Have Democratic and Republican presidents used force more often than members of the other party under some circumstances during the postwar era? This article presents evidence that unemployment and inflation produce differences in the likelihood of a diversionary use of force by presidents from...

Many international relations theorists suggest that improved military capabilities will make the use or threat of military force a more attractive policy choice. Tests of this argument are complicated because policy makers’anticipation of their future needs for military capabilities could...

Three complementary explanations are tested for the phenomenon that, since 1940, the inflation rate for military goods and services has been higher on average than the inflation rates for the nonmilitary government sector or the economy as a whole. First, higher rates of public-sector inflation...

Joanne Gowa's 1998 article “Politics at the Water's Edge: Parties, Voters, and the Use of Force Abroad†is examined in light of issues raised by her empirical analysis. Newly available time-series models for event-count data permit consideration of the dynamics of the use-of-force...

Most research on congressional consideration of foreign and defense policy concludes that ideology is the most important influence on roll-call voting and that constituent economic interests are not very important. This article challenges this conclusion on two grounds. First, most previous...

Does trade influence whether individuals view other states as friendly or threatening? Liberal theory implies that it should, but the individual-level implications of the liberal argument are rarely tested. Trade should influence individual attitudes more strongly where trade is more...