Maurits van der Veen

Research Areas

• Overall research agenda
  A general statement of my research interests (pdf format).
  
  
• European integration and motivations for international cooperation
  What do elites and publics see as the purpose of European integration? Have these visions of Europe changed over time? How do they differ across member states? And what are the implications of all this for the development of the European Union and of a sense of European identity?
  
  
• The political economy of international altruism
  Why do states engage in normative behaviour beyond borders, such as peacekeeping, election monitoring, giving foreign aid, or providing emergency humanitarian assistance? How important are non-material considerations such as reputation or a sense of obligation in explaining patterns in aid or peacekeeping? What explains differences across countries in the choice of targets for development assistance, peacekeeping operations, etc.?
  
  
• Agent-based modeling
  How do ideas and identities spread through a population? Under what conditions can ideas emerge even when material pressures provide strong constraints? How do social networks, within and across borders, affect the spread of ideas? Is it possible to predict the impact of strong cueing by elites? All of these questions can be investigated not just empirically, but also through agent- based computer simulations.
  
  
• The power of terminology
  Why and how does it matter what we call something? Was Shakespeare right when he had Juliet say "That which we call a rose / by any other name would smell as sweet"? If so, why do countries fight so hard against the applicaton of particular labels to their policies (the U.S. does not "torture", there was no Armenian "genocide", etc.). And why does the word "Union" in European Union raise hackles in Norway but much less so in Sweden?
  
  
• Incidental papers
  Other papers on a variety of topics, including some on the growing literature of non-fiction graphic "novels" about world politics (such as Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis).
  
  
• Dataset
  A handy little dataset to facilitate merging datasets that use different standard country codes.

• Small States in the European Union: Debating Membership and Enlargement A study of decisions about membership in the European integration project going back half a century. I show that neither commercial factors nor a concern with efficiency adequately explain which states join and when they do so. Instead, a study of legislative debates in six European states - Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden - from the 1950s to the present demonstrates that those decisions are shaped by competing visions and perceptions.
  
  Two particular beliefs play a crucial role: perceptions about the domestic impact of decisions taken by other countries involved in the EU, and visions about the possibility and sustainability of embedded liberalism through integration. Whenever elites believed that they could insulate themselves from decisions made elsewhere in Europe, they opposed joining the EU. Whenever they felt that certain socio-economic goals important to them could only be achieved jointly with other European countries, on the other hand, they advocated membership.
  
  (Click to download a prospectus of the manuscript)
  Book manuscript, to be completed September 2009.
  
  
• The European Parliament Elections of 2009: A First Assessment The June 2009 elections for the European Parliament (EP) produced several surprises. Major right-wing parties performed better than expected, while left-wing parties did worse. Among the smaller parties, both Greens and Eurosceptics did unexpectedly well. This paper offers a first assessment of the implications of these results. Much of the literature on EP elections characterizes them as second-order elections. I argue, however, that the EP elections resemble second-order elections in large part due to choices made by national political parties in their individual domestic context. In other words, the elections would more closely resemble first-order elections on the European Union if only political parties made it possible for voters to judge them on European issues.
  
  (Click to download a copy of published version of the article)
  EUSA Review 22(3):18-22. Summer 2009.
  
  
• Who Can Join? Public Opinion and EU Enlargement The enlargement of the European Union has been politically salient and contentious for more than a decade, with much of the discussion focused on Turkey's candidacy. In this paper, I argue that the way people frame European integration has important implications for their opinions about enlargement in general, as well as for their relative support for particular candidate countries. I show that frames explain much of the variation in support for various prospective members, both at the individual level and at the aggregate national level. Significantly, the results show that Turkey is less exceptional than public debates occasionally make it seem: the same variables that explain support for other candidates are also crucial in shaping support for Turkey, and there is no evidence of stronger country-level effects in Turkey's case. The results show that the frames most important in explaining support for enlargement are personal mobility and cultural diversity, rather than frames such as prosperity or democracy that are often considered central to public assessments of the EU.
  
  (Click to download a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• National Governments and EU Referendums: Sorcerers or Apprentices? Referendums on European integration have become a risky proposition for governments. Much has been written about the failed referendums in France and the Netherlands in 2005, but there has been almost no analysis of the decision to hold a referendum in the first place. This decision was puzzling on two counts: previous referendum experiences at home and abroad ought to have counseled against a referendum, and calculations of political advantage recommended that certain key political parties oppose a referendum. The decision against a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty in both countries is puzzling in its own way, for it is inconsistent with the earlier decision.
  
  This paper explains these puzzles through an in-depth study of the legislative debates in the Netherlands and France on the issue of a referendum on the Constitutional Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty. The analysis produces two key findings. First, political leaders assume general support for European integration will translate into a positive referendum vote, unless a recent experience has shown otherwise. Second, many political actors display a strong normative commitment to the public-level outcomes associated with an EU referendum: strengthening public participation in and knowledge of European integration.
  
  (Click to download a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again? Prospects for Referenda on the EU Constitution in France and the Netherlands After French and Dutch referenda on the EU's Constitutional Treaty failed in the early summer of 2005, many politicians and observers alike called for holding a second referendum in each country, to be preceded by a more thorough public relations campaign. A similar approach had been successful previously in the aftermath of failed EU referenda in Denmark and Ireland.
  
  I argue that this tactic would likely have failed in France and the Netherlands, for two reasons. First, the Constitutional Treaty was too complex to galvanize voters, which meant that any referendum almost inevitably would focus on more general concerns about European integration. Second, the factors that helped produce successful outcomes in the Danish and Irish cases were not likely to be replicated in the Dutch and French cases. Turnout was already high in the first referenda, so apathy was not the problem; and whereas Denmark and Ireland had been offered opt-outs or clarifications on issues of particular sensitivity, no such issues stood out in the case of the Constitutional Treaty.
  
  (Click to download a copy of the published version of the article)
  EUSA Review 20(2):21-25. Spring 2007.
  
  
• If At First You Don't Succeed, Try, Try Again? Prospects for Referenda on the EU Constitution in France and the Netherlands After French and Dutch referenda on the EU's Constitutional Treaty failed in the early summer of 2005, many politicians and observers alike called for holding a second referendum in each country, to be preceded by a more thorough public relations campaign. A similar approach had been successful previously in the aftermath of failed EU referenda in Denmark and Ireland.
  
  I argue that this tactic would likely have failed in France and the Netherlands, for two reasons. First, the Constitutional Treaty was too complex to galvanize voters, which meant that any referendum almost inevitably would focus on more general concerns about European integration. Second, the factors that helped produce successful outcomes in the Danish and Irish cases were not likely to be replicated in the Dutch and French cases. Turnout was already high in the first referenda, so apathy was not the problem; and whereas Denmark and Ireland had been offered opt-outs or clarifications on issues of particular sensitivity, no such issues stood out in the case of the Constitutional Treaty.
  
  (Click to download a copy of the published version of the article)
  EUSA Review 20(2):21-25. Spring 2007.
  
  
• The Purpose of the European Union: Framing European Integration Ongoing debates over a constitution for the European Union underscore the degree to which the future of the European integration project remains up in the air. I argue that differences of opinion in this context are informed by the frames adopted by policy-makers when thinking about the purpose of the European Union. The literature in international and comparative political economy increasingly recognizes the importance of ideas held by policy-makers, but has found it difficult to operationalize this insight and to use it to derive testable implications. In this chapter, I propose a model for meeting these challenges. I argue that ideas about the purpose of European integration can be measured by coding legislative debates on the EU, and that these measures, in turn, can be used to explain initiatives and choices by policy makers that cannot be reduced straightforwardly to material interests. Evidence from recent legislative debates about EU enlargement in Belgium, Ireland, and the Netherlands shows that this approach can improve our understanding of the process of European integration.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the chapter)
  Chapter 6 (pp. 88-107) in Erik Jones and Amy Verdun, eds. The Political Economy of European Integration: Theory and Analysis. New York: Routledge, 2005. (Available at Amazon.)
  
  
• Defending Integration or Integrating Defense? Ratifying the EDC in Belgium and the Netherlands The European Defence Community (EDC) is one of the most famous failures in the history of European integration. While much has been written about the causes of its demise in the French National Assembly, this paper argues that its successful ratification by four other signatory states presents a more interesting puzzle. It is often assumed that ratification in these states was made possible by their commitment to European integration. However, most European integration advocates did not consider defense integration a logical next step, and many considered the EDC an ill-advised construct. An analysis of the ratification debates in Belgium and the Netherlands shows that the treaty was ratified despite fears about possible damage to the European integration process, because legislators considered it the only politically feasible road to a remilitarized Germany. German rearmament was the real goal; for most, European integration was only a means. As a result, ratification was far from automatic, and a commitment to European integration played little role in convincing legislators to approve the treaty.
  
  (Click to download a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• European Integration Seen from the North: Debating Membership in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden in the 1960s The conventional wisdom about the Nordic countries as "reluctant Europeans" holds that two key factors prevented their early membership in the EEC: the Cold War geopolitical context and the lack of sizeable economic gains to be derived from free trade with the Six. The present paper, however, argues for the primacy of another factor: the perceived level of mutual economic dependence. What distinguished the Nordic countries from the Six was not their assessment of the geopolitical situation, nor their expectations about the gains from free trade, but rather their sense that they could still achieve most of their macro-economic goals by themselves, and that decisions taken by the Six would not affect them all that much. Whether or not such perceptions were accurate, they decisively shaped decisions made by political leaders in these countries.
  
  The paper analyzes key debates on EEC membership in 1961-1962 in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and shows that later membership decisions can already be predicted from the contents of these debates. Denmark was the most concerned about its vulnerability to decisions made by the EEC, and hence was first to join, ten years later. Sweden was interested in the possibilities of macro-economic cooperation, and joined next, more than thirty years after the debate studied here. In Norway neither vulnerability nor the importance of coordination loomed large, and the country remains a non-member today.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Presented at the biennial international conference of the European Union Studies Association, Montreal, May 2007.
  The analysis is part of chapter 6 in the book manuscript Small States in the European Union (see above).
  
  

• Framing Aid: Ideas and Interests in Foreign Policy Foreign aid presents a puzzle: Why give away money to foreign countries rather than spending it at home? I show that different visions of the purpose of foreign aid strongly shape the overall organization and quality of aid programs. Moreover, they also affect specific program features, such as the total volume of aid and the geographical allocation of aid across recipient states. In order to test the model, I develop a unique dataset on ideas about aid in four European countries - Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway - over half a century, derived through content analysis of legislative debates in those states. Humanitarian motivations play an important, but not dominant role; other important factors are considerations of reputation and perceptions of obligation.
  
  (Click to download a prospectus of the manuscript)
  Book manuscript, under review.
  
  
• Reframing the Purpose of U.S. Foreign Aid: The Impact of Carter's Emphasis on Human Rights A prominent feature of President Carter's foreign policy agenda was an increased emphasis on the importance of human rights. This focus was expected to have a considerable impact on foreign aid policy. However, most research into U.S. foreign assistance during the Carter years has found that aid patterns did not change noticeably. Some scholars have argued that this was due to vacillation on Carter's part about the relative priority of human rights in decision-making, or to bureaucratic inertia. This paper argues, instead, that the resistance to change of the U.S. aid program is due primarily to Carter's lack of success at changing beliefs about the purpose of foreign aid among the policy-making elite. A study of successive major aid debates during the Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations shows that underlying beliefs about the goals served by aid remain remarkably constant, even though some of the superficial rhetoric changed in the direction of giving lip service to human rights under Carter.
  
  (Click to download a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• National Identity and the Origins of Development Assistance The political salience of foreign aid has increased considerably in recent years. Yet the factors shaping aid policy remain poorly understood. In particular, most standard international relations theories are hard-pressed to explain why the composition and contents of aid programs continue to vary considerably across donor states. I argue that differences in how donor-state policy-makers think about the basic purposes of development assistance account for the observed variation in aid programs. In turn, different ideas, or 'frames', about aid are strongly shaped by specific features of national identity and history. Using data from legislative debates on aid policy in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway, I show that national identity is a crucial factor in explaining the original creation of aid programs as well as in the initial selection of aid recipients. The effects of these early decisions remain visible in aid programs today.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  An elaboration of chapter 4 of the book manuscript Framing Aid (see above).
  In process.
  
  
• The Generosity Contest: Ideas and the Determinants of Foreign Aid Although development assistance accounts for a large part of the non-military foreign policy expenditures of OECD states, the determinants of aid policy are not well understood. I argue that ideas about the purposes of foreign aid have important implications for the volume of aid disbursed by these states. I code legislative debates to derive measures of the relative strength of different motivations for aid. These measures are interacted with the explanatory variables associated with each motivation. Statistical analysis of cross-national and over-time variation in aid volume shows that the interacted variables bring out important patterns that would otherwise remain hidden. Moreover, I find that often-overlooked considerations of prestige, obligation, and enlightened self-interest are important explanatory factors. Case studies of aid policy in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, and Norway corroborate these findings and underscore the explanatory power of the model.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  An elaboration of chapter 6 of the book manuscript Framing Aid (see above).
  In process.
  
  
• Selecting the Recipients of Aid: A Two-Stage, Sample-Selection Model This paper develops a new statistical model to analyze the distribution of development aid. Allocation decisions are modeled as a two-stage process, the first with ordered probit, the second with a truncated linear model. A comparison to alternative approaches supports the use of this new model. The model is applied to a comparative analysis of the factors determining the distribution of foreign aid by the United States and the United Kingdom. The data shows that the process of selecting aid recipients is more idiosyncratic than the process of deciding the amount of aid each recipient is to receive. In both stages of the overall decision-making process, a number of non-material factors play an important role.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  An elaboration of the statistical model used in chapter 7 of the book manuscript Framing Aid? (see above), but applied to American and British aid.
  In process.
  
  

• The Emergence of a Shared Identity: An Agent-Based Computer Simulation of Idea Diffusion Liberal theorists and, more recently, constructivists have argued that a shared sense of identity will decrease threat perception and increase international cooperation. But what processes lead to the emergence (or collapse) of a shared sense of identity? Drawing on individual-level experiments of identity change and societal-level theories of idea diffusion from the constructivist literature, the authors develop an agent-based computer simulation of identity change. Four findings emerge from the analysis: (1) there is a curvilinear relationship between the complexity of agentsÕviews and the emergence of shared identity, (2) highly unstable environments encourage the emergence of a shared identity, (3) the presence of leaders (i.e., agents with greater influence in the population) in the neighborhood decreases shared identity, and (4) the interaction of complexity, stability, and leadership produces extremely polarized societies.
  
  (Click to download a copy of the article)
  David L. Rousseau, A. Maurits van der Veen
  Journal of Conflict Resolution 49(5):686-712. October 2005.
  
  
• Modeling the Evolution of Ethnic Demography We develop an agent-based model that allows us to study the dynamics of ethnic demography. Identities are modeled as constructed from a repertoire of identity attributes, which vary in the degree to which they are sticky (i.e. easy to drop or change). Individual agents can change their identity repertoire over time, within the constraints of stickyness, and they can also choose to highlight particular components of their repertoire. Political leaders propose coalitions in the form of certain identity conditions, so that only those who meet those conditions (have the correct attributes in their repertoire) can join. The model is then used to investigate under what conditions electoral institutions have the same impact on leadership stability in countries where ethnic cleavages dominate and in countries politically divided on less "sticky" dimensions.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  A. Maurits van der Veen, David D. Laitin
  Prepared for inclusion in an edited volume on the political economy of ethnicity, edited by Kanchan Chandra.
  In process.
  
  
• Ethnicity and Pork: A Virtual Test of Causal Mechanisms We use an agent-based model of the dynamics of ethnic demography (see immediately above) to investigate the widely recognized elective affinity between ethnicity and the exclusionary distribution of political benefits, also known as "pork". We show that when political entrepreneurs have incentives to seek small coalitions (due to the goal of distributing a limited amount of pork to supporters), those that win and stay in power are those that attract voters based on their ethnic membership. Moreover, our findings elucidate the mechanisms that drive political entrepreneurs to propose and voters to support ethnic coalitions when distribution (i.e. pork) rather than policy drives political competition. In particular, we show that an affinity between ethnicity and pork emerges even when neither the public nor its leaders consciously takes into account differences between ethnic identities and other forms of political identification. Finally, the affinity between ethnicity and pork applies not just to winning coalitions, but also to the overall nature of political contestation: If pork is up for grabs, ethnic identities become more politically salient.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  David D. Laitin, A. Maurits van der Veen
  Prepared for inclusion in an edited volume on the political economy of ethnicity, edited by Kanchan Chandra.
  In process.
  
  
• Studying Performance and Learning with ABIR: The Effects of Knowledge, Mobilizing Agents, and Predictability We use the Agent-Based Identity Repertoire model to investigate the ability of populations to adapt and learn in an unpredictable environment. Our findings highlight the trade-off between adaptation and diversity in the pursuit of performance, but also show that this trade-off is far from straight-forward. Increasing sophistication improves the ability to adapt but reduces diversity, imposing high costs down the line. However, high levels of sophistication also produce small, stable homogeneous clusters of agents, which slow down declines in diversity. Innovative or entrepreneurial agents reacting more rapidly to environmental signals increase the prevalence of such clusters, helping diversity but hampering adaptability. This makes it difficult to improve performance systematically by introducing such agents into a population. We also show that more predictable environments facilitate successful adaptation, especially for populations of intermediate sophistication. Finally, we conclude that the trade-off between adaptation and diversity is such that, in the present model, long-term learning is difficult to achieve
  
  (Click to download a preprint copy of the article)
  A. Maurits van der Veen, Ian S. Lustick, Dan Miodownik
  Social Science Computer Review 19(3):263-279. Fall 2001.
  
  
• Transforming the Prisoner's Dilemma: Beyond One-Dimensional Utility Functions It is well-known that cooperation can evolve and be sustained among populations playing iterated prisoner's dilemmas, as long as the shadow of the future is sufficiently large. An extensive literature has arisen examining ways to lengthen that shadow, for example by introducing local context preservation or tagging of agents. Comparatively less attention has been paid to the possibility of changing the utility functions of the agents themselves. The present paper is a first attempt at investigating the implications of doing so. The experiments presented here show that allowing agents to derive utility from conformity or loyalty, and particularly from normatively cooperative behaviour, greatly facilitates the emergence of cooperation, in situations where traditional payoffs alone prevent such an outcome.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Presented at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association, Boston, August 2008.
  In process.
  
  
• The Emergence of a European Identity: Modeling International Contacts This paper uses agent-based modeling to study the role of different variables in the emergence and spread of a European identity. I investigate the impact of two different types of international contacts on the spread of a European identity: exchange programs and social networks among leaders. The results illustrate how difficult it is for a strong sense of European identity to emerge. More specifically, I find that foreign study programs do not contribute to the spread of a European identity — instead, it seems likely that those who feel European are more likely to study abroad. In addition, although a network of political elites that lacks international contacts strongly favours the national identity, the converse fails to hold: an international network of elites does little to improve the fortunes of the European identity.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Presented at the annual conference of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, August 2003.
  In process.
  
  

• Lobbying the Court of Public Opinion: Terminological Rent-Seeking on Genocide, Torture, and Apartheid The concept of rent-seeking is usually applied to private actors lobbying governments or other regulatory agencies. This paper argues that it can also explain the behavior of governments lobbying public opinion. The paper presents three case studies: the United States and torture, Turkey and genocide, and Israel and apartheid. In each case, the strategy and the benefits of rent-seeking on the part of these governments and their supporters are highlighted. Taken together, the cases demonstrate that terminological rent-seeking is difficult, but that the associated rents can make it a sound strategy in some situations.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• What's in a Name? The Armenian Genocide and Terminological Rent-Seeking The government of Turkey maintains an active campaign to prevent the use of the word 'genocide' for the massacres and deportations of Armenians that took place starting in 1915. The Turkish effort is puzzling since it is costly and contradicts both the preponderance of evidence of the issue and the conclusions of most academic experts. I present a new concept to explain Turkey's behavior, arguing that it can be seen as a form of 'terminological rent-seeking'. I show that the political economy notion of rent-seeking can profitably be applied to the understanding of attempts to shape public debate about the applicability of a specific term to a particular issue. Turkey engages in terminological rent-seeking by lobbying heavily against the application of term 'genocide' to the Armenian experiences, even as the underlying historical facts become harder and harder to deny. The 'rents' enjoyed by Turkey as a result of its lobbying, I argue, take the form of international economic and political benefits as well as domestic political support.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• The Logic and Patterns of Denial: Questioning Genocides in Armenia, World War II, and Bosnia Most people judge — and reject — attempts at genocide denial on their individual, evidentiary merits. However, genocide denial invariably relies not merely on ignoring or distorting evidence, but also on faulty logic. Moreover, strikingly similar patterns of faulty argumentation are used across different cases of genocide denial, by people with dramatically different backgrounds. This article highlights both the faulty logic itself and the degree to which genocide denials systematically rely on almost identical sets of arguments, regardless of the case in question. The article draws on arguments made to deny the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, and genocide during the Bosnian war in order to illustrate its point.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  

• The Dutch Tulip Mania: The Social Politics of a Financial Bubble The Dutch tulip mania of 1636-1637 is the first well-documented instance of a financial bubble. In recent years, however, some economists have argued that bulb prices, while extremely high, nevertheless reflected underlying economic fundamentals. This paper demonstrates that attempts to rationalize the bubble in this manner cannot be justified with the available data: the tulip mania really did produce a bubble. A model based on social networks and information cascades explains the emergence and collapse of this bubble: a dense, localized social network made the bubble possible, but also served to limit its impact on the broader economy.
  
  (Click to download a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• Irrational Choice or Reshaping Reality? The Bush Administration and the War in Iraq It is common to assume that foreign policy decision-making is generally rational. The most prominent alternative model to rational choice is that offered by prospect theory. This paper introduces a "reshaping reality" model, with predictions that are the opposite of those made by prospect theory. I argue that some decision-makers act as though they believe their thoughts and wishes can reshape reality. This results in decision-making that is highly risk acceptant with respect to gains and risk averse with respect to losses. In addition, it implies a conscious lack of interest in evidence and and analysis. To illustrate the model, four decisions regarding the war in Iraq are analyzed. In each case, the Bush administration's choices are difficult to explain with a rational choice or prospect theory model, but are precisely as would be predicted by the reshaping reality model.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• Framing Anti-Terrorism Policies: Debates in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands Most European nations are struggling to respond to the challenge of terrorism on their home soil. Although the potential components of anti-terrorism policy are similar from one country to the next, the overall response varies considerably. This paper argues that cross-national variation derives from differences in the framing of the terrorist threat in domestic debates, in particular the perceived connection between this threat and national policies aimed at integrating minority groups. A comparative study of Dutch and British anti-terrorism debates illustrates the argument. In the Netherlands, terrorism has been perceived simultaneously as a symptom and an indictment of a failed integration policy. In the United Kingdom, in contrast, it has seen more as the work of individual extremists. This explains why a less severe terrorist attack in the Netherlands has nevertheless resulted in a more aggressive official response, as well as in more soul searching about broader Dutch integration policies.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  An earlier version was published as Occasional Paper #2, Department of International Affairs, University of Georgia. 2007.
  
  
• Politics and Global Issues in Graphic Novels: A Survey Over the past twenty years, graphic novels have become an increasingly popular category of books, but their audience remains limited by their association, in most people's minds, with superhero comics. In fact, however, modern graphic novels are far removed from traditional comics, and many are not fictional at all, describing instead serious real-world events including warfare. Such works can play a valuable role in political science and global issues classes, whether as core readings or to supplement classroom material. This article describes in some detail some of the most prominent works in this literature, such as Spiegelman's Maus, Satrapi's Persepolis and Sacco's Safe Area Gorazde. In addition, it provides an extensive survey of all relevant graphic novels readily available on the U.S. market today.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• A Different Kind of 'New Media': Teaching Global Issues through Graphic Novels Graphic novels have become increasingly mainstream over the past decade. They can now be readily found in most major bookstores, and such varied publications as the New York Times and Harper's Magazine have published excerpts or short stories by graphic authors. An increasing number of graphic novels deal with contemporary world politics. This paper argues that graphic novels can profitably be used in introductory courses in global issues, and highlights a number of the best such novels that could easily constitute the core readings for a full introductory course. The works discussed include memoirs, war reporting, and travelogues, as well as a few explicitly political books.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  Under review.
  
  
• Not Whether But Why: Using Public Opinion to Explain Foreign Policy. Despite much interest in the contents of public opinion regarding foreign policy, we know surprisingly little about the relationship between opinion and policy. Much of the literature is interested primarily in the sources of public opinion, ignoring the equally (if not more) important question of the degree to which public opinion predicts or constrains actual foreign policy behaviour on the part of states. This paper makes two claims about the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy. First, information about whether respondents support a particular foreign policy initiative provides no explanatory leverage, since answers are essentially cost-free. Second, and in contrast, information about why respondents support a particular initiative does provide valuable explanatory leverage, because public opinion reflects the relative importance of different frames (ways of thinking about foreign policy), and these same frames shape foreign policy decision-making. Empirical data from a series of Eurobarometer surveys regarding foreign aid provide support for both of these claims.
  
  (Click to email me for a copy of the paper)
  In process.