Field:
    International Relations, Formal Theory, and Quantitative Methods

Dissertation Title:
    Military Alliances, Regional Trade Agreements, and the Politics of Compliance

Committee:
    Ronald Rogowski (Co-Chair), Arthur A. Stein (Co-Chair), Jeffrey B. Lewis, Ichiro Obara, and Barry O’Neill

Date of Completion: June 2010

Contact Information:
    Koji Kagotani
    UCLA Political Science Department
    4289 Bunche Hall
    Los Angeles, California 90095-1472
    Phone: 310-825-4331
    Fax: 310-825-0778

 Curriculum Vitae:
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Homepage:
    http://kagotani.bol.ucla.edu

Dissertation Summary:
    My dissertation, Military Alliances, Regional Trade Agreements, and the Politics of Compliance, addresses an old-and-new and under-explored topic: what promotes cooperative behavior in military alliances and regional trade agreements (RTAs)? Put differently, how do states secure persistent commitments to security and economic agreements? To explain this puzzle, I focus on strategic interactions inherent in alliance politics and trade liberalization. With regard to military alliances, I argue that political leaders have a dilemma between national security and their domestic support and the use of intra-alliance trade cooperation serves as a costly signal because leaders accept the risk of losing some domestic support as the result of trade liberalization. The strategic use of trade policy reinforces alliance ties in peacetime and in crisis by conveying each alliance member’s security concerns. As for RTAs, I advance an institutional analysis by focusing on institutional performance, institutional change, and the demise. Implementation of trade liberalization in RTAs depends on an international context such as informational uncertainty from market volatility, the distribution of power, and economic interdependence. A variety of dispute settlement procedures (DSPs) are used to promote trade cooperation in RTAs but their institutional performance is also affected by this international context. I discover that when international circumstances stimulate trade liberalization, RTAs are more likely to experience institutional change or to become inactive because DSPs are imperfect.

Research Interests:
    Trade Politics, Alliance Politics, International Organization, Economic Interdependence and International Conflict, Regional Integration, and the U.S.-Japan Relationship

Teaching Interests:
    Theories of International Relations, International Political Economy, International Organization, Game Theory, and Quantitative Methods (Maximum Likelihood Estimation and Structural Models).