COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES 9 out through the scalp,” Cox says. “We can get kind of a biological movie of the time course of processing.” Perhaps the most innovative aspect involves a mobile game simulating airport security screening. Through collaboration with developer Kedlin Co., Cox obtained data from more than 15 million downloads and nearly 4 billion virtual bags. “It’s a bit cartoony, but it still looks like a realworld search,” Cox explains. This massive dataset allows researchers to detect behavioral patterns at a scale impossible in traditional laboratory settings. One key insight challenges conventional emphases in visual search research. While the field has traditionally focused on physical stimulus properties, Cox argues that prior experience and expectation exert equally powerful influences. “Not just what you’re looking at now, but what did you see the trial before? Three trials before? Yesterday? For someone like a TSA agent or a radiologist, these have very large effects.” Now in his third year at Lehigh, Cox is pursuing collaborations with the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the Army Research Lab, radiologists, and local law enforcement. His integrative approach—combining laboratory experiments, neuroimaging, computational modeling, and big data analytics—promises both theoretical advances in understanding visual cognition and practical improvements in domains where visual search performance can literally save lives. PACIFIC PRESS / ALAMY STOCK PHOTO INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS THE POWER OF PERSISTENCE In the corridors of the United Nations, conventional wisdom suggests that power flows from military strength and economic heft. Yet Sabrina Arias has uncovered a different story, one where small countries punch far above their weight and where individual diplomats matter as much as the GDP of the nations they represent. Arias’ book project, “Diplomatic Giants: How Small States and Powerful Ambassadors Shape International Organization Policymaking,” challenges fundamental assumptions about how influence operates in international organizations. Through data collection and interviews with diplomats from more than 50 countries, she demonstrates that small states wield surprising influence in the early stages of policymaking, cultivating what Arias calls “diplomatic capital.” The research required extraordinary persistence. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Arias tracked every UN ambassador and deputy from 1946-2018, ultimately compiling a database of 21,159 entries from the UN’s “Blue Books,” annual directories listing diplomatic staff. When archives remained closed, she had volumes delivered through interlibrary loan and manually constructed the dataset, entry by entry. The dataset revealed a striking pattern. Small states maintain significantly longer average tenures for their ambassadors compared to large states. While diplomats from countries such as Germany or the United States typically rotate every two to four years, ambassadors from smaller nations often serve for decades. Liechtenstein’s ambassador, for instance, has represented his country at the UN for more than 20 years. Arias proposes three mechanisms through which diplomatic experience translates into diplomatic capital: developing social networks, gaining substantive expertise, and attaining mastery over institutional rules. These advantages become particularly important in the complex UN General Assembly, where proposals must navigate intricate procedures. “Several diplomats I interviewed weren’t even familiar with the procedure,” Arias adds. “It takes a lot of know-how to understand how to do it.” To establish causation, Arias examined cases where ambassadors died unexpectedly during their terms. When experienced diplomats were suddenly replaced by novices, their countries’ engagement in agendasetting measurably declined, supporting her theory that individual diplomatic skill drives small-state influence. Arias argues that previous scholars have overestimated the influence of powerful states by focusing on late-stage activities like voting. But in the early stages of policymaking, where visibility is lower, it becomes much harder to translate material resources into influence. Arias’ findings carry significant implications for international relations scholarship and practice. Her research challenges state-centric models that privilege material capabilities, demonstrating that influence in international organizations may be more widely distributed than conventional theories suggest. The findings indicate that small states can leverage diplomatic continuity, social capital, and procedural expertise to exercise disproportionate influence during agenda-setting phases. This work advances our understanding of how individual-level factors mediate structural power unevenness in global governance institutions. UN Security Council members vote on a draft resolution.
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