“Hate To Lose More Than Love To Win: Relational Status Decline and Interstate Conflict“, Journal of Peace Research, Forthcoming
Despite extensive scholarly attention to the relationship between status concerns and interstate conflict, no clear consensus has emerged. This is partly due to persistent theoretical and methodological limitations. Most existing research has focused almost exclusively on status inconsistency—a mismatch between a state’s material capabilities and the recognition it receives—as the primary source of dissatisfaction, thereby overlooking alternative pathways. Drawing on insights from psychology and sociology, I argue that status concerns arise not only from such mismatches; they may also emerge when states perceive their standing to be deteriorating over time. I focus in particular on relational status decline, defined as a state’s decreasing embeddedness across multiple, compositionally distinct communities within diplomatic networks. States undergoing such relational decline are more likely to take risks and initiate conflict. To capture these dynamics, I employ a novel link-based community detection method that moves beyond traditional approaches by identifying multiple, potentially overlapping status reference communities. This empirical innovation captures the relational and multilayered nature of international recognition, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of a state’s position in the global hierarchy. Analyzing nearly 200 years of militarized interstate disputes (MIDs), I find that relational status decline significantly increases the likelihood of conflict initiation.
“The Rise of China’s Status: A Relational Approach“, The Pacific Review, 2025, 39(2): 317-337
To what extent has China’s status risen, and how? Despite the pivotal role of China’s status in shaping its foreign policy and global phenomena, there is no scholarly consensus on where China is ranked in the global hierarchy and how it attains such a position. Building on empirical studies that use diplomatic exchanges and extending them by employing social network analysis, this article provides the first systematic analysis of China’s standing in the global status hierarchy. My findings show that China’s status has experienced significant growth with a substantial increase in the number of diplomatic recognitions received. While the United States garnered more recognition than China, the gap between the two has narrowed significantly over the last three decades, and, when considering the quality of diplomatic ties, China’s status even surpassed that of the United States by 2005. Additionally, my findings suggest that both exogenous and endogenous factors worked in concert to elevate China’s status. The rise of China’s status did not occur automatically with its economic or military capabilities’ growth. Instead, relational dynamics were also important: recognition from the most prestigious country, the United States, in the 1970s triggered a domino effect, prompting other countries to recognize China. Furthermore, China’s emphasis on aligning with the developing Third World enables it to uniquely position itself in diplomatic networks by engaging with both well-connected and marginalized countries. This diplomatic portfolio, in turn, equips China with significant social and brokerage power, suggesting that its influence is far more formidable than its material capabilities alone would imply.
Where You Sit Matters: The Power of Brokers in Diplomatic Networks & Interstate Conflict, International Interactions, 2023, 49(5): 669-695
How does a state’s broker position in diplomatic networks influence its tendency to engage in conflict? While the existing scholarship typically characterizes brokers as ideal mediators or facilitators of peace, there is little systematic analysis that examines the impact of broker position on a state’s conflict propensity. I argue that the exclusive emphasis on the mediating role of brokers has elided the fact that broker position serves as strategic assets for states. Building on the existing literature on diplomacy and brokerage, I posit that broker position in diplomatic networks provides a state with leverage that can be used to coerce and co-opt other states into supporting its military operations, thereby increasing its propensity to initiate militarized interstate disputes. I assemble diplomatic networks from the past two centuries to examine the impact of broker position and find that the more a state occupies a broker position, the more likely it is to initiate militarized disputes. These findings challenge the prevalent notions that diplomatic ties are insignificant in shaping state conflict behavior and that broker position is solely used to promote peace.
U.S. immigration policy at the court: organized interests & asymmetric decisions, Politics, Groups, and Identities, Online First (With Dino P. Christenson and Janet M. Box-Steffensmeier)
Do some interest groups fare better on immigration cases before the Supreme Court? We build on interest group power theory and extend the literature by focusing on the heterogeneity of signers to amicus curiae briefs. Specifically, we argue that the presence of organizations that collaborate with multiple communities sends stronger signals to the justices. We use network community detection methods to reveal the coalition behavior of amici that file briefs on immigration cases between 1947 and 2021. We find that immigration cases garner far more amici on the liberal than conservative side, and that amici coalition behavior varies from acting alone, to cliques, to multiple communities. The presence of an amicus that works in multiple communities has a significant and asymmetric effect on judicial decision-making, such that conservative amici move justices to decide in their favor, but there is no comparable effect for liberal groups. Moreover, the effect is conditional on justice ideology, with moderate justices moving to side with conservative amici. In the domain of immigration cases, the accent heard by justices is that of the conservative side.