The classical liberals believed that democracy and free trade would reduce the incidence of war. Here we conduct new tests of the `democratic peace', incorporating into the analyses of Maoz & Russett (1993) a measure of economic interdependence based on the economic importance of bilateral...

The proposition that democracies rarely fight each other in the modern international system is increasingly accepted, and of great importance to theory and practice. Yet the reasons behind this phenomenon, and hence expectations as to how it may operate under other conditions, are still not well...

Some recent analyses challenge previous reports which show that economically important trade significantly reduces the probability of militarized disputes between countries. Beck et al. (1998) address the effect of temporal dependence in the time-series data on empirical support for the liberal...

Two studies question whether economic interdependence promotes peace, arguing that previous research has not adequately considered the endogeneity of trade. Using simultaneous equations to capture the reciprocal effects, they report that trade does not reduce conflict, though conflict reduces...

It is argued that extended deterrence in the bipolar subsystem has contributed to the prevention of war in the past. It makes sense to assume that past success repeats itself in the future, if past success is theoretically well understood and the expectation of future success theoretically...

This paper hypothesizes two pacifying effects of superpower control on international relations: (1) If the superpowers deter each other from going to war against each other, and if they largely control the national security decision-making of their allies or clients or bloc members, then...

In a widely, but undeservedly overlooked book, Payne (1989) raised two important issues. First, he argued that many cross-national analyses of military burdens and arms races are misleading, because they rely on expenditure-based measures that are not comparable beyond OECD nations. This...

The empirical evidence on democracy and war involvement indicates two quite robust findings. First, democracies do not differ from other regimes in their degree of war involvement. Second, war is extremely rare between democracies. So, the pacifying impact of democracy is restricted to relations...

There are many rebellions, fewer successful rebellions, and extremely few social revolutions. First, the relative frequencies of elite and mass rebellions are investigated. Because a rational choice approach finds it easier to explain elite rebellions and a deprivation approach seems tailored to...