About

Neil Narang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His specialization includes International Relations, International Security and Conflict Management, Political Violence, and International Institutions. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2012 and holds a B.A. in Molecular Cell Biology and Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley. In 2015-2016, he served as a Senior Advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy on a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow. His research primarily focuses on international security, conflict management and peacebuilding, and the relationship between international institutions and conflict. He is the editor of the book Nuclear Posture and Nonproliferation Policy: Causes and Consequences for the Spread of Nuclear Weapons. Neil Narang has been a fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Browne Center for International Politics, a nonproliferation policy fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and a junior faculty fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. He teaches courses including National Security, Junior Honors Seminar, International Relations Theory Seminar, and War, Diplomacy, and International Security.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Political Science
• Law
• Sociology
• Public administration
• Positive economics
• Epistemology
• Macroeconomics
• Social psychology
• Psychology
• Economics
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• Emerging Technologies and International Stability

  2021-09-23 · 1 citations

  book
  PublisherDOI

• Does female ratio balancing influence the efficacy of peacekeeping units? Exploring the impact of female peacekeepers on post-conflict outcomes and behavior

  International Interactions · 2021 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Psychology

  The UN. has intensified efforts to recruit female peacekeepers for peacekeeping missions. From 2006 to 2014, the number of female military personnel in UN peacekeeping missions nearly tripled. The theory driving female recruitment is that female peacekeepers employ distinctive skills that make units more effective along a variety of dimensions. Yet skeptics argue that deeper studies are needed. This paper explores the theoretical mechanisms through which female military personnel are thought to increase the effectiveness of peacekeeping units. Using new data, we document variation in female participation across missions over time, and we explore the impact of female ratio balancing on various conflict outcomes, including the level of female representation in post-conflict political institutions, the prevalence of sexual violence in armed conflict, and the durability of peace. We find evidence that a greater proportion of female personnel is systematically associated with greater implementation of women’s rights provisions and a greater willingness to report rape, and we find no evidence of negative consequences for the risk of conflict recurrence. We conclude that the inclusion of more female peacekeepers in UN peacekeeping does not reduce the ability to realize mission goals.

  PublisherDOI

• Emerging technologies and international stability

  2021-09-23

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Acknowledgments

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2020

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  DOI

• Stylized Facts and Comparative Statics in (Social) Science Inquiry

  International Studies Quarterly · 2020 · 3 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Economics

  Abstract In a recent article, David Blagden (2019) critiques our research published in the International Studies Quarterly (LeVeck and Narang 2017a), in which we draw on the well-known “wisdom of crowds” phenomenon to argue that, because democracies typically include a larger number of decision makers in the foreign policy process, they may produce fewer decision-making errors in situations of crisis bargaining. As a result, bargaining may fail less often. Blagden's critique focuses on two supposed flaws: first, that “[d]emocracies may have a larger number of more diverse policymakers, of course, but this relationship is not necessary,” and second, that “weighing against the superior ability of large groups to average towards accurate answers, meanwhile, is a substantial drawback of larger groups: the diminishing ability to take and implement decisions” due to additional veto players. In this article, we demonstrate the ways in which we believe Blagden's critique to be misguided in its approach to social science inquiry. In particular, we argue that much of his critique requires that we reject two hallmarks of scientific inquiry: the use of stylized facts in theory building; and the use of comparative statics to generate testable hypotheses.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: What Is Populist Nationalism and Why Does It Matter?

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2019-01-01 · 12 citations

  articleOpen access

  This essay serves as an introduction to the US Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump Symposium. Two years into his first term as president of the United States, Donald Trump has made his presence known on the international stage. In articulating his administration’s position on a range of foreign policy issues, he has been called many things, including “antiglobalist,” “nativist,” and “isolationist,” which suggests a break from American foreign policy of the recent past. Is this perceived break indeed real? While many pundits and political watchers believe that President Trump’s foreign policy is fundamentally different from that of his predecessors, political scientists are only now beginning to examine these important questions in detail. This symposium brings together a set of scholars to provide some initial answers and to offer some educated speculations on the short-term future of American foreign policy.

  Publisher

• Emerging technologies and strategic stability in peacetime, crisis, and war

  Journal of Strategic Studies · 2019-08-22 · 118 citations

  article

  Recent commentary has sounded the alarm about the effects of emerging technologies on strategic stability, yet the topic has received relatively little systematic scholarly attention. Will emerging technologies such as cyber, autonomous weapons, additive manufacturing, hypersonic vehicles, and remote sensing make the world more dangerous? Or is pessimism unwarranted? In this volume, we leverage international relations scholarship, historical data, and a variety of methodological approaches to discern the future implications of new technologies for international security. The findings suggest that new technologies can have multiple, conditional, and even contradictory effects on different aspects of strategic stability, and raise a host of important questions for future research.

  PublisherDOI

• International reputation and alliance portfolios: How unreliability affects the structure and composition of alliance treaties

  Journal of Peace Research · 2019-02-04 · 21 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Why do states ever form military alliances with unreliable partners? States sign offensive and defensive military alliances to increase their fighting capabilities in the event of war and as a signal to deter potential aggressors from initiating a crisis. Yet, signing an alliance with an unreliable partner is at odds with both of these rationales. This should be particularly concerning for peace scholars and policymakers, since the uncertainty generated by unreliable partners may increase system-wide conflict. This article provides an answer to this puzzle by arguing that states continue to form alliances with unreliable partners because they can adopt rational portfolio-diversification strategies. Drawing on well-developed models from portfolio theory, we present evidence that states design their overall alliance portfolios to minimize the risks posed by allies with a reputation for being unreliable. Specifically, we show that unreliable allies are more likely to be pooled into multilateral alliances that dilute risk rather than bilateral alliances, and that states allied with unreliable partners form a greater number of alliances to hedge against the added risk of default. Together, our results demonstrate why unreliable partners may not lead to increased conflict initiation, while also providing a novel explanation for previously unexplained variation in the structure of alliance portfolios. The article contributes to the literatures on international reputation and the rational design of international institutions by demonstrating how international reputation matters in subtle and often overlooked ways.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction: What Is Populist Nationalism and Why Does It Matter?

  The Journal of Politics · 2019-03-05 · 54 citations

  article

  This essay serves as an introduction to the US Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump Symposium. Two years into his first term as president of the United States, Donald Trump has made his presence known on the international stage. In articulating his administration’s position on a range of foreign policy issues, he has been called many things, including “antiglobalist,” “nativist,” and “isolationist,” which suggests a break from American foreign policy of the recent past. Is this perceived break indeed real? While many pundits and political watchers believe that President Trump’s foreign policy is fundamentally different from that of his predecessors, political scientists are only now beginning to examine these important questions in detail. This symposium brings together a set of scholars to provide some initial answers and to offer some educated speculations on the short-term future of American foreign policy.

  PublisherDOI

• Forgotten Conflicts: Need versus Political Priority in the Allocation of Humanitarian Aid across Conflict Areas

  Harvard Dataverse · 2018-02-22

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Despite a principled commitment to assist people in need equally, the allocation of humanitarian assistance across conflict and post-conflict states shows remarkable variation that is not easily explained by differences in the level of recipient-need. This paper attempts to explain these “forgotten conflicts“ by analyzing the determinants of humanitarian aid to civil war and post-civil war states. Using cross-national panel data on humanitarian aid provisions, I show that the most important determinants of international humanitarian assistance are not always demand-side factors measuring humanitarian need – as the principals of humanitarian action would dictate – but often strategic factors that reflect donors’ political interests in providing humanitarian assistance. Although humanitarian aid to ongoing civil wars appears to be substantially more humanitarian than strategic in its allocation, humanitarian aid provided to post-conflict states in the aftermath of civil war tends to go to conflicts where donors perceive important strategic and political interests. These results suggest that one important explanation for why some conflicts are essentially ignored or gradually neglected over time is that strategic interests of donors can dominate humanitarian concerns over time.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Brad L. LeVeck

  University of California, Merced

  4 shared

• Brian C. Rathbun

  Southern California University for Professional Studies

  4 shared

• Caitlin Talmadge

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  3 shared

• Erik Gartzke

  3 shared

• Todd S. Sechser

  University of Virginia

  3 shared

• Michael C. Horowitz

  University of Pennsylvania

  2 shared

• Emilie M. Hafner‐Burton

  2 shared

• Matthew Kroenig

  Atlantic Council

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Browne Center for…
• Nonproliferation Policy Fellow at Los Alamos National Labora…
• Junior Faculty Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for In…
• Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellow (2…