Anne E. Sartori
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 often forget to check my voice-mail messages. Please send
me an email if you are having trouble reaching me.
Research
Interests
Most of my research uses game-theoretic and statistical
methods to understand international relations, with particular attention to
international conflict and cooperation and to communication among states. 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.” (The
book is available from Princeton University
Press. More on the book below.)
I also work on developing research methods. I am
particularly interested in methods for testing game-theoretic models
empirically. (See the paper on selection bias below.)
Current
Research
- Chronic Wars. Why
do a small number of pairs of states (e.g. India
and Pakistan)
engage in such a disproportionate number of wars? A dramatically large
percentage of wars and other forms of militarized conflict take place
between the same pairs of states, which the literature calls rivals or
enduring rivals. (See, e.g, Goertz and Diehl 1993). By definition, rivalries
include the present-day's most recalcitrant conflicts; they also include
some of its most serious, such as the relationship between India and Pakistan,
both recent members of the nuclear club, and the rivalry between the
People’s Republic of China
and the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Such rivalries are inadequately explained by current theory.
My second paper on international rivalry,
“Leadership Incentives, International Rivalry, and War,” re-conceptualizes
rivalry as an international relationship that is particularly salient to the “selectorates” of the countries involved (the group of
people who have the power to select and remove leaders, which differs by
country). I argue that selectorates,
like other people, do not have the time to pay equal attention to all of their
countries’ foreign relations. War focuses their attention on a particular
foreign relationship, and repeated conflicts and war with the same adversary
focuses their attention further. I
show that rivalries often are self-perpetuating because leaders have greater
incentives to begin international conflicts when the relationship has high
salience, and these additional conflicts further increase the salience of the
international relationship. My explanation about why leaders are more likely to
start conflicts in the context of high-salience relationships concerns leaders'
incentive to retain office. A preliminary version of this paper is available here.
- Reputation formation with
partially persistent resolve. A key contribution of the
theoretical literature on reputation formation has been to show that
sometimes the weak or irresolute types will take the actions necessary to
obtain a reputation (in some sense, undeserved) for being strong or
resolute. There is a disjuncture between this conception of reputations
and the discussion of reputations in the public policy sphere, which often
suggests that the United States should fight over lesser interests to get
a reputation for being willing to fight over greater interests. The
authors who suggest that the U.S. should act tough and even fight to
maintain a reputation probably are not trying to say that the U.S. is a
weak type that should pretend to be strong. In this paper, I consider what
it means for a strong type to establish a reputation. I argue that part of
the disjuncture between these two literatures stems from the fact that
resolve to fight is only partially a persistent quality. The paper
examines reputation formation when a strong state is more likely, but not
certain, to be a strong state tomorrow.
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Publications
Journal
Articles
- “An Estimator for Some Binary-Outcome Selection
Models without Exclusion Restrictions” Political Analysis
11:2 (Spring 2003) 111-138. STATA program to implement the estimator is in
selection.zip. If you want to use this
program, put the files in your Adopersonal
directory and type “help sartsel” in STATA.
Note: The most common problem people have with the software is that they
forget to recode the dependent variables in the selection into one: Y=0 if
the observation does not select in/is not selected; 1 if it selects in but
does not go on; 2 if it selects in and goes on.
Book Chapters and Shorter Publications
- “Who Wants War?” forthcoming in Gary
King, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Norman Nie, eds. The Future of Political Science: 100
Perspectives, Routledge Taylor Frances.
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.
Additional
Working Papers Available for Download (Please e-mail me if you would like others.)
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Last revised: 07/08