Patrick A Mello
Biographic Data
| ID | 4085540 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Patrick A Mello |
| GIVEN NAMES | Patrick A |
| FAMILY NAME | Mello |
| SIGNATURE | MELLO P A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Technical University of Munich |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0751-5109 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 147 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Can the public sector break the mold? Exploring antecedent factors driving sensing capabilities with fsQCA in the Tuscan family and community nurse model
Public sector organizations (PSOs) operate in dynamic environments where they must anticipate change in societal needs. Developing sensing capabilities, understood as the capacity to detect opportunities and threats, is critical to ensure adaptability. This study investigates how PSOs develop sensing capabilities by analyzing combinations of internal (organizational) and external (environmental) antecedent factors using a Fuzzy-set Qualitative Co…
The party politics of national role contestation: Germany’s ‘traffic light’ coalition and the Russian war against Ukraine
Addressing the German Bundestag in February 2022, Chancellor Scholz described the implications of Russia’s war against Ukraine as a Zeitenwende (‘watershed’) in international politics. Since then, Germany saw unprecedented changes in its foreign and security policy, overturning established policies and long-held beliefs. While these have been the subject of academic studies and political commentary, less attention has been paid to the domestic co…
Zeitenwende: German Foreign Policy Change in the Wake of Russia's War Against Ukraine
Russia’s war against Ukraine has severely damaged the European security architecture. This article examines the consequences of this rupture for German foreign and security policy. Just a few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany saw the transition to an unprecedented three-party coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals. In a special address to the Bundestag three days after the invasion, Chancellor …
The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know? by Richard Ned Lebow
Journal Article The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know? by Richard Ned Lebow Get access Richard Ned Lebow. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 256 pp. $29.99. Patrick A Mello Patrick A Mello Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0751-5109 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, qqad096, https://doi.org/10.1093/psquar/qqad096 Publi…
Qualitative Comparative Analysis
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a set-theoretic comparative method that treats cases as configurations of conditions, aiming to identify those conditions and/or combinations that are necessary and/or sufficient for an outcome. This chapter opens with a review of how the method has been applied empirically in the fields of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and International Relations (IR). This is followed by an introduction to the method’s …
Methods of Foreign Policy Analysis
Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) has become a major subfield of International Relations (IR). Contemporary FPA applies a broad range of approaches, drawing on IR’s meta-theories as well as domestic-level, psychological, and cognitive theories of foreign policy decision-making. This gives testament to a considerable diversity as FPA has established a panoply of relations to other disciplines and sciences that enrich its analytical capabilities. Despi…
Persistence Against the Odds: How Entrepreneurial Agents Helped the UN Joint Inspection Unit to Prevail
Since its inception in 1966, the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) has prevailed in the face of significant existential challenges. Against this backdrop, we investigate how and why the JIU persisted over time. Combining delegation and historical institutionalist approaches, we posit that entrepreneurial agents and layering processes together help us better understand persistence of international organizations. Based on semi‐structured i…
Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods
QCA in International Relations: A Review of Strengths, Pitfalls, and Empirical Applications
Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is a rapidly emerging method in the field of International Relations (IR). This raises questions about the strengths and pitfalls of QCA in IR research, established good practices, how IR performs against those standards, and which areas require further attention. After a general introduction to the method, we address these questions based on a review of all empirical QCA studies published in IR journals bet…
The unintended consequences of UN sanctions: A qualitative comparative analysis
Sanctions are widely used foreign policy tools in reaction to crises in world politics. Accordingly, literature on sanction effectiveness—their intended consequences—is abundant. Yet, fewer studies address the unintended consequences of restrictive measures. This is remarkable given that negative externalities are well documented. Our article explores this phenomenon by asking under which conditions sanctions yield negative externalities. We deve…
Incentives and constraints: A configurational account of European involvement in the anti-Daesh coalition
In 2014, the USA initiated the formation of a multilateral military operation against Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Eventually, more than 70 states joined the anti-Daesh coalition. However, contributions to the military effort have been characterized by great variance, especially among EU member states. While some states took leading roles in the airstrikes, others provided training for Iraqi and Kurdish forces, and still others did not get involved b…
Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods
When Do International Organizations Engage in Agency Slack? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of United Nations Institutions
The extensive delegation of power to international organizations (IOs) has been accompanied by occasional agency slack. While prior studies suggest that IOs’ propensity for agency slack may be rooted in their organizational characteristics, this has rarely been explored empirically. To address this lacuna, in this article we propose a conceptualization and measurement of agency slack and develop a framework of organizational characteristics. Our …
Patterns of Political Ideology and Security Policy
Recent studies on political ideology suggest the existence of partisan divides on matters of foreign and security policy, challenging the notion that “politics stops at the water's edge.” However, when taken as a whole, extant work provides decidedly mixed evidence of party-political differences outside domestic politics. This article first conducts a systematic empirical analysis of the relationship between parties’ left–right positions and thei…
Entscheidungsträger in der deutschen Außenpolitik: Führungseigenschaften und politische Überzeugungen der Bundeskanzler und Außenminister
Entscheidungsträger in der deutschen Außenpolitik: Führungseigenschaften und politische Überzeugungen der Bundeskanzler und Außenminister." German Politics, 30(4), pp. 606–607
Paths towards coalition defection: Democracies and withdrawal from the Iraq War
Despite widespread public opposition to the Iraq War, numerous democracies joined the US-led multinational force. However, while some stayed until the end of coalition operations, and several increased their deployments over time, others left unilaterally. How to explain this variation? While some studies suggest that democratic defection from security commitments is primarily motivated by electoral incentives or leadership change, scholars have …
Parliaments in security policy: Involvement, politicisation, and influence
While parliaments have long been neglected actors in the analysis of security policy, a research literature on the subject is growing. Current research is focused primarily on how parliaments, relying on formal legal competences, can constrain governmental policies. However, this research needs expansion in three areas. First, informal sources of parliamentary influence on security policy deserve more systematic attention as the significance of p…
The unintended consequences of parliamentary involvement: Elite collusion and Afghanistan deployments in Canada and Germany
This article argues that there is a need to question whether parliamentary involvement actually leads to the intended effects of increased democratic deliberation and responsiveness. We compare the unintended consequences of parliamentary votes on the use of force in two ‘most-different cases’: Canada and Germany. Despite substantive differences in the formal war powers of their parliaments, we find that military deployment votes on Afghanistan l…
The politics of multinational military operations
Today, few countries fight alone; most fight as allies or partners in multilateral campaigns. The end of the Cold War opened a window of opportunity for multinational military operations (MMOs). These have seen varying degrees of participation, enthusiasm, and success. This special forum is devoted to the politics of multilateral warfare including their formation, maintenance, and durability. The introduction sketches past research and derives so…
National restrictions in multinational military operations: A conceptual framework
Recent scholarship in security studies has started to explore the causes and consequences of various forms of national restrictions in multinational military operations (MMOs). This article makes a conceptual contribution to this literature by developing a theoretical framework of national restrictions in MMOs that distinguishes between structural, procedural, and operational restrictions. I argue that these types of restrictions are governed by …
Curbing the royal prerogative to use military force: The British House of Commons and the conflicts in Libya and Syria
To what extent does political practice under the British Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition (2010–2015) reflect a ‘parliamentary prerogative’? From a formal-institutional point of view one should not expect substantial parliamentary influence in Britain. Yet recent developments suggest the emergence of a new convention. Examining parliamentary debates during the run-up to the votes on Libya and Syria, this contribution shows that the scope a…
Asymmetric Warfare
Asymmetric warfare is commonly defined as a mode of combat where the aims, means, or methods of the parties in conflict are substantively dissimilar. Most scholars assume a gaping power disparity between the warring parties in asymmetric conflicts. However, a two‐fold distinction can be made, separating asymmetry of strength from asymmetry of weakness. The former rests on an actor's ability to play to its own strengths, while the latter refers to…
Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis
The empirical analysis of subsequent chapters in this book is based on fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). This chapter introduces the methodological approach of fsQCA, placing emphasis on its core principles, specific terminology, and analytical procedures. In the first two sections, I justify the methodological choice of a set-theoretic approach against the backdrop of prevalent methods in democratic peace research. This is foll…
Democratic Participation in Armed Conflict: Military Involvement in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq
When do democracies participate in military operations, and under which conditions do they abstain? Studies on the democratic peace have largely neglected the flipside of democratic participation in armed conflict. Moreover, whilst scholars have made the case that democracy needs to be unpacked to be meaningful, this is rarely done in international relations. In comparative politics, on the other hand, there has been extensive research on democra…
Democratic Participation in Armed Conflict
Under which conditions do democracies participate in war, and when do they abstain? Providing a unique theoretical framework, Mello identifies pathways of war involvement and abstention across thirty
Parliaments in security policy: Involvement, politicisation, and influence
While parliaments have long been neglected actors in the analysis of security policy, a research literature on the subject is growing. Current research is focused primarily on how parliaments, relying on formal legal competences, can constrain governmental policies. However, this research needs expansion in three areas. First, informal sources of parliamentary influence on security policy deserve more systematic attention as the significance of p…
Curbing the royal prerogative to use military force: The British House of Commons and the conflicts in Libya and Syria
To what extent does political practice under the British Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition (2010–2015) reflect a ‘parliamentary prerogative’? From a formal-institutional point of view one should not expect substantial parliamentary influence in Britain. Yet recent developments suggest the emergence of a new convention. Examining parliamentary debates during the run-up to the votes on Libya and Syria, this contribution shows that the scope a…
Patterns of Political Ideology and Security Policy
Recent studies on political ideology suggest the existence of partisan divides on matters of foreign and security policy, challenging the notion that “politics stops at the water's edge.” However, when taken as a whole, extant work provides decidedly mixed evidence of party-political differences outside domestic politics. This article first conducts a systematic empirical analysis of the relationship between parties’ left–right positions and thei…
The unintended consequences of parliamentary involvement: Elite collusion and Afghanistan deployments in Canada and Germany
This article argues that there is a need to question whether parliamentary involvement actually leads to the intended effects of increased democratic deliberation and responsiveness. We compare the unintended consequences of parliamentary votes on the use of force in two ‘most-different cases’: Canada and Germany. Despite substantive differences in the formal war powers of their parliaments, we find that military deployment votes on Afghanistan l…
Parliamentary peace or partisan politics? Democracies’ participation in the Iraq War
The politics of multinational military operations
Today, few countries fight alone; most fight as allies or partners in multilateral campaigns. The end of the Cold War opened a window of opportunity for multinational military operations (MMOs). These have seen varying degrees of participation, enthusiasm, and success. This special forum is devoted to the politics of multilateral warfare including their formation, maintenance, and durability. The introduction sketches past research and derives so…
Zeitenwende: German Foreign Policy Change in the Wake of Russia's War Against Ukraine
Russia’s war against Ukraine has severely damaged the European security architecture. This article examines the consequences of this rupture for German foreign and security policy. Just a few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany saw the transition to an unprecedented three-party coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals. In a special address to the Bundestag three days after the invasion, Chancellor …
The unintended consequences of UN sanctions: A qualitative comparative analysis
Sanctions are widely used foreign policy tools in reaction to crises in world politics. Accordingly, literature on sanction effectiveness—their intended consequences—is abundant. Yet, fewer studies address the unintended consequences of restrictive measures. This is remarkable given that negative externalities are well documented. Our article explores this phenomenon by asking under which conditions sanctions yield negative externalities. We deve…
National restrictions in multinational military operations: A conceptual framework
Recent scholarship in security studies has started to explore the causes and consequences of various forms of national restrictions in multinational military operations (MMOs). This article makes a conceptual contribution to this literature by developing a theoretical framework of national restrictions in MMOs that distinguishes between structural, procedural, and operational restrictions. I argue that these types of restrictions are governed by …
When Do International Organizations Engage in Agency Slack? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of United Nations Institutions
The extensive delegation of power to international organizations (IOs) has been accompanied by occasional agency slack. While prior studies suggest that IOs’ propensity for agency slack may be rooted in their organizational characteristics, this has rarely been explored empirically. To address this lacuna, in this article we propose a conceptualization and measurement of agency slack and develop a framework of organizational characteristics. Our …
Paths towards coalition defection: Democracies and withdrawal from the Iraq War
Despite widespread public opposition to the Iraq War, numerous democracies joined the US-led multinational force. However, while some stayed until the end of coalition operations, and several increased their deployments over time, others left unilaterally. How to explain this variation? While some studies suggest that democratic defection from security commitments is primarily motivated by electoral incentives or leadership change, scholars have …
The party politics of national role contestation: Germany’s ‘traffic light’ coalition and the Russian war against Ukraine
Addressing the German Bundestag in February 2022, Chancellor Scholz described the implications of Russia’s war against Ukraine as a Zeitenwende (‘watershed’) in international politics. Since then, Germany saw unprecedented changes in its foreign and security policy, overturning established policies and long-held beliefs. While these have been the subject of academic studies and political commentary, less attention has been paid to the domestic co…
Incentives and constraints: A configurational account of European involvement in the anti-Daesh coalition
In 2014, the USA initiated the formation of a multilateral military operation against Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Eventually, more than 70 states joined the anti-Daesh coalition. However, contributions to the military effort have been characterized by great variance, especially among EU member states. While some states took leading roles in the airstrikes, others provided training for Iraqi and Kurdish forces, and still others did not get involved b…
Parliamentary peace or partisan politics? Democracies’ participation in the Iraq War
Fuzzy-Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis
The empirical analysis of subsequent chapters in this book is based on fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA). This chapter introduces the methodological approach of fsQCA, placing emphasis on its core principles, specific terminology, and analytical procedures. In the first two sections, I justify the methodological choice of a set-theoretic approach against the backdrop of prevalent methods in democratic peace research. This is foll…
Democratic Participation in Armed Conflict: Military Involvement in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq
When do democracies participate in military operations, and under which conditions do they abstain? Studies on the democratic peace have largely neglected the flipside of democratic participation in armed conflict. Moreover, whilst scholars have made the case that democracy needs to be unpacked to be meaningful, this is rarely done in international relations. In comparative politics, on the other hand, there has been extensive research on democra…
Democratic Participation in Armed Conflict
Under which conditions do democracies participate in war, and when do they abstain? Providing a unique theoretical framework, Mello identifies pathways of war involvement and abstention across thirty
Asymmetric Warfare
Asymmetric warfare is commonly defined as a mode of combat where the aims, means, or methods of the parties in conflict are substantively dissimilar. Most scholars assume a gaping power disparity between the warring parties in asymmetric conflicts. However, a two‐fold distinction can be made, separating asymmetry of strength from asymmetry of weakness. The former rests on an actor's ability to play to its own strengths, while the latter refers to…
Curbing the royal prerogative to use military force: The British House of Commons and the conflicts in Libya and Syria
To what extent does political practice under the British Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition (2010–2015) reflect a ‘parliamentary prerogative’? From a formal-institutional point of view one should not expect substantial parliamentary influence in Britain. Yet recent developments suggest the emergence of a new convention. Examining parliamentary debates during the run-up to the votes on Libya and Syria, this contribution shows that the scope a…
Parliaments in security policy: Involvement, politicisation, and influence
While parliaments have long been neglected actors in the analysis of security policy, a research literature on the subject is growing. Current research is focused primarily on how parliaments, relying on formal legal competences, can constrain governmental policies. However, this research needs expansion in three areas. First, informal sources of parliamentary influence on security policy deserve more systematic attention as the significance of p…
The unintended consequences of parliamentary involvement: Elite collusion and Afghanistan deployments in Canada and Germany
This article argues that there is a need to question whether parliamentary involvement actually leads to the intended effects of increased democratic deliberation and responsiveness. We compare the unintended consequences of parliamentary votes on the use of force in two ‘most-different cases’: Canada and Germany. Despite substantive differences in the formal war powers of their parliaments, we find that military deployment votes on Afghanistan l…
The politics of multinational military operations
Today, few countries fight alone; most fight as allies or partners in multilateral campaigns. The end of the Cold War opened a window of opportunity for multinational military operations (MMOs). These have seen varying degrees of participation, enthusiasm, and success. This special forum is devoted to the politics of multilateral warfare including their formation, maintenance, and durability. The introduction sketches past research and derives so…
National restrictions in multinational military operations: A conceptual framework
Recent scholarship in security studies has started to explore the causes and consequences of various forms of national restrictions in multinational military operations (MMOs). This article makes a conceptual contribution to this literature by developing a theoretical framework of national restrictions in MMOs that distinguishes between structural, procedural, and operational restrictions. I argue that these types of restrictions are governed by …
Paths towards coalition defection: Democracies and withdrawal from the Iraq War
Despite widespread public opposition to the Iraq War, numerous democracies joined the US-led multinational force. However, while some stayed until the end of coalition operations, and several increased their deployments over time, others left unilaterally. How to explain this variation? While some studies suggest that democratic defection from security commitments is primarily motivated by electoral incentives or leadership change, scholars have …
Patterns of Political Ideology and Security Policy
Recent studies on political ideology suggest the existence of partisan divides on matters of foreign and security policy, challenging the notion that “politics stops at the water's edge.” However, when taken as a whole, extant work provides decidedly mixed evidence of party-political differences outside domestic politics. This article first conducts a systematic empirical analysis of the relationship between parties’ left–right positions and thei…
Entscheidungsträger in der deutschen Außenpolitik: Führungseigenschaften und politische Überzeugungen der Bundeskanzler und Außenminister
Entscheidungsträger in der deutschen Außenpolitik: Führungseigenschaften und politische Überzeugungen der Bundeskanzler und Außenminister." German Politics, 30(4), pp. 606–607
Qualitative Comparative Analysis
Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) is a set-theoretic comparative method that treats cases as configurations of conditions, aiming to identify those conditions and/or combinations that are necessary and/or sufficient for an outcome. This chapter opens with a review of how the method has been applied empirically in the fields of Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) and International Relations (IR). This is followed by an introduction to the method’s …
Methods of Foreign Policy Analysis
Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) has become a major subfield of International Relations (IR). Contemporary FPA applies a broad range of approaches, drawing on IR’s meta-theories as well as domestic-level, psychological, and cognitive theories of foreign policy decision-making. This gives testament to a considerable diversity as FPA has established a panoply of relations to other disciplines and sciences that enrich its analytical capabilities. Despi…
Persistence Against the Odds: How Entrepreneurial Agents Helped the UN Joint Inspection Unit to Prevail
Since its inception in 1966, the United Nations Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) has prevailed in the face of significant existential challenges. Against this backdrop, we investigate how and why the JIU persisted over time. Combining delegation and historical institutionalist approaches, we posit that entrepreneurial agents and layering processes together help us better understand persistence of international organizations. Based on semi‐structured i…
Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods
QCA in International Relations: A Review of Strengths, Pitfalls, and Empirical Applications
Qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) is a rapidly emerging method in the field of International Relations (IR). This raises questions about the strengths and pitfalls of QCA in IR research, established good practices, how IR performs against those standards, and which areas require further attention. After a general introduction to the method, we address these questions based on a review of all empirical QCA studies published in IR journals bet…
The unintended consequences of UN sanctions: A qualitative comparative analysis
Sanctions are widely used foreign policy tools in reaction to crises in world politics. Accordingly, literature on sanction effectiveness—their intended consequences—is abundant. Yet, fewer studies address the unintended consequences of restrictive measures. This is remarkable given that negative externalities are well documented. Our article explores this phenomenon by asking under which conditions sanctions yield negative externalities. We deve…
Incentives and constraints: A configurational account of European involvement in the anti-Daesh coalition
In 2014, the USA initiated the formation of a multilateral military operation against Daesh in Syria and Iraq. Eventually, more than 70 states joined the anti-Daesh coalition. However, contributions to the military effort have been characterized by great variance, especially among EU member states. While some states took leading roles in the airstrikes, others provided training for Iraqi and Kurdish forces, and still others did not get involved b…
Routledge Handbook of Foreign Policy Analysis Methods
When Do International Organizations Engage in Agency Slack? A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of United Nations Institutions
The extensive delegation of power to international organizations (IOs) has been accompanied by occasional agency slack. While prior studies suggest that IOs’ propensity for agency slack may be rooted in their organizational characteristics, this has rarely been explored empirically. To address this lacuna, in this article we propose a conceptualization and measurement of agency slack and develop a framework of organizational characteristics. Our …
Zeitenwende: German Foreign Policy Change in the Wake of Russia's War Against Ukraine
Russia’s war against Ukraine has severely damaged the European security architecture. This article examines the consequences of this rupture for German foreign and security policy. Just a few months before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany saw the transition to an unprecedented three-party coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens, and Liberals. In a special address to the Bundestag three days after the invasion, Chancellor …
The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know? by Richard Ned Lebow
Journal Article The Quest for Knowledge in International Relations: How Do We Know? by Richard Ned Lebow Get access Richard Ned Lebow. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2022. 256 pp. $29.99. Patrick A Mello Patrick A Mello Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0751-5109 Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, qqad096, https://doi.org/10.1093/psquar/qqad096 Publi…
The party politics of national role contestation: Germany’s ‘traffic light’ coalition and the Russian war against Ukraine
Addressing the German Bundestag in February 2022, Chancellor Scholz described the implications of Russia’s war against Ukraine as a Zeitenwende (‘watershed’) in international politics. Since then, Germany saw unprecedented changes in its foreign and security policy, overturning established policies and long-held beliefs. While these have been the subject of academic studies and political commentary, less attention has been paid to the domestic co…
Political science (21 works) · Politics (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Law (15 works) · Political economy (13 works) · Economics (12 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (10 works) · Qualitative comparative analysis (10 works)