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Recent research has shown the importance of studying military deployments and their effects on a wide range of social, political, and economic outcomes. In particular, it has demonstrated how the US has shaped the international system through the largest, and most enduring, military footprint in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. However, data on US military deployments have been limited in scope and are often difficult to access, making it harder for researchers to use them more widely. In this article, we focus on three goals. First, we discuss the evolution of the quantitative US military deployment literature in recent years, highlighting some of the insights this work has generated for scholarship on international relations and US foreign policy. Second, we update the existing troop data assembled by Kane (2004) through 2020. We also include new data on deployment levels specific to US service branches. Third, to facilitate the use of these data we introduce troopdata, an R package containing the updated data and convenience functions to allow scholars to more easily access these data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do some domestic actors see the international environment as a threatening place populated by untrustworthy powers, when others find opportunities for peaceful cooperation in the same conditions? Because these actors confront the same international environment, the reasons for their divergent evaluations must rest on differences in their own beliefs and interests. In this article, we consider the impact of societal interests in trade and trade protection on elite assessments of the international environment. We examine evaluations of the international environment in speeches given in the US Congress during naval appropriations debates between 1890 and 1914. The manufacturing sector’s interest in trade protection led political leaders who represented manufacturing regions to offer more negative assessments of the international environment, while those representing export-oriented agricultural areas of the country gave more positive evaluations. These effects were roughly comparable to those associated with party, as well as individual-level characteristics, such as having served as a military officer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent work has begun exploring the effects of foreign military deployments on host-state foreign policies. However, research mostly focuses on dyadic relationships between major powers and host-states, ignoring the broader regional security environment of host-states. We develop a theory of spatial hierarchies to understand how security relationships throughout the region surrounding the host-state affect host-state foreign policy. Using data on US military deployments from 1950–2005, we show that regional security considerations condition how host-states respond to the deployment of military forces to their territory. Consequently, regional analyses are fundamental in understanding monadic and dyadic decisions about security, alliance behavior, and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Barry, Colin M., K. Chad Clay, and Michael E. Flynn. (2012) Avoiding the Spotlight: Human Rights Shaming and Foreign Direct Investment. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12039 Nonstate actors, such as international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs), have attained an increasingly prominent role in modern world affairs. While previous research has focused on these actors' respective interactions with states, little attention has been paid to their interactions with each other. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the decisions of private actors seeking to invest abroad are affected by the reputational costs of doing business in countries publicly targeted by human rights activists. We find that ''naming and shaming'' by human rights INGOs tends to reduce the amount of foreign direct investment received by developing states, providing evidence that INGO activities affect the behavior of MNCs. An additional implication of our findings is that shaming by INGOs can impose real costs on targeted states in the form of lost investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Barry, Colin M., K. Chad Clay, and Michael E. Flynn. (2012) Avoiding the Spotlight: Human Rights Shaming and Foreign Direct Investment. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/isqu.12039 Nonstate actors, such as international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) and multinational corporations (MNCs), have attained an increasingly prominent role in modern world affairs. While previous research has focused on these actors' respective interactions with states, little attention has been paid to their interactions with each other. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the decisions of private actors seeking to invest abroad are affected by the reputational costs of doing business in countries publicly targeted by human rights activists. We find that ''naming and shaming'' by human rights INGOs tends to reduce the amount of foreign direct investment received by developing states, providing evidence that INGO activities affect the behavior of MNCs. An additional implication of our findings is that shaming by INGOs can impose real costs on targeted states in the form of lost investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]