Autocratic Cooperation and Threat Perceptions in US Foreign Policy

• In Event: Crisis of the Liberal International Order: Resilience, Adaptation, or Collapse?

Abstract

Autocratic countries have formed and joined international organizations for the last 100 years, and yet they only occasionally garner attention from great powers. But when they do, it creates memorable moments that can have long-term consequences for those IOs. Under what conditions are autocratic IOs, or the membership of autocrats in otherwise democratic IOs, salient to great powers? Specifically, if autocratic countries are a consistent feature of IOs, why do US policymakers only occasionally view them as a threat to US foreign policy? We argue that the focus of US foreign policy is dynamic, rather than static. All IOs face fluctuations in their vitality, and as such US policymakers pay less attention to the stable features of autocratic IOs. Instead, autocratic IOs only appear as a threat in the moments when they are able to effectively coordinate. We test this argument using text-as-data and natural language processing methodologies to analyze newly declassified State Department cables from 1973-1979. Only a handful “autocratic IOs” attracted State’s notice in the first place. We demonstrate empirically that moments of coordination within autocratic IOs generate both a higher volume of communications, and that the sentiment is far more negative.

Authors

• Julia Gray, University of Pennsylvania

• Raymond Hicks, Columbia University

• Matthew Connelly