Research

Secrecy has long been central to international politics. For decades, however, serious scholarly work on secrecy-related topics was rare. Even as theoretical models drawing on “private information” and “incentives to misrepresent” changed the field, there has been less attention to how states misrepresent, what they keep private, and why image manipulation is an ever-present feature of international politics. I’ve written two award-winning books that attempt to change this.

Much of my research begins with the basic insight that governments care about, and therefore strategically manage, wider impressions of themselves and their interactions. Managing optics is often the point. I’ve explored this in two published book projects on secrecy, war, and escalation and on secrecy, cooperation, and global governance. I am now working on a third book about what I am calling “intelligence infrastructure” — i.e., the physical sites and installations which are required to operate most modern surveillance systems — and its importance to diplomacy and power politics.

I also research other themes beyond secrecy and intelligence. Many of these newer projects address leaders, bureaucracy, and perceptions. This includes articles on specific issues like racism within foreign policy institutions, under-analyzed dimensions of the U.S. and postwar international order, and the role language and maps in foreign policy bureaucracies.

For more on my research and background, see my CV. A good overview of some of this research is in this podcast episode.
                                                                                                                                                             

Secrecy, war, and escalation

Secret Wars: Covert Conflict in International Politics. Princeton University Press, Princeton Studies in International History and Politics. 2018.

The book analyzes the covert side of five major 20th century conflicts, introducing a new theory of secrecy linking its use to states’ efforts to limit the scale and scope of conflict in an age of industrialized warfare and nuclear weaponry.  The theory is built, in part, on adapted insights from Erving Goffman about secrecy and the “back stage collusion” we use in everyday life to define our social encounters and avoid crises.  I analyze covert military intervention before, during, and after the Cold War. The book builds on the award winning article “Facing Off and Saving Face” (IO, 2016) and features case studies of the Spanish Civil War, Korean War, Vietnam War, the 1980s war in Afghanistan, and Iraq after 2003.

Related articles and manuscripts

Facing Off and Saving Face: Covert Intervention and Escalation Management in the Korean War, International Organization, 70 (1), 2016, pp. 103-131. [PDF]  
–Winner, Best Security Article Award, International Security Studies Section, International Studies Association 2018.

Covert Communication: The Intelligibility and Credibility of Signaling in Secret (with Keren Yarhi-Milo), Security Studies, Vol 26, No 1, 2017, pp. 124-156. [PDF]


Secrecy, cooperation, and global governance

Secrets in Global Governance: Disclosure Dilemmas and the Challenge of International Cooperation. With Allison Carnegie. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Studies in International Relations Series. 2020.

What makes cooperation in the international system so hard? How do international organizations (IOs) help states overcome these barriers?  Scholars have long argued that IOs help reveal violations of international rules. Secrets in Global Governance introduces and theorizes the opposite institutional function, showing how international organizations use “confidentiality systems” — organizational secrecy by another name — to solicit sensitive information from states and better identify rule violations.

In the book, we argue that investigating compliance with rules increasingly requires access to sensitive kinds of disclosures for everything from nuclear proliferation to war crimes to international trade. Intelligence disclosed by governments, for examples, can be the difference between spotting violations, documenting them, or missing them entirely. We assess a disclosure dilemma: by disclosing such information, states can help identify violations but also risk commercial and national security harm. We show how IOs mitigate this dilemma by safeguarding such disclosures with confidentiality systems, or secrecy. This allows them to better identify and document violations. We develop this unique role for IOs — and the normative and practical challenges it often generates — in chapters on war crimes, trade disputes, nuclear nonproliferation, and foreign direct investment arbitration.

  • Winner, Best Book Award, APSA’s International Collaboration section, 2021
  • Book website at Cambridge University Press
  • Sample: Chapter 1

Related articles and manuscripts

The Spotlight’s Harsh Glare:  Rethinking Publicity and International Order (with Allison Carnegie), International Organization, 72 (3), 2018, pp. 627-657. [PDF] [Appendix]
–Winner, Robert Keohane Award, Best Article by Untenured Scholar, 2018.
–Honorable Mention, Best Article Award, International Security Section, American Political Science Association, 2019.

The Disclosure Dilemma: Nuclear Intelligence and International Organization (with Allison Carnegie). American Journal of Political Science, 63 (2), 2019, pp. 269-285. [PDF]
–First article to undergo AJPS verification & transparency for qualitative research. Related: Jan Leighley, “Celebrating Verification, Replication, and Qualitative Research Methods at the AJPS,” March 20, 2019. Allison Carnegie and Austin Carson, “Our Experience with the AJPS Transparency and Verification Process for Qualitative Research,” May 9, 2019.

Reckless Rhetoric? Compliance Pessimism and International Order in the Age of Trump (with Allison Carnegie), Journal of Politics, 81 (2), 2019, pp. 739-746. [PDF]

UN Peacekeeping After the Pandemic: An Increased Role for Intelligence (with Allison Carnegie). Survival 63.2 (2021): 77-83.

Scared to Share: Why Fighting Pandemics Requires Secrecy, Not Transparency (with Allison Carnegie). Global Perspectives 4.1 (2023): 57639.

The Power in Opacity: Rethinking Information in International Organizations (with Alexander Thompson). In International Institutions and Power Politics: Bridging the Divide, eds. T.V. Paul and Anders Wivel, Georgetown University Press, 2019.

Intelligence Infrastructure in International Politics

Since 2022, I have been working on a third book that introduces the concept of “intelligence infrastructure,” or the physical sites and installations which are required to operate most modern surveillance systems. Intelligence infrastructure includes listening posts for intercepting communications, airfields used for drone surveillance flights, space control systems to operate spy satellites, and radar networks for detecting missile attacks.

Geography matters for intelligence collection. Many of these installations and sites must be constructed on foreign territory to be effective. Using a qualitative-historical approach drawing on declassified archival material, the book will argue that the “built environment” of U.S. foreign intelligence collection — global in scope since World War II — has deeply influenced American foreign relations and policy.

In broad terms, the book will theorize the material-logistical mechanics of surveillance and its relevance to power, geography, and threat. The empirical heart of the book will be a historical narrative of American Cold War-era intelligence infrastructure located in overseas territory. This narrative will highlight some recurrent themes, such as the importance of legacy colonial territory, the strategic value of unique geographic locations that are often overlooked in our field (i.e. islands and other remote spaces), the use of lucrative quid pro quos, and the backlash and adaptations such infrastructure elicited. The book will also contextualize the U.S experience with chapters assessing the British infrastructure for global surveillance in the 19th century and Soviet infrastructure during the Cold War. It will also draw out implications for China’s rise and its nascent overseas intelligence infrastructure.

Leaders and Bureaucracy: Racism, Senility, and More

Other projects address leaders, perceptions, and bureaucracy with a focus on specific themes such as racial tropes, perceived senility, and the U.S. approach to postwar order in the mid-1940s. This includes a set of papers using text-as-data and qualitative methods to analyze a unique corpus of declassified documents: the President’s Daily Brief (PDB).

Carson, Austin, and Matthew J. Conklin. “Co-Optation at the Creation: Leaders, Elite Consensus, and Postwar International Order.” Security Studies 31.4 (2022): 634-666. [Ungated PDF]

Byun, Joshua, and Austin Carson. “More than a Number: Aging Leaders in International Politics.” International Studies Quarterly 67.1 (2023): sqad008. [Ungated PDF]

“Racial Tropes in Foreign Policy: A Computational Text Analysis” (with Eric Min and Maya Van Nuys). Under review.

“Keeping It Professional: Language and Bureaucracy in the Cold War” (with Eric Min). Under review.

“‘A Fair Background to Show its Strength’: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Lethal Debut of Atomic Weaponry.” With Joshua Byun. Under review.

“Does Intelligence Pay? Daily Intelligence Summaries and Media Reporting across Four Presidencies” (with Eric Min). Working Paper.

“All Over the Map: Leaders, Bureaucracy, and Geographic Orientation” (with Ari Weil). Working Paper.