Luis Schenoni
Biographic Data
| ID | 1008236 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Luis Schenoni |
| GIVEN NAMES | Luis |
| FAMILY NAME | Schenoni |
| SIGNATURE | SCHENONI L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University College London |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6770-2136 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 135 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Rejoinder to Ana Vedovato’s Review of Bringing War Back In
Bringing War Back In is the product of over a decade of research aimed at re-establishing within the social sciences what historians have long understood: in Latin America, as elsewhere, internatio
Por la Razón o por la Fuerza. La pacificación interna de América del Sur (1830-1929)
A lo largo del siglo XIX, América del Sur enfrentó una serie de conflictos internos que provocaron inestabilidad en las economías y en los sistemas políticos de la región. Sin embargo, a principios del siglo XX, los niveles de violencia política en toda la región disminuyeron drásticamente. Los estudios existentes han prestado sorprendentemente poca atención a esta transformación histórica, en parte debido a la ausencia de datos exhaustivos sobre…
Conceptualizing and Operationalizing the “Interstate System”
Spraying Conflict: Aerial Drug Eradication and Armed Violence in Colombia
How do state interventions targeting illicit economies influence armed violence? Using Colombia as a critical case, we argue that aerial spraying of coca crops exacerbates violence by destabilizing local power dynamics and disrupting interactions among armed actors, civilians, and the state. Using municipal-level data from 2000 to 2015, we find that aerial spraying increases overall levels of violence in affected areas. Aerial spraying, we find, …
Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
Bringing War Back In provides a fresh theory connecting war and state formation that incorporates the contingency of warfare and the effects of war outcomes in the long run. The book demonstrates that international wars in nineteenth-century Latin America triggered state-building, that the outcomes of those wars affected the legitimacy and continuity of such efforts, and that the relative capacity of states in this region today continues to refle…
Reining in Rebellion: The Decline of Political Violence in South America, 1830–1929
During the nineteenth century, South America was plagued by internal rebellions that destabilized the region's economies and political systems. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, levels of political violence throughout the region declined dramatically. Existing scholarship has paid surprisingly little attention to this historic transformation, in part because comprehensive data on revolts have been lacking. Historical narratives …
The Saavedra Lamas Peace: How a Norm Complex Evolved and Crystallized to Eliminate War in the Americas
sAfter the Napoleonic Wars interstate war regularly occurred throughout the Western Hemisphere—until in matter of decades it disappeared. After the 1930s even low-level militarized interstate conflict became less frequent, shorter, and less severe over time. What explains the change in this specific region and historical jucture? We argue that leaders in the Americas identified territorial disputes and foreign intervention as interrelated problem…
The Ukraine War and the Limits of Latin American Fence-Sitting
Why have most Latin American countries - traditionally pro-Atlantic and staunch defenders of non-intervention - remained conspicuously neutral during the Ukraine War? We argue that in an increasingly bipolar context, fence-sitting produces clear strategic gains through partner-diversification and bargaining power. However, this strategy becomes riskier with polarisation and, at a certain point, these risks may upset benefits. We formalise this ar…
State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Volume 3
Neoliberalism is often studied as a political ideology, a government program, and even as a pattern of cultural identities. However, less attention is paid to the specific institutional resources employed by neoliberal administrations, which have resulted in the configuration of a neoliberal state model. This accessible volume compiles original essays on the neoliberal era in Latin America and Spain, exploring subjects such as neoliberal public p…
Myths of Multipolarity: The Sources of Brazil's Foreign Policy Overstretch
In this article, we provide a framework to analyze the foreign policy overstretch of middle powers, that is, their recent tendency to expand foreign policy goals and ambitions beyond their capabilities. We propose that overstretch results from the interaction of permissive international environments and the collusion of domestic actors to produce foreign policy myths. These myths, in turn, justify unsustainable swelling of foreign policy expendit…
Compliance in Time: Lessons from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
This paper integrates the scholarship on compliance with international human rights courts to reflect upon how the literature approaches delays and compliance cycles. Building on this review, we propose a new analytical approach that helps distinguish between reparations prone to immediate or protracted implementation. We introduce two metrics to facilitate the interpretation of delays: the yearly probability of compliance and the expected time t…
To lead or not to lead: Regional powers and regional leadership
Recent trends demonstrate that states with sufficient capabilities to be granted regional power status by its peers (primarily other states within their region) can nonetheless renounce regional leadership. This article analyzes the puzzling behavior of these detached or reluctant regional powers. We argue that resorting to an approach grounded in neoclassical realism is helpful to explain why regional powers might not exercise leadership. In thi…
Bringing War Back in: Victory and State Formation in Latin America
Scholars have often dismissed the effect of war on state formation in regions like Latin America, where mobilization for war is deemed insufficiently intense and international conflict fails to out‐select weaker states. Against this conventional wisdom, I contend that wars can affect state‐building trajectories in a postwar period through the different state institutions that result from victory and defeat. After reconsidering the role of war out…
Fue la crisis de las Malvinas una guerra de distracción? Una reinterpretación del declive argentino a través de la teoría prospectiva
Cómo se explica la Guerra de Malvinas? En este artículo revisitamos este episodio a través de un análisis contrafáctico utilizando nueva evidencia documental. Estas fuentes ponen en duda la tesis de la guerra de distracción y la tesis del error de cálculo. La evidencia sugiere que dinámicas de poder de largo plazo y sesgos psicológicos afectando a los miembros de la Junta militar argentina explican de mejor manera las decisiones que llevaron a la…
Foreign Policy Change in Latin America: Exploring a Middle-Range Concept
This article examines patterns of change and continuity in Latin American foreign policies. It asks two interrelated questions: How can we conceptually and empirically account for foreign policy change? And why do states change their foreign policies in Latin America? To answer these questions, we used the results of a new expert survey on foreign policy preferences in the region between 1980 and 2014. The results we obtained using both linear an…
Three Dragons in the Backyard? The Multifaceted Political Economy of China in Latin America
China's rise as a trading partner, investor, and lender to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) during the twenty-first century has been well documented. Nevertheless, this tectonic shift has spawned divergent development outcomes that remain under-researched. Why has China concentrated the bulk of its outgoing foreign direct investment (FDI) in Brazil and Peru? How did the Middle Kingdom become Chile's main trading partner while lending and inv…
Settling Resistant Territorial Disputes: The Territorial Boundary Peace in Latin America
Why do some territorial disputes defy settlement? Through what mechanism might these resistant territorial disputes be settled? We propose that the answer involves three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. First, the dispute must receive attention—i.e., be (re)placed and (re)prioritized on the dyad's agenda. Second, governments need altered preferences that expand the bargaining range so they can break deadlock and pursue se…
Was the Malvinas/Falklands a Diversionary War? A Prospect-Theory Reinterpretation of Argentina’s Decline
Why did Argentina risk seizing the Malvinas/Falkland Islands by force in 1982, provoking a war against Great Britain, and what are the larger implications of this case? We revisit this influential episode using counterfactual analysis to interpret newly declassified declarations of high-ranking state officials involved in the decision to occupy the islands. These sources cast doubt on the diversionary-war and miscalculation theses of the Malvinas…
US hegemony and regime change in Latin America
We contribute to the extensive literature on international influences on democratization and democratic breakdowns by conceptualizing hegemonic mechanisms of regime change and assessing them empirically. Our findings are based on a multi-methods approach and highlight the varying importance of hegemonic influences in post-1945 Latin America. We argue that US support for democratization was consistent in the wave of transitions to democracy that b…
Hegemonía estadounidense y cambio de régimen en América Latina
Este trabajo busca contribuir a la literatura sobre los factores internacionales que afectan el surgimiento y ruptura de la democracia a través de la conceptualización y análisis empírico de diversos mecanismos por los cuales una potencia internacional puede provocar cambios de régimen en su área de influencia. A través de múltiples métodos, analizamos el rol de Estados Unidos en 64 episodios (27 quiebres y 37 transiciones democráticas) que tuvie…
Backing Despots? Foreign Aid and the Survival of Autocratic Regimes
What is the effect of foreign aid on the survival of autocratic regimes? Extant work about the effect of foreign aid on the recipient’s political regime has come to contradictory conclusions. Current findings display the full spectrum of possibilities from a democratizing effect to the enhancement of authoritarian survival. While some studies suggest that foreign aid strengthen autocrats and their incentives to cling to power, others have focused…
Twisting Uncle Sam's Arm? Exploring Latin American Leverage vis-à-vis the United States
Research on US–Latin America relations is often contained in policy silos and limited to specific bilateral relations. Generations of scholars have burned the midnight oil in archives all over the Americas, but only the very best—for example, Robert Pastor, to whom the book is dedicated—have been able to advance enduring narratives that span many issues and decades across this massive region. Well-balanced, comparative histories must capture vari…
The Southern African unipolarity
Despite the tectonic changes that have taken place in Southern Africa since the demise of apartheid, South Africa is still widely considered a hegemonic regional power by scholars, practitioners and pundits. This article challenges this interpretation, asserting that both Pretoria’s foreign policy and that of its neighbours fit the concept of regional unipolarity with more precision. Since the early 1990s, South Africa has pursued leadership with…
The Argentina-Brazil Regional Power Transition
Almost four decades have passed since the Argentina-Brazil balance of power gave way to a Brazilian uncontested primacy in the Southern Cone. The peaceful and cooperative nature of this regional power transition poses an interesting puzzle for structural theories and those concerned with the US-China transition. Why do certain countries accept accommodation more leniently, like Argentina did? I offer an explanatory model and use process tracing t…
Of words and deeds: Latin American declaratory regionalism, 1994–2014
The idea of an integrated Latin American region goes back to the early post-independence period, and yet, in substance, Latin American regionalism has remained far behind its stated aims. The perceived implementation gap has raised the question why policymakers continued to talk about something they appeared to avoid in practice. This article contributes to the debate on Latin America’s integration gap by exploring the phenomenon of declaratory r…
Chinese Economic Statecraft and U.S. Hegemony in Latin America: An Empirical Analysis, 2003–2014
If one interprets China's sizable rise in Latin America as an unprecedented phenomenon, it follows that the concurrent story of declining U.S. influence in the region is an event hastily acknowledged at best and ignored at worst. In this article, we ask whether Chinese economic statecraft in Latin America is related to the declining U.S. hegemonic influence in the region and explore how. To do so we analyze foreign direct investments, bank loans,…
Of words and deeds: Latin American declaratory regionalism, 1994–2014
The idea of an integrated Latin American region goes back to the early post-independence period, and yet, in substance, Latin American regionalism has remained far behind its stated aims. The perceived implementation gap has raised the question why policymakers continued to talk about something they appeared to avoid in practice. This article contributes to the debate on Latin America’s integration gap by exploring the phenomenon of declaratory r…
Bringing War Back in: Victory and State Formation in Latin America
Scholars have often dismissed the effect of war on state formation in regions like Latin America, where mobilization for war is deemed insufficiently intense and international conflict fails to out‐select weaker states. Against this conventional wisdom, I contend that wars can affect state‐building trajectories in a postwar period through the different state institutions that result from victory and defeat. After reconsidering the role of war out…
Peripheral Realism Revisited
In this article we summarize the precepts of Peripheral Realism, its place in the intellectual history of International Relations Theory, its contributions to interpreting Latin American international politics and its insights for the future. After revising the intellectual merits and tenets of the theory in the four initial sections, we show how it predicted the behavior of Latin American states under unipolarity. Finally, we review its implicat…
Settling Resistant Territorial Disputes: The Territorial Boundary Peace in Latin America
Why do some territorial disputes defy settlement? Through what mechanism might these resistant territorial disputes be settled? We propose that the answer involves three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. First, the dispute must receive attention—i.e., be (re)placed and (re)prioritized on the dyad's agenda. Second, governments need altered preferences that expand the bargaining range so they can break deadlock and pursue se…
US hegemony and regime change in Latin America
We contribute to the extensive literature on international influences on democratization and democratic breakdowns by conceptualizing hegemonic mechanisms of regime change and assessing them empirically. Our findings are based on a multi-methods approach and highlight the varying importance of hegemonic influences in post-1945 Latin America. We argue that US support for democratization was consistent in the wave of transitions to democracy that b…
The Argentina-Brazil Regional Power Transition
Almost four decades have passed since the Argentina-Brazil balance of power gave way to a Brazilian uncontested primacy in the Southern Cone. The peaceful and cooperative nature of this regional power transition poses an interesting puzzle for structural theories and those concerned with the US-China transition. Why do certain countries accept accommodation more leniently, like Argentina did? I offer an explanatory model and use process tracing t…
To lead or not to lead: Regional powers and regional leadership
Recent trends demonstrate that states with sufficient capabilities to be granted regional power status by its peers (primarily other states within their region) can nonetheless renounce regional leadership. This article analyzes the puzzling behavior of these detached or reluctant regional powers. We argue that resorting to an approach grounded in neoclassical realism is helpful to explain why regional powers might not exercise leadership. In thi…
As possíveis causas domésticas da liderança brasileira na América do Sul
A internacionalização do Estado brasileiro tem sido vista como uma consequência de sua ascensão internacional, muito embora também pudesse ser considerada uma das causas de sua crescente liderança e projeção no exterior. Neste artigo, resume-se o debate atual sobre o processo de formulação da política externa brasileira, discutindo o papel do Ministério das Relações Exteriores, da Presidência da República e sua burocracia e do Congresso. Além dis…
Compliance in Time: Lessons from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
This paper integrates the scholarship on compliance with international human rights courts to reflect upon how the literature approaches delays and compliance cycles. Building on this review, we propose a new analytical approach that helps distinguish between reparations prone to immediate or protracted implementation. We introduce two metrics to facilitate the interpretation of delays: the yearly probability of compliance and the expected time t…
Ascenso y hegemonía: Pensando a las potencias emergentes desde América del Sur
El presente trabajo se enmarca en el actual debate sobre potencias emergentes intentando un aporte desde una perspectiva latinoamericana. Para ello trabajará algunas disyuntivas teóricas que se han tornado difíciles de resolver para el mainstream racionalista de la disciplina, desarrollando un modelo de cambio complementario del programa realista actual. Argumentaremos que este marco presenta algunas ventajas para el estudio de diversas cuestione…
The Saavedra Lamas Peace: How a Norm Complex Evolved and Crystallized to Eliminate War in the Americas
sAfter the Napoleonic Wars interstate war regularly occurred throughout the Western Hemisphere—until in matter of decades it disappeared. After the 1930s even low-level militarized interstate conflict became less frequent, shorter, and less severe over time. What explains the change in this specific region and historical jucture? We argue that leaders in the Americas identified territorial disputes and foreign intervention as interrelated problem…
Backing Despots? Foreign Aid and the Survival of Autocratic Regimes
What is the effect of foreign aid on the survival of autocratic regimes? Extant work about the effect of foreign aid on the recipient’s political regime has come to contradictory conclusions. Current findings display the full spectrum of possibilities from a democratizing effect to the enhancement of authoritarian survival. While some studies suggest that foreign aid strengthen autocrats and their incentives to cling to power, others have focused…
Myths of Multipolarity: The Sources of Brazil's Foreign Policy Overstretch
In this article, we provide a framework to analyze the foreign policy overstretch of middle powers, that is, their recent tendency to expand foreign policy goals and ambitions beyond their capabilities. We propose that overstretch results from the interaction of permissive international environments and the collusion of domestic actors to produce foreign policy myths. These myths, in turn, justify unsustainable swelling of foreign policy expendit…
Was the Malvinas/Falklands a Diversionary War? A Prospect-Theory Reinterpretation of Argentina’s Decline
Why did Argentina risk seizing the Malvinas/Falkland Islands by force in 1982, provoking a war against Great Britain, and what are the larger implications of this case? We revisit this influential episode using counterfactual analysis to interpret newly declassified declarations of high-ranking state officials involved in the decision to occupy the islands. These sources cast doubt on the diversionary-war and miscalculation theses of the Malvinas…
Spraying Conflict: Aerial Drug Eradication and Armed Violence in Colombia
How do state interventions targeting illicit economies influence armed violence? Using Colombia as a critical case, we argue that aerial spraying of coca crops exacerbates violence by destabilizing local power dynamics and disrupting interactions among armed actors, civilians, and the state. Using municipal-level data from 2000 to 2015, we find that aerial spraying increases overall levels of violence in affected areas. Aerial spraying, we find, …
Reining in Rebellion: The Decline of Political Violence in South America, 1830–1929
During the nineteenth century, South America was plagued by internal rebellions that destabilized the region's economies and political systems. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, levels of political violence throughout the region declined dramatically. Existing scholarship has paid surprisingly little attention to this historic transformation, in part because comprehensive data on revolts have been lacking. Historical narratives …
Fue la crisis de las Malvinas una guerra de distracción? Una reinterpretación del declive argentino a través de la teoría prospectiva
Cómo se explica la Guerra de Malvinas? En este artículo revisitamos este episodio a través de un análisis contrafáctico utilizando nueva evidencia documental. Estas fuentes ponen en duda la tesis de la guerra de distracción y la tesis del error de cálculo. La evidencia sugiere que dinámicas de poder de largo plazo y sesgos psicológicos afectando a los miembros de la Junta militar argentina explican de mejor manera las decisiones que llevaron a la…
The Southern African unipolarity
Despite the tectonic changes that have taken place in Southern Africa since the demise of apartheid, South Africa is still widely considered a hegemonic regional power by scholars, practitioners and pundits. This article challenges this interpretation, asserting that both Pretoria’s foreign policy and that of its neighbours fit the concept of regional unipolarity with more precision. Since the early 1990s, South Africa has pursued leadership with…
El Concepto De Lo Político en Nicolás Maquiavelo
El presente trabajo pretende analizar, desde una perspectiva original, el pensamiento de Nicolás Maquiavelo, y en especial su concepción de la política. En un principio, nos pro- pondremos discernir qué es la política para este autor, cuáles son sus presupuestos esenciales y qué características propias tiene aquello que llama "político". Posteriormente, intentaremos poner en discusión, mediante un desarrollo sistemático, la hipótesis de que las c…
Preconceptos teóricos y política exterior: Reflexiones Críticas a Partir Del Conflicto Afgano
En este trabajo se intentará cuestionar la utilidad del concepto de "Estado" para interpretar determinados fenómenos de política internacional, considerando la centralidad que tiene el concepto en las teorías de las Relaciones Internacionales y para los formuladores de política exterior en general. Se tomará como caso de estudio el conflicto en Afganistán, argumentando que el mismo no puede circunscribirse a las categorías de lo estatal, en tanto…
Ascenso y hegemonía: Pensando a las potencias emergentes desde América del Sur
El presente trabajo se enmarca en el actual debate sobre potencias emergentes intentando un aporte desde una perspectiva latinoamericana. Para ello trabajará algunas disyuntivas teóricas que se han tornado difíciles de resolver para el mainstream racionalista de la disciplina, desarrollando un modelo de cambio complementario del programa realista actual. Argumentaremos que este marco presenta algunas ventajas para el estudio de diversas cuestione…
As possíveis causas domésticas da liderança brasileira na América do Sul
A internacionalização do Estado brasileiro tem sido vista como uma consequência de sua ascensão internacional, muito embora também pudesse ser considerada uma das causas de sua crescente liderança e projeção no exterior. Neste artigo, resume-se o debate atual sobre o processo de formulação da política externa brasileira, discutindo o papel do Ministério das Relações Exteriores, da Presidência da República e sua burocracia e do Congresso. Além dis…
Chinese Economic Statecraft and U.S. Hegemony in Latin America: An Empirical Analysis, 2003–2014
If one interprets China's sizable rise in Latin America as an unprecedented phenomenon, it follows that the concurrent story of declining U.S. influence in the region is an event hastily acknowledged at best and ignored at worst. In this article, we ask whether Chinese economic statecraft in Latin America is related to the declining U.S. hegemonic influence in the region and explore how. To do so we analyze foreign direct investments, bank loans,…
Peripheral Realism Revisited
In this article we summarize the precepts of Peripheral Realism, its place in the intellectual history of International Relations Theory, its contributions to interpreting Latin American international politics and its insights for the future. After revising the intellectual merits and tenets of the theory in the four initial sections, we show how it predicted the behavior of Latin American states under unipolarity. Finally, we review its implicat…
The Argentina-Brazil Regional Power Transition
Almost four decades have passed since the Argentina-Brazil balance of power gave way to a Brazilian uncontested primacy in the Southern Cone. The peaceful and cooperative nature of this regional power transition poses an interesting puzzle for structural theories and those concerned with the US-China transition. Why do certain countries accept accommodation more leniently, like Argentina did? I offer an explanatory model and use process tracing t…
Of words and deeds: Latin American declaratory regionalism, 1994–2014
The idea of an integrated Latin American region goes back to the early post-independence period, and yet, in substance, Latin American regionalism has remained far behind its stated aims. The perceived implementation gap has raised the question why policymakers continued to talk about something they appeared to avoid in practice. This article contributes to the debate on Latin America’s integration gap by exploring the phenomenon of declaratory r…
Backing Despots? Foreign Aid and the Survival of Autocratic Regimes
What is the effect of foreign aid on the survival of autocratic regimes? Extant work about the effect of foreign aid on the recipient’s political regime has come to contradictory conclusions. Current findings display the full spectrum of possibilities from a democratizing effect to the enhancement of authoritarian survival. While some studies suggest that foreign aid strengthen autocrats and their incentives to cling to power, others have focused…
Twisting Uncle Sam's Arm? Exploring Latin American Leverage vis-à-vis the United States
Research on US–Latin America relations is often contained in policy silos and limited to specific bilateral relations. Generations of scholars have burned the midnight oil in archives all over the Americas, but only the very best—for example, Robert Pastor, to whom the book is dedicated—have been able to advance enduring narratives that span many issues and decades across this massive region. Well-balanced, comparative histories must capture vari…
The Southern African unipolarity
Despite the tectonic changes that have taken place in Southern Africa since the demise of apartheid, South Africa is still widely considered a hegemonic regional power by scholars, practitioners and pundits. This article challenges this interpretation, asserting that both Pretoria’s foreign policy and that of its neighbours fit the concept of regional unipolarity with more precision. Since the early 1990s, South Africa has pursued leadership with…
US hegemony and regime change in Latin America
We contribute to the extensive literature on international influences on democratization and democratic breakdowns by conceptualizing hegemonic mechanisms of regime change and assessing them empirically. Our findings are based on a multi-methods approach and highlight the varying importance of hegemonic influences in post-1945 Latin America. We argue that US support for democratization was consistent in the wave of transitions to democracy that b…
Hegemonía estadounidense y cambio de régimen en América Latina
Este trabajo busca contribuir a la literatura sobre los factores internacionales que afectan el surgimiento y ruptura de la democracia a través de la conceptualización y análisis empírico de diversos mecanismos por los cuales una potencia internacional puede provocar cambios de régimen en su área de influencia. A través de múltiples métodos, analizamos el rol de Estados Unidos en 64 episodios (27 quiebres y 37 transiciones democráticas) que tuvie…
Foreign Policy Change in Latin America: Exploring a Middle-Range Concept
This article examines patterns of change and continuity in Latin American foreign policies. It asks two interrelated questions: How can we conceptually and empirically account for foreign policy change? And why do states change their foreign policies in Latin America? To answer these questions, we used the results of a new expert survey on foreign policy preferences in the region between 1980 and 2014. The results we obtained using both linear an…
Three Dragons in the Backyard? The Multifaceted Political Economy of China in Latin America
China's rise as a trading partner, investor, and lender to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) during the twenty-first century has been well documented. Nevertheless, this tectonic shift has spawned divergent development outcomes that remain under-researched. Why has China concentrated the bulk of its outgoing foreign direct investment (FDI) in Brazil and Peru? How did the Middle Kingdom become Chile's main trading partner while lending and inv…
Settling Resistant Territorial Disputes: The Territorial Boundary Peace in Latin America
Why do some territorial disputes defy settlement? Through what mechanism might these resistant territorial disputes be settled? We propose that the answer involves three individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions. First, the dispute must receive attention—i.e., be (re)placed and (re)prioritized on the dyad's agenda. Second, governments need altered preferences that expand the bargaining range so they can break deadlock and pursue se…
Was the Malvinas/Falklands a Diversionary War? A Prospect-Theory Reinterpretation of Argentina’s Decline
Why did Argentina risk seizing the Malvinas/Falkland Islands by force in 1982, provoking a war against Great Britain, and what are the larger implications of this case? We revisit this influential episode using counterfactual analysis to interpret newly declassified declarations of high-ranking state officials involved in the decision to occupy the islands. These sources cast doubt on the diversionary-war and miscalculation theses of the Malvinas…
To lead or not to lead: Regional powers and regional leadership
Recent trends demonstrate that states with sufficient capabilities to be granted regional power status by its peers (primarily other states within their region) can nonetheless renounce regional leadership. This article analyzes the puzzling behavior of these detached or reluctant regional powers. We argue that resorting to an approach grounded in neoclassical realism is helpful to explain why regional powers might not exercise leadership. In thi…
Bringing War Back in: Victory and State Formation in Latin America
Scholars have often dismissed the effect of war on state formation in regions like Latin America, where mobilization for war is deemed insufficiently intense and international conflict fails to out‐select weaker states. Against this conventional wisdom, I contend that wars can affect state‐building trajectories in a postwar period through the different state institutions that result from victory and defeat. After reconsidering the role of war out…
Fue la crisis de las Malvinas una guerra de distracción? Una reinterpretación del declive argentino a través de la teoría prospectiva
Cómo se explica la Guerra de Malvinas? En este artículo revisitamos este episodio a través de un análisis contrafáctico utilizando nueva evidencia documental. Estas fuentes ponen en duda la tesis de la guerra de distracción y la tesis del error de cálculo. La evidencia sugiere que dinámicas de poder de largo plazo y sesgos psicológicos afectando a los miembros de la Junta militar argentina explican de mejor manera las decisiones que llevaron a la…
Myths of Multipolarity: The Sources of Brazil's Foreign Policy Overstretch
In this article, we provide a framework to analyze the foreign policy overstretch of middle powers, that is, their recent tendency to expand foreign policy goals and ambitions beyond their capabilities. We propose that overstretch results from the interaction of permissive international environments and the collusion of domestic actors to produce foreign policy myths. These myths, in turn, justify unsustainable swelling of foreign policy expendit…
Compliance in Time: Lessons from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
This paper integrates the scholarship on compliance with international human rights courts to reflect upon how the literature approaches delays and compliance cycles. Building on this review, we propose a new analytical approach that helps distinguish between reparations prone to immediate or protracted implementation. We introduce two metrics to facilitate the interpretation of delays: the yearly probability of compliance and the expected time t…
State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain: Volume 3
Neoliberalism is often studied as a political ideology, a government program, and even as a pattern of cultural identities. However, less attention is paid to the specific institutional resources employed by neoliberal administrations, which have resulted in the configuration of a neoliberal state model. This accessible volume compiles original essays on the neoliberal era in Latin America and Spain, exploring subjects such as neoliberal public p…
Bringing War Back In: Victory, Defeat, and the State in Nineteenth-Century Latin America
Bringing War Back In provides a fresh theory connecting war and state formation that incorporates the contingency of warfare and the effects of war outcomes in the long run. The book demonstrates that international wars in nineteenth-century Latin America triggered state-building, that the outcomes of those wars affected the legitimacy and continuity of such efforts, and that the relative capacity of states in this region today continues to refle…
Reining in Rebellion: The Decline of Political Violence in South America, 1830–1929
During the nineteenth century, South America was plagued by internal rebellions that destabilized the region's economies and political systems. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, levels of political violence throughout the region declined dramatically. Existing scholarship has paid surprisingly little attention to this historic transformation, in part because comprehensive data on revolts have been lacking. Historical narratives …
Political science (24 works) · Law (16 works) · Economics (15 works) · International Development and Aid (14 works) · Law (14 works) · Political economy (14 works) · Politics (14 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Latin Americans (12 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (10 works)