Networks in Global Politics
The Medieval Peace Dividend: Post-Alfredian Anglo-Saxon State Formation, Political Networks, and Peace
With Eric Grynaviski and Sverrir Steinsson (Revise & Resubmit at International Studies Quarterly)
Prominent theories of state formation hold that the origin of the state is rooted in warfare. Heightened insecurity incentivized rulers to develop institutional innovations in taxation, administration, and military organization. Emerging evidence from the medieval world, however, suggests a more complex picture. Early royal governments were tiny and had relatively small resource bases. During the early periods of state formation, existential security threats might divert the kinds of resources needed to enact comprehensive state reform. We refer to this as a security-reform tradeoff. Existential security threats can divert attention and resources away from comprehensive state reforms. We examine patterns of state formation in post-Alfredian Anglo-Saxon England, from the end of the ninth century to the late eleventh century, measuring political centralization using prosopographic data. We find a relationship between periods of peace and political centralization. We examine the causal mechanisms through a comparative case study of four Anglo-Saxon kings’ reigns.
The Curse of Centrality
work in progress with Eric Grynaviski
In the last two decades, IR scholars have increasingly turned to network-based theories to explain important outcomes in international politics. The most consistent finding of this scholarship is that centrality to networks produces advantages to agents, usually in the form of power or influence. This centrality finding spans issue areas and has been used to explain imperial, organizational, security, and trade networks. This paper questions this conventional wisdom. Building on balance and social ledger theorists, this paper argues that IR scholars have a positive tie bias. By this, we mean that IR scholars neglect to study negative ties that link agents together in social networks. Negative ties, defined as negative relationships or enduring, recurring sets of negative judgments, feelings, and behavioral intentions toward another, are common in international politics. By incorporating negative ties into IR scholarship on social networks, we show that centrality can be as much of a curse as a blessing. We explore this argument by examining dyadic level and system level effects of negative ties in the international system.