With access to inexpensive credit, states can finance wars without overburdening their constituents, and face relatively small short-term costs compared to states with poor credit access. As a result of these economic benefits, states with lower credit costs will be more likely to win their...

Does it matter whether a civil war is fought as a conventional, irregular, or symmetric nonconventional conflict? Put differently, do “technologies of rebellion†impact a war’s severity, duration, or outcome? Our answer is positive. We find that irregular conflicts last...

How does the hawkish or dovish nature of the domestic opposition in one state influence its own, as well as an international opponent’s, negotiating behavior? I show that doves, when negotiating in the presence of a hawkish opposition, have more bargaining leverage in international...

This article considers the way in which the likelihood of being observed by others affects a state’s conflict behavior. The analysis examines the effect of potential observation on the probability that a dispute will escalate to violence as well as the duration of war and peace. To...

The goal of the current project is to integrate psychological research on emotion regulation with the study of democratic practices in general and political intolerance in particular. We hypothesized that the use of a well-established emotion regulation strategy, cognitive reappraisal, would be...

The causes and consequences of nuclear proliferation have received a great deal of academic attention. However, nuclear weapons are rarely discussed in isolation in policy circles. Instead, nuclear weapons are relevant as part of a category of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) that includes...

This note uses a new data set on international territorial disputes and boundary agreements to explore whether and how legal commitments affect state behavior. Do border treaties reduce subsequent conflict simply through their effect on the distribution of the disputed good, or do treaties have...

The research on the influence of democracy on terrorism renders support for two causal mechanisms. One is that democracy reduces terrorism because it creates an environment in which dissenters can pursue their interests through peaceful means. The other argument states that democracy encourages...

The emergence and institutionalization of cooperation in sizable groups without reciprocity receives considerable attention in game-theoretical modeling. Agents in our study play the Prisoner’s Dilemma game cooperating with tolerably similar neighbors. They may imitate cultural markers...

A long-standing research tradition on political culture argues that greater support for core liberal values leads to a rejection of destructive political activities and reduced support for violent politics. In this vein, many contemporary analysts of security policy contend that a lack of...