The Making of National Interest

Professor Soyoung Lee from Yale University at will speak at the MIT Security Studies Program's Wednesday Seminar.

Summary: Why do states and their citizens often fight over barren, seemingly worthless territories while not fighting over territories or issues that can be potentially more valuable? In this seminar, Professor Lee will discuss her book, which proposes a new theory of national interest to answer the puzzle. It argues that issues without clear economic value—such as barren lands—are more likely to be perceived as national interests precisely because they do not benefit any single domestic group. Since who benefits is unclear, politicians have an easier time framing such issues as benefiting the entire nation. This book draws on geospatial analyses of territorial claims, survey experiments, textual analyses of political rhetoric, and archival case studies to provide support for the theory. By showing how economic benefits can frequently become a liability in mobilizing unified support for conflict, this book challenges our conventional understanding of economic value in international relations and contributes to a new understanding of distributive politics and foreign policy. It also systematically unpacks how issue value in international relations is formed and deepens our insight into a core question in international relations: what states fight for and why.