WORKING PAPERS
"The
Political Economy of
Blood and Treasure,”
presents a formal model of the median voter’s arming decision, and
empirically shows that democracies with high economic inequality among
voters spend more on defense and build capitalized militaries. The
paper employs cross-national public opinion surveys to provide
microfoundational support.
“Send the
Mild Hindoo: Imperial Subjects as Source of British Military Labor,”
argues that as European great power conflict grew increasingly heated,
and the average voter increasingly poorer in the nineteenth century,
Britain pursued a capital-intensive form of empire-building, parlaying
taxes on the relatively wealthy to gain the necessary military labor
required for great power politics.
"Neoconservatism, Neoclassical Realism and the Narcissism of Small Differences." Inspecting the range of neoconservative thought reveals a unifying theme: the enervating effects of democracy on state power and the will to wield it in a dangerous world. Viewing regime type through the prism of state power extraction in a competitive, anarchic world puts neoconservatism squarely in the neoclassical realist camp. Many realists offer their approach to international relations as the antidote to the neoconservatism, but the theoretical differences between the two must be better specified for this to be feasible.
PUBLICATIONS
“Why Democracies will Continue to Fight More Small Wars Poorly: Evidence from the Vietnam War,” International Security, forthcoming. The paper argues that democracies will select and fight small wars using a firepower-intensive military strategy because such a doctrine reduces the costs of conflict for the average voter more than it reduces the benefits from an ineffective strategy. The paper supports the theory with a case study of Vietnam War counterinsurgency.
“United
States Hegemony and the New Economics of Defense.” Security Studies
16, no. 4 (October–December 2007): 597–613. The paper proposes a theory
of technological hegemony that explains the U.S. policy of massive
military R&D investment in both the late Cold War and the current
era of American preponderance. Through this technology policy,
the U.S. promotes a form of defense industrial globalization that
extends its international political influence.