Thinking Fast and Slow in Alliance Politics
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Thinking Fast and Slow in Alliance Politics The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Lee, Yoon Jin. 2020. Thinking Fast and Slow in Alliance Politics. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, Graduate School of Arts & Sciences. Citable link https://nrs.harvard.edu/URN-3:HUL.INSTREPOS:37366012 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Thinking Fast and Slow in Alliance Politics A dissertation presented by Yoon Jin Lee to The Department of Government in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2020 © 2020 Yoon Jin Lee All rights reserved. Dissertation Advisors: Iain Johnston, Josh Kertzer Yoon Jin Lee Thinking Fast and Slow in Alliance Politics Abstract In this dissertation, I develop a general level sociological theory of choice, which subsumes the classical expected utility theory of choice. I explain when the logic of habit (absence of utility) and when the various forms of instrumental, normative, and motivated rationality (presence of utility) would operate, and why. The key explanatory variable is the degree of contestation in the relevant action knowledge, held jointly at the individual and institutional levels. I offer various measurement standards with which one can systematically and rigorously measure the different logics of action. To demonstrate the explanatory value of the sociological theory of choice, I derive contextualized propositions. The concrete context concerns an instance of alliance bargaining over the foreign policy stance toward a third-party. As conventional wisdom is that national leaders are playing the ‘two-level game,’ I argue that this particular context consists a hard test for my mid-level theoretical argument. Specifically, I address the following question: What explains the US allies’ joining behaviors in US-led military operations, especially when there is a lack of international institutional authorization to use armed force? I specify that the relative strengths of pre-existing ideas on the effectiveness of bilateralism, multilateralism, and the use of force in achieving national security objectives, held jointly at the individual and institutional levels, explain the US allies’ joining behaviors. ! iii I test my argument against existing alternatives. I address the serious problem of equifinality by leveraging the differentially expected logics of action, and set up two rounds of critical tests. I employ a cross-national multi-methods research design. I focus on two US allies—the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea—as they almost always receive US requests to join the operations of interest but remain vastly different from one another. I examine additional decision-making cases of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. The findings of the two rounds of critical tests across three stages of the cross-national multi-methods research design overwhelmingly support my two-level ideational argument of US allies’ joining behaviors, specified from the sociological theory of choice. ! iv Acknowledgments This dissertation took many years and many transformations. So many individuals have helped me throughout the process, and I could not have written this dissertation without their help. First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge the members of my dissertation committee— Iain Johnston, Josh Kertzer, and Steve Rosen—for helping me endure and complete my first truth-seeking journey. When I was torn between returning to campus and staying in Seoul with my husband and our first newborn son, Beomku, Iain reassured me that it is completely okay to stay in Seoul and get as much help as I can in trying to balance dissertation writing and raising a baby (once I completely failed in this balance, I asked for my mother’s help in the longest time that I could remember). Steve and Josh were equally supportive of my balancing attempts. Steve shared his own daycare stories to brighten and reassure me that the heartbreaking drop-offs will get better soon. Josh even offered his office space for pumping, for my newborn daughter, Yuna, in-between the Weatherhead Center’s international security pilot workshop in the fall of 2018. Their non-academic support was as meaningful as their academic support. I wish to take this opportunity to more formally thank Iain for providing me with the many, many guiding posts throughout all stages of my dissertation. I wish to thank Steve for providing me with the vital opportunities to cut and sharpen my concepts, microfoundations, measures, findings, and presentations, and for encouraging me. I wish to thank Josh for teaching me everything from designing survey experiments, drawing upon research from across the disciplines, to writing clearly, helping me discover the core of my argument in numerous ways, and providing me with every possible enhancement opportunity that I could wish for. If at all possible, I would re-embark my truth-seeking journey with Iain, Steve, and Josh a thousand times more, but only in wiser and harder ways. It is too bad that time only flows forward. I am also indebted to fellow graduate students. Special thanks to the wonderful and amazing members of the IR Women’s Writing Group—Angie Bautista-Chavez, Chelsea Green, Naima Green, Dana Higgins, Katherine Irajpanah, Boram Lee, Yon Soo Park, Sooahn Shin, Diana Stanescu, and Sally White—I was able to significantly develop, defend, and reiterate ideas, and gain some of the fondest memories. I absolutely appreciate their support. I wish to extend many thanks to all faculty and student attendants at my presentations in the IR Workshop, HEWG Workshop, WoGPoP Workshop, Grad PE Workshop, and conference panels. The clarification questions, comments, and suggestions at these venues made this dissertation better. In particular, I wish to acknowledge Marika Landau-Wells for her immensely helpful comments in the fall of 2017. On some specific aspects of my survey experiments, I benefitted from the expert insights of Chase Harrison and Dustin Tingley. They solved some of hardest problems that I struggled with. I wish to thank Gary King for guiding me on the logical steps to devising text classification scheme for the open-ended survey responses. His expertise and cheers made my last spurt possible. I wish to acknowledge several of my English & Korean bilingual friends, who helped me devise and update this scheme attached in Appendix A.3: I once again thank Columbia’s Stephanie Char, MIT’s Jason Kwon, Boston College Carroll School of Management’s Do Yoon Kim, Volition Capital’s Tomy Han, and McKinsey’s Jae Hyun Lee for their tremendous help. I am also very grateful for Max Kuhelj Bugaric for his kind help with visualization of the survey ! v experimental findings. I once again thank all the interviewees in and out of this dissertation for accepting my interview requests, sharing their thoughts, and for their time. I wish to further acknowledge several individuals of the Harvard Interfaculty Initiative, Mind Brain and Behavior (MBB)—Mina Cikara, Kathryn Davidson, Shawn Harriman, and Jason Mitchell—for their decisive insights and guidance. These conversations streamlined the dissertation. I also wish to thank East Asian Languages and Civilizations (EALC) department faculty members, Sun Joo Kim and Sinae Park, for their moral support. The funding for this dissertation came from the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs (WCFIA), Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), Harvard Experiments Working Group (HEWG), and my dissertation committee. Again, Josh took the initiative and helped me navigate the funding opportunities… I will remain grateful for their generous research support and forever grateful for the generosity of Harvard University in financially supporting my studies. I will also remain grateful for Thom Wall, our legendary department administrator, and Darryl Ziegler, my international office advisor, for seamlessly keeping me on track through all these years. Finally, I wish to acknowledge my friends and family. I thank my friends—Emmy, Jesse, Tory, Kenny, Hijung, Minjung, Kristie, Tomy, and Jason—for playing with Beomku and Yuna, while I eat some hot food and work some more. I thank my brother, Yoonjong, whose dogged faith in me was so surprisingly inspiring. I thank my sister, So Jin, whose care and wisdom, saved me. I thank my aunts in Seoul for taking care of me, when I was in most need. I thank my parents, Jae-Sil and Ki-Seog, who sacrificed their daily lives again and even at the height of their career… these trusted and relaxed babysitters and housekeepers were my daily arms and legs and sanity. I cannot thank enough my family in-law for their constant encouragement and unwavering faith in me… I thank my husband and compass, Jae-Yeop, for excitedly stepping it up on the weekends and preserving the non-academic side of me, while critically shaping this dissertation. I thank our ever-growing souls, Beomku and Yuna, for their growth, joy, and love. This dissertation is still hugely imperfect. All shortcomings and errors are my own. It is my plan to more aim-fully and full-heartedly improve upon this groundwork. I dedicate this dissertation to