Patricia Sullivan, Ph.D.
tsulli@email.unc.edu
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Country: United States (North Carolina)
About Me:
Patricia L. Sullivan is an associate professor in the Department of Public Policy and the Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a 2015-2017 Andrew Carnegie Fellow. She received her Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Davis in 2004 with a concentration in international relations, comparative politics, and research methodology. She teaches courses in foreign policy, international conflict, national security policy, and research design. Dr. Sullivan’s research explores the utility of military force as a policy instrument; the effects of foreign military aid and assistance provided to both state and nonstate actors; and factors that affect leaders’ decisions to initiate, escalate, or terminate foreign military operations. Her book, Who Wins? Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict, was published by Oxford University Press in 2012.
Research Interests
Military Intervention
Political Violence
Foreign Aid
Arms Transfers
Human Rights
Military Aid
Foreign Security Assistance
International Security
Military Operations
National Security Policy
Publications:
Journal Articles:
What are the effects of foreign security assistance on the quality of the peace in post-conflict countries? Despite the stakes, and the tremendous amount of weaponry and other forms of foreign military aid flowing to governments of post-conflict countries, the academic literature provides little guidance as to what effects policymakers and practitioners should expect from this type of aid. Military assistance provided to the government of a country emerging from the turmoil of civil war could enable the state to establish a monopoly on the legitimate use of force, leading to a more durable peace and greater human security. However, we contend that significant flows of military aid and weapons from foreign governments may encourage regimes to adopt more repressive approaches to governance. We investigate the impact of security assistance on human rights conditions after 171 internal armed conflicts that ended between 1956 and 2012 using a novel measure of military aid and an instrumented measure of weapons transfers. We find strong evidence that both military aid and arms transfers to post-conflict governments increase state repression.
Does political science research have something to add to the counterinsurgency strategy debate? Should the discipline even concern itself with debates over military doctrine and strategy? After conducting a thorough review of the extant empirical literature, we argue that the answer to both of these questions is yes. Evaluating the theoretical and empirical findings of the last two decades, we identify three dimensions of civil wars affecting who prevails: (i) state capacity, (ii) the effects of violence against civilians, and (iii) foreign intervention. Domestic armed conflicts are characterized not only by military struggles, but equally importantly by contests of legitimacy between incumbent and rebel visions for the state. We conclude that the analyses of COIN strategy cannot be divorced from assessments of state capacity and the role of external actors in the conflict. We thus see the academic literature as instrumental in adding to practitioners' perspectives by more clearly identifying what COIN strategies can be applied under state capacity and legitimacy constraints to facilitate peace through both population-centered (legitimacy) and insurgent-centered (battlefield effectiveness) strategies. Our analysis identifies points of consensus, but also highlights the gaps in our knowledge, which need attention from both academe and practitioners.
What can states expect to receive in return for the military aid they provide to other states? Can military aid buy recipient state compliance with donor objectives? In this study, we systematically investigate the effects of US military assistance on recipient state behavior toward the United States. We build on existing literature by creating three explicit theoretical models, employing a new measure of cooperation generated from events data, and controlling for preference similarity, so that our results capture the influence military aid has on recipient state behavior independent of any dyadic predisposition toward cooperation or conflict. We test seven hypotheses using a combination of simultaneous equation, cross-sectional time series, and Heckman selection models. We find that, with limited exceptions, increasing levels of US military aid significantly reduce cooperative foreign policy behavior with the United States. US reaction to recipient state behavior is also counterintuitive; instead of using a carrot-and-stick approach to military aid allocations, our results show that recipient state cooperation is likely to lead to subsequent reductions in US military assistance.
How does the domestic political climate within democratic states affect the duration of their foreign military engagements? To answer this question we combine a rationalist model of war termination with a theory about how partisan politics affects the policy preferences of national leaders to predict the duration of democratic military interventions. Specifically, we examine how changes in a chief executive’s public appro.val ratings interact with partisanship to affect decisions about the timing of conflict termination. We test our expectations on a set of 47 British, French, and American cases from a new dataset of military interventions by powerful states. Our results suggest that partisanship mediates the effect of public approval on the duration of military operations initiated by powerful democratic countries. As executive approval declines, governments on the right of the political spectrum are inclined to continue to fight
The Military Intervention by Powerful States (MIPS) project develops a rigorous, generalizable measure of the effectiveness of military force as a policy instrument and applies the measure to code the outcomes of all military interventions conducted by five major powers since the termination of World War II. The MIPS dataset provides detailed data on US, British, Chinese, French, and Russian uses of military force against both state and non-state targets between 1946 and 2003. In particular, this project focuses on the political objectives strong states pursue through the use of force, the human and material cost of their military operations, and measures of intervention outcomes relative to the intervening states’ objectives. The dataset also includes extensive data on factors commonly hypothesized to be associated with war outcomes, such as the nature of the target, the type of force used by the intervening state, and military aid and assistance provided to each side.
What determines a democratic public's willingness to tolerate the human and material costs of sustaining ongoing military operations to victory? Athough much literature has addressed the factors that affect public attitudes toward the use of military force, few studies adopt either a theoretical perspective or a research method explicitly designed to answer this question. In particular, existing research tends to focus on the costs of war fighting, while ignoring both the tangible and intangible costs of withdrawing from a foreign military engagement. I argue that many of the factors that the public uses to estimate the cost of prosecuting a war—troop strength requirements, whether or not troops are engaged in ground combat and, most importantly, casualties—are also measures of the extent of a state's commitment to achieving its war aims. If the public treats the cost of the state's military commitment simply as an expense , support for sustaining an operation should decrease as the cost of commitment increases. If, however, citizens have a tendency to see military commitments as investments that put the country's reputation on the line or can only be redeemed if the state is victorious in the war, an increase in commitment could actually strengthen the public's determination to sustain the fight. Employing a cross-sectional time-series design with data from 12 U.S. and British military interventions, I explore whether the costs of continuing to prosecute a war or the costs of withdrawing have a greater effect on public willingness to sustain ongoing military operations. The results suggest that public concern about the costs of withdrawing from a conflict can be a more important determinant of willingness to persevere than sensitivity to the costs of war fighting. As a result, there is a considerable disconnect between what the public claims it would support in hypothetical scenarios and the types of military operations the public actually shows a willingness to sustain once they are underway.
Why are states with tremendous advantages in capabilities and resources often unable to attain even limited objectives vis-à-vis much weaker adversaries? The theory I develop focuses on how the nature of a strong state's war aims affects prewar uncertainty about the cost of victory. I argue that the relative magnitude of the effect of military strength and resolve on war outcomes varies with the nature of the object at stake and that strong states become more likely to underestimate the cost of victory as the impact of resolve increases relative to that of war-fighting capacity. I evaluate the empirical implications of this theory against the historical record provided by the universe of major power military interventions since World War II. The results challenge both existing theories and conventional wisdom about the impact of factors such as military strength, resolve, troop commitment levels, and war-fighting strategies on asymmetric war outcomes.
Books Written:
Despite their immense war-fighting capacity, the five most powerful states in the international system have failed to attain their primary political objective in almost 40% of their military operations against weak state and non-state targets since 1945. Why are states with tremendous military might so often unable to attain their objectives when they use force against weaker adversaries? More broadly, under what conditions can states use military force to attain their political objectives and what conditions limit the utility of military force as a policy instrument? Can we predict the outcome of a war before the fighting begins? Scholars and military leaders have argued that poor military strategy choices, domestic political constraints on democratic governments, or failure to commit sufficient resources to the war effort can explain why strong states lose small wars. In contrast, Who Wins? by Patricia L. Sullivan argues that the key to understanding strategic success in war lies in the nature of the political objectives states pursue through the use of military force. Sullvian does not deny the importance of war-fighting capacity, military strategies, or resolve as determinants of war outcomes. But she provides both a coherent argument and substantial empirical evidence that the effects of these factors are dependent on the nature of the belligerents' political objectives. The theory's predictions about the conditions under which states are able to attain their political objectives through the use of military force are tested against the most widely accepted alternative explanations of war outcomes with an abundance of historical data on violent conflicts. The results support Sullivan's argument and challenge both existing theories and conventional wisdom about the impact of factors like military strength, resolve, regime type, and war-fighting strategies on war outcomes.
Media Appearances:
Newspaper Quotes:
Why can’t America win a war these days? With the 10th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq this week, it seems a worthwhile time to reflect on the fact that for all its obvious military advantages over every country on the planet, the United States doesn’t seem particularly good at winning wars anymore. In her book-length study, Who Wins: Predicting Strategic Success and Failure in Armed Conflict, University of North Carolina political scientist Patricia L. Sullivan writes: "The United States failed to achieve its primary political objectives in approximately 30 percent of its major military operation between 1946 and 2002. In almost every one of these failues, the United States chose to terminate its military intervenion short of victory despite the fact that it retained an overwhelming physical capacity to sustain military operations. The U.S. withdrawal from Somalia after the death of sixteen Army Rangers may appear to be an extreme case, but it is consistent with a pattern in which the United States experienced higher-than-expected costs and withdrew its troops short of attaining intervention objectives, despite the fact that its military was, at most, only marginally degraded in the conflict. The United States’ unsuccessful intervention in Vietnam is, of course, the quintessential example. "
Blog Posts:
Is it ever a good idea to arm violent nonstate actors?