Abstract A growing body of work suggests that authoritarian regimes can enhance their external legitimacy by undertaking reform—from democratic or “pseudodemocratic” institutional changes at the domestic level to participation in international efforts to mitigate climate change. Yet the shared theoretical logic underlying this work has received surprisingly little empirical attention. This research contributes by offering findings from an iterative series of original survey experiments conducted over nationally representative samples of US citizens. Study 1 tested the foundational hypothesis—that reforms build external legitimacy—by adopting a simple independent groups design. Studies 2 and 3 subjected that hypothesis to harder tests via conjoint designs, and also evaluated extension hypotheses about when and in what sense “legitimacy” is gained. Across studies, the results consistently demonstrate that reforms (of a variety of types) do generate external legitimacy, offering both positive benefits as well as shielding benefits in keeping with theoretical arguments. The results also provide support for several new and previously undocumented findings concerning the role of reform type, type of legitimacy-derived gain, and the conditions under which such gains are more or less likely to accrue.

Abstract Scholars and policymakers have argued that territorial revisionism is dangerous because it risks setting off a cascade of claims by states dissatisfied with their borders. This Pandora’s box logic suggests that states that are vulnerable to an unraveling of the status quo have incentives to restrain their territorial ambitions to preserve stability. This paper explores this claim theoretically and empirically. It provides descriptive evidence to determine whether vulnerability to territorial threats has historically been associated with a lower likelihood of initiating territorial disputes. We find some evidence of such an effect in postindependence Africa, where this logic is most frequently invoked, and to some extent in Asia, but not in other regions. To help explain these empirical observations, we develop a multistate model of territorial conflict that identifies the conditions under which cooperation to preserve the territorial status quo can be sustained. The model shows that while an equilibrium of mutual restraint can exist, the necessary conditions are quite restrictive, and this cooperative equilibrium is never unique. Thus while a Pandora’s box of potential claims can provide the basis for a norm of restraint, the emergence of such a norm is neither straightforward nor guaranteed.

Abstract Any theoretically informed predictions about the future of international order and global governance must reckon with the power and intentions of the United States. We argue that fundamental changes in the nature of domestic audience constraint within many democracies, and the United States in particular, undermine both the willingness and the capability of the United States to continue its role as the underwriter of international order and global governance. A US government unbound by domestic constraint will have difficulty building broad coalitions to solve national and international problems because it will have reduced incentives to invest in public goods, including national defense, science and technology, and future economic prosperity; reduced barriers to corruption that undermines the quality of and trust in US capabilities; and reduced state capacity, including the capacity to finance wars and other long-term international commitments. We argue that three trends were especially relevant in reshaping domestic audience constraint: information fragmentation, extreme polarization, and a global threat environment that facilitated executive power concentration. Together they reduce the costs and risks for leaders to escape domestic audience constraints, weakening the institutional and accountability mechanisms that give democracies advantages in the international system. Though these trends affect many democracies, the undermining of US domestic constraint is particularly consequential because the United States shaped and buttressed the current system. An unconstrained United States likely means a less cooperative and less predictable global order, irrevocably altering the post-1945 system.

Abstract Scholars and policymakers have expressed concern that the decline of territorial conquest, a central pillar of the postwar international order, is under strain. Do the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rise of China, and retrenchment of the United States portend a return to earlier patterns of international politics when boundaries were more frequently redrawn by force? This essay evaluates the theories and evidence that speak to this question. It delineates several mechanisms through which recent developments could destabilize the territorial order: the growing power of revisionist states, the declining credibility of third-party guarantees, and the erosion of the normative prohibition against conquest. At the same time, institutionalized equilibria at the dyadic and regional levels are sources of stability that can cushion the effect of these threats. Although escalation of conflicts in already disputed areas is possible, the most destabilizing outcome—widespread contestation of settled borders—is also the least likely.

Abstract Political myths, the sacred narratives that legitimize power, are at the core of all political communities and organizations. In the post–World War II era, clear myths emerged around the ordering of the world, placing democracy, order, and peace at the idealized heart of global governance. Today, the international order is markedly changed. Previously dominant myths are routinely questioned and the international order that was built on these myths is beginning to fragment. Myths traditionally change with institutions. At this unique inflection point in the 2020s, however, this is no longer the case—myths crumble while the institutions they once supported persist, creating a vacuum in which novel myths must emerge in what we refer to as the new age of myth. We argue that the global order is in a transitional moment in terms of its governing mythologies. The myths that are born out of this age will underline the institutions, ideas, and ideologies that will shape the trajectory of the international order in the coming decades. In this essay we therefore argue that the study of political myths should be central to future approaches to international relations. Such an emphasis not only provides insight into the pathways of international cooperation and politics that may emerge from the contemporary shattering of the global political order, but also highlights how these sacred narratives will shape its future trajectory.

Abstract In this article I argue that the climate crisis may emerge as a new arena for status competition among states, enabled through the grafting of decarbonization and green-energy policies onto the status order’s existing symbolic-materialist logic. Status is often thought of as a destabilizing force in world politics, as its pursuit so often pushes states toward violent and financially wasteful policies of social aggrandizement. But this belief elides two points: that the status order and its rules of membership and esteem are malleable and subject to change; and that the emergence of different and new status symbols can also push status-seeking toward more prosocial outcomes. Rather than see these changes as occurring through explicit normative transformation, however, I argue that the status order is most likely to change surreptitiously when entrepreneurs can graft new status symbols onto an order’s underlying tenets, thus concealing but also producing change. I apply this grafting theory to the climate crisis in arguing that (1) highly visible steps taken to effect the green-energy revolution can be legibly grafted onto the existing status order; (2) this grafting technique was already evident in the Biden administration’s increased framing of the climate as an arena of status competition against China; and (3) in an era of renewed great power rivalry, status competition may at least compel states to make the kinds of costly and needed investments in climate mitigation they eschewed earlier.

Abstract The development of nuclear weapons added a new dimension to conventional conflict: the possibility that it could inadvertently escalate into a nuclear exchange. How does this relationship between conventional war and nuclear escalation shape deterrence? I present a formal model of deterrence and arming. The novelty here is that investing in conventional capabilities has a direct effect on the balance of power but also an indirect effect on conflict duration and the likelihood of an accidental nuclear exchange. I find that accounting for the risk of nuclear escalation may require greater conventional force postures for deterrence, thus lowering welfare in the absence of nuclear war. I also find the nuclear era will be more peaceful, but when conflicts occur, they may be more aggressive and decisive. These results (and others) offer insight into the difficulty of substituting nuclear weapons for conventional arms, and into the Soviet response to the 1956 Hungarian Revolution.

Abstract An explosion of survey experimental research shows that public support for nuclear use is alarmingly high and malleable. Thus, nuclear nonuse may depend on elite restraint. Can elites be counted on to resist nuclear use? How do national security elites think about nuclear weapons, and what does this imply for potential nuclear use and our understanding of public–elite gaps in political behavior? Drawing on the literature on public opinion formation, I argue that two features of public attitudes toward nuclear weapons help explain elite–public gaps on nuclear weapons: low salience and low knowledge. I then test this explanation using parallel preregistered survey experiments assessing support for nuclear use across three samples: the US public before the Ukraine conflict; the US public after the Ukraine conflict began; and a highly elite sample of US military officers and strategists, also after the Ukraine conflict began. While the US public is willing to support nuclear use, US national security elites are significantly more reluctant. Among the public, respondents for whom nuclear weapons are a high-knowledge or high-salience issue behave more like elites: they are less likely to support nuclear use. The findings have important implications for survey experimental research, scholarship on nuclear weapons, public opinion formation, and elite–public gaps in political behavior.