​U.S. non-invasion troops deployed abroad often try to promote greater respect for human rights in the host country. The host country, having an incentive to retain the troop presence, may choose to comply with these requests. We argue that this effect will not be at play in states with high security salience for the United States (for which the U.S. may not be able to credibly threaten to remove the troops). In these cases, U.S. deployments will provide the leader with security from both internal and external threats that is independent of the local population’s support for the leader. Host state leaders thus become less reliant on (and potentially less responsive to) their local populations, which in turn may lead to increased human rights violations. In this paper, we use data on both US troop deployments abroad and on human rights violations to test these arguments from 1982 to 2005.

Can actors’ interactions affect similar, future interactions between those initial actors and others? We investigate this broad question through the lens of international border agreements. In particular, we propose that border agreements can emerge through a previously overlooked mechanism: diffusion. Because border territory is salient, leaders are expected to misrepresent their positions and therefore have difficulty credibly conveying information to their counterpart. To overcome this problem, actors require a costly signal, and we argue that border agreements can serve this purpose. When a state signs a border agreement with a neighboring state, it signals to its other neighbors about both the existence of a bargaining range and the potentially acceptable provisions, thereby helping these other neighbors successfully conclude border agreements with the original signatory states. An analysis of all contiguous dyads during the period 1816-2001 uncovers substantial support for our argument. 

Leaders are assumed to face fiscal constraints on their ability to remain in office by providing a competitive distribution of public and/or private goods. However, many leaders can relax this constraint by borrowing on sovereign credit markets. We argue that states with the fiscal flexibility offered by favorable credit terms have the resources necessary to (1) respond to citizen demands with policies other than widespread repression and (2) avoid agency loss that may result in unauthorized repression by state agents. Empirical analyses indicate that creditworthy states have greater respect for physical integrity rights and are less likely to suffer diminished respect for those rights when facing violent dissent or negative shocks to government revenues