Christopher M Webb
Biographic Data
| ID | 217055 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christopher M Webb |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christopher M |
| FAMILY NAME | Webb |
| SIGNATURE | WEBB C M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kansas |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6840-9476 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 153 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 21 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Of monsters and martyrs
Can presidents use human rights rhetoric to manipulate public perceptions of foreign countries and build support for foreign policies? Previous research shows that public perceptions of human rights conditions in foreign countries affect public support for military intervention. This makes public perceptions of human rights a potential political tool. Political leaders can weave narratives about human rights conditions in foreign countries to per…
A Practical Guide to Time Series Analysis
Understanding change over time is a critical component of social science. However, data measured over time – time series – requires their own set of statistical and inferential tools. In this book, Suzanna Linn, Matthew Lebo, and Clayton Webb explain the most commonly used time series models and demonstrate their applications using examples. The guide outlines the steps taken to identify a series, make determinations about exogeneity/endogeneity,…
A Public Demand Theory of Economic Sanctions
A number of theories about the effectiveness, design, and targeting of economic sanctions highlight public perceptions of economic sanctions as an important factor influencing foreign policy decision making. Some even suggest that public pressure to respond to international events creates public demand for sanctions. Does public demand for economic sanctions exist? If so, what factors shape this demand? We develop a public-demand theory of econom…
Recovering from economic coercion
Sanctions episodes, like those imposed by the United States against Cuba and North Korea, can persist for decades. What are the consequences of lifting sanctions? Do the harmful consequences of economic sanctions outlast the sanctions? How do target states adjust after these coercive policies end? A growing literature identifies a range of adverse effects of economic sanctions for targeted states including shrinking income from trade and investme…
Civil-Military Relations and Domestic Terrorism
Civil-military relations and terrorism are both extensively studied subjects. Their relationship has, however, yet to be examined. We maintain that public conflict between the civilian and the military leadership in a country and declining civil control over the armed forces may often precipitate a rise in domestic terror events. Civil-military conflict and reduced civilian control can lead to agency slack by the armed forces and ineffective coun…
Experimental Methods
In this chapter, we describe the use of experimental research designs in the conduct of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). While experiments are not well-suited to all topics in FPA, we argue they are particularly useful for studying microfoundational questions related to public opinion and decision-making. In this chapter, we explain the primary ways experiments have been used by FPA scholars over time, describe the key concepts and terms used in ex…
Avoiding, and Learning From, Mistakes Made by Junior Scholars Teaching Political Methodology
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Wither Elites? The Role of Elite Credibility and Knowledge in Public Perceptions of Foreign Policy
Existing theories of foreign policy opinion formation tend to treat elites as a black-box category for members of the nonpublic. This misses important nuances in public perceptions of elites. We argue that elite vocation serves as an important source cue, signaling elite access to information and elite knowledge that can be brought to bear on that information. We use a survey experiment to evaluate our hypotheses comparing four types of elites: e…
Lagged Outcomes, Lagged Predictors, and Lagged Errors
Debate on the use of lagged dependent variables has a long history in political science. The latest contribution to this discussion is Wilkins (2018, Political Science Research and Methods, 6, 393–411), which advocates the use of an ADL(2,1) model when there is serial dependence in the outcome and disturbance. While this specification does offer some insurance against serially correlated disturbances, this is never the best (linear unbiased estim…
The Wounds That Never Heal
For many veterans returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, homecoming is an encounter with an unrecognisable former homeland that has become a place of uncertainty and confounding moral landscapes. Within the liminal space of combat deployment, occupying soldiers cross thresholds which confound established moral worlds and problematise notions of purpose. Through acts of transgression, temporality and ratiocination are challenged and reconfig…
Economic Crises and Terrorism
The prevailing academic consensus holds that economic hardship does not motivate terrorism. We argue that this academic consensus is misguided because it assumes a single causal pathway connecting the economy to terrorism. In addition, most tests rely on national-level macroeconomic measures of economic performance that are not well suited to capturing individual-level decision-making processes that motivate people to engage in political violence…
Re-examining the costs of sanctions and sanctions threats using stock market data
Are sanctions and sanctions threats costly for the sanctioning state? The costs of sanctions for the sender are an important feature of many theories developed to explain the use and utility of economic sanctions. Despite the prominence of this assumption in existing research, there are only a handful of studies that have endeavored to analyze or estimate the economic consequences of sanctions for sender states. This paper builds a theoretical fr…
Beyond the Unit Root Question
A fundamental challenge facing applied time‐series analysts is how to draw inferences about long‐run relationships (LRR) when we are uncertain whether the data contain unit roots. Unit root tests are notoriously unreliable and often leave analysts uncertain, but popular extant methods hinge on correct classification. Webb, Linn, and Lebo (WLL; 2019) develop a framework for inference based on critical value bounds for hypothesis tests on the long‐…
Not in My Back Yard
Why does the public care more about some terrorist attacks than others? In recent years, there has been a wave of terrorist attacks carried out by similar terrorist organizations, but these attacks have produced disparate public responses. Existing research shows that terrorist attacks are more traumatic for people who live near terrorist targets, but this research cannot explain differences in public attitudes about attacks occurring in other co…
A Bounds Approach to Inference Using the Long Run Multiplier
Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) (PSS) proposed a bounds procedure for testing for the existence of long run cointegrating relationships between a unit root dependent variable ($y_{t}$) and a set of weakly exogenous regressors$\boldsymbol{x}_{t}$when the analyst does not know whether the independent variables are stationary, unit root, or mutually cointegrated processes. This procedure recognizes the analyst’s uncertainty over the nature of the re…
The big, the bad, and the dangerous
Does coordination affect threat perceptions? The attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 received a significant amount of attention in the media. The attacks were transnational, fatal, and perpetrated by the same group in western European countries. We argue that these are not the only features of the attacks that matter. The attacks involved coordination among teams of militants. This coordination signals sophistication. Sophistication am…
Death rituals
I haven’t worn a military uniform in nine years....The question foreshadowed the disconnectedness I would feel over the next 24 hours. A family member asked me the day before the funeral if I would b
Power Politics or Public Pandering? An Empirical Investigation of Economic Sanctions and Presidential Approval
How do economic sanctions affect presidential approval? Competing claims have been made about the domestic political consequences of economic sanctions. One claim is that sanctions are unpopular because they have negative economic consequences; another claim is that sanctions are popular because they project an image of strength; and another claim is that sanctions are neither popular nor unpopular because the public is uninformed about internati…
Concluding Comments
This issue began as an exchange between Grant and Lebo (2016) and ourselves (Keele, Linn, and Webb 2016) about the utility of the general error correction model (GECM) in political science. The exchange evolved into a debate about Grant and Lebo's proposed alternative to the GECM and the utility of fractional integration methods (FIM). Esarey (2016) and Helgason (2016) weigh in on this part of the debate. Freeman (2016) offers his views on the ex…
Treating Time with All Due Seriousness
In this article, we highlight three points. First, we counter Grant and Lebo's claim that the error correction model (ECM) cannot be applied to stationary data. We maintain that when data are properly stationary, the ECM is an entirely appropriate model. We clarify that for a model to be properly stationary, it must be balanced. Second, we contend that while fractional integration techniques can be useful, they also have important weaknesses, esp…
The President, Polarization and the Party Platforms, 1944–2012
Scholars generally agree that political elites in the US are polarized. Yet most of our evidence, especially longitudinal evidence, is built on proxy measures of elite ideology that fail to identify the unique dimensions that drive the cleavages between the parties. And our understanding of when elite polarization reemerged is also unclear. This study leverages the party platforms, along with the tools of content analysis, to shed new light on el…
Treating Time with All Due Seriousness
In this article, we highlight three points. First, we counter Grant and Lebo's claim that the error correction model (ECM) cannot be applied to stationary data. We maintain that when data are properly stationary, the ECM is an entirely appropriate model. We clarify that for a model to be properly stationary, it must be balanced. Second, we contend that while fractional integration techniques can be useful, they also have important weaknesses, esp…
Not in My Back Yard
Why does the public care more about some terrorist attacks than others? In recent years, there has been a wave of terrorist attacks carried out by similar terrorist organizations, but these attacks have produced disparate public responses. Existing research shows that terrorist attacks are more traumatic for people who live near terrorist targets, but this research cannot explain differences in public attitudes about attacks occurring in other co…
Beyond the Unit Root Question
A fundamental challenge facing applied time‐series analysts is how to draw inferences about long‐run relationships (LRR) when we are uncertain whether the data contain unit roots. Unit root tests are notoriously unreliable and often leave analysts uncertain, but popular extant methods hinge on correct classification. Webb, Linn, and Lebo (WLL; 2019) develop a framework for inference based on critical value bounds for hypothesis tests on the long‐…
Wither Elites? The Role of Elite Credibility and Knowledge in Public Perceptions of Foreign Policy
Existing theories of foreign policy opinion formation tend to treat elites as a black-box category for members of the nonpublic. This misses important nuances in public perceptions of elites. We argue that elite vocation serves as an important source cue, signaling elite access to information and elite knowledge that can be brought to bear on that information. We use a survey experiment to evaluate our hypotheses comparing four types of elites: e…
A Bounds Approach to Inference Using the Long Run Multiplier
Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) (PSS) proposed a bounds procedure for testing for the existence of long run cointegrating relationships between a unit root dependent variable ($y_{t}$) and a set of weakly exogenous regressors$\boldsymbol{x}_{t}$when the analyst does not know whether the independent variables are stationary, unit root, or mutually cointegrated processes. This procedure recognizes the analyst’s uncertainty over the nature of the re…
Power Politics or Public Pandering? An Empirical Investigation of Economic Sanctions and Presidential Approval
How do economic sanctions affect presidential approval? Competing claims have been made about the domestic political consequences of economic sanctions. One claim is that sanctions are unpopular because they have negative economic consequences; another claim is that sanctions are popular because they project an image of strength; and another claim is that sanctions are neither popular nor unpopular because the public is uninformed about internati…
The Wounds That Never Heal
For many veterans returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, homecoming is an encounter with an unrecognisable former homeland that has become a place of uncertainty and confounding moral landscapes. Within the liminal space of combat deployment, occupying soldiers cross thresholds which confound established moral worlds and problematise notions of purpose. Through acts of transgression, temporality and ratiocination are challenged and reconfig…
Concluding Comments
This issue began as an exchange between Grant and Lebo (2016) and ourselves (Keele, Linn, and Webb 2016) about the utility of the general error correction model (GECM) in political science. The exchange evolved into a debate about Grant and Lebo's proposed alternative to the GECM and the utility of fractional integration methods (FIM). Esarey (2016) and Helgason (2016) weigh in on this part of the debate. Freeman (2016) offers his views on the ex…
The big, the bad, and the dangerous
Does coordination affect threat perceptions? The attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 received a significant amount of attention in the media. The attacks were transnational, fatal, and perpetrated by the same group in western European countries. We argue that these are not the only features of the attacks that matter. The attacks involved coordination among teams of militants. This coordination signals sophistication. Sophistication am…
Civil-Military Relations and Domestic Terrorism
Civil-military relations and terrorism are both extensively studied subjects. Their relationship has, however, yet to be examined. We maintain that public conflict between the civilian and the military leadership in a country and declining civil control over the armed forces may often precipitate a rise in domestic terror events. Civil-military conflict and reduced civilian control can lead to agency slack by the armed forces and ineffective coun…
Re-examining the costs of sanctions and sanctions threats using stock market data
Are sanctions and sanctions threats costly for the sanctioning state? The costs of sanctions for the sender are an important feature of many theories developed to explain the use and utility of economic sanctions. Despite the prominence of this assumption in existing research, there are only a handful of studies that have endeavored to analyze or estimate the economic consequences of sanctions for sender states. This paper builds a theoretical fr…
The President, Polarization and the Party Platforms, 1944–2012
Scholars generally agree that political elites in the US are polarized. Yet most of our evidence, especially longitudinal evidence, is built on proxy measures of elite ideology that fail to identify the unique dimensions that drive the cleavages between the parties. And our understanding of when elite polarization reemerged is also unclear. This study leverages the party platforms, along with the tools of content analysis, to shed new light on el…
Lagged Outcomes, Lagged Predictors, and Lagged Errors
Debate on the use of lagged dependent variables has a long history in political science. The latest contribution to this discussion is Wilkins (2018, Political Science Research and Methods, 6, 393–411), which advocates the use of an ADL(2,1) model when there is serial dependence in the outcome and disturbance. While this specification does offer some insurance against serially correlated disturbances, this is never the best (linear unbiased estim…
Death rituals
I haven’t worn a military uniform in nine years....The question foreshadowed the disconnectedness I would feel over the next 24 hours. A family member asked me the day before the funeral if I would b
Economic Crises and Terrorism
The prevailing academic consensus holds that economic hardship does not motivate terrorism. We argue that this academic consensus is misguided because it assumes a single causal pathway connecting the economy to terrorism. In addition, most tests rely on national-level macroeconomic measures of economic performance that are not well suited to capturing individual-level decision-making processes that motivate people to engage in political violence…
The President, Polarization and the Party Platforms, 1944–2012
Scholars generally agree that political elites in the US are polarized. Yet most of our evidence, especially longitudinal evidence, is built on proxy measures of elite ideology that fail to identify the unique dimensions that drive the cleavages between the parties. And our understanding of when elite polarization reemerged is also unclear. This study leverages the party platforms, along with the tools of content analysis, to shed new light on el…
Concluding Comments
This issue began as an exchange between Grant and Lebo (2016) and ourselves (Keele, Linn, and Webb 2016) about the utility of the general error correction model (GECM) in political science. The exchange evolved into a debate about Grant and Lebo's proposed alternative to the GECM and the utility of fractional integration methods (FIM). Esarey (2016) and Helgason (2016) weigh in on this part of the debate. Freeman (2016) offers his views on the ex…
Treating Time with All Due Seriousness
In this article, we highlight three points. First, we counter Grant and Lebo's claim that the error correction model (ECM) cannot be applied to stationary data. We maintain that when data are properly stationary, the ECM is an entirely appropriate model. We clarify that for a model to be properly stationary, it must be balanced. Second, we contend that while fractional integration techniques can be useful, they also have important weaknesses, esp…
Power Politics or Public Pandering? An Empirical Investigation of Economic Sanctions and Presidential Approval
How do economic sanctions affect presidential approval? Competing claims have been made about the domestic political consequences of economic sanctions. One claim is that sanctions are unpopular because they have negative economic consequences; another claim is that sanctions are popular because they project an image of strength; and another claim is that sanctions are neither popular nor unpopular because the public is uninformed about internati…
The big, the bad, and the dangerous
Does coordination affect threat perceptions? The attacks in Paris and Brussels in 2015 and 2016 received a significant amount of attention in the media. The attacks were transnational, fatal, and perpetrated by the same group in western European countries. We argue that these are not the only features of the attacks that matter. The attacks involved coordination among teams of militants. This coordination signals sophistication. Sophistication am…
Death rituals
I haven’t worn a military uniform in nine years....The question foreshadowed the disconnectedness I would feel over the next 24 hours. A family member asked me the day before the funeral if I would b
Not in My Back Yard
Why does the public care more about some terrorist attacks than others? In recent years, there has been a wave of terrorist attacks carried out by similar terrorist organizations, but these attacks have produced disparate public responses. Existing research shows that terrorist attacks are more traumatic for people who live near terrorist targets, but this research cannot explain differences in public attitudes about attacks occurring in other co…
A Bounds Approach to Inference Using the Long Run Multiplier
Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001) (PSS) proposed a bounds procedure for testing for the existence of long run cointegrating relationships between a unit root dependent variable ($y_{t}$) and a set of weakly exogenous regressors$\boldsymbol{x}_{t}$when the analyst does not know whether the independent variables are stationary, unit root, or mutually cointegrated processes. This procedure recognizes the analyst’s uncertainty over the nature of the re…
Economic Crises and Terrorism
The prevailing academic consensus holds that economic hardship does not motivate terrorism. We argue that this academic consensus is misguided because it assumes a single causal pathway connecting the economy to terrorism. In addition, most tests rely on national-level macroeconomic measures of economic performance that are not well suited to capturing individual-level decision-making processes that motivate people to engage in political violence…
Re-examining the costs of sanctions and sanctions threats using stock market data
Are sanctions and sanctions threats costly for the sanctioning state? The costs of sanctions for the sender are an important feature of many theories developed to explain the use and utility of economic sanctions. Despite the prominence of this assumption in existing research, there are only a handful of studies that have endeavored to analyze or estimate the economic consequences of sanctions for sender states. This paper builds a theoretical fr…
Beyond the Unit Root Question
A fundamental challenge facing applied time‐series analysts is how to draw inferences about long‐run relationships (LRR) when we are uncertain whether the data contain unit roots. Unit root tests are notoriously unreliable and often leave analysts uncertain, but popular extant methods hinge on correct classification. Webb, Linn, and Lebo (WLL; 2019) develop a framework for inference based on critical value bounds for hypothesis tests on the long‐…
Lagged Outcomes, Lagged Predictors, and Lagged Errors
Debate on the use of lagged dependent variables has a long history in political science. The latest contribution to this discussion is Wilkins (2018, Political Science Research and Methods, 6, 393–411), which advocates the use of an ADL(2,1) model when there is serial dependence in the outcome and disturbance. While this specification does offer some insurance against serially correlated disturbances, this is never the best (linear unbiased estim…
The Wounds That Never Heal
For many veterans returning from wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, homecoming is an encounter with an unrecognisable former homeland that has become a place of uncertainty and confounding moral landscapes. Within the liminal space of combat deployment, occupying soldiers cross thresholds which confound established moral worlds and problematise notions of purpose. Through acts of transgression, temporality and ratiocination are challenged and reconfig…
Experimental Methods
In this chapter, we describe the use of experimental research designs in the conduct of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA). While experiments are not well-suited to all topics in FPA, we argue they are particularly useful for studying microfoundational questions related to public opinion and decision-making. In this chapter, we explain the primary ways experiments have been used by FPA scholars over time, describe the key concepts and terms used in ex…
Avoiding, and Learning From, Mistakes Made by Junior Scholars Teaching Political Methodology
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Wither Elites? The Role of Elite Credibility and Knowledge in Public Perceptions of Foreign Policy
Existing theories of foreign policy opinion formation tend to treat elites as a black-box category for members of the nonpublic. This misses important nuances in public perceptions of elites. We argue that elite vocation serves as an important source cue, signaling elite access to information and elite knowledge that can be brought to bear on that information. We use a survey experiment to evaluate our hypotheses comparing four types of elites: e…
A Public Demand Theory of Economic Sanctions
A number of theories about the effectiveness, design, and targeting of economic sanctions highlight public perceptions of economic sanctions as an important factor influencing foreign policy decision making. Some even suggest that public pressure to respond to international events creates public demand for sanctions. Does public demand for economic sanctions exist? If so, what factors shape this demand? We develop a public-demand theory of econom…
Recovering from economic coercion
Sanctions episodes, like those imposed by the United States against Cuba and North Korea, can persist for decades. What are the consequences of lifting sanctions? Do the harmful consequences of economic sanctions outlast the sanctions? How do target states adjust after these coercive policies end? A growing literature identifies a range of adverse effects of economic sanctions for targeted states including shrinking income from trade and investme…
Civil-Military Relations and Domestic Terrorism
Civil-military relations and terrorism are both extensively studied subjects. Their relationship has, however, yet to be examined. We maintain that public conflict between the civilian and the military leadership in a country and declining civil control over the armed forces may often precipitate a rise in domestic terror events. Civil-military conflict and reduced civilian control can lead to agency slack by the armed forces and ineffective coun…
Of monsters and martyrs
Can presidents use human rights rhetoric to manipulate public perceptions of foreign countries and build support for foreign policies? Previous research shows that public perceptions of human rights conditions in foreign countries affect public support for military intervention. This makes public perceptions of human rights a potential political tool. Political leaders can weave narratives about human rights conditions in foreign countries to per…
A Practical Guide to Time Series Analysis
Understanding change over time is a critical component of social science. However, data measured over time – time series – requires their own set of statistical and inferential tools. In this book, Suzanna Linn, Matthew Lebo, and Clayton Webb explain the most commonly used time series models and demonstrate their applications using examples. The guide outlines the steps taken to identify a series, make determinations about exogeneity/endogeneity,…
Political science (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Criminology (5 works) · Political economy (5 works)