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...

A continuous-outcome expected utility model is presented that generalizes the expected utility theory of Bueno de Mesquita. An examination of the more general model uncovers several unstated assumptions within and produces new conclusions from, while supporting the basic logic of, the expected...

This article considers the effects of arms races on the occurrence of wars. Existing evidence on the link between arms races and wars suggests that arms races do not necessarily cause wars, but that some arms races end in war and others do not. Why? This article proposes an answer to this...

Neorealists argue that states may refuse mutually profitable trade because of concern about “relative gains.†If one state profits more than another, the latter may fear the former will use its advantage to dominate it. However, the relative gains argument ignores states' ability to...

This article presents and tests two arguments about how the democratic institutions of the United States influence arms control bargaining. Principal-agent models of elections with retrospective voters form the basis of a formal model linking elections and arms control. It implies that the...

Alliances are not perfectly credible. Although alliances raise the probability of intervention into war, many allies do not honor their promise in wartime. A formal model of alliances as signals of intentions to explore the credibility of alliances is presented. One state threatens another. A...

This report describes a dataset on compliance with the laws of war in 20th century interstate wars. We introduce the dataset, discuss sources, and explain the coding schemes. The unit is a directed warring dyad in a given war for one of nine issues. We collect five dimensions of compliance,...

A common argument is that international trade prevents conflict because the possible loss of trade reduces the willingness of both sides to fight. I examine the logic of this argument in the light of game theoretic models of conflict. In such models, crises are contests of relative resolve....