Dorussen (1999) concludes that trade between states reduces the incentives for conflict, but that the effect of trade diminishes with a larger number of countries. I demonstrate that the indicator Dorussen uses to gauge the impact of trade is dependent on the size of the system itself, and...

Esteban & Ray formalize the argument that conflict is likely to be more intense when individuals in a society are divided into two clearly identifiable groups where differences within groups are considerably smaller than differences between groups. They show that such polarization increases...

The article reviews the literature on the relationship between democracy and armed conflict, internal as well as interstate. The review points to several similarities between how democratic institutions affect both conflict types. It summarizes the main empirical findings and discusses the most...

An important key to reducing the suffering due to civil war is to shorten conflicts. The marked decrease in the incidence of conflicts in the 1990s was mostly due to a high number of conflict terminations, not to a decrease in the number of new wars. The articles in this special issue treat...

In this article, we re-examine the statistical evidence for the democratic peace at the dyadic level. We also investigate the seeming paradox that democracies are engaged in war as often as autocracies at the nation level. From the extensive literature on democracy and peace we have selected as...

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...

This article presents ACLED, an Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset. ACLED codes the actions of rebels, governments, and militias within unstable states, specifying the exact location and date of battle events, transfers of military control, headquarter establishment, civilian violence,...

It is commonly assumed that there is much less secrecy in the United States than in its allies across the Atlantic. This paper sets out to substantiate this thesis by means of a comparison between Norway and the US. The Freedom of Information Act and the Executive Order on classification are...

The role of military research and development in the arms race and the role of universities in promoting military R&D have been described in many previous studies. This article describes how two universities (in Norway and New Zealand) took the further step of getting involved in servicing a...