Don Casler

Americans oppose the change to 'Department of War' and it's not especially close. @robertralston.bsky.social and I found that relatively few think the change will make America safer, focus the department's mission, or make it more lethal.

Most Americans oppose the ’Department of War’ rebranding Even 42% of Republicans are no fans of the change.

Check out this piece in which @doncasler.bsky.social and I talk to Stacie Goddard about our recent survey. No one really likes the rebranding of the "Department of War" & a majority of Americans neither endorse the change nor see it as a matter of national security.
goodauthority.org/news/most-am...

We're hiring here at Illinois! I'm not on the committee but am happy to answer questions about the position, department, and life in Champaign-Urbana

We're grateful to so many colleagues for their feedback, as well as to the anonymous reviewers and the stellar editorial team at IS.

For policymakers, our findings emphasize the importance of institutional quality. The future of effective diplomacy between Washington and Beijing or Delhi and Islamabad may hinge whether leaders can implement institutional structures that minimize noise.

They also have key implications for the study of war more generally, as the noisiness of senders’ signals can increase the odds of incomplete information and miscalculation for receivers.

Our findings illuminate a new and underappreciated way that interstate communication breaks down: when senders introduce transmission noise via institutional pathologies.

By contrast, India’s reformed institutions minimized noise during negotiations that followed the 1965 Indo-Pakistani War, setting conditions for mutual understanding at the Tashkent summit.

Before the 1962 Sino-Indian War, India’s closed institutions produced ample transmission noise, creating misunderstanding during negotiations with China.

After measuring India’s institutional structure, we apply process tracing to a rich set of primary source documents, drawn from six countries, which allow us to reconstruct how a given signal transited the communication channel.

To illustrate, we compare signal transmission processes from a single sender — India — before and after major institutional reforms in the mid-1960s. This provides analytic leverage to assess how institutions affect transmission noise, all else equal.

Different kinds of bureaucratic institutions are associated with different levels of transmission noise. Open institutions, which regularly connect leaders and bureaucrats, reduce noise. Closed institutions, which impede leader-bureaucrat information flow, increase noise.

States' bureaucratic institutions shape the noisiness of interstate communication. Drawing on information theory, we suggest that the division of labor within states — between bureaucrats and leaders — creates transmission noise, corrupting signals before they reach receivers.

Yet there are many cases of communication failure in which senders were perceived as sincere and receivers processed signals effectively. Why did communication still fail in these instances? In short, because communication BETWEEN states is a function of institutions WITHIN them.

Perception and Misperception in International Politics Since its original publication in 1976, Perception and Misperception in International Politics has become a landmark book in its field, hailed by the New York Times as "the seminal statement of princi...

Another is about misperception — when states send signals, they often can't account for biases in how receivers process information or make decisions. books.google.com/books?hl=en&...

The Personal Touch: Leaders’ Impressions, Costly Signaling, and Assessments of Sincerity in International Affairs1 Abstract. What counts as evidence that the other side is sincere? Within mainstream international relations literature, scholars have focused on costly sig

We generally think communication fails for two reasons. One is about insincerity — when states send signals, they often misrepresent their bargaining position to get the best deal, so receivers of these signals doubt whether the sender is being truthful. academic.oup.com/isq/article-...

China Crosses the Yalu China Crosses the Yalu by Allen S. Whiting was published on November 25, 2021 by Stanford University Press.

Historically, communication failures have often pushed states down the road to conflict, perhaps most famously World War I and the Korean War www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi...

When does communication fail in international politics? In a new @intsecurity.bsky.social piece, Tyler Jost and I present some fresh theory and evidence on an enduring challenge for states — getting others to understand what they are trying to say

Volume 49 Issue 4 | International Security | MIT Press

1) The new Spring 2025 issue is online!

Read articles by John Mearsheimer, @stephenwalt.bsky.social , Zachary Burdette, Nilay Saiya and Stuti Manchanda, and @doncasler.bsky.social and Tyler Jost

direct.mit.edu/isec/issue/4...

Spring 2025 issue preview!

J. Mearsheimer < war & international politics> @stephenwalt.bsky.social <realism and China>
Zach Burdette <space>
N. Saiya & S. Manchanda <Buddhist violence>
@doncasler.bsky.social & T. Jost <noisy negotiations>

@intsecurity.bsky.social @mitpress.bsky.social

GUEST POST: We Are Professors at Columbia. Here is How We Would Respond. Five Columbia University political scientists offer their unofficial response to the Trump administration's demands on their university.

Drezner's World has never published anything not written by the hard-working staff. Until now. danieldrezner.substack.com/p/guest-post...

*taps sign*

Happy to review Mearsheimer and Rosato's new book, a spirited takedown of political psychology that claims that political psychologists don’t study how individuals comprehend the world around them, which is rather like arguing that botanists don’t study plants

www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1...

My book, Cooperative Complexity: The Next Level of Global Economic Governance, is out today! You can order it from @cambridgeuppolisci.bsky.social for 20% off with the discount code CLARK24. The purchase link and a short thread on the book follow 🧵

Trade Rage: Audience Costs and International Trade - Don Casler, Richard Clark, 2021 Politicians frequently issue public threats to manipulate tariffs but only sometimes follow through. This behavior theoretically ought to generate audience cost...

During Trump's first term, @doncasler.bsky.social and I found American consumers were sensitive to price increases from tariffs (whether on China or Canada). Given the salience of inflation discourse today, our findings suggest Trump's new tariffs may face headwinds as consumer costs come to bear.

I was very fortunate to contribute a review to the H-Diplo | RJISSF roundtable on Melvyn Leffler's new history of the Iraq War issforum.org/ISSF/PDF/RJI...

If Prigozhin really is dead, I have to applaud the simulation writers for their impeccable timing---I'm teaching about two-level games tomorrow! www.nytimes.com/live/2023/08...

Can I also get onto the list, please? Thank you!