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One of the most powerful findings in the field of international relations has been the robust linkage between liberal democracy and peace. Scholars have explored this linkage from numerous theoretical and empirical perspectives, and also expanded the early insights of Doyle and others beyond interstate war to argue that democracy also correlates highly with reduced levels of domestic violence. Our paper asks the question: how should we characterize the linkage between liberal democracy and new forms of transnational threats such as climate change, transnational crime and global terrorism? Are democracies relatively more vulnerable than closed and less transparent systems, or do they remain relatively effective in managing these new threats? Our paper brings together theoretical work on transnational networks and extensive empirical work on the US and transnational threats to reconsider core arguments of the democratic peace thesis. In particular, we draw on data from an NSF funded, multi-year, national panel survey to analyze U.S. public perceptions of threat and vulnerability in response to terrorism, environmental disasters and other traumatic events. We further evaluate how these perceptions of threats affect the level and duration of political support for policies generated in response to terrorism and environmental disasters. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prominent hypotheses about the causal mechanism behind the theory of democratic peace are unable to account for variations in the political and social behavior of individuals within democracies in response to personal and national threats. Recent research focusing on particular conditions mediating public behavior - like the Fever proposition that the likelihood of success affects one's political support - help clarify some behavior, but are limited to explaining special cases and specific issues because they fail to identify the mechanisms that drive individual social and political behavior. Building on a unique panel survey of national respondents, ("Societal Implications of Individual Differences in Response to Turbulence: The Case of Terrorism," NSF 05-520), the authors demonstrate how one's personal life experiences, psychological profile, and political characteristics and experiences - the "3P" characteristics - affect individual responses and behavior to threatening or traumatic events, how these factors affect the choices people in American make when balancing the need to maximize security of individuals and our nation as a whole with the need to preserve the democratic values and individual liberties that we are seeking to protect, and the implications that these factors have for U.S. leadership in the turbulent world of the 21st century. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The potential negative impacts of biological weapons have been described in great detail and often with a great deal of sensationalism. My intention here is not to add to such sensationalized discussions, nor is it to suggest that such threats are so improbable or intractable that they should be ignored. Rather, what is needed is dispassionate consideration of the potential risks and vulnerabilities from threats such as biological weapons. As unconventional security threats like bioweapons increasingly blur the lines between what is and is not a security issue, such discussions need to occur in public forums and include representative from the many relevant constituencies and disciplines, from molecular biologists to social scientists and first responders to health care providers. Emerging debates about threats from biological weapons will influence the spending of large sums of money and help shape organizational and research priorities. We can find valuable lessons with regard to concerns over the emergence of new threats from biological weapons through an examination of the global controversy over the introduction and use of foods produced using agricultural biotechnology. Genetically modified crops now account for a significant percentage of global agriculture. The rapid development of crop cultivars produced using agricultural biotechnology has raised concerns about possible impacts on people, animals and ecosystems as novel traits from crops migrate into other organisms. The first section of this paper provides a brief overview of the global debates over genetically modified foods. To that end, I describe how the debates over genetically modified foods have develop through a heavy use of alarming imagery and grand discursive claims. Much of the existing debate about the use of agricultural biotechnology has been framed with regard to the potential positive, intended impacts of the technologies versus the potential negative, unintended impacts of these same technologies. Significantly less attention has been focused on the potential negative, intended impacts these technologies could facilitate for actors seeking to cause harm. As the development and dispersal of virulent biological weapons is a difficult process, the paper?s second section provides an overview of concern about biological weapons with a specific focus on concern about use of the food systems as a delivery mechanism for biological weapons. The paper concludes with thoughts about the implications of the topics raised for more systematic examinations of new threats and vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of a network has gained increasing salience to explain the evolving structure of relations between people, places, and things. Networks are having an impact on many areas of daily life from transportation, to telecommunications, to the sorts of foods people eat. The way people gain access to food has always been central to social, political and economic systems. The acceleration of connections between the world’s places and peoples has highlighted the importance of links between how humans produce, distribute, and consume foodstuffs and pressing social, political and environmental issues. In this paper, I use an interrogation of one type of threat confronting the global food system – infectious disease – to consider the way in which the security landscape is being reconstructed by economic, technological, and cultural practices that increasingly operate through transnational networks. I begin with an overview of human security threats from infectious disease. Second, I address the role of disease as a chronic or pervasive threat with a specific focus on the changing nature of this challenge in a time of increased interconnectedness and global environmental change. Third, I argue that infectious disease is also relevant in the second aspect of human security as a sudden, hurtful or critical disruption given the development of the ability to use biological agents for intentional purposes such as warfare, terrorism, or criminal endeavors. Finally, the paper concludes by considering the continually evolving relationship between hunger, disease, and security. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing a strong basis for global environmental ethics faces at least three obstacles: the primacy environmentalists give to issues of prudence; the prominence environmental ethicists have given to extending moral consideration across species; and broader skepticism among students of international affairs about moral life at the global level. This paper makes the case for greater moral concern in global environmental affairs by engaging each of these obstacles and identifying ways of surmounting them. The fundamental step in doing so involves shifting the focus of moral analysis from human-nature relations to human-human ones. Seeing environmental issues as a matter of how people treat each other allows one to perceive the ethical component in all aspects of environmental concern. It also enables one to work through the other obstacles that prohibit greater moral focus by shedding ethical light on prudential worries about environmental degradation and inserting ethical consideration into the realist practice of subordinating environmental dangers to national security ones. The three sets of challenges that work to minimize moral sensitivity in global environmental affairs are tied together by a common misjudgment, which is based on locating the point of moral concern at the interface between humans and nature. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are public views on anti-terrorism policies driven by concerns about future threats or by emotional responses to a prior attack? A terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 is both a harbinger of future threat and a discrete, one-time national trauma. We sought to distinguish between a) perceptions of the future threat of terrorism and b) responses to the 9/11 attacks themselves as predictors of Americans’ national security policy preferences. Using an anonymous Web-based survey methodology, we surveyed a nationally representative sample of US adults (N=1613, 75% response rate) in late 2006 and early 2007. Respondents rated the likelihood of another terrorist attack occurring on U.S. soil in the near future. They also reported any experience of terror-related posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTS) in the form of intrusive thoughts and images resulting from 9/11. In addition, respondents expressed their degree of support for anti-terrorism policies in three ways: 1) as having desired an aggressive U.S. response to 9/11, 2) as support for ongoing military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, and 3) as willingness to sacrifice civil liberties for security. Multiple regression analyses adjusting for political affiliation, general psychological distress, exposure to 9/11, and other key variables revealed that both perceived likelihood of future terrorism and 9/11-related PTS independently predicted greater support for all three categories of anti-terrorism policies. Moreover, perceived likelihood and PTS interacted such that perceived likelihood of future terrorism did not predict policy preferences among individuals high in PTS. Public views on future-oriented policies may be disproportionately influenced by distressing experiences from the past. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]