Polarization has been a cause of political gridlock and other negative attributes within the state legislature for many years. Many legislatures complain that salaries are too low to allow an elected official position to be their full-time job. Therefore, I explore the theory that some candidates emerge to change the status quo, not for material incentives. Using an original state-level data set from 2007 and 2017 and OLS techniques, I hypothesize that legislative salaries negatively correlate with polarization in roll-call voting on average, ceteris paribus.

Why, how, and to what effect do states use disinformation in their foreign policies? Inductive accounts variously address those questions, but International Relations has yet to offer a theoretical account. I propose Putnam’s two-level game (1988) as a candidate theory. A rationalist approach that jettisons the unitary actor assumption, the model accounts for previous accounts’ observations and suggests their interrelation and four overarching objectives. The model also generates novel implications about disinformation in foreign policy, two of which I test via separate survey experiments.The primary implication is that states can use disinformation to encourage polarization and in turn can reverberate into commitment problems. A survey experiment tests the first link in that chain, arguing that disinformation’s effects could be underestimated due to focus on belief outcomes; potential selection bias in active-exposure studies; and probable pre-treatment effects. It hypothesizes that passive exposure to novel political dis/misinformation has ripple effects on trust, affective polarization, and participation-linked emotions even among those that disbelieve it. It thus tests both the implication that disinformation can encourage polarization and that disinformation can be used to impact multiple potential outcomes at once. The second empirical paper tests the latter links in the disinformation-commitment problem chain. Building on a study that found U.S polarization decreases U.K. ally confidence (Myrick 2022), it argues that polarization uniquely increases chances of voluntary defection and does so not only due to government changeover risk but also weakened leader accountability. It employs a causal mediation analysis on survey experiment data to test whether a potential partner’s polarization increases their perceived unreliability and in turn decreases public cooperation preference. The commitment problem implication receives mixed support. The first experiment evidences no impact of partisan mis/disinformation on affective polarization, though that may be due to floor effects. The second experiment finds that polarization modestly increases perceived defection risk, but this increase is not necessarily strong enough to change public cooperation preference. Beyond those findings, the first experiment also uncovers that polarization may indeed have sociopolitical impacts on even those that disbelieve it, consistent with the multiple-outcomes implication.

Internet governance is complex. When illegal content gets to social media platforms, governments must work through public-private partnerships in a 21st century style of community policing. However, research on public attitudes for these scenarios is limited. To understand how this enforcement relationship can best be fostered, an online survey experiment examining the illegal content enforcement context was conducted. The causal effect of four treatments on law enforcement legitimacy perceptions by American participants (n = 704) was examined. Only one hypothesis finds empirical support, with the other null results suggesting that variation in the enforcement context has no meaningful effect on perceptions of legitimacy. While not statistically significant at conventional levels, some estimates move in some predicted ways, which creates a basis for future legitimacy research.

When does coercion succeed in international relations? Why do states resist coercion in some cases but concede in others? This dissertation adopts network analysis to investigate the network factors influencing the success and failure of economic and military coercion. The first chapter addresses the coercion target states’ information problem regarding how coercers would react to the targets’ resistances and concessions. By regarding resistances and concessions as network ties that can transmit information, it argues that past coercion outcomes endogenously influence targets’ current responses and coercion outcomes. Specifically, target states are more likely to concede to coercers who have been successful in gaining others’ compliance. Sender states are more likely to succeed in coercion when they had successful coercion in the past. The second chapter adds a condition to the first chapter’s argument. It argues that when being coerced by the same sender, a stronger sanction target’s compliance is likely to prompt a weaker target’s acquiescence, and that a weaker target’s resistance is likely to prompt a stronger target’s resistance. The third chapter explores how states’ positions in international security and economic networks influence the success and failure of military and trade coercion. States that occupy different network positions own different network power. I argue that when the coercion sender has relatively more network power than the target, the more likely coercion will be successful. I use interstate military alliances and arms transfer data to operationalize international security networks. International economic networks are operationalized by bilateral trade and regional trade agreements networks. Using military and trade coercion outcomes in the Military Compellent Threats (MCT) and the Threats and Imposition of Economic Sanctions (TIES) datasets as outcome variables, the statistical analysis partially supports my argument. Trade coercion is more likely to succeed when the sender has more network power. However, military coercion is less likely to succeed when the sender has more network power than the target.

In this dissertation, I investigate the causes of differences in the use of suicide terror by non-state armed groups, including magnitude of use, targeting decisions, and how reliant groups are on suicide attacks. I develop and test the propositions that the age of groups and the capability of the state military they face significantly impact the scale of use and targeting selection of their suicide attacks. Older groups are predicted to carry out a decreased number of suicide attacks in comparison with younger groups, but increase their focus on attacking hard targets and decrease their focus on attacking soft targets, due to older groups being more likely to possess skilled terror operatives and to follow traditional guerrilla warfare practices. Groups that began using suicide terror later in their existence are predicted to carry out less suicide attacks than groups that adopt the tactic earlier in their histories, due to organizations having increased reliance on established practices and procedures. Groups fighting strong state militaries are predicted to carry out more suicide attacks, a higher proportion of attacks on soft targets, and be more reliant on suicide terror than are groups fighting weak militaries, as increased military pressure on groups decreases the effectiveness of their individual attacks, reduces their ability to train skilled operatives, and increases their desperation and incentive to use unconventional tactics. I conduct a quantitative analysis of 140 groups from 1998-2012 and find that older groups and groups that adopt suicide terror later in their existence carry out less suicide attacks than younger groups and groups that adopt suicide terror earlier in their histories. I also find that groups respond to increases in state military personnel by carrying out more suicide attacks overall, a higher proportion of suicide attacks against soft targets, a lower proportion against hard targets, and by becoming more reliant on suicide terror. These dynamics are also illustrated in depth through case study analysis of suicide terror campaigns by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)/Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), which represent two distinct models of suicide terror.

Third-party diplomatic support for protest movements has become an increasingly important tool for international actors in order to inform and influence foreign publics, especially, discontented citizens. Expressing official support for protest campaigns -through condemning government repression, encouraging political reform, praising protesters, and sympathizing with them- or imposing economic sanctions because of the host government's repressive behavior is now a significant component of diplomacy. Despite the growing importance of third-party diplomatic support for protest movements, little systematic research has been conducted on its causes and consequence. This study includes three interrelated papers to address this gap in the literature. The first paper addresses the question of why countries provide diplomatic support for protest movements. Focusing on Western diplomacy in the post-Cold War era, I argue that there are two reasons why Western democracies take diplomatic actions in support of protest campaigns. First, when the host government uses extreme violence against protesters; and second when the host government has an oppositional stance toward the U.S.-led liberal international order. I use original data of 523 diplomatic actions from 1990 to 2019 to test these theoretical expectations. The second paper asks whether and under what conditions diplomatic support is effective. I argue that diplomatic support is likely to reduce popular support or protest movements when it occurs alongside protesters' call for international help because it makes governments' common claim on the alleged coordination between opposition figures and foreign countries credible. I conduct a survey experiment among Iranian intelligentsia to test this argument. The results support the theoretical model. The third chapter asks whether the identity of supporter could make a difference in the public's attitudes toward protest movements. The central argument is that support from strategic allies is likely to weaken public support for protest campaigns. However, when diplomatic support comes from allies, it is likely to increase support for protesters. I test this theory by conducting a survey experiment of 1800 American citizens on the Black Lives Matter Movement. The findings show that the identity of supporters plays a crucial role in shaping public attitudes toward protest movements.