Arming the Other
American Small Wars, Local Proxies, and the Social Construction of the Principal-Agent Problem
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6274580 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eric R Rittinger (Salisbury University, corresponding author), Eric Rittinger |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 396-409 |
| Publication date | 2017-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-8833 • E-ISSN: 1468-2478 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/isq/sqx021 |
| OpenAlex | W2751860484 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 15 |
| References cited | 56 |
A state that enlists foreign fighters as extensions of its own military power confronts an acute principal-agent problem. While the state (principal) might benefit by delegating security responsibilities to foreigners (agents), it risks seeing its aims partially implemented, unfulfilled, or even subverted. For more than a century, the United States has attempted to mitigate this problem as it has raised, trained, and armed proxies to fight its small wars. But we find considerable variation in its approach across time and space. Why? Rationalist treatments of the agency problem face difficulty in accounting for this variation, as they focus on goal incongruity between the principal and agent. This downplays, if not ignores, the historical and social process that leads to different manifestations of goal incongruity. Thus, I propose a constructivist reworking of agency theory. I stress how the principal draws upon, and deploys, social knowledge to identify and manage the particular hazards that it believes its agent poses. Mining primary sources, I show that changing characterizations of local proxies—as either biologically or culturally flawed—led to different interpretations of the agency problem. In turn, this led American officials to adopt different approaches to mitigating it—ranging from outright paternalism to less direct tutelage
Agency (philosophy · Computer security · Corporate governance · Economics · Face (sociological concept · Management · Paternalism · Political economy · Political science · Principal (computer security · Principal–agent problem · Social constructivism · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science · Variation (astronomy · Computer Science · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
Re-examining the “Base”
Puerto Rico and the Postcolonial Challenge to the Study of US–Latin American Relations in IR
Strings attached
Making stars align
The Way of Progress and Civilization”
Security Force Assistance to Fragile States
Falling Short or Rising above the Fray? Rising Powers and Security Force Assistance to Africa
Practices of Intervention
Analysing (In)formal Relations and Networks in Security Force Assistance
Rethinking Proxy War Theory in IR
Security Assistance and the Crisis of the Liberal International Order
(Re)ordering the Mediterranean
Putting the Civilian Back in Civil–Military Relations
The role of tri-liminality in the UK’s security force assistance to Nigerian counterinsurgency
History, archeology, and espionage as improvised legibility
The retreat of scientific racism
The role of the military in underdeveloped countries.
The Myth of Inevitable US Defeat in Vietnam
Delegation and Agency in International Organizations
Armed Servants
The School of the Americas
Delegation under anarchy
Complex organizations
The Purpose of Intervention
Rediscoveries and Reformulations
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States
Narrative and the Making of US National Security
The Conduct of Inquiry in International Relations
Race and Racism in International Relations
Army Politics in Cuba, 1898-1958
Strategies for Research in Constructivist International Relations
Constructing International Relations
Agents of Destruction? Applying Principal-Agent Analysis to State-Sponsored Terrorism
The Philippine Scout Mutiny of 1924
Why `Soft Power' Isn't So Soft
Friends Like These
Soft Balancing in the Americas
Progressivism and Imperialism
Still training to torture? US training of military forces from Latin America
Building the Organizational Society
Mixed Signals
The Philippine Scouts
The Rise and Fall of the Cuban Rural Guard, 1898-1912
Security Institutions as Agents of Socialization? Nato and the ‘New Europe
Beyond the Soldier and the State
Foreign Policy as Social Construction
The Delegation of War to Rebel Organizations
Constructivist Implications of Material Power
Securitization, Social Identity, and Democratic Security
The Political Evolution of Principal-Agent Models
The Power Politics of Identity
The Imperial Peace
US professional military education and democratization abroad
Brokering cooperation
Power in International Politics
Discursive Institutionalism
Exporting professionalism
"Defence Diplomacy" in North-South Relations
The American Occupation of Haiti II
The American Occupation of Haiti I
On the pedagogy of 'small wars
The United States and the Caribbean Republics, 1921-1933
Foreign Relations of the United States. Diplomatic Papers, 1938
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1924
US military assistance to El Salvador
The Economics of Organization
Agency Theory
The Noble American Science of Imperial Relations and Its Laws of Race Development
| Unique citing works | 15 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2,14 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2026 (8) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 14 |