Domestic Vulnerability and the Use of Non-Militarized Foreign Confrontation: A Case Study of Taiwan's Foreign Policy toward China from 2000 to 2008

This dissertation examines whether state leaders initiate nonviolent foreign provocation for diversionary purposes. After reviewing the ongoing debate over the diversionary foreign policy theory's validity and the tremendous efforts by IR scholars to address this issue, I discuss a recent theory revision suggestion by Clark and others about expanding the dependent variable to nonviolent foreign confrontation. Nonetheless, although this suggestion is insightful, little empirical effort has been made to test its applicability. Therefore, the goal of this dissertation is to investigate whether there is positive relationship between state leaders' domestic problems and their initiation of nonviolent foreign provocation toward rival states.;Based on an in-depth case study on Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian's (2000-2008) provocative China policy, I find that nonviolent foreign provocation is a broadly-used strategy for the president to divert domestic attention away from his problems. The statistical results further show that, in Taiwan's case, political rather than economic and social challenges are more likely to drive the leader to pursue nonviolent provocative policy toward China. Lastly, both the quantitative and qualitative analyses demonstrate that intra-party/coalition is positively associated with the president's diversionary motivation. This suggests that existing indicators of state leaders' domestic problems are insufficient, and thus the inclusion of the variable of intra-party/coalition would improve the empirical measurement of domestic vulnerability.;To examine whether the positive findings on the non-militarized diversionary foreign policy hypothesis is idiosyncratic to Taiwan's case, I also conduct a preliminary analysis on Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko's Russia policy. The results show that Georgia's case provides positive, although moderate, support for the non-militarized diversionary foreign policy hypothesis. This leads to my conclusion that future studies on diversionary behavior should take into account both militarized and non-militarized external provocation.