The Center for Empirical Analysis of Political Economy hosted a lecture by Stanford University Professor Kenneth Schultz on Monday, January 18, 2016. Professor Schultz is a leading scholar in the field of international security and is especially known for his work on domestic politics as they relate to international conflict. He received the prestigious Karl Deutsch Award in 2003. Although a snow storm hit Tokyo in the morning and prevented many from coming to campus, the auditorium was filled with students and faculty.
Professor Schultz’s lecture, titled “Territorial Disputes and What It Tells Us about Government Preferences,” answers the perennial question of whether small territorial concessions lead to demands for even greater territory. Empirical evidence demonstrates that a challenger in a territorial dispute does not generally demand the whole territory of its target state. Professor Schultz notes that this empirical pattern presents us with a puzzle – it is not clear if the the challenger genuinely harbors limited intentions or if they misrepresent their more ambitious goals in order to seek further concessions down the road. Professor Schultz presents a game-theoretic model to solve this problem, showing that limited aims in territorial conflicts reflect a challenger’s attempt to validate their demand.
During the lecture, Professor Schultz utilized Google Earth and geocoded dataset of territorial disputes to visualize the location of contested territories, their size, and how they change territorial boundaries. Professor Schultz’s lecture inspired the international politics students and researchers in the audience.
Following the lecture was a conversation session with Professor Schultz over lunch. Students discussed with the professor the content of his lecture and research. This was an invaluable opportunity for students to speak with a top scholar of international politics.
Professor Schultz visited an undergraduate research seminar supervised by Professor Shuhei Kurizaki on Friday, January 15. Three students presented their senior theses. Ryosuke Nishi from the Global Political Economy department presented his game-theory analysis of how defensive alliance affects crisis diplomacy. Yana Otlan from the political science department also presented a game-theory model to analyze the strategic role of inhabitants in the dynamics of territorial disputes. Mitsufumi Kikyotani from the economics department presented a quantitative analysis on the effect of political institutions on battle effectiveness. Professor Schultz was impressed by their research and their presentations. The three presenters and other seminar participants benefited tremendously from his feedback.
