This article studies whether political campaign contributions influence agricultural protection in the United States in the manner suggested by the political economy model of Grossman and Helpman (1994). This is the first attempt to test this model using agricultural data. We test the model using a detailed cross-sectional data set of agricultural protection, subsidies, and PAC contributions in the late 1990s. The model is qualitatively affirmed by the data. We make a novel attempt to solve a puzzle about the model's quantitative implications, also found in recent studies. This solution makes the simple model consistent with the complicated decision-making process in real-world government. The results imply the underpinnings of a political economy equilibrium that will be hard to dislodge.This article has benefited greatly from the insightful comments of the editor and two anonymous referees. We thank Marcelo Olarreaga for access to valuable data on agricultural protection and subsidies. We accept responsibility for any remaining errors. The views expressed are our own and should not be attributed to the World Bank.

Our article analyzes the impact of the European Union (EU) on border conflicts, in particular how integration and association are related to conflict transformation. We approach this issue from a theoretically as well as empirically grounded constructivist perspective. On this basis we propose a stage model of conflict development, based on the degree of securitization and societal reach of conflict communication. We argue that the EU can transform border conflicts and propose a four pathway-model of EU impact. This model comprises forms of EU impact that are, on the one hand, either actor-driven or indirectly caused by the integration process and have, on the other hand, as their main target either particular policies or the wider society in border conflict areas. We then apply this model to a comparative study of border conflicts, thereby analyzing the conflicts in Northern Ireland, Greece-Turkey, Cyprus, Europe's North (EU-Russia) and Israel-Palestine. We finish with a specification of the conditions of positive and negative EU impact.We are grateful to Gesa Bluhm, Olga Demetriou, Katy Hayward, Pertti Joenniemi, Kemal Kirisci, Yosef Lapid, Andrey Makarychev, David Newman, David Officer, Michelle Pace, Sergei Prozorov, Bahar Rumelili, Myria Vassiliadou, Jevgenia Viktorova, Tobias Werron, Antje Wiener, Haim Yacobi, and the reviewers and editors of this journal for their stimulating inputs, criticism, and support in the preparation of this article. Audiences at the Universities of Bielefeld, Hannover, and Osnabrück, Bilkent University (Ankara), the Viessmann Centre at Wilfrid Laurier University (Waterloo, Canada) and the copanelists at the BISA conferences 2002 and 2003, the ISA/CEEISA conference 2003, the ISA Annual Convention 2004, the ECPR Joint Session of Workshops 2004, and the ECPR SGIR Meeting 2004 have helped to shape and refine the arguments presented. We also thank Apostolos Agnantopoulos for his editorial assistance. This article builds on a research project on “The EU and Border Conflicts: The Impact of Integration and Association” (EUBorderConf), funded by a grant from the European Union's Fifth Framework Programme (SERD-2002-00144), with additional funding by the British Academy. See also 〈http://www.euborderconf.bham.ac.uk〉 for further information.

We offer a theory explaining how alliances as international security regimes reduce military conflict between member-states through their internal provision of information concerning national military capabilities. Bargaining models of war have shown that a lack of information about relative military capabilities functions as an important cause of war. We argue that alliances provide such information to internal participants, and greater knowledge within the alliance about member-state military capabilities reduces certain informational problems that could potentially lead to war. This internal information effect, however, is a conditional one. We posit that the information provided within the alliance matters most for dyads at or near power parity: the cases where states are most uncertain about who would prevail if a military conflict did emerge. In power preponderant dyads where the outcome of a potential military conflict is relatively certain, the internal information provided by military alliances becomes less important. Our statistical results provide strong support for these theoretical arguments.Our greatest thanks go to Ashley Leeds, who made available an advance copy of the ATOP 3.0 data set. This article also benefited from presentations at the University of Wisconsin and at ISA-South in Columbia, S.C. Finally, we thank Lisa Martin, two anonymous reviewers, Scott Gehlbach, Chuck Gochman, Zaryab Iqbal, George Krause, Pat McDonald, Jon Pevehouse, Bill Reed, Kevin Sweeney, and Harrison Wagner for their detailed comments and/or suggestions.

Recent events have raised questions about the extent to which military intervention promotes democracy and the degree to which this depends on the nature of the intervener. We argue that traction on these issues is best obtained by focusing on the policies of the target state that have the greatest implications for the political survival of the intervening state's leader and the kind of governmental institutions in the target state that are most likely to produce them. This perspective generally—although not always—predicts that third-party military intervention in civil wars, other intra- or interstate disputes and wars will lead to little if any improvement, and all too often erosion in the trajectory of democratic development. Three hypotheses on the impact of third-party intervention by democracies, autocracies, and the United Nations are then tested and strongly supported against a counterfactual expectation of what the democratic trajectory would have been in the absence of intervention.We benefited greatly from the wise counsel of Feryal Cherif, Michael Gilligan, Shanker Satyanath, and Alastair Smith, each of whom read or discussed in depth earlier versions of this study. Patrick Regan was also extremely helpful in providing data and guidance in the use of the data on interventions that he has made available. The study was significantly improved by the insightful advice of the anonymous reviewers (we wish we could thank them by name) and by Lisa Martin's able and thoughtful guidance. Authors often complain about referees; we have nothing but praise for the contributions they made. Of course, we alone are responsible for any errors and for all remaining shortcomings in this investigation.

Political decentralization is widely believed to reduce ethnic conflict and secessionism in the world today. Yet decentralization is more successful in reducing conflict and secessionism in some countries than in others. In this article, I explore why this difference occurs. I demonstrate using a statistical analysis of thirty democracies from 1985 to 2000 that decentralization may decrease ethnic conflict and secessionism directly by bringing the government closer to the people and increasing opportunities to participate in government, but that decentralization increases ethnic conflict and secessionism indirectly by encouraging the growth of regional parties. Regional parties increase ethnic conflict and secessionism by reinforcing ethnic and regional identities, producing legislation that favors certain groups over others, and mobilizing groups to engage in ethnic conflict and secessionism.Earlier versions of this article were presented at Harvard University and the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics at Princeton University. The author would like to thank Sandra Alfonso-Leon, James Alt, Micah Altman, Barry Friedman, Shigeo Hirano, Simon Hug, Gary King, Rose Rozaghian, Tulia Falleti, and two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.

Retributiveness and humanitarianism, predispositions that shape individuals' moral judgment and criminal punishment attitudes, should also influence their positions on war against evil-seeming states. Retributiveness should heighten support for punitive uses of military force, satisfaction from punitive wars, and threats perceived from transgressor states, while humanitarianism should have the opposite effects. Using death penalty support as a proxy measure for these values, public opinion about the 1991 and 2003 Persian Gulf wars provides evidence for a moral-punitiveness effect. Death penalty supporters were significantly more hawkish than death penalty opponents in both cases, controlling for ideology, utilitarian logic, and other potential confounders. These findings explain why foreign villains and good-versus-evil framing heighten public support for war.Earlier versions of this article were delivered at the 2003 and 2005 annual meetings of the American Political Science Association. I am grateful to Kurt Gaubatz, Daniel Geller, Paul Goren, Jon Hurwitz, Keena Lipsitz, Shoon Murray, Felicia Pratto, and International Organization's reviewers for comments on earlier drafts. Craig Enders, Keith Markus, and Cornell University Peace Studies Seminar participants gave me helpful suggestions, and Linda Skitka shared useful unpublished findings. This study benefited from a PSC-CUNY grant from the City University of New York, and Ahuva Spitz's able research assistance.

Most combatants in armed conflict are men, so naturally men are the major direct victims of military operations. Yet armed conflicts have important indirect negative consequences on agriculture, infrastructure, public health provision, and social order. These indirect consequences are often overlooked and underappreciated. They also affect women—arguably more so than men. This article provides the first rigorous analysis of the impact of armed conflict on female life expectancy relative to male. We find that over the entire conflict period, interstate and civil wars on average affect women more adversely than men. In peacetime, women typically live longer than men. Hence, armed conflict tends to decrease the gap between female and male life expectancy. For civil wars, we also find that ethnic wars and wars in “failed” states are much more damaging to women than other civil wars. Our findings challenge policymakers as well as international and humanitarian organizations to develop policies that tackle the large indirect and long-term negative health impacts of armed conflicts.Equal authorship. We are grateful for helpful suggestions by Andrew Mack, Håvard Hegre, David Hugh-Jones, Lisa Martin, and the anonymous referees. Eric Neumayer acknowledges financial assistance from the Leverhulme Trust and Thomas Plümper financial assistance by the European Commission-DG Research Sixth Framework Program (CIT-2-CT-2004-506084). Data and do-files to generate the results are available on request.

Are most voters opposed to globalization? A growing body of empirical research, using data from available surveys of public opinion, suggests that antiglobalization sentiments are strong, especially among blue-collar workers. This article reports the findings from a survey experiment aimed at measuring the impact of issue framing on individuals' stated attitudes toward international trade. Respondents given an antitrade introduction to the survey question, linking trade to the possibility of job losses, were 17 percent less likely to favor increasing trade with other countries than were those asked the same question without any introduction at all. Curiously, respondents who were given a protrade introduction to the question, suggesting that trade can lead to lower prices for consumers, were not more likely to express support for trade than those who received no introduction. In addition, the responses of less educated individuals were more sensitive to framing effects than those of highly educated individuals. Without measuring and taking these types of framing effects into account, opinion surveys offer unreliable guides to gauging the extent (and distribution) of opposition to trade among voters. Results from a second experiment reveal that knowledge of the endorsement of trade openness by economists mitigates framing effects and raises overall support for trade liberalization by a substantial degree.I would like to thank Adam Berinsky, Mac Destler, Jeffry Frieden, Judith Goldstein, Jens Hainmueller, Helen Milner, Diana Mutz, Dani Rodrik, Ken Scheve, Mike Tomz, and seminar participants at Harvard, Duke, Columbia, Stanford, Princeton, Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Pennsylvania for helpful comments on earlier drafts. My thanks also go to Lisa Martin and two anonymous IO reviewers.