Richardson’s concept of arms race dynamics is considered, with two objectives in mind. One is to examine the degree to which hostility, prior levels of armaments and changes in those levels by rivals facilitate the prediction of current arms, with specific attention to year-by-year changes in...

Richardson's concept of arms race dynamics is considered, with two objectives in mind. One is to examine the degree to which hostility, prior levels of armaments and changes in those levels by rivals facilitate the prediction of current arms, with specific attention to year-by-year changes in...

The authors advance a theory of the effects of political institutions on state policy. The theory explains how political institutions affect the ability of leaders to maintain themselves in office, why some political systems are more prone to policy failure than others, and why autocrats create...

Indicators of the tightness and discreteness of poles in the international system, as well as of the distribution of capabilities and interaction opportunities among poles, are developed. With alliance bonds as the focus, scores for each indicator are presented for each year of the past century...

We model foreign-aid-for-policy deals, assuming that leaders want to maximize their time in office. Their actions are shaped by two political institutions, their selectorate and winning coalition. Leaders who depend on a large coalition, a relatively small selectorate, and who extract valuable...

The literature concerned with the relationship between polarity and war generally focuses on decision maker responses to uncertainty. That literature assumes, implicitly, that foreign-policy decision makers are generally risk-acceptant or risk-avoidant under uncertainty. I suggest several...

By applying the criteria suggested by Lakatos for comparing rival theories, I show that the expected utility research program developed in The War Trap has yielded an integrative, fairly comprehensive theory that has provided a better empirical understanding of international conflict than any...

We assume that in a conflict between a nation with a nuclear capability and one without, the conflict may become nuclear, while, in a conflict between two nuclear powers, the conflict is unlikely to become nuclear by reason of fear of retaliation. Then, as the number of nations with nuclear...

A large amount of recent research points to the importance of domestic political institutions in shaping foreign policy, most of it turning on the distinction between democratic and nondemocratic regimes. However, fundamental characteristics differentiate regime types beyond the distinction...