Byungwon Woo

• Ph.D. in Political Science
• Professor at Yonsei University

With increased transnational investment activities, multinational firms and states find their interests conflicted and decide to litigate disputes in international investment disputes courts. Given that there are multiple venues to settle international investment disputes, which court do firms and governments choose and why? We argue that investors...

How do investors respond when a country participates in an International Monetary Fund (IMF) program? While there exists some optimism in and around the IMF on the catalytic effect of a Fund program, empirical research on the catalytic finance reports rather diverse findings; contrary to most theoretical research, empirical studies report both posi...

Does China exert influence over the AIIB, including its share allocation, to pursue its interests as many skeptical eyes suggest? What explains the subscription shares a member state has at the AIIB? Building upon existing literature on American influence in international financial institutions, we propose a unique theoretical argument on these que...

Which countries are middle powers in international relations? While the term “middle powers” has witnessed a steady increase in its use in the past two decades, answers to the question are likely to be diverse, depending on to whom one asks the question. The paper tries to provide objective criteria that would allow one to define the entire populat...

¿Los programas y las condiciones del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI) perjudican los derechos laborales de los países que participan de los programas? Los críticos del FMI sostienen que participar de los programas de dicha institución es perjudicial a los derechos laborales, ya que el FMI intenta imponer políticas laborales proempresa a través d...

Should democracies be rewarded and autocracies punished, or should it be the reverse? This is an important question for foreign policy makers who regularly find themselves wanting to alter the behavior of foreign governments favorable to their interests. Existing studies on economic sanctions and rewards provide an uneasy answer that sanctions are...

How do International Monetary Fund programs and conditions affect labor rights? Recognizing the diversity of International Monetary Fund conditionality, we argue that the more stringent International Monetary Fund labor market conditionality is, the worse labor rights become. However, this negative effect can be mitigated if there exist domestic po...

This study examines how globalization affects slum prevalence in developing countries. Recognizing that globalization is a multifaceted phenomenon, we disaggregate globalization into three conventional sub-dimensions – economic globalization, political globalization, and social globalization – and propose the hypotheses that economic globalization...

What effect do economic sanctions have on the IMF lending decisions? Though countries under economic sanctions often face significant economic and financial difficulties, no comprehensive research to date has explored whether the IMF as a de facto lender of last resort intervenes in those countries in need. We posit that economic coercion is likely...

How do political factors affect foreign aid allocation? Recognizing that aid can be used as inducement, we argue that the US has incentives to provide aid to countries who oppose it a priori at the United Nations General Assembly when it is the sole country that “buys votes” with aid, in order to maximize the number of favorable votes. When there i...

Does a country’s abuse of human rights influence its ability to get a loan from the International Monetary Fund? We examine whether human rights conditions matter for the likelihood that a country participates in an International Monetary Fund program. We argue that human rights conditions are unlikely to be enough by themselves to influence Intern...

How does official development assistance (ODA) affect women’s rights in aid-receiving countries? We argue that ODA allows those donor countries who have more respect for women’s rights and who have the intention of spreading the norm of gender equality to successfully influence recipient countries, and thus improve women’s rights in aid-recipient c...

How does official development assistance (ODA) affect women's rights in aid-receiving countries? We argue that ODA allows those donor countries who have more respect for women's rights and who have the intention of spreading the norm of gender equality to successfully influence recipient countries, and thus improve women's rights in aid-recipient c...

This article first reviews and compares HRC/UPR research published during and shortly after the institution-building period (2006–2009) to more recent work (2010–2014), to identify patterns of scholarly interest in NGO roles and behavior at the HRC/UPR. It divides research into that which either ‘ignores’ NGOs, or offers ‘indirect’ attention, ‘dire...

Why do some countries participate in IMF programs while others refuse to do so? We suggest an answer to the question by unpacking one side of the typical democracy–autocracy dichotomy. Specifically, we utilize the growing literature on the varieties of authoritarianism to develop an argument linking the different incentives and constraints that lea...

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) often seeks to influence countries' domestic public policy via varying levels of conditionality—linking financial support to borrowing governments' commitment to policy reforms. When does extensive conditionality encourage domestic economic reforms and when does it impede them? We argue that, rather than univer...

How do countries with a history of conflict and colonialism overcome animosity? Despite thick economic interdependence and societal contact, problems of memory remains in Northeast Asia, as negative images spawning from past interactions continue to inhibit improvement in perceptions of other states. Riots exhibit anti-Japanese sentiment in South K...

How do countries with a history of conflict and colonialism overcome animosity? Despite thick economic interdependence and societal contact, problems of memory remains in Northeast Asia, as negative images spawning from past interactions continue to inhibit improvement in perceptions of other states. Riots exhibit anti-Japanese sentiment in South K...

We examine the global determinants of the illicit international narcotics trade and the specific roles that states play in it, a topic understudied by international relations scholars. We develop the first comprehensive global data set of state involvement in international narcotics trafficking and then use the data set to empirically test hypothes...

What is the relationship between respect for labor rights and foreign direct investment (FDI)? This study explores this connection with an emphasis on the strategic role of governments in attracting FDI. We present a formal model demonstrating that governments can do so by setting the level of labor rights protection and, as a consequence, investor...

The article explores how International Monetary Fund (IMF) program design influences foreign direct investment inflows. The author argues that stricter IMF conditionality signals a program-participating government's commitment to economic reforms, as it incurs larger ex ante political cost and risks greater ex post political cost. Thus, the catalyt...

Sanctions are said to fail because of the “rally‐round‐the‐flag effect”. This is the main reason why many advocate the use of positive incentives as a viable alternative. Not only do rewards provoke no defensive reaction, but they may elicit a rally in support of compliance – a “fifth‐column effect.” Yet, positive incentives are vulnerable to extor...

This chapter introduces how latent variables are handled in event history analysis, a popular method used to examine both the occurrence and the timing of events. We first emphasize why event history models are popular and what kinds of research questions the model can be used to answer. We also review the major estimation issues, briefly trace the...

Why do some states enter into IMF programs while others do not participate in IMF programs? Though there have been a number of IMF studies by political sci- entists in recent years, relatively little attention has been devoted to the question of IMF program participation. Instead, most political science studies of the IMF focus on either the conseq...

Many economic sanctions fail because the sanction threat triggers a perverse Rally-Round-the-Flag effect within the domestic politics of the targeted state. Bribes, instead, trigger two opposite effects: a virtuous Fifth-Column effect, by which the bribe elicits support for compliance in the target country, and a vicious extortion effect, according...

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