Though study of the relationship between international trade and militarized conflict has become more sophisticated, whether trade reduces the chance of conflict, exacerbates it, or has no effect, remains contested. This article considers two aspects of trade – volume and interdependence –...

Serious instability and deadly political violence have surrounded several recent elections and gained global media coverage. Do elections in general make such incidents more likely? Are elections especially dangerous in partially democratic or ethnically divided states? Elections are among the...

Do factors associated with the outbreak of genocidal violence differ across global regions? This chapter focuses on the role of institutions relating to democratic or authoritarian governance, using statistical models to test hypotheses on five decades of data. Improved understanding of causal...

Competing hypotheses are tested on an extensive set of defense-burden data to determine the general factors that influence states' levels of military spending. Results provide some clear answers to longstanding questions and supply new findings that beg further investigation. When controls are...

To overcome obstacles to causal inference in observational and qualitative studies, we use synthetic control method to assess whether acquisition of nuclear weapons by security rivals might increase their level of conventional militarized conflict. Recent theoretical (Powell 2015) and...

Does foreign aid extended by one country improve that country’s image among populations of recipient countries? Using a multinational survey, we show that a United States aid program targeted to address HIV and AIDS substantially improves perceptions of the U.S. Our identification strategy for...