That rebels face a collective action problem is one of the most widely shared assumptions in the literature on civil wars. The authors argue that the collective action paradigm can be both descriptively inaccurate and analytically misleading when it comes to civil wars. They question both pillars of the paradigm as applied to the study of civil wars, namely, the free-riding incentive generated by the public goods dimension of insurgency and the risks of individual participation in insurgent collective action. The authors argue, instead, that although insurgent collective action may entail the expectation of future collective benefits, public (rather than just private) costs tend to predominate in the short term. Moreover, the costs of nonparticipation and free riding may equal or even exceed those of participation. The authors support these claims by triangulating three types of evidence: historical evidence from counterinsurgency operations in several civil wars; data from the Vietnam War's Phoenix Program; and regional evidence from the Greek Civil War. They conclude by drawing implications for the study of civil wars.

To what extent do international factors affect domestic conflict processes? How do external conditions affect the state's repressive capabilities and the opportunities for opposition groups to mobilize, launch an insurgency, and sustain it? This article argues that because state strength is limited by international boundaries, rebel groups often organize transnationally in order to evade repression. External bases, refugee communities, and characteristics of neighboring states are expected to increase the likelihood of civil war onset and continuation. Importantly, external mobilization is difficult for states to monitor and verify, a factor that exacerbates bargaining problems and increases the probability of armed conflict. These claims are tested through a quantitative analysis of civil conflicts from 1951 to 1999. Results suggest that weak neighbors, rival neighbors, and refugee diasporas contribute to rebellion and that conflicts endure longer when rebels have access to external bases.

This article argues that, beginning in the mid-1990s, there has been a transformation of immigrant integration policies in Western Europe, away from distinct “national models” and toward convergent policies of “civic integration” for newcomers and “antidiscrimination” for settled immigrants and their descendants. This convergence is demonstrated by a least-likely case comparison of the Netherlands, France, and Germany—states that had pursued sharply different lines in the past. The author fleshes out the conflicting, even contradictory logics of antidiscrimination and civic integration and grounds them in opposite variants of liberalism, an “old” liberalism of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity and a “new” liberalism of power and disciplining, respectively.

What explains the selection of cases for WTO adjudication? This article explores the business conditions under which industries lobby their home government to use the WTO adjudication process and the political factors that influence government decisions. It explains the industry pattern of selection for international trade disputes as a function of the velocity of the business environment. While WTO adjudication is seen as costly and slow, a positive ruling brings broad benefits in terms of deterrence against future discrimination. Firms in static industries will invest in WTO dispute settlement to achieve these benefits, but firms in industries shaped by dynamic competition have high opportunity costs that make them less willing to pursue adjudication. This argument accounts for why there are fewer WTO cases about electronics industry issues than there are likely incidences of protectionist measures. Since Japan is a leading exporter and provides a government report with unique data on potential WTO disputes, it was chosen to test the argument in greater depth. Interviews with Japanese business officials and statistical analysis of an original data set provide support for the argument. The authors conclude that the passive attitude toward WTO adjudication by Japan's largest export industry, electronics, and the sensitivity of Japan's diplomatic relations with China have constrained the cases that Japan files. These findings suggest that the effectiveness of the WTO for dispute settlement is conditional upon the time horizon of the industry and the political relations among members.

Post-9/11 security concerns and the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq have renewed scholarly interest in nation-building as a form of externally fostered democratization. The selected works assess Iraq and its precursors, seeking general lessons for establishing new democracies. They principally conclude that successful nation-building depends on sustained commitments of time, materiel, and manpower. Although this thesis improves upon earlier studies of democracy promotion, which often treated intentions as determinative, it does not fully reckon with the effect of antecedent conditions on external intervention. As this review addresses, American efforts at nation-building have historically been enabled or constrained by local political institutions. Rather than autonomously reengineering the target society, nation-builders have buttressed bureaucracies and parliaments where they were already available (Germany, Japan) and foundered in countries that lacked such institutions (Somalia, Haiti). In sum, nation-building has been most effective when pursued least ambitiously, amid functioning states with prior experience in constitutional government.