Previous research has shown that Taiwan's military spending is affected either by China's military buildup or the US's military pipeline. This study investigates whether it is also true an ongoing US-China relationship has dynamic effects. Three major findings are obtained from the statistical analyses. First and foremost, the level of US-China conflict has a contemporaneous positive effect on Taiwan's military spending. Second, the analyses also indicate that the volatility of US-China relations has negative effects on Taiwan's military spending. This finding suggests that instability in US-China relations will prompt Taiwan to decrease its military spending due to a higher amount of perceived security on the one hand, and Taiwan wants to avoid further provoking China on the other. Third, analyses indicate that an error correction model fares better than a simple budgetary incremental model in explaining the re-equilibrating effects of GNP growth on Taiwan's military spending. Overall, the results demonstrate the interplay of domestic and international constraints and may help to predict what will be the expected military spending when Taiwan's economy changes. I suggest that Taiwan's military spending is likely to be influenced by US-China relations as well as by foreign investment and domestic economic constraints as long as …

The theory proposed here is that the Supreme Court behaves in a strategic manner at the agenda-setting stage in order to vote sincerely on the merits. To test this, I measure the impact issue salience and ideological distance between Congress and the Supreme Court has on the agenda. The results indicate that whether the Supreme Court behaves either sincerely or strategically depends on the policy area. The strategic nature of the Supreme Court at the agenda-setting phase may be in large part why some research shows that the Court behaves sincerely when voting on the merits. By behaving strategically at the agenda-setting phase, the Court is free to vote sincerely in later parts of the judicial process.