, the State and Protest: International Perspectives on Methods for the Study of Protest(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-05-12) Jenkins, Craig; Slomczynski, Kazimierz; Tomescu-Dubrow, Irina; Brantd, Patrick; Dalton, Russell; Van Deth, Jan; Earl, Jennifer; Vrablikova, Katerina; Kriesi, Hanspeter; Klandermans, BertItem Water, Culture, and Society in Global Historical Perspective II(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-06-24) Breyfogle, Nicholas; Brown, Philip; Arch, Jakobina; Bender, Mark; Burton, Christopher; Costlow, Jane; Féaux de la Croix, Jeanne; Michinori, Hashimoto; Weifang, Gu; Kochetkova, Elena; de Kraker, Adriaan; Yawen, Ku; Laakkonen, Simo; Yushang, Li; Park, Albert; Perkiömäk, Mika; Reid, Patryk; Roberts, Flora; Ruder, Cynthia; Wilson, Roderick"Water" constitutes a multi-faceted topic of overwhelming historical and contemporary significance. Water defines every aspect of life: from the ecological to the cultural, religious, social, economic, and political. Without the molecule H20, life as we understand it would cease to exist. Water remains at the center of human activity: in irrigation and agriculture; waste and sanitation; drinking and disease; floods and droughts; religious beliefs and practices; fishing and aquaculture; travel and discovery; scientific study; water pollution and conservation; multi-purpose dam building; in the setting of boundaries and borders; politics and economic life; and wars and diplomacy. Water also plays an important symbolic role in works of literature, art, music, and architecture, and it serves as a source of human beauty and spiritual tranquility.Item The Crisis of Liberal Democracy(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-04-10) Diamond, LarryFor the past decade, the world has been in a modest but persistent recession of freedom and democracy. As more democracies in recent years have slipped back onto an authoritarian path--including Turkey, Thailand, Bangladesh, and Nicaragua--analysts have debated whether we might be a risk of a "reverse wave" of democratic breakdowns. But with the rise of right-wing, nativist, populist movements and candidates in Europe and the United States, a bigger concern has emerged: That liberal democracy (and perhaps democracy altogether) may be threatened in the core of the democratic system. This lecture will review the trends in freedom and democracy over the last decade and then explain why liberal democracy is now in danger in the one place where it was presumed to be stable: The West.Item Military Frontiers Conference: A Graduate Student Symposium(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-04-29) Watson, Mason; Von Bargen, Max; Sheffield, Gary; Harris, Jim; Thompson, Peter; Kent, Daniel; Kurzon, Daniel; Bamford, Tyler; Boehm, Ben; Larson, Zeb; Knuppe, Austin; Crean, Jeff; Villanueva, Jim; Morton, Doug; Laughlin, BenIn the last three months of 1918 the Western Allies finally defeated the Central Powers. Over the years, historians have been divided over the reasons for the Allied victory. In this lecture, Gary Sheffield argues that a combination of factors brought about the defeat of Germany and its allies. These include seapower; the greater resilience of the Allied home fronts; and the economic strengths and manpower of the British and French empires; the support of the United States, even before it formally became a belligerent; and, not least, the formidable military achievements of the armies of the British Empire.Item Transparency, Protest, and Democratic Stability(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-04-06) Rosendorff, PeterDemocratic rule is maintained so long as all relevant actors in the political system comply with the institutional rules of the game – democratic institutions must be self-enforcing. We examine the role of transparency in supporting a democratic equilibrium. Transparency improves the functioning of elections: In transparent polities, elections more effectively resolve adverse selection problems between the public and their rulers. Transparency increases popular satisfaction with democracy and inhibits challenges to the democratic order. We provide a game-theoretic model, test these claims, and find they enjoy empirical support. Transparency is associated with a reduction in both the probability of democratic collapse and of the irregular removal of democratic leaders. Transparency stabilizes democratic rule.Item Translocal Relations of Climate Change in East Asia(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-03-28) Lee, TaedongWhy do local governments become actively engaged in the issue of global climate change? How do global factors influence local governments' choices, policies, and interactions? These questions are puzzling in that local governments have been regarded as public service providers in the domestic arena; and studies on cities and climate change have primarily focused on domestic drivers to explain local governments' climate change policies. In this talk, I discuss translocal relations of cities that have made an international effort to collectively tackle climate change. Compared to state-centric terms, inter-national or trans-national relations, trans-local relations look at policies, politics, and interactions of local governments in the globalized world. Using the framework of translocal relations, I argue that the level of global cityness and local political attributes are primary driving factors for local governments' engagement in global climate governance in Asia as well as around the world.Item The Law of War and the Treatment of Prisoners of War during the World Wars(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-03-24) Morrow, JamesInternational humanitarian law on prisoners of war and other issues has grown extensively over the last century and a half. I lay out a general argument about how the law can aid warring parties in limiting violence during wartime. The patterns of compliance and violations during the World Wars illustrate both the strengths and limitations of law to protect prisoners. During the First World War, all parties wanted to follow the war but disagreed about what it required. As a result, conduct deteriorated during the war. In the Second World War, some parties wanted to follow the law while others rejected it, resulting in great differences in conduct across theaters. Practical issues also limited the ability of the parties to control abuses of prisoners of war.Item Troops or Cash? Analyzing the Interdependencies Between Security & Financial Cooperation(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-02-09) Bunte, JonasHow are defense cooperation and economic cooperation related? Research into this important question has focused primarily on trade and militarized conflict or, more relevantly, trade and military alliances. Yet, these approaches suffer from "apples to oranges" comparisons. Militarized conflict and defense pacts are both intergovernmental phenomena, monopolized by public actors, while trade is largely the realm of private economic actors. Furthermore, existing research is limited to bilateral relations, ignoring the more complex ways in which economics and defense influence one another. This paper introduces two broad innovations. First, we shift attention from trade and conflict to defense cooperation agreements (DCAs) and bilateral loans. Importantly, both DCAs and loans reflect deliberate governmental policies, which facilitates direct comparisons between the two. Second, we conceptualize DCAs and loans as "coevolving multiplex networks." We model not only the simultaneous bilateral relationship between DCAs and loans, but also more complex higher-order influences, where ties to third parties affect governments' willingness to sign defense agreements with, or make loans to, one another. Our analysis reveals that (1) defense and economic cooperation mutually increase the other, (2) countries that are highly active creditors in the loan network make for unattractive defense partners, (3) countries that borrow from the same creditors are more likely to cooperate in defense, and (4) governments tend to make loans to the same debtors as their defense partners. In light of significant changes in the international landscape, such as the rise of China and India as new creditors, this study refines our understanding of how governments wield the dual tools of defense and financial policy.Item Promise & Perils of a Politics of Peace: How the Report from Iron Mountain exposed the Absurdity of Cold War Militarism(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-04-04) Goedde, PetraThe "Report from Iron Mountain," was published in 1967 as an alleged leaked study by an unnamed U.S. government task force regarding the "possibility and desirability of peace" with the Soviet Union. Though a complete fabrication, the study as well as the public debate it generated marked a turning point in the public discourse on peace in the United States. This talk takes the report as a point of departure for an exploration of the interconnections between public peace advocacy and the politics of peace during the 1960s and early 1970s. It is part of a larger study of the national and transnational engagement with peace as an ideal as well as a practical political manifestation, from the level of grassroots activism to the highest echelons of power; and from the cultural-religious realm to the realm of international diplomacy.Item Network Topology and the Democratic Peace(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-01-24) Cranmer, SkylerThe democratic peace is one of the few empirical findings in International Relations that has acquired a law-like status. Many attempts have been made to fully understand the theoretical mechanisms at work, increasingly focusing less upon regime type alone, and more upon collinear explanations such as trade, economic openness, interests, and IGOs along with joint regime type. We take a network-based perspective on the democratic peace, holding that democracies are often on the same side of conflicts against autocratic states and because of this, do not fight one another. We find strong evidence of interdependence in the conflict network, that a state's decision to attack another is conditioned upon a third state with that same target. When accounting for this effect, evidence of the democratic peace is much less clear.Item The Geopolitics of Feminism: International Women's Year, the United Nations, and the Globalization of Social Policy(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-02-02) Olcott, JocelynThis talk considers the case of the 1975 UN International Women's Year Conference in Mexico City to discuss the ways that 1970s feminism and the explosion of women's organizing around the world reoriented global policies around a host of issues ranging from population and food security to labor policies and environmental accords. These debates were refracted through 1970s geopolitics -- détente, decolonization, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Sino-Soviet split -- but also created vehicles through with feminist movements and women's organizations shaped international policies and practices.Item Prisons of the Forgotten: King on Ghettos and Economic Justice(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-01-13) Shelby, TommieKing believed that racial injustice and economic injustice have always been linked in America. Tommie Shelby takes up the race-class nexus by considering King's analysis of ghetto poverty. Like Jim Crow segregation, ghetto conditions are a threat to dignity. But they are also incompatible with economic fairness and non-exploitative labor relations. Shelby discusses King's practical proposals for ending poverty in the United States and considers four principles of economic justice (each found in King's writings) that might justify these recommended remedies. He also takes up the question of what kind of egalitarian King was and whether he is best described as a socialist.Item Combat and Historiography in the Battle of Sangshak(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-03-23) Barkawi, TarakProduced by soldiers and veterans, the materials through which we seek to understand war carry war's antagonisms; they are shaped by fighting, by specific battles, by old debts and lost arguments between commanders, invoiced in the lives of their soldiers. In a way, military historiography is too close to its own subject matter. Clarity demands an exacting reflexivity, of a kind evident in the life and work of Louis Allen, a Japanese-speaking British military intelligence officer who participated in the Burma campaign and wrote its standard account, Burma: The Longest War 1941-45. Between the first and second editions of that book, Allen became embroiled in historiographical disagreement with veterans of the Battle of Sangshak. He helps guide us through some of the ways in which history is a continuation of war by other means.Item Did Women Have a Great War? Gender and the Global Conflict of 1914-1918(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-03-29) Grayzel, SusanThe title of my talk pays homage to a classic and pioneering essay in women's history: Joan Kelly's 1977 "Did Women Have a Renaissance?" Kelly's intent was to see if -- by asking a question that placed women at the center of a world event -- we could challenge (as she put it) "accepted schemes of periodization." Following Kelly, the question "Did women have a Great War?" offers a starting point to consider whether or not we can separate the collective wartime and postwar experiences of women from those of their male counterparts. If so, how might a female-centered perspective enhance our understanding of the First World War? In order to address these questions, the talk will explore what the war meant, in at least a few ways, to women qua women in all its messy complexity by drawing upon a range of sources from visual and material evidence to government documents to women's own texts. It will then suggest what focusing on gendered experiences does to the history of the First World War and perhaps to modern war more generally.Item Permeation of Global Governance by Pressure Groups(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-03-09) Johnson, Tanan domestic politics, pressure groups are viewed warily. The founders of the United States, for instance, warned about the “mischiefs of faction” and strived to create a political system that would moderate their influence. But international politics is very different. There, the United Nations and other intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) regularly solicit participation from pressure groups, often in the hopes of connecting with the grassroots, obtaining diverse input, and boosting IGO legitimacy. In this regard, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are particularly important pressure groups. After all, regardless of whether a particular NGO is known more for service delivery or advocacy of particular policy positions, its actions and aspirations tend to stem from a seed of dissatisfaction that produces policy-related appeals and pressures governmental entities. I develop a framework for understanding which kinds of NGOs tend to permeate IGOs to the greatest extent.Item Illiberal Modernity and National Populism in the BRICS and the West(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-03-02) Snyder, JackIn both developed and developing states, challenges to the liberal order are converging on a single main competitor, populist nationalism, which is a response to the tension between two central elements of liberal modernity: free markets and mass participation in politics. When popular self-determination is expressed through the nation-state, mass public grievances against the "creative destruction" caused by free markets in goods, capital, and labor often take the form of populist nationalism. Whereas in late developers this contradiction is caused by the mismatch between market economics and clientelistic political institutions, in consolidated democracies it is caused by economic policies of deregulation, accelerating capital and labor mobility, and economic globalization that disconnect markets from democratic control. The remedy in both cases is to embed markets more firmly in liberal, democratically accountable institutions. I analyze the details of this process by drawing on research on "late development" and what has recently been labeled "the middle-income trap."Item A Neurally-Informed Model of Habit in Consumer Choice(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2016-11-28) Camerer, ColinItem Work, Energy, and the Value of Nature: From Planetary Conquest to Epochal Crisis in the Capitalist World-Ecology(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2017-01-19) Moore, JasonWhere and when do we find the origins of today’s planetary crisis? In this lecture, Moore argues that rise of capitalism in the centuries after 1450 marked an environment-making revolution greater than any since the dawn of agriculture. Arguing that capitalism develops not only through economic process but by cultural and territorial conquests, Moore shows how the modern world was forged in a peculiar – and destructive – relation of work and energy. In this account, the work of human and extra-human natures is foregrounded, implicating the creation of “Nature” and “Humanity” – including the powerfully racialized and gendered expulsions of humans from “Humanity.” At its core, capitalism works through a strategy of Cheap Nature: one premised on the de-valuation of ‘women, nature, and colonies.’ The limits of this strategy are increasingly revealed in the ongoing exhaustion – and growing opposition to – of Cheap Nature in the early 21st century.Item Ruling the Market: Economic Geography, Electoral Institutions, and Redistribution(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2016-11-08) Rickard, StephanieWhy do politicians in some democracies redistribute more than in others? I examine this question in the context of particularistic economic policies, which selectively assist small groups of citizens at the expense of many. Government-funded subsidies, for example, help people employed in the subsidized industry but do so at the expense of taxpayers. While the political motivations behind such policies are well understood, the cross-national variation is not. Why do elected leaders enact generous particularistic economic policies in some democracies but not others? Industrial subsidies, for example, vary significantly across democracies, despite international restrictions on their use in both WTO and the EU agreements. Professor Rickard argues that electoral institutions and economic geography work together to explain industrial subsidies are more generous in some countries than others. Electoral institutions generate incentives for politicians and parties to pursue certain (re-) election strategies. Geography determines which policies best accomplish the institutionally-generated electoral tactics. Sometimes particularistic economic policies are the most efficient option to aid (re-) election. In these cases, international economic agreements do little to curb subsidy spending.Item Race Place and Capital Workshop(Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies, 2016-11-19) Guzman, Andres; Lund, Joshua; Rosenthal, Olimpia; Cohen, Amy; Asutosh, Ishan; Alexander, Leslie; Nemser, Daniel; Akbar, Amna; Valdez, Ines; Speer, Jessie; Rodriguez Arguelles, Sara