Byungwon Woo
Biographic Data
| ID | 4148136 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Byungwon Woo |
| GIVEN NAMES | Byungwon |
| FAMILY NAME | Woo |
| SIGNATURE | WOO B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Yonsei University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4211-616X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 124 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 19 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Effect of international organizations’ direct engagement with the public: Information source credibility and the public’s attitudes towards Covid-19-related measures
Can international organizations (IOs) effectively shape attitudes held by individuals? Under what conditions does the public perceive information supplied by IOs as more trustworthy than information provided by other authorities? With the exponential growth of social network platforms, many IOs utilize them to engage individuals directly. Building on the growing literature on IOs’ engagement with the public, we examine if and under what condition…
High-Level Leader Visits: A Promising Area of Study in IR
Once deemed a “nearly impossible” area of study, high-level leader visits—one of the most visible and consequential practices in global politics—have recently attracted renewed scholarly attention. This resurgence stems from the growing recognition of leader visits as a valuable lens for addressing foundational questions in international relations, including why states act as they do, the consequences of their actions, and how their behavior shap…
Who gets picked on and why? The politics of North Korea’s human rights recommendations in the universal periodic review
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a human rights mechanism under which all UN members are subject to human rights reviews by other states. Given that North Korea is among the worst human rights violators globally, human rights practitioners and academic research have paid much attention to North Korea as a State under Review (SUR). What is much less known and researched is that North Korea actively engages as a ‘reviewer’, regularly making h…
Types of foreign finance and slum upgrading: How do official development assistance, foreign direct investment, and foreign remittances affect slum upgrading across regime types in developing countrie…
Curse of friendship: IMF programme, friendship with the United States and foreign direct investment
How do investors respond when a country participates in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme? While there exists some optimism in and around the IMF on the catalytic effect of a Fund programme, empirical research on the catalytic finance reports rather diverse findings; contrary to most theoretical research, empirical studies report both positive and negative effects as well as null effects. This paper revisits the question of whether a…
Empirical categorization of middle powers and how different middle powers are treated in international organizations: The case of India and South Korea
Which countries are middle powers in international relations? While the term “middle powers” has witnessed a steady increase in its use in the past two decades, answers to the question are likely to be diverse, depending on to whom one asks the question. The paper tries to provide objective criteria that would allow one to define the entire population of middle powers and theorize how different types of middle powers are regarded and treated by o…
IMF = I’M Fired! IMF Program Participation, Political Systems, and Workers’ Rights
How do International Monetary Fund programs and conditions affect labor rights? Recognizing the diversity of International Monetary Fund conditionality, we argue that the more stringent International Monetary Fund labor market conditionality is, the worse labor rights become. However, this negative effect can be mitigated if there exist domestic political institutions that have incentives and abilities to provide protections over workers: one suc…
Globalization and slums: How do economic, political, and social globalization affect slum prevalence
Economic Sanctions and the Politics of IMF Lending
What effect do economic sanctions have on the IMF lending decisions? Though countries under economic sanctions often face significant economic and financial difficulties, no comprehensive research to date has explored whether the IMF as a de facto lender of last resort intervenes in those countries in need. We posit that economic coercion is likely to hinder the target’s access to IMF credits as sanctioning (sender) countries are likely to use th…
Aid for Vote? United Nations General Assembly Voting and American Aid Allocation
How do political factors affect foreign aid allocation? Recognizing that aid can be used as inducement, we argue that the US has incentives to provide aid to countries who oppose it a priori at the United Nations General Assembly when it is the sole country that “buys votes” with aid, in order to maximize the number of favorable votes. When there is a rival country trying to buy votes, as was the case during the Cold War, there are incentives for…
International Organizations and Naming and Shaming: Does the International Monetary Fund Care about the Human Rights Reputation of Its Client
Does a country’s abuse of human rights influence its ability to get a loan from the International Monetary Fund? We examine whether human rights conditions matter for the likelihood that a country participates in an International Monetary Fund program. We argue that human rights conditions are unlikely to be enough by themselves to influence International Monetary Fund decision-making; there are simply too many countries with poor human rights co…
NGOs invite attention: From the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to the Human Rights Council
This article first reviews and compares Human Rights Council and University Period Review (HRC/UPR) research published during and shortly after the institution-building period (2006–2009) to more recent work (2010–2014) to identify patterns of scholarly interest in NGO roles and behavior at the HRC/UPR. It divides research into that which either “ignores” NGOs or offers “indirect” attention, “direct” attention, or “foregrounds” NGO activity, conc…
IMF Conditionality, Government Partisanship, and the Progress of Economic Reforms
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) often seeks to influence countries' domestic public policy via varying levels of conditionality—linking financial support to borrowing governments' commitment to policy reforms. When does extensive conditionality encourage domestic economic reforms and when does it impede them? We argue that, rather than universally benefiting or harming reforms, the effects of stricter IMF conditionality depend on domestic p…
Official Development Assistance and Women’s Rights: How Aid Donor Characteristics Affect Women’s Rights Improvement in Recipient Countries
How does official development assistance (ODA) affect women’s rights in aid-receiving countries? We argue that ODA allows those donor countries who have more respect for women’s rights and who have the intention of spreading the norm of gender equality to successfully influence recipient countries, and thus improve women’s rights in aid-recipient countries. We argue that this is possible because aid is equipped with technical assistance, donor co…
Heeding the Sirens: The Politics of IMF Program Participation
Given similar economic distress indicators, why do some states enter into International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs while others do not? Building on extant studies of IMF program participation that highlight the importance of various economic and political determinants, this article proposes an argument focusing on the political incentives of the IMF and a borrowing country when they engage in IMF program negotiations. Specifically, the study de…
Unpacking Autocracy: Political Regimes and IMF Program Participation
Why do some countries participate in IMF programs while others refuse to do so? We suggest an answer to the question by unpacking one side of the typical democracy–autocracy dichotomy. Specifically, we utilize the growing literature on the varieties of authoritarianism to develop an argument linking the different incentives and constraints that leaders in party-based, personalist, and military regimes face when considering whether to sign agreeme…
Smuggler’s Blues: Examining Why Countries Become Narcotics Transit States Using the New International Narcotics Production and Transit (Inapt) Data Set
We examine the global determinants of the illicit international narcotics trade and the specific roles that states play in it, a topic understudied by international relations scholars. We develop the first comprehensive global data set of state involvement in international narcotics trafficking and then use the data set to empirically test hypotheses concerning the likelihood of countries to serve as transit states for the transshipment of illici…
Attracting Investment: Governments' Strategic Role in Labor Rights Protection
What is the relationship between respect for labor rights and foreign direct investment (FDI)? This study explores this connection with an emphasis on the strategic role of governments in attracting FDI. We present a formal model demonstrating that governments can do so by setting the level of labor rights protection and, as a consequence, investors will choose to invest in the face of tough labor regulations or cease investing, anticipating that…
Conditional on Conditionality: IMF Program Design and Foreign Direct Investment
The article explores how International Monetary Fund (IMF) program design influences foreign direct investment inflows. The author argues that stricter IMF conditionality signals a program-participating government's commitment to economic reforms, as it incurs larger ex ante political cost and risks greater ex post political cost. Thus, the catalytic effect of an IMF program is conditional on conditionality: programs with stricter conditions cata…
IMF Conditionality, Government Partisanship, and the Progress of Economic Reforms
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) often seeks to influence countries' domestic public policy via varying levels of conditionality—linking financial support to borrowing governments' commitment to policy reforms. When does extensive conditionality encourage domestic economic reforms and when does it impede them? We argue that, rather than universally benefiting or harming reforms, the effects of stricter IMF conditionality depend on domestic p…
Aid for Vote? United Nations General Assembly Voting and American Aid Allocation
How do political factors affect foreign aid allocation? Recognizing that aid can be used as inducement, we argue that the US has incentives to provide aid to countries who oppose it a priori at the United Nations General Assembly when it is the sole country that “buys votes” with aid, in order to maximize the number of favorable votes. When there is a rival country trying to buy votes, as was the case during the Cold War, there are incentives for…
International Organizations and Naming and Shaming: Does the International Monetary Fund Care about the Human Rights Reputation of Its Client
Does a country’s abuse of human rights influence its ability to get a loan from the International Monetary Fund? We examine whether human rights conditions matter for the likelihood that a country participates in an International Monetary Fund program. We argue that human rights conditions are unlikely to be enough by themselves to influence International Monetary Fund decision-making; there are simply too many countries with poor human rights co…
Attracting Investment: Governments' Strategic Role in Labor Rights Protection
What is the relationship between respect for labor rights and foreign direct investment (FDI)? This study explores this connection with an emphasis on the strategic role of governments in attracting FDI. We present a formal model demonstrating that governments can do so by setting the level of labor rights protection and, as a consequence, investors will choose to invest in the face of tough labor regulations or cease investing, anticipating that…
Conditional on Conditionality: IMF Program Design and Foreign Direct Investment
The article explores how International Monetary Fund (IMF) program design influences foreign direct investment inflows. The author argues that stricter IMF conditionality signals a program-participating government's commitment to economic reforms, as it incurs larger ex ante political cost and risks greater ex post political cost. Thus, the catalytic effect of an IMF program is conditional on conditionality: programs with stricter conditions cata…
Heeding the Sirens: The Politics of IMF Program Participation
Given similar economic distress indicators, why do some states enter into International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs while others do not? Building on extant studies of IMF program participation that highlight the importance of various economic and political determinants, this article proposes an argument focusing on the political incentives of the IMF and a borrowing country when they engage in IMF program negotiations. Specifically, the study de…
Economic Sanctions and the Politics of IMF Lending
What effect do economic sanctions have on the IMF lending decisions? Though countries under economic sanctions often face significant economic and financial difficulties, no comprehensive research to date has explored whether the IMF as a de facto lender of last resort intervenes in those countries in need. We posit that economic coercion is likely to hinder the target’s access to IMF credits as sanctioning (sender) countries are likely to use th…
IMF = I’M Fired! IMF Program Participation, Political Systems, and Workers’ Rights
How do International Monetary Fund programs and conditions affect labor rights? Recognizing the diversity of International Monetary Fund conditionality, we argue that the more stringent International Monetary Fund labor market conditionality is, the worse labor rights become. However, this negative effect can be mitigated if there exist domestic political institutions that have incentives and abilities to provide protections over workers: one suc…
Globalization and slums: How do economic, political, and social globalization affect slum prevalence
Official Development Assistance and Women’s Rights: How Aid Donor Characteristics Affect Women’s Rights Improvement in Recipient Countries
How does official development assistance (ODA) affect women’s rights in aid-receiving countries? We argue that ODA allows those donor countries who have more respect for women’s rights and who have the intention of spreading the norm of gender equality to successfully influence recipient countries, and thus improve women’s rights in aid-recipient countries. We argue that this is possible because aid is equipped with technical assistance, donor co…
Unpacking Autocracy: Political Regimes and IMF Program Participation
Why do some countries participate in IMF programs while others refuse to do so? We suggest an answer to the question by unpacking one side of the typical democracy–autocracy dichotomy. Specifically, we utilize the growing literature on the varieties of authoritarianism to develop an argument linking the different incentives and constraints that leaders in party-based, personalist, and military regimes face when considering whether to sign agreeme…
Smuggler’s Blues: Examining Why Countries Become Narcotics Transit States Using the New International Narcotics Production and Transit (Inapt) Data Set
We examine the global determinants of the illicit international narcotics trade and the specific roles that states play in it, a topic understudied by international relations scholars. We develop the first comprehensive global data set of state involvement in international narcotics trafficking and then use the data set to empirically test hypotheses concerning the likelihood of countries to serve as transit states for the transshipment of illici…
High-Level Leader Visits: A Promising Area of Study in IR
Once deemed a “nearly impossible” area of study, high-level leader visits—one of the most visible and consequential practices in global politics—have recently attracted renewed scholarly attention. This resurgence stems from the growing recognition of leader visits as a valuable lens for addressing foundational questions in international relations, including why states act as they do, the consequences of their actions, and how their behavior shap…
Empirical categorization of middle powers and how different middle powers are treated in international organizations: The case of India and South Korea
Which countries are middle powers in international relations? While the term “middle powers” has witnessed a steady increase in its use in the past two decades, answers to the question are likely to be diverse, depending on to whom one asks the question. The paper tries to provide objective criteria that would allow one to define the entire population of middle powers and theorize how different types of middle powers are regarded and treated by o…
NGOs invite attention: From the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to the Human Rights Council
This article first reviews and compares Human Rights Council and University Period Review (HRC/UPR) research published during and shortly after the institution-building period (2006–2009) to more recent work (2010–2014) to identify patterns of scholarly interest in NGO roles and behavior at the HRC/UPR. It divides research into that which either “ignores” NGOs or offers “indirect” attention, “direct” attention, or “foregrounds” NGO activity, conc…
Conditional on Conditionality: IMF Program Design and Foreign Direct Investment
The article explores how International Monetary Fund (IMF) program design influences foreign direct investment inflows. The author argues that stricter IMF conditionality signals a program-participating government's commitment to economic reforms, as it incurs larger ex ante political cost and risks greater ex post political cost. Thus, the catalytic effect of an IMF program is conditional on conditionality: programs with stricter conditions cata…
Unpacking Autocracy: Political Regimes and IMF Program Participation
Why do some countries participate in IMF programs while others refuse to do so? We suggest an answer to the question by unpacking one side of the typical democracy–autocracy dichotomy. Specifically, we utilize the growing literature on the varieties of authoritarianism to develop an argument linking the different incentives and constraints that leaders in party-based, personalist, and military regimes face when considering whether to sign agreeme…
Smuggler’s Blues: Examining Why Countries Become Narcotics Transit States Using the New International Narcotics Production and Transit (Inapt) Data Set
We examine the global determinants of the illicit international narcotics trade and the specific roles that states play in it, a topic understudied by international relations scholars. We develop the first comprehensive global data set of state involvement in international narcotics trafficking and then use the data set to empirically test hypotheses concerning the likelihood of countries to serve as transit states for the transshipment of illici…
Attracting Investment: Governments' Strategic Role in Labor Rights Protection
What is the relationship between respect for labor rights and foreign direct investment (FDI)? This study explores this connection with an emphasis on the strategic role of governments in attracting FDI. We present a formal model demonstrating that governments can do so by setting the level of labor rights protection and, as a consequence, investors will choose to invest in the face of tough labor regulations or cease investing, anticipating that…
Heeding the Sirens: The Politics of IMF Program Participation
Given similar economic distress indicators, why do some states enter into International Monetary Fund (IMF) programs while others do not? Building on extant studies of IMF program participation that highlight the importance of various economic and political determinants, this article proposes an argument focusing on the political incentives of the IMF and a borrowing country when they engage in IMF program negotiations. Specifically, the study de…
NGOs invite attention: From the United Nations Commission on Human Rights to the Human Rights Council
This article first reviews and compares Human Rights Council and University Period Review (HRC/UPR) research published during and shortly after the institution-building period (2006–2009) to more recent work (2010–2014) to identify patterns of scholarly interest in NGO roles and behavior at the HRC/UPR. It divides research into that which either “ignores” NGOs or offers “indirect” attention, “direct” attention, or “foregrounds” NGO activity, conc…
IMF Conditionality, Government Partisanship, and the Progress of Economic Reforms
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) often seeks to influence countries' domestic public policy via varying levels of conditionality—linking financial support to borrowing governments' commitment to policy reforms. When does extensive conditionality encourage domestic economic reforms and when does it impede them? We argue that, rather than universally benefiting or harming reforms, the effects of stricter IMF conditionality depend on domestic p…
Official Development Assistance and Women’s Rights: How Aid Donor Characteristics Affect Women’s Rights Improvement in Recipient Countries
How does official development assistance (ODA) affect women’s rights in aid-receiving countries? We argue that ODA allows those donor countries who have more respect for women’s rights and who have the intention of spreading the norm of gender equality to successfully influence recipient countries, and thus improve women’s rights in aid-recipient countries. We argue that this is possible because aid is equipped with technical assistance, donor co…
International Organizations and Naming and Shaming: Does the International Monetary Fund Care about the Human Rights Reputation of Its Client
Does a country’s abuse of human rights influence its ability to get a loan from the International Monetary Fund? We examine whether human rights conditions matter for the likelihood that a country participates in an International Monetary Fund program. We argue that human rights conditions are unlikely to be enough by themselves to influence International Monetary Fund decision-making; there are simply too many countries with poor human rights co…
Economic Sanctions and the Politics of IMF Lending
What effect do economic sanctions have on the IMF lending decisions? Though countries under economic sanctions often face significant economic and financial difficulties, no comprehensive research to date has explored whether the IMF as a de facto lender of last resort intervenes in those countries in need. We posit that economic coercion is likely to hinder the target’s access to IMF credits as sanctioning (sender) countries are likely to use th…
Aid for Vote? United Nations General Assembly Voting and American Aid Allocation
How do political factors affect foreign aid allocation? Recognizing that aid can be used as inducement, we argue that the US has incentives to provide aid to countries who oppose it a priori at the United Nations General Assembly when it is the sole country that “buys votes” with aid, in order to maximize the number of favorable votes. When there is a rival country trying to buy votes, as was the case during the Cold War, there are incentives for…
Globalization and slums: How do economic, political, and social globalization affect slum prevalence
Empirical categorization of middle powers and how different middle powers are treated in international organizations: The case of India and South Korea
Which countries are middle powers in international relations? While the term “middle powers” has witnessed a steady increase in its use in the past two decades, answers to the question are likely to be diverse, depending on to whom one asks the question. The paper tries to provide objective criteria that would allow one to define the entire population of middle powers and theorize how different types of middle powers are regarded and treated by o…
IMF = I’M Fired! IMF Program Participation, Political Systems, and Workers’ Rights
How do International Monetary Fund programs and conditions affect labor rights? Recognizing the diversity of International Monetary Fund conditionality, we argue that the more stringent International Monetary Fund labor market conditionality is, the worse labor rights become. However, this negative effect can be mitigated if there exist domestic political institutions that have incentives and abilities to provide protections over workers: one suc…
Curse of friendship: IMF programme, friendship with the United States and foreign direct investment
How do investors respond when a country participates in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) programme? While there exists some optimism in and around the IMF on the catalytic effect of a Fund programme, empirical research on the catalytic finance reports rather diverse findings; contrary to most theoretical research, empirical studies report both positive and negative effects as well as null effects. This paper revisits the question of whether a…
Types of foreign finance and slum upgrading: How do official development assistance, foreign direct investment, and foreign remittances affect slum upgrading across regime types in developing countrie…
High-Level Leader Visits: A Promising Area of Study in IR
Once deemed a “nearly impossible” area of study, high-level leader visits—one of the most visible and consequential practices in global politics—have recently attracted renewed scholarly attention. This resurgence stems from the growing recognition of leader visits as a valuable lens for addressing foundational questions in international relations, including why states act as they do, the consequences of their actions, and how their behavior shap…
Who gets picked on and why? The politics of North Korea’s human rights recommendations in the universal periodic review
The Universal Periodic Review (UPR) is a human rights mechanism under which all UN members are subject to human rights reviews by other states. Given that North Korea is among the worst human rights violators globally, human rights practitioners and academic research have paid much attention to North Korea as a State under Review (SUR). What is much less known and researched is that North Korea actively engages as a ‘reviewer’, regularly making h…
Effect of international organizations’ direct engagement with the public: Information source credibility and the public’s attitudes towards Covid-19-related measures
Can international organizations (IOs) effectively shape attitudes held by individuals? Under what conditions does the public perceive information supplied by IOs as more trustworthy than information provided by other authorities? With the exponential growth of social network platforms, many IOs utilize them to engage individuals directly. Building on the growing literature on IOs’ engagement with the public, we examine if and under what condition…
Political science (18 works) · Politics (15 works) · Economics (14 works) · Law (12 works) · Law (12 works) · International Development and Aid (11 works) · Incentive (6 works) · Market economy (6 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (6 works) · Political economy (6 works)