Jeffrey R. Weber

Floating Market 2007 Thailand

Research

My research focuses on how domestic political institutions such as elections, and public opinion influence the behavior of political actors both within and between states.

 

Dissertation:

My dissertation, “From State Foreign Policy to Strategic Interaction,” consists of 6 chapters which are summarized below.  I have made chapters 1-5 available to my committee and will post them soon.

 

Chap 1: Introduction

This chapter motivates the dissertation by observing that over the past 30 years, the field of International relations has trended toward studying the potential linkages between domestic and international politics…

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Chap 2: Theory

Broadly, this dissertation will address two questions: first, do rivals respond to the domestic political environment in the home state of a foreign leader; and second, when does the US Congress oppose a US president’s foreign policy?

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Research Interests:

Terrorism and Political Violence

Conflict Processes

Elections & Vote Choice

Civil-Military Relations

Democratization

 

 

Doctoral Candidate

Department of Political Science

Chap 3: Interstate Relations

Studies linking domestic unrest with international conflict have been beset by inconsistent findings and consistent revision. Schultz (2005) builds on the strategic choice literature on the topic and proposes a model where different types of leaders…

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Chap 4: Congressional-Presidential Relations

Despite frequent scholarly references to a so-call resurgent congress, actual incidents of congressional opposition in the post-Vietnam era were relatively few and far between. Indeed, a frequency of congressional support and opposition shows that…

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Chap 5: Do Hawks Negotiate Better Terms? The Case of Nixon in China

This chapter looks at US-China rapprochement under Nixon. On the surface, this case seems to contradict my argument that rivals will exploit politically vulnerable hawks. Indeed, current research uses the Nixon example to stipulate…

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Chap 6: Conclusion

This chapter brings the previous ones together and draws out lessons from the dissertation that are useful to policy-makers. It also discusses which issues would benefit from further research.