In a well-publicized finding, Bueno de Mesquita and Smith argue that temporary members of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) suffer politically and economically because they receive elevated inflows of foreign aid in exchange for votes. Closer examination of the data reveals a lack of...

How, if at all, do nondemocratic elections affect credible signaling in international crises? While the literature on credible signaling emphasizes the importance of electoral competition, it does not specify the minimal conditions that elections must satisfy in order to enhance the credibility...

Environmentalists often urge their home countries to take a leading role in reducing global environmental problems like climate change. A pertinent question is, Will examples set by leading nations influence others to follow suit, and if so, do the costs of leading matter? For instance, will...

Entrepreneurship is generally regarded as a productive force of change, innovation, and development in modern economies. Particularly for institutionally less developed environments, however, it has been argued that the same energy and talent can also be allocated to unproductive ends. In this...

The premise of the cultural congruence hypothesis is that the level of congruence between democratic values among the public and in political institutions of a country is an important indication of political stability: the greater the congruence, the greater the stability. Though this hypothesis...

Governments are concerned about the dangers posed by ballistic missiles. However, there is almost no theoretical or empirical scholarship on ballistic missiles. This article presents and tests the conventional wisdom that the spread of ballistic missiles makes conflict more likely. Original data...

Can issue linkage, the combining of multiple issues into a single agreement, enhance the credibility of an agreement? I use the alliance relations of buffer states (states located between two recently or currently warring rivals) to test the claim that issue linkage enhances compliance with...

This article suggests a rational explanation for extreme voluntary sacrifice in situations in which the state of the world when the decision must be made is observable only by the agent. Such explanation is the cult of martyrs, heroes, and saints. This cult may get out of control and fuel...

The article analyzes the impact of private military companies (PMCs) on the duration of civil wars in Africa from 1990 to 2008. We develop an “opportunity structure†theory to argue that while PMCs are profit-oriented entities, the prevalent opportunities in conflicts will determine...