Karen Rasler
Biographic Data
| ID | 248520 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Karen Rasler |
| GIVEN NAMES | Karen |
| FAMILY NAME | Rasler |
| SIGNATURE | RASLER K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indiana University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 699 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Regions, Power, and Conflict: Constrained Capabilities, Hierarchy, and Rivalry
The Effects of Selective and Indiscriminate Repression on the 2013 Gezi Park Nonviolent Resistance Campaign
We investigate the differential effects of selective and indiscriminate repression on the rate of protest actions during the nonviolent resistance campaign in Gezi Park, Turkey, in 2013. After deriving theoretical expectations about how and why these forms of repression will influence protest actions, we test them with protest event data that were collected from a major local newspaper and subsequently validated through a comparison with two othe…
How Rivalries End
Examining political hot spots stretching from Egypt and Israel to North and South Korea, How Rivalries End builds an original theory from patterns in successful conflict resolutions and reveals the key factors in reducing tensions and building long-term peace between adversaries
Borders, Rivalry, Democracy, and Conflict in the European Region, 1816-1994
Should peace be attributed mainly to democracy or to some intervening variable that influences both democracy and conflict? A second, perhaps related question is whether or to what extent democratization is driven by external drivers of threat. If regime type helps explain external conflict, does external conflict also help explain regime type? By examining the relationships among strategic rivalry, unstable boundaries, democracy, and interstate …
Globalization and North—South Inequality, 1870—2000: A Factor for Convergence, Divergence or Both
Analysts continue to debate the nature of the relationship between globalization and global inequality between states, with some arguing that globalization increases inequality, others saying that the relationship is negative, and still others suggesting that the relationship varies over time. There is actually more overlap in these positions than is apparent — an element underlined by our own argument that globalization’s effects can be both pos…
Looking for Waves of Terrorism1
This article uses ITERATE data on international terrorism 1968–2004 to test Rapoport's wave-like behavior of modern terrorism. While the interpretation encompasses a much longer period of time than can be tested empirically with readily available data, it is possible to examine the past 3–4 decades of terrorist activity for traces of the coming and going of old and new groups. The article codes the type of group (anarchists, nationalists, leftist…
Strategic Rivalries in World Politics: Position, Space and Conflict Escalation
International conflict is neither random nor inexplicable. It is highly structured by antagonisms between a relatively small set of states that regard each other as rivals. Examining the 173 strategic rivalries in operation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, this book identifies the differences rivalries make in the probability of conflict escalation and analyzes how they interact with serial crises, arms races, alliances and capa…
Strategic Rivalries in World Politics: Position, Space and Conflict Escalation
Karen Rasler
How many causal paths lead to suicide terrorism? Unfortunately, too many to produce precise predictions about when and where suicide terrorism is likely to occur. Nonetheless, Mia Bloom's, Diego Gambetta's, and Robert Pape's books do an excellent job of addressing this phenomenon with sophisticated theories and empirical findings. While Pape presents a coherent, single theoretical framework for explaining suicide terrorism, Bloom and the contribu…
Contested Territory, Strategic Rivalries, and Conflict Escalation
After bringing together independent information on contested territory, rivalries, and conflict escalation (militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) and war), we examine the timing of the temporal ordering of these three processes. Contrary to conventional expectations, we find the contested territory-militarized dispute-rivalry ordering to be rare. Rivalries and contested territory often begin at the same time. Next, after setting up a unified mod…
War, Trade, and the Mediation of Systemic Leadership
Processes of war, trade, and systemic leadership are often examined in isolation from one another. Sometimes, two of the three are studied together. Does war interrupt trade? Does systemic leadership reduce the level of warfare? Does systemic leadership lead to freer trade? While these are familiar questions, our contention is that all three processes are interrelated at the systemic level. War and trade are dependent upon systemic leadership. Tr…
Puzzles of the Democratic Peace: Theory, Geopolitics and the Transformation of World Politics (Evolutionary Processes in World Politics)
The Democratic Peace and a Sequential, Reciprocal, Causal Arrow Hypothesis
One of the democratic peace puzzles is the question of whether and to what extent the democracy → peace relationship underestimates the possibility that peace precedes democracy: the reversed causal arrow hypothesis. From a war making–state making perspective, democratization needs to be viewed as a partial function of external threat and domestic power concentration. All three variables are found to be interrelated as predicted and related in tu…
The Monadic Democratic Puzzle and an ‘End of History' Partial Solution
Structural Change and Democratization in the Major Power Subsystem: Some Systemic Puzzles of the Democratic Peace
Malign autocracies and major power warfare: Evil, tragedy, and international relations theory
Rivalries and the Democratic Peace in the Major Power Subsystem
Strategic rivalry dyads facilitate conflict, while democratic dyads constrain conflict. Which effect is more powerful? Examining conflict (militarized disputes and war) in the major power subsystem (1816-1992), both types of relationships are statistically significant predictors of conflict, and both employed together are more powerful than either used separately. Of the two, rivalry information provides the more powerful predictor, but this expl…
Explaining Rivalry Escalation to War: Space, Position, and Contiguity in the Major Power Subsystem
Vasquez's (1996) rivalry escalation theory stressed territorial disputes as the principal focus for a two-path explanation of war. Neighbors fight over adjacent space and non-neighbors sometimes join ongoing wars between neighbors. But major powers are also much concerned with positional issues. Expanding the war motivation focus to encompass both spatial and positional issues facilitates the development of a new, more elaborate theory from which…
Shocks, Expectancy Revision, and the De-escalation of Protracted Conflicts: The Israeli-Palestinian Case
This article introduces an evolutionary framework for the de-escalation of protracted conflicts. Key variables are political shocks, expectancy revision, policy entrepreneurship, third-party pressure, and reciprocity. The model is tested in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian case, 1979-98. A quantitative assessment is made with the use of Middle East KEDS data as well as a qualitative assessment of the intervening impact of shocks on the expe…
Predatory Initiators and Changing Landscapes for Warfare
The Gartner-Siverson war initiation model's focus on selection bias and initiators selecting vulnerable targets is attractive, but it demands further specification. A predictive model of war initiations might not retain statistical significance after 1945. The authors examine 16 possibly related variables and develop a three-variable initiation model, adding information on target regime type and war duration to the original lone initiator-lone ta…
War, the Military Revolution(s) Controversy, and Army Expansion: A Test of Two Explanations of Historical Influences on European State Making
One school of thought on European state making argues that discontinuous change in weapons and tactics led to the expansion of armies, and, therefore, states. Others argue that decision makers expanded state organizations to make war for its own sake, not simply because the tools of war changed. Although this controversy is not easily resolved, the empirical evidence indicates that major expansions in army sizes over the past 500 years were almos…
Concessions, Repression, and Political Protest in the Iranian Revolution
L'A. cherche a comprendre en quoi les differentes politiques tantot de compromis et tantot de repression du Shah, entre 1977 et 1978 ont provoque l'escalade revolutionnaire en Iran. Il montre que la repression a eu un effet negatif a court-terme vis-a-vis de la protestation. Du fait de la repression, celle-ci apparait comme presentant un cout. En revanche sur le long terme, la repression quand elle est jugee illegitime contribue a discrediter le …
The Great Powers and Global Struggle, 1490-1990
In The Great Powers and Global Struggle Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson focus on two themes. They explore the rise and fall as well as the relative decline of major world powers over the past five hundred years, and they examine how these processes have set the stage for the outbreak of global war. Their interdisciplinary approach encompasses political science, economics, sociology, geography, and history. The most significant wars occur …
Technological Innovation, Capability Positional Shifts, and Systemic War
Based on a model linking ascent prerequisites, relative decline, long-wave dynamics, and systemic war, the relationships among the pace of technological innovation, relative economic position, and naval capability are examined for Britain (1780-1913) and the United States (1870-1980). In both cases, albeit subject to different lag structures, the pace of technological innovation and relative economic position are interrelated and predict to naval…
Relative Decline and the Overconsumption-Underinvestment Hypothesis
Eventually, the economies of preeminent states tend to decline relative to the capability positions of rivals and in terms of their own history of growth. One of the explanations put forward to account for this phenomenon is the idea that rich and powerful societies spend too much and, in the process, undercut the material foundations of their own success. We trace the development of this theme from ancient Greece through the 14th century and Ibn…
Concessions, Repression, and Political Protest in the Iranian Revolution
L'A. cherche a comprendre en quoi les differentes politiques tantot de compromis et tantot de repression du Shah, entre 1977 et 1978 ont provoque l'escalade revolutionnaire en Iran. Il montre que la repression a eu un effet negatif a court-terme vis-a-vis de la protestation. Du fait de la repression, celle-ci apparait comme presentant un cout. En revanche sur le long terme, la repression quand elle est jugee illegitime contribue a discrediter le …
War Making and State Making: Governmental Expenditures, Tax Revenues, and Global Wars
Addressing the disputed relationship between war and the expansion of governmental expenditures and revenues, Box-Tiao intervention models are applied to a number of British (1700-1980), United States (1792-1980), French (1815-1979), and Japanese (1878-1980) spending and taxation series. Distinguishing between global and interstate wars, the more intensive and extensive bouts of warfare (global wars) tend to bring about abrupt, permanent impacts …
Global Wars, Public Debts, and the Long Cycle
The explanation of the rise and fall of the world system's leading powers in terms of uneven economic development tends to overlook the role of the creation and management of public credit and national debts. Prior to 1815, the Netherlands and Great Britain owed a significant proportion of their respective victories over the larger and wealthier states of Spain and France to the development of competitive financial capabilities. Winning, however,…
Contested Territory, Strategic Rivalries, and Conflict Escalation
After bringing together independent information on contested territory, rivalries, and conflict escalation (militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) and war), we examine the timing of the temporal ordering of these three processes. Contrary to conventional expectations, we find the contested territory-militarized dispute-rivalry ordering to be rare. Rivalries and contested territory often begin at the same time. Next, after setting up a unified mod…
War, Accommodation, and Violence in the United States, 1890-1970
War, postwar demobilization, and economic depression are national crises that ultimately test the state's capacity to respond simultaneously to internal and external challenges. This analysis probes the nexus between crises and domestic violence, investigating how this relationship is mediated by the influence of two variables: the severity of crisis and the presence or absence of government accommodation. Box-Tiao impact assessment models are us…
The Democratic Peace and a Sequential, Reciprocal, Causal Arrow Hypothesis
One of the democratic peace puzzles is the question of whether and to what extent the democracy → peace relationship underestimates the possibility that peace precedes democracy: the reversed causal arrow hypothesis. From a war making–state making perspective, democratization needs to be viewed as a partial function of external threat and domestic power concentration. All three variables are found to be interrelated as predicted and related in tu…
Explaining Rivalry Escalation to War: Space, Position, and Contiguity in the Major Power Subsystem
Vasquez's (1996) rivalry escalation theory stressed territorial disputes as the principal focus for a two-path explanation of war. Neighbors fight over adjacent space and non-neighbors sometimes join ongoing wars between neighbors. But major powers are also much concerned with positional issues. Expanding the war motivation focus to encompass both spatial and positional issues facilitates the development of a new, more elaborate theory from which…
War and the Economic Growth of Major Powers
As part of an ongoing analysis of the expansion of the international system's major powers, this study examines the net impact of warfare on the economic growth of five of the system's leading state actors since 1700. A review of earlier efforts suggests the technical utility of Box-Tiao intervention techniques. It is also important to distinguish between the historical impacts of global and interstate wars. As hypothesized, the impact of war on …
The Great Powers and Global Struggle, 1490-1990
In The Great Powers and Global Struggle Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson focus on two themes. They explore the rise and fall as well as the relative decline of major world powers over the past five hundred years, and they examine how these processes have set the stage for the outbreak of global war. Their interdisciplinary approach encompasses political science, economics, sociology, geography, and history. The most significant wars occur …
Defense Burdens, Capital Formation, and Economic Growth: The Systemic Leader Case
One of the factors thought to explain the relative decline of system leaders is the high military overhead costs assumed by leaders. High defense burdens, however, may be achieved at the expense of investment, capital formation, and future economic growth. By evading the high defense burdens, rivals and competitors are able to improve their relative economic positions while the system leader's economic position is decaying. Focusing on Smith's (1…
Predatory Initiators and Changing Landscapes for Warfare
The Gartner-Siverson war initiation model's focus on selection bias and initiators selecting vulnerable targets is attractive, but it demands further specification. A predictive model of war initiations might not retain statistical significance after 1945. The authors examine 16 possibly related variables and develop a three-variable initiation model, adding information on target regime type and war duration to the original lone initiator-lone ta…
Foreign Policy Makers, Personality Attributes, and Interviews: A Note on Reliability Problems
Content analytic procedures for operationalizing 6 personality attributes (Hermann, 1974, 1980) are applied to 92 (1950–1978) interviews with 10 heads of state and government. Focusing on data reliability, a test of temporal consistency is examined. The outcome suggests that the trait scores are not sufficiently consistent across time to be considered highly reliable. Two possible sources of trait score variance (data source and situation) are co…
War and Systemic Capability Reconcentration
Historical-structural analyses of world politics tend to emphasize the theoretical significance of a handful of wars that over the past several hundred years have demarcated important changes in systemic structure. However, analysts do not fully agree on which wars have constituted the benchmarks of structural change and transition. Nor do they agree completely on the definitional criteria to be employed in identifying such wars. In addressing th…
Globalization and North—South Inequality, 1870—2000: A Factor for Convergence, Divergence or Both
Analysts continue to debate the nature of the relationship between globalization and global inequality between states, with some arguing that globalization increases inequality, others saying that the relationship is negative, and still others suggesting that the relationship varies over time. There is actually more overlap in these positions than is apparent — an element underlined by our own argument that globalization’s effects can be both pos…
War, the Military Revolution(s) Controversy, and Army Expansion: A Test of Two Explanations of Historical Influences on European State Making
One school of thought on European state making argues that discontinuous change in weapons and tactics led to the expansion of armies, and, therefore, states. Others argue that decision makers expanded state organizations to make war for its own sake, not simply because the tools of war changed. Although this controversy is not easily resolved, the empirical evidence indicates that major expansions in army sizes over the past 500 years were almos…
Internationalized Civil War: A Dynamic Analysis of the Syrian Intervention in Lebanon
This study involves a longitudinal investigation of the short-term and long-term effects of the Syrian military intervention (June 1976) on Lebanese domestic conflict. The inquiry also includes an analysis of the strategic timing of the intervention in Lebanon. Variables such as the level of Lebanese domestic conflict, social polarization, and linkages of internal-external cooperation are examined as possible precipitating factors. The study reve…
The Effects of Selective and Indiscriminate Repression on the 2013 Gezi Park Nonviolent Resistance Campaign
We investigate the differential effects of selective and indiscriminate repression on the rate of protest actions during the nonviolent resistance campaign in Gezi Park, Turkey, in 2013. After deriving theoretical expectations about how and why these forms of repression will influence protest actions, we test them with protest event data that were collected from a major local newspaper and subsequently validated through a comparison with two othe…
Borders, Rivalry, Democracy, and Conflict in the European Region, 1816-1994
Should peace be attributed mainly to democracy or to some intervening variable that influences both democracy and conflict? A second, perhaps related question is whether or to what extent democratization is driven by external drivers of threat. If regime type helps explain external conflict, does external conflict also help explain regime type? By examining the relationships among strategic rivalry, unstable boundaries, democracy, and interstate …
Looking for Waves of Terrorism1
This article uses ITERATE data on international terrorism 1968–2004 to test Rapoport's wave-like behavior of modern terrorism. While the interpretation encompasses a much longer period of time than can be tested empirically with readily available data, it is possible to examine the past 3–4 decades of terrorist activity for traces of the coming and going of old and new groups. The article codes the type of group (anarchists, nationalists, leftist…
Rivalries and the Democratic Peace in the Major Power Subsystem
Strategic rivalry dyads facilitate conflict, while democratic dyads constrain conflict. Which effect is more powerful? Examining conflict (militarized disputes and war) in the major power subsystem (1816-1992), both types of relationships are statistically significant predictors of conflict, and both employed together are more powerful than either used separately. Of the two, rivalry information provides the more powerful predictor, but this expl…
Technological Innovation, Capability Positional Shifts, and Systemic War
Based on a model linking ascent prerequisites, relative decline, long-wave dynamics, and systemic war, the relationships among the pace of technological innovation, relative economic position, and naval capability are examined for Britain (1780-1913) and the United States (1870-1980). In both cases, albeit subject to different lag structures, the pace of technological innovation and relative economic position are interrelated and predict to naval…
Relative Decline and the Overconsumption-Underinvestment Hypothesis
Eventually, the economies of preeminent states tend to decline relative to the capability positions of rivals and in terms of their own history of growth. One of the explanations put forward to account for this phenomenon is the idea that rich and powerful societies spend too much and, in the process, undercut the material foundations of their own success. We trace the development of this theme from ancient Greece through the 14th century and Ibn…
War, Trade, and the Mediation of Systemic Leadership
Processes of war, trade, and systemic leadership are often examined in isolation from one another. Sometimes, two of the three are studied together. Does war interrupt trade? Does systemic leadership reduce the level of warfare? Does systemic leadership lead to freer trade? While these are familiar questions, our contention is that all three processes are interrelated at the systemic level. War and trade are dependent upon systemic leadership. Tr…
Shocks, Expectancy Revision, and the De-escalation of Protracted Conflicts: The Israeli-Palestinian Case
This article introduces an evolutionary framework for the de-escalation of protracted conflicts. Key variables are political shocks, expectancy revision, policy entrepreneurship, third-party pressure, and reciprocity. The model is tested in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian case, 1979-98. A quantitative assessment is made with the use of Middle East KEDS data as well as a qualitative assessment of the intervening impact of shocks on the expe…
A Comparative Analysis of Monadic and Dyadic Perspectives on the 1976 Lebanese Crisis
Do monadic and dyadic approaches to the study of international crisis produce different representations of reality? This question is explored through an analysis of the 1976 Lebanese Crisis. A comparison is made between Dawisha's (1980) analysis of Syrian decisionmaking processes and an events data-based early warning indicator. The study investigates whether the quantitative shifts in the interactions among Lebanese groups correspond with what t…
Systemic interaction opportunities and war behavior∗
This paper reexamines Singer and Small's (1968) finding that the direction of the relationship between interaction opportunities and war behavior differs by century. New indicators for the independent and dependent variables are introduced and examined for three time periods (1816–1914,1919–1939, and 1946–1965) utilizing OLS/GLS techniques. At a great power level of analysis, no significant relationships emerge for the 1816–1914 period. The findi…
Foreign Policy Makers, Personality Attributes, and Interviews: A Note on Reliability Problems
Content analytic procedures for operationalizing 6 personality attributes (Hermann, 1974, 1980) are applied to 92 (1950–1978) interviews with 10 heads of state and government. Focusing on data reliability, a test of temporal consistency is examined. The outcome suggests that the trait scores are not sufficiently consistent across time to be considered highly reliable. Two possible sources of trait score variance (data source and situation) are co…
Global Wars, Public Debts, and the Long Cycle
The explanation of the rise and fall of the world system's leading powers in terms of uneven economic development tends to overlook the role of the creation and management of public credit and national debts. Prior to 1815, the Netherlands and Great Britain owed a significant proportion of their respective victories over the larger and wealthier states of Spain and France to the development of competitive financial capabilities. Winning, however,…
Internationalized Civil War: A Dynamic Analysis of the Syrian Intervention in Lebanon
This study involves a longitudinal investigation of the short-term and long-term effects of the Syrian military intervention (June 1976) on Lebanese domestic conflict. The inquiry also includes an analysis of the strategic timing of the intervention in Lebanon. Variables such as the level of Lebanese domestic conflict, social polarization, and linkages of internal-external cooperation are examined as possible precipitating factors. The study reve…
A Comparative Analysis of Monadic and Dyadic Perspectives on the 1976 Lebanese Crisis
Do monadic and dyadic approaches to the study of international crisis produce different representations of reality? This question is explored through an analysis of the 1976 Lebanese Crisis. A comparison is made between Dawisha's (1980) analysis of Syrian decisionmaking processes and an events data-based early warning indicator. The study investigates whether the quantitative shifts in the interactions among Lebanese groups correspond with what t…
War and the Economic Growth of Major Powers
As part of an ongoing analysis of the expansion of the international system's major powers, this study examines the net impact of warfare on the economic growth of five of the system's leading state actors since 1700. A review of earlier efforts suggests the technical utility of Box-Tiao intervention techniques. It is also important to distinguish between the historical impacts of global and interstate wars. As hypothesized, the impact of war on …
War Making and State Making: Governmental Expenditures, Tax Revenues, and Global Wars
Addressing the disputed relationship between war and the expansion of governmental expenditures and revenues, Box-Tiao intervention models are applied to a number of British (1700-1980), United States (1792-1980), French (1815-1979), and Japanese (1878-1980) spending and taxation series. Distinguishing between global and interstate wars, the more intensive and extensive bouts of warfare (global wars) tend to bring about abrupt, permanent impacts …
War, Accommodation, and Violence in the United States, 1890-1970
War, postwar demobilization, and economic depression are national crises that ultimately test the state's capacity to respond simultaneously to internal and external challenges. This analysis probes the nexus between crises and domestic violence, investigating how this relationship is mediated by the influence of two variables: the severity of crisis and the presence or absence of government accommodation. Box-Tiao impact assessment models are us…
Defense Burdens, Capital Formation, and Economic Growth: The Systemic Leader Case
One of the factors thought to explain the relative decline of system leaders is the high military overhead costs assumed by leaders. High defense burdens, however, may be achieved at the expense of investment, capital formation, and future economic growth. By evading the high defense burdens, rivals and competitors are able to improve their relative economic positions while the system leader's economic position is decaying. Focusing on Smith's (1…
War and Systemic Capability Reconcentration
Historical-structural analyses of world politics tend to emphasize the theoretical significance of a handful of wars that over the past several hundred years have demarcated important changes in systemic structure. However, analysts do not fully agree on which wars have constituted the benchmarks of structural change and transition. Nor do they agree completely on the definitional criteria to be employed in identifying such wars. In addressing th…
Technological Innovation, Capability Positional Shifts, and Systemic War
Based on a model linking ascent prerequisites, relative decline, long-wave dynamics, and systemic war, the relationships among the pace of technological innovation, relative economic position, and naval capability are examined for Britain (1780-1913) and the United States (1870-1980). In both cases, albeit subject to different lag structures, the pace of technological innovation and relative economic position are interrelated and predict to naval…
Relative Decline and the Overconsumption-Underinvestment Hypothesis
Eventually, the economies of preeminent states tend to decline relative to the capability positions of rivals and in terms of their own history of growth. One of the explanations put forward to account for this phenomenon is the idea that rich and powerful societies spend too much and, in the process, undercut the material foundations of their own success. We trace the development of this theme from ancient Greece through the 14th century and Ibn…
The Great Powers and Global Struggle, 1490-1990
In The Great Powers and Global Struggle Karen A. Rasler and William R. Thompson focus on two themes. They explore the rise and fall as well as the relative decline of major world powers over the past five hundred years, and they examine how these processes have set the stage for the outbreak of global war. Their interdisciplinary approach encompasses political science, economics, sociology, geography, and history. The most significant wars occur …
Concessions, Repression, and Political Protest in the Iranian Revolution
L'A. cherche a comprendre en quoi les differentes politiques tantot de compromis et tantot de repression du Shah, entre 1977 et 1978 ont provoque l'escalade revolutionnaire en Iran. Il montre que la repression a eu un effet negatif a court-terme vis-a-vis de la protestation. Du fait de la repression, celle-ci apparait comme presentant un cout. En revanche sur le long terme, la repression quand elle est jugee illegitime contribue a discrediter le …
Predatory Initiators and Changing Landscapes for Warfare
The Gartner-Siverson war initiation model's focus on selection bias and initiators selecting vulnerable targets is attractive, but it demands further specification. A predictive model of war initiations might not retain statistical significance after 1945. The authors examine 16 possibly related variables and develop a three-variable initiation model, adding information on target regime type and war duration to the original lone initiator-lone ta…
War, the Military Revolution(s) Controversy, and Army Expansion: A Test of Two Explanations of Historical Influences on European State Making
One school of thought on European state making argues that discontinuous change in weapons and tactics led to the expansion of armies, and, therefore, states. Others argue that decision makers expanded state organizations to make war for its own sake, not simply because the tools of war changed. Although this controversy is not easily resolved, the empirical evidence indicates that major expansions in army sizes over the past 500 years were almos…
Explaining Rivalry Escalation to War: Space, Position, and Contiguity in the Major Power Subsystem
Vasquez's (1996) rivalry escalation theory stressed territorial disputes as the principal focus for a two-path explanation of war. Neighbors fight over adjacent space and non-neighbors sometimes join ongoing wars between neighbors. But major powers are also much concerned with positional issues. Expanding the war motivation focus to encompass both spatial and positional issues facilitates the development of a new, more elaborate theory from which…
Shocks, Expectancy Revision, and the De-escalation of Protracted Conflicts: The Israeli-Palestinian Case
This article introduces an evolutionary framework for the de-escalation of protracted conflicts. Key variables are political shocks, expectancy revision, policy entrepreneurship, third-party pressure, and reciprocity. The model is tested in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian case, 1979-98. A quantitative assessment is made with the use of Middle East KEDS data as well as a qualitative assessment of the intervening impact of shocks on the expe…
Malign autocracies and major power warfare: Evil, tragedy, and international relations theory
Rivalries and the Democratic Peace in the Major Power Subsystem
Strategic rivalry dyads facilitate conflict, while democratic dyads constrain conflict. Which effect is more powerful? Examining conflict (militarized disputes and war) in the major power subsystem (1816-1992), both types of relationships are statistically significant predictors of conflict, and both employed together are more powerful than either used separately. Of the two, rivalry information provides the more powerful predictor, but this expl…
The Monadic Democratic Puzzle and an ‘End of History' Partial Solution
Structural Change and Democratization in the Major Power Subsystem: Some Systemic Puzzles of the Democratic Peace
The Democratic Peace and a Sequential, Reciprocal, Causal Arrow Hypothesis
One of the democratic peace puzzles is the question of whether and to what extent the democracy → peace relationship underestimates the possibility that peace precedes democracy: the reversed causal arrow hypothesis. From a war making–state making perspective, democratization needs to be viewed as a partial function of external threat and domestic power concentration. All three variables are found to be interrelated as predicted and related in tu…
War, Trade, and the Mediation of Systemic Leadership
Processes of war, trade, and systemic leadership are often examined in isolation from one another. Sometimes, two of the three are studied together. Does war interrupt trade? Does systemic leadership reduce the level of warfare? Does systemic leadership lead to freer trade? While these are familiar questions, our contention is that all three processes are interrelated at the systemic level. War and trade are dependent upon systemic leadership. Tr…
Puzzles of the Democratic Peace: Theory, Geopolitics and the Transformation of World Politics (Evolutionary Processes in World Politics)
Political science (32 works) · Economics (26 works) · Law (26 works) · Politics (23 works) · Law (19 works) · Political economy (18 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (16 works) · Sociology (16 works) · Development economics (12 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (12 works)