Associate
Professor of Political Science and (by courtesy) of Managerial Economics and
Decision Sciences
Northwestern
University
Mailing address:
Department of Political Science
Scott Hall
601 University Place
Evanston, IL 60208
email: a-sartori at northwestern dot edu
phone: (847) 491-4017*
fax: (847) 491-8985
*I am on leave for the 2012-13 academic year. The best way to contact me is by email.
My CV is available here.
Most of my research uses game-theoretic and statistical methods to understand international relations, with particular attention to when and how countries resolve (or fail to resolve) international conflict and to communication between countries. My book, Deterrence by Diplomacy (Princeton University Press, September, 2005) explains why states often are able to use diplomacy to resolve their differences, though diplomacy is only “cheap-talk.” A mostly-completed project investigates the formation of reputations for willingness to fight when that willingness may differ between situations. New projects investigate the relationships between famine and both international and civil war, and strategies for stabilizing the nuclear relationship between India and Pakistan.
·
Famine and War. A new project investigates the links between famine and war, both
international and civil.
· Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century. A second new project investigates nuclear politics in the 21st century. “Nuclear Weapons Policy in the 21st Century,” coauthored with Leo Sartori, is a policy paper written for the Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation at Georgia Tech. In the next step in the project, I apply theories of strategic stability to assess the stability of the nuclear weapons held by India and Pakistan (i.e., how the force structure affects the likelihood that the countries will use the weapons) and to propose changes to the force structure that would increase stability.
Book
Deterrence by
Diplomacy. Princeton
University Press, September, 2005. Why are
countries often able to communicate critical information using diplomacy,
despite incentives to bluff? Why are they often able to deter attacks using
verbal threats to use force? International-relations theory is largely
pessimistic about the prospects for effective diplomacy, yet leaders
nevertheless expend a great deal of time and energy trying to resolve conflicts
through verbal negotiations and public statements. This book challenges
standard approaches to deterrence by studying it as a form of talk. It stresses
the importance of reputation and of honesty in establishing effective
diplomacy. The book argues that
diplomacy often is effective precisely because it is so valuable. States take pains to use diplomacy honestly
most of the time because doing so allows them to maintain reputations for
honesty, which enhance their ability to resolve future disputes using diplomacy
rather than force. To do so, however, they pay a cost: they sometimes acquiesce
to others' demands when they might have been able to attain their goals through
successful bluffs. The book develops its
arguments about effective diplomacy through a game-theoretic argument,
illustrates them using a case from the Korean War, and tests the resulting
implications using statistical analyses.
Journal
Articles
Book Chapters and Shorter Publications
·
“Selection
Bias,” in Bernard Badie, Dirk Berg‐Schlosser, and Leonardo Morlino, eds., International
Encyclopedia of Political Science, Sage Publications, 2011.
·
“Who
Wants War?” in Gary King, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Norman Nie, eds. The
Future of Political Science: 100 Perspectives, Routledge, 2009.
·
Book review of Trust and Mistrust in International
Relations, by Andrew H. Kydd (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2005). Journal of Peace Research 43:3 (May, 2006) 356.
Last revised: 09/12