Power Today is Not Power Tomorrow: A Framework for Change in the Causal Effect of Coercive Policies
Despite the persistence of change within the international system, academic research frequently presupposes that policies have constant effects. Scholars typically overlook the fact that causal relationships vary in response to changes in context and the actors themselves. The failure to develop theories of change has created a disconnect between theorists and policymakers and led to counterproductive policies. Because theorists have failed to identify the conditions that lead to change, policymakers are prone to erroneously discard policies that initially appear to be ineffective and continue to rely on policies that have an immediate but quickly ebbing effect. To systematize the study of change, I identify three novel mechanisms to predict the conditions under which causal relationships will vary. These mechanisms include the obsolescence of information revealed from costly signals, perceptual changes due to behavioral tendencies such as habituation and hedonic adaptation, and circumvention strategies that actors employ to mitigate the effects of coercive policies.
The project's primary implication is that social scientists focus on theorizing about and estimating the wrong quantity of interest. Instead of attempting to determine the “true” time-invariant causal effect of a policy, scholars should be more interested in theorizing and testing general patterns of change in causal relationships. Two large-n empirical analyses that test changes in the causal effect of bombing during the Vietnam War and interstate fences on the interstate trade demonstrate the problem with assuming that causal relationships remain constant. Bombing worked immediately to reduce territorial control, but that effectiveness attenuated quickly. Moreover, the results suggest that North Vietnamese insurgents moved into the areas surrounding hamlets to avoid U.S. bombing campaigns. Similarly, border fences temporarily reduce trade flows, but simultaneously increase trade volumes via alternate routes.
The failure to account for the dynamic nature of causal relationships means that current international relations scholarship fundamentally misunderstands the dynamics of coercion and the utility of force. Because actors update their strategy and tactics to mitigate the effects of an imposed policy, tools that work in one period are likely to be ineffective in others. Policymakers should expect coercive policy tools to be most effective when they are novel. When evaluating the long-term effect of policy tools, policymakers should not be lulled into a false sense of confidence simply because early attempts at coercion appear to have a positive effect. Likewise, an equally salient yet counterintuitive takeaway is that attempting to coerce an opponent in a restrained way is often worse than not coercing them. Because restrained policies create incentives for the target to adapt but cannot typically compel an opponent, they make future attempts at coercion less likely to succeed. When states attempt to coerce an opponent, they should be willing to leverage their entire array of military and political capabilities or not intervene.