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...