PUBLICATIONS
BOOKS
NATIONAL ROLE CONCEPTIONS IN A NEW MILLENNIUM: DEFINING A PLACE IN A CHANGING WORLD
(CO-EDITED WITH MICHAEL GROSSMAN AND FRANCIS SHORTGEN)
2022 (Routledge)
Since the end of the Cold War, the international system has been characterized by the preponderance of American power. Yet in the past decade, US relative power has declined, and the international system has begun to move from unipolarity, dominated by Washington, to one characterized by multiple new rising power centers and an increase in multipolarity. These changes have led national leaders to redefining how they see their country’s place in the global hierarchy as well as the roles they believe their countries should play internationally. This book will aim to investigate the changes through the lens of role theory which provides us with an opportunity to investigate the transformation of the international system through an examination of the role conceptions espoused by the different global actors.
US GLOBAL LEADERSHIP ROLE AND DOMESTIC POLARIZATION: A ROLE THEORY APPROACH
2021 (Routledge)
In this book Gordon Friedrichs offers a pioneering insight into the implications of domestic polarization for U.S. foreign policymaking and the exercise of America’s international leadership role. Through a mixed-method design and a rich dataset consisting of polarization data, congressional debates and letters, as well as co-sponsorship coalitions, Friedrichs applies role theory to analyze three polarization effects for U.S. leadership role-taking: a sorting effect, a partisan warfare, and an institutional corrosion effect. These effects are deployed in two comparative case studies: The Iran nuclear crisis as well as the negotiations of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. Friedrichs effectively exposes the drivers of polarization and how this extreme divergence has translated into partisan warfare as well as institutional corrosion, affecting direction and performance of the U.S. global leadership role. Through advancing role theory beyond other studies and developing the concept of "diagonal contestation" as a mechanism that allows us to locate polarization within a "two-level role game" between agent and structure, U.S. Global Leadership Role and Domestic Polarization is a rich resource for scholars of international relations, foreign policy analysis, American government and polarization.
THE POLITICS OF RESILIENCE AND TRANSATLANTIC ORDER: ENDURING CRISIS?
(CO-EDITED WITH SEBASTIAN HARNISCH AND CAMERON THIES)
2019 (Routledge)
This edited volume bridges the "analytical divide" between studies of transatlantic relations, democratic peace theory, and foreign policy analysis, and improves our theoretical understanding of the logic of crises prevention and resolution. The recent rise of populism and polarization in both the U.S.A and Europe adds to a host of foreign policy crises that have emerged in transatlantic relations over the last two decades. Through examining how democracies can manage to sustain and maintain mechanisms of crisis resilience that are embedded in the democratic peace, and particularly transatlantic relations, this book helps enhance the understanding of inter-democratic crisis resolution across issue areas. In doing so, it addresses some of the most important and prevalent crises of our time, such as anti-terrorism intervention in Afghanistan; Iran’s nuclear program; burden-sharing within North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO; key aspects of the international order, such as binding norms for cyber security and the integration of China into the Western-led international economic order; as well as domestic order shifts, such as the British vote to leave the European Union (EU) and the impact of the Trump administration populist foreign policy on transatlantic crisis resolution. This book will be of key interest to students and scholars of International Relations, Transatlantic Studies, Foreign Policy Analysis, and Comparative Politics.
PEER-REVIEWED ARTICLES
Selection
WHEN LEADERS DISAPPOINT - REJECTION AND DENIAL OF LEADERSHIP ROLES IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS (WITH ÁINE FELLENZ)
Accepted at International Relations
International leadership failure by states is an underdeveloped concept in International Relations. Existing approaches commonly equate leadership with hegemony, arguing that leadership success and failure are contingent on primacy or shared material interests among states. In this article, we introduce a role theoretical approach, which defines international leadership as a social role that emerges from shared expectations among states pertaining to leadership purpose, group cohesion, and time horizon. Accordingly, leadership failure occurs when role expectations between states diverge, and a leader is thus unable to generate commensurate follower roles. Four leader-follower constellations can be distinguished: leadership enactment, denial, rejection, and vacuum. The paper explores scope conditions for leadership failure in two case studies. The first case involves Brazil’s attempted leadership role in response to the Latin American migration crisis. The second case looks at Indonesia’s attempted leadership role in the South China Sea dispute. The empirical findings contribute to existing work on hegemony and leadership in international relations theory by showing that leadership failure comes in different variants and these variants are contingent on shared role expectations and altercasting capacity of states involved.
Regime Complexity as an Asset? The Negotiations of the Arms Trade Treaty (with Diana Panke).
2023: Journal of Global Security Studies 8(1).
The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is an important milestone in reducing the illicit trade of arms but was highly unlikely to be negotiated and passed. Major powers and states exporting and importing arms were not keen on universally binding regulations, leading to political stalemate in the initial negotiation arena, the Conference on Disarmament. This article investigates under which conditions regime complexity had a positive influence on the ATT negotiation dynamics and result. We distinguish between two types of regime complexity, each providing states with a distinct window of opportunity during international negotiations: horizontal regime complexity can allow states to overcome negotiation gridlock by changing the institutional conditions for passing an agreement. Vertical regime complexity can allow regional organizations to turn into agents of change by bringing in experiences gained on the regional level to the international negotiation table. Our empirical analysis of the ATT negotiations revealed critical scope conditions under which both forms of regime complexity function properly, allowing the negotiations to overcome negotiation gridlock and resulting in the passing of the accord beyond a lowest common denominator. The article contributes to the rich and vibrant scholarship in regime complexity and global governance complexes by making a novel analytical distinction between horizontal and vertical regime complexity and by identifying the opportunity structures under which regime complexity can have positive effects on the negotiation and outcome of international treaties.
POPULIST MINDS THINK ALIKE? NATIONAL IDENTITY CONCEPTIONS AND FOREIGN POLICY PREFERENCES OF POPULIST LEADERS
2022: Foreign Policy Analysis 18(2).
The global wave of populism has recently drawn the attention of foreign policy analysts. Despite significant contributions, we still know little about populist leaders’ conceptions of their nation's identity and how these inform foreign policy preferences. What understanding do populists have regarding what their nation stands for and how high it stands in comparison to others? In this article, I introduce a theoretical model of identity-driven foreign policymaking that examines the national identity conceptions of six populist leaders and their non-populist predecessors via an original quantitative content analysis of foreign policy speeches. The article further assesses whether this identity conception translates into foreign policy preferences for revisionism toward the liberal international order by examining voting behavior in the UN General Assembly. The article contributes to conceptual and methodological approaches in foreign policy analysis to study individuals, as well as provides comparative empirical evidence for what drives populists’ foreign policy thinking.
THE EFFECTS OF POLARIZATION FOR U.S. FOREIGN POLICY BEHAVIOR IN INTERNATIONAL NEGOTIATIONS: REVISITING THE TWO-LEVEL GAME
2022: International Studies Review 24(1).
Polarization has been a prevalent phenomenon in US politics, yet its foreign policy implications remain understudied. A common assumption is that polarization undermines the utilization of United States’ material power via a coherent grand strategy. In this article, I argue that polarization does not make the United States incapable of enacting a foreign policy per se but instead affects US foreign policy conduct, power, and strategy toward international negotiations. The effects of domestic polarization for US foreign policy behavior in international negotiations are best understood via an advanced application of the “two-level game” model, which conceptualizes a state's domestic politics as a determinant factor for the executive branch's approach toward foreign affairs. I identify three effects polarization has on US foreign policy: (1) a sorting effect, which produces homogenous partisan coalitions with divergent foreign policy preferences and inclines the executive to pursue an obstinate international negotiation conduct; (2) a partisan conflict effect, which weakens Congress as a veto player and reduces United States’ bargaining power; and, finally, (3) an institutional corrosion effect, which inclines the executive branch to manipulate domestic support and to politicize international negotiations at home. In sum, domestic polarization increases the opportunity costs for US foreign policy toward international negotiations and contributes to global instability. Anecdotal evidence from US foreign policy over the last decade offers support for these effects, but further empirical research is needed to better understand when they are most impactful and in which combination these effects appear.
POLARIZATION AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY: KEY DEBATES AND NEW FINDINGS (CO-AUTHORED WITH JORDAN TAMA)
2022: International Politics 59(5): 767 – 785.
Polarization in the USA has been on the rise for several decades. In this context, few observers expect politics today to stop “at the water’s edge,” as the old cliché goes. But key questions about the relationship between polarization and US foreign policy remain to be fully answered. To what extent are American ideas about foreign policy now polarized along partisan lines? How is polarization changing the foreign policy behavior of the US Congress and President? And how is polarization altering the effectiveness of US foreign policy and influencing America’s role in the world? In this introductory article to our special issue “Domestic Polarization and US Foreign Policy: Ideas, Institutions, and Policy Implications,” we provide an overview of key debates and existing knowledge about these questions, highlight important new findings from the contributions to the special issue, and suggest avenues for further research on this increasingly important topic.
POLARIZED WE TRADE? INTRA-PARTY POLARIZATION AND U.S. TRADE POLICY
2021: International Politics 59(5): 956 – 980. Online first.
Research indicates that polarization has led to an increasing dispersion between moderate and more extreme voters within both parties. Intraparty polarization supposedly affects the nature of interparty competition as it creates political space for new political realignments and the rise of anti-establishment candidates. This article examines the extent and impact of intraparty polarization in Congress on US trade policy. Specifically, the article examines whether (and which) trade policy preferences are distributed within and between both parties, as well as how intraparty polarization has influenced the outcome of US trade negotiations. It is theorized that intraparty polarization causes crosscutting legislative coalitions around specific trade policies and political realignments around ideological factions, with consequences for the outcome of trade negotiations. By relying on a unique dataset of congressional letters and co-sponsorship legislation, the article first derives trade policy preferences from members of Congress and computes their ideological means. Two contemporary cases of US trade policy are examined: The Transpacific Partnership Agreement and the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement. Via a structured-focused comparison of both cases, the paper finally assesses under which combinations of preference-based and ideology-based intraparty polarization Congress manages to ratify trade agreements. Findings suggest that both parties are intrinsically polarized between free trade and fair trade preferences yet show variance in their degree of ideology-based intraparty polarization. These findings contribute to existing work on bipartisanship as well as factions in the foreign policy realm, as it shows under which circumstances legislators can build crosscutting coalitions around foreign policies.
FROM FACTIONS TO FRACTIONS: INDIA’S FOREIGN POLICY ROLES ACROSS DIFFERENT PARTY SYSTEMS
2019: India Review 18(2)
India’s government under Narendra Modi represents a return to single party rule. This paper investigates whether and why single party governments in India differ in their extremity of foreign policies from coalition governments. It particularly focuses on how different forms of government influence the saliency, contestation, and enactment of national conceptions about India’s global role. First, I situate India within the academic debate regarding coalitional governments and foreign policy. I suggest that one reason why India challenges scholars‘ assumption is the missing link between partisan conceptions of India’s global role and their institutional representation. Second, I propose a role theoretical approach and argue that the process of self-identification, consisting of ego and anticipated alter expectations, conditions a state’s role set and extreme foreign policy. It is hypothesized that the nature of contestation of national role conceptions varies between factions and fractions because of the nature of India’s party system, as well as the relative significance of external others for India’s identity. Third, I examine instances of role-taking in the field of nuclearization and Sino-Indian relations. Findings suggest that contested role conceptions during single-party rule caused more extreme variances in international role-taking, while coalition governments proved to induce more complementary role-taking processes.
ALLIANCES REBALANCED? THE SOCIAL MEANING OF THE U.S. PIVOT AND ALLIES’ RESPONSES IN NORTHEAST ASIA
(CO-AUTHORED WITH SEBASTIAN HARNISCH)
The Korean Journal of International Studies Vol. 15, No. 1
Pundits and policymakers have articulated growing concerns about a coming clash between the U.S. and China. In this view, the U.S. Pivot to Asia is a (merely hidden) attempt of the Obama administration to preempt the competition with Beijing through strengthening a formidable web of military alliances and partnerships to frustrate Chinese ambitions. If this interpretation was true, U.S. allies in the region would heed Washington’s call to arms, because their military dependence would make them comply. Our role theoretical appraisal of the U.S. Pivot and reactions suggests that the material dynamics of security dilemmas in the region have been exaggerated: both, factions within the U.S. and U.S.’ allies, Japan and South Korea, differ considerably in casting China as a military threat while they continue to treat China as an economic partner. Focusing on the social structure of security dilemmas, we examine role taking behavior by U.S. allies in all three dimensions of the Pivot. We find that security dynamics depend as much on the role-taking of U.S. allies, and their respective historical experiences, as on the alleged intentions of the two protagonists. It follows that security cooperation and/ or competition in Asia is what concerned states as role holder make of it.
UNDER REVIEW
LEARNING BY DOING? A ROLE THEORETICAL APPROACH TO ROLE LEARNING OF INTER-GOVERNMENTAL ORGANIZATIONS
Under review at The Journal of International Relations and Development.
International politics has seen a sprawling proliferation of inter-governmental organizations (IGOs). The spread of IGOs alongside treaties, regimes, conventions, and international law has formed “thick” social relations, contributing to the overall “density of social expectations” prevalent in the global arena. As a consequence, IGOs have been confronted with the need to learn roles in order to facilitate the management of state role conflicts, on the one hand, and contribute to regional and international order on the other hand. Against this backdrop, this article investigates which international roles IGOs have learned and how they have learned these roles in the case of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the African Union (AU). The article develops a role theoretical approach to “organizational role learning” (ORL) in order to capture how IGOs define social expectations as well as functions for themselves vis-à-vis others. An original coding scheme is then applied to a novel dataset that identifies the role set of both IGOs, including role functions, role relations, and role institutionalization over time. The article contributes to role theory by introducing an innovative method to the study of social roles of IGOs, which have been underrepresented in this particularly scholarship.
THE POLARIZATION OF U.S. ALLIANCES: DOMESTIC DIVISION AND U.S. COMMITMENTS TO INTERNATIONAL SECURITY
Under Review at Democracy & Security
To what extent do alliance commitments polarize U.S. elites? Combining the literature on audience costs and democratic peace theory with research on polarization and U.S. foreign policy, this article theorizes that U.S. responses to global challenges involving allies are negatively affected by partisan and ideological polarization as they prohibit American democracy to send credible signals of resolve. Analysing an original data set of co-sponsored legislation in two cases - the South China Sea dispute and the Russian annexation of Crimea - reveal the degree of partisan and ideological polarization among members of Congress regarding alliance commitment and instruments necessary to support the alliance. This article contributes to existing research on the consequences of polarization for American politics as it sheds light on the nature and extent of polarization in Congress regarding U.S. alliance commitments. Findings of this article suggest some potentially serious implications for future U.S. contribution to international security.