James Lee Ray
Biographic Data
| ID | 250883 |
|---|---|
| NAME | James Lee Ray |
| GIVEN NAMES | James Lee |
| FAMILY NAME | Ray |
| SIGNATURE | RAY J L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vanderbilt University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 43 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 574 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 43 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1973 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
Democratic peace versus contractualism
If contractualism causes both democracy and peace, the correlation between democracy and peace is spurious. But the definition of contractualism is sufficiently unclear as to create doubts that it has such an impact. In addition, if democracy has an impact on contractualism, then, even with an otherwise perfectly specified model, controlling for contractualism will bias estimates of the effect of democracy on peace. International trade involves c…
Presidential political ambition and US foreign conflict behavior, 1816–2010
How do term limits affect international conflict behavior? We revisit this question using new quarter-year-level data on presidential political ambition in the US from 1816 to 2010. Multi-country research finds that the re-election motive decreases the likelihood of conflict initiation. We argue that there are good reasons to expect that the US is different. We find that politically ambitious US presidents are more likely to initiate internationa…
Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War
War on Democratic Peace: War on Democratic Peace
Gartzke and Weisiger emphasize the pacifying impact of regime similarity. But the logic of their argument makes it seem unlikely that shared autocracy and democracy have equal pacifying impacts, because autocracies are so much more diverse. Regime similarity is in any case a problematic control variable. Since joint democracy and regime similarity are related by definition, any confounding impact regime similarity appears to have is produced in p…
Ally provocateur: Why allies do not always behave
The primary purpose of many alliances is to deter attacks on members of the alliance by potentially antagonistic states. Yet some alliances can increase the probability of conflict that may be initiated by alliance members. Cognizant of that possibility, states that wish to sustain peace may nevertheless intentionally form alliance commitments with revisionist leaders of other states. Faced with the partially conflicting goals of deterring antago…
Historical Analogies, Military Surges, (and Economic Crises): Who Should be Consulted
The economics profession both sanctioned and rationalized a business model of society which supported a minimally supervised rule of markets. As a consequence, the failure of markets has marginalized economics itself. It is left on the sidelines as politicians try to salvage something from the breakdown of the market order. Robert Skidelsky, 2009 When I was in college, I majored in political science. But if I were going through college today, I d…
J. David Singer
J. David Singer, a globally recognized scholar of international politics, died Monday, December 28, 2009, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was involved in an auto accident on September 22 and had been hospitalized since. At the time of his death, Singer was Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, where he'd been on the faculty from 1958 until retiring in 2002. He was 84 years old
Power Concentration and Interstate Conflict: Is There a Connection
Singer et al. (1972) hypothesized that the distribution of military—industrial capabilities among the major powers, as reflected in an index referred to as CON, would have an impact on the incidence of war for those states. Subsequent research on the possible connection between CON and interstate conflict has continued for almost four decades. A recent book declares that CON is the single most potent predictor of interstate conflict. However, the…
Constructing Multivariate Analyses (of Dangerous Dyads)
Most multivariate models aimed at evaluating the impact of democracy on interstate conflict contain a set of control variables sufficiently large to have a confusing impact. Partly for that reason, the potentially confounding impacts of such variables as wealth, political stability, and political similarity on the relationship of democracy to conflict have still not been evaluated in a definitive manner. In other cases, multivariate models contai…
Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization
Journal Article Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization Get access Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization by Jon C. Pevehouse. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 262 pp. Cloth, $75.00; paper, $29.99. James Lee Ray James Lee Ray Vanderbilt University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 120, Issue 4, Winter 2005, Page…
Extending the Democratic Peace: An Introduction to the Ideas, Strategies and Actions That Can Help End War
Symposium on Replication in International Studies Research
The following symposium tackles an important debate in the field of international studies research and in social science research more broadly. Originating as presentations at the 2002 International Studies Association meetings in New Orleans, the following set of papers examines issues concerning the potential replication of research results from a number of different conceptual and technical perspectives. It also spans an array of journals and …
Explaining Interstate Conflict and War: What Should Be Controlled for
Most multivariate models designed by analysts of intemational conflict focus on one key explanatory factor and include several control variables. There are prominent norms or customs in the subfield of international politics regarding the construction of multivariate models and the selection of control variables. Several of these norms or customs may make the results of multivariate analyses confusing and difficult to interpret. Analysts typicall…
Does Interstate War Have A Future
Interstate wars are part of a process of "bargaining" beriveen and among nation-stales that also involves voluntary and forced migrations, as well as the definition and re-drawing of boundaries. Europe has undergone such a thorough process of this kind in recent centuries that interstate wars may not occur there in the future. Territorial disputes and wars also seem unlikely in Narth America. Even Latin America may have enough states with definit…
Democracy and Peace: Then and Now
(2001). Democracy and Peace: Then and Now. The International History Review: Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 784-798
Integrating Levels of Analysis in World Politics
`Levels of analysis' problems can involve issues regarding (1) the relative potency of different categories of explanatory factors, (2) the relationship between analyses focusing on different units of analysis or (3) the relationship between assumptions about individual social entities and hypotheses regarding interactions among those entities. An analysis of the manner in which economists have dealt with levels of analysis issues and recent deve…
R. J. Rummel's Understanding Conflict and War: An Overlooked Classic
R.J. Rummel's five volume work Understanding Conflict and War is an ambitious, comprehensive theoretical approach to international as well as domestic conflict. It provides a substantial theoretical as well as epistemological basis for the democratic peace proposition, which has received a lot of attention in recent years. Yet most writers in the field seem unaware of the roots of that proposition in this 5 volume work. The democratic peace propo…
Does Democracy Cause Peace
The idea that democratic states have not fought and are not likely to fight interstate wars against each other runs counter to the realist and neorealist theoretical traditions that have dominated the field of international politics. Since the mid-1970s, the generation of new data and the development of superior analytical techniques have enabled evaluators of the idea to generate impressive empirical evidence in favor of the democratic peace pro…
A post‐mortem on the predictions: Criteria, complaints, and compliments
Rational choice, or expected utility models have garnered considerable skepticism in many quarters in recent years. Much of that skepticism is deserved. However, the model on which the forecasts in this collection are based is different from many of its competitors in ways which address quite directly the shortcomings that have generated most of the skepticism. Attempts to apply this model can be evaluated according to several criteria, such as t…
New Tests of the Democratic Peace: Controlling for Economic Interdependence, 1950-85
Maoz and Russett (1993) reported that democratic states after World War II were unlikely to engage in militarized disputes with one another, but their continuous measure of joint democracy is problematic. It can decrease if one of a pair of states becomes more democratic, even if the political regime of the other does not change. Thus, results using this index are difficult to interpret. In this study we estimate the likelihood of dyadic conflict…
The Democratic Path to Peace
Activities and Appointments
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Movement
The Future as Arbiter of Theoretical Controversies: Predictions, Explanations and the End of the Cold War
Some analysts assert that a failure by the discipline of international relations to predict the end of the Cold War reinforces their conviction that predominant theories as well as systematic empirical analyses of international politics have proved fruitless. Accurate predictions are an important product of useful theory, partly because predictions cannot be modified in order to accommodate the events upon which they focus, since the outcomes to …
Democracy and international conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition
In Democracy and International Conflict James Lee Ray defends the idea, so optimistically advanced by diplomats in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise and so hotly debated by international relations scholars, that democratic states do not initiate war against one another and therefore offer an avenue to universal peace. Arguing that advocates of the democratic peace proposition have not adequately evaluated the impact of regime transition on de…
New Tests of the Democratic Peace: Controlling for Economic Interdependence, 1950-85
Maoz and Russett (1993) reported that democratic states after World War II were unlikely to engage in militarized disputes with one another, but their continuous measure of joint democracy is problematic. It can decrease if one of a pair of states becomes more democratic, even if the political regime of the other does not change. Thus, results using this index are difficult to interpret. In this study we estimate the likelihood of dyadic conflict…
Does Democracy Cause Peace
The idea that democratic states have not fought and are not likely to fight interstate wars against each other runs counter to the realist and neorealist theoretical traditions that have dominated the field of international politics. Since the mid-1970s, the generation of new data and the development of superior analytical techniques have enabled evaluators of the idea to generate impressive empirical evidence in favor of the democratic peace pro…
Explaining Interstate Conflict and War: What Should Be Controlled for
Most multivariate models designed by analysts of intemational conflict focus on one key explanatory factor and include several control variables. There are prominent norms or customs in the subfield of international politics regarding the construction of multivariate models and the selection of control variables. Several of these norms or customs may make the results of multivariate analyses confusing and difficult to interpret. Analysts typicall…
Wars between democracies: Rare, or nonexistent
It is often asserted that democratic states never fight wars against each other, but there is a rather lengthy list of exceptions to that rule that are consistently or prominently mentioned in the literature on the democratic peace phenomenon. The controversy regarding whether democratic states never, or only rarely fight wears against each other is unlikely to move in the direction of satisfactory resolution unless an attempt is made to evaluate…
The abolition of slavery and the end of international war
Slavery and war have both historically been considered inevitable consequences of human nature. Yet slavery has been abolished, and moral progress may have contributed to slavery's disappearance. Both realists and Marxists are skeptical about the impact of ethical constraints on political decisions, while idealists as well as at least some regime analysts emphasize the role of those constraints. However, elements of all of these approaches suppor…
Constructing Multivariate Analyses (of Dangerous Dyads)
Most multivariate models aimed at evaluating the impact of democracy on interstate conflict contain a set of control variables sufficiently large to have a confusing impact. Partly for that reason, the potentially confounding impacts of such variables as wealth, political stability, and political similarity on the relationship of democracy to conflict have still not been evaluated in a definitive manner. In other cases, multivariate models contai…
Measuring the Concentration of Power in the International System
The purpose of this paper is to examine some earlier efforts to measure the inequality of distribution within several different substantive contexts and to see how appropriate these different measures might be if they were applied to the distribution of 'power potential' in the international system or any of its subsystems. We discuss several measures which we find would not be appropriate. We then present a measure which we find better suited fo…
Beginners and Winners: The Fate of Initiators of Interstate Wars Involving Great Powers Since 1495
All interstate wars involving Great Powers from 1495 to 1991 are analyzed in order to investigate a controversy about the success rate of war initiators and factors that might have an impact on that success rate. We find that the initiators of wars involving Great Powers won only slightly more than half the time in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, whereas they have been about twice as likely to win as targets in the 19th and 20th centuries. Th…
The Future as Arbiter of Theoretical Controversies: Predictions, Explanations and the End of the Cold War
Some analysts assert that a failure by the discipline of international relations to predict the end of the Cold War reinforces their conviction that predominant theories as well as systematic empirical analyses of international politics have proved fruitless. Accurate predictions are an important product of useful theory, partly because predictions cannot be modified in order to accommodate the events upon which they focus, since the outcomes to …
The Democratic Path to Peace
Democracy and international conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition
In Democracy and International Conflict James Lee Ray defends the idea, so optimistically advanced by diplomats in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise and so hotly debated by international relations scholars, that democratic states do not initiate war against one another and therefore offer an avenue to universal peace. Arguing that advocates of the democratic peace proposition have not adequately evaluated the impact of regime transition on de…
Symposium on Replication in International Studies Research
The following symposium tackles an important debate in the field of international studies research and in social science research more broadly. Originating as presentations at the 2002 International Studies Association meetings in New Orleans, the following set of papers examines issues concerning the potential replication of research results from a number of different conceptual and technical perspectives. It also spans an array of journals and …
Integrating Levels of Analysis in World Politics
`Levels of analysis' problems can involve issues regarding (1) the relative potency of different categories of explanatory factors, (2) the relationship between analyses focusing on different units of analysis or (3) the relationship between assumptions about individual social entities and hypotheses regarding interactions among those entities. An analysis of the manner in which economists have dealt with levels of analysis issues and recent deve…
A Generalized Index of Concentration
A generalized nth power index of concentration is defined; for n = 1 it yields the entropy-based "relative redundancy, " and for n = 2 it yields the Ray and Singer (1973) concentration coefficient. Relations are established with a dozen other indices of concentration, diversity, fragmentation, differentiation, and inequality used in social science literature. Explicit conversion formulas are given for these often apparently unrelated indices. For…
Dependency and Economic Growth in Latin America
Journal Article Dependency and Economic Growth in Latin America Get access James Lee Ray, James Lee Ray University of New Mexico Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Thomas Webster Thomas Webster University of New Mexico Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Quarterly, Volume 22, Issue 3, September 1978, Pages 409–434, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600322 Publ…
Global Trends, State-Specific Factors and Regime Transitions, 1825-1993
If democratic states are significantly less conflict prone in their relationships with each other than are pairs of states involving at least one autocratic regime, then global trends in regime transitions have important implications for international politics. Analysts of international politics, then, might fruitfully pay increased attention to such global trends. Predominant approaches to regime transitions emphasize differences between regime …
Power disparities and paradoxical conflict outcomes∗
The “paradox of unrealized power” arises when weaker states defeat more powerful states in military conflicts. Such conflict outcomes can be accounted for by stressing the lack of will or skill on the part of the apparently more powerful states, or by focusing on the extent to which power resources effective within some polity‐contingency frameworks are relatively useless in others. The fact that the former type of explanation can be unfalsifiabl…
War on Democratic Peace: War on Democratic Peace
Gartzke and Weisiger emphasize the pacifying impact of regime similarity. But the logic of their argument makes it seem unlikely that shared autocracy and democracy have equal pacifying impacts, because autocracies are so much more diverse. Regime similarity is in any case a problematic control variable. Since joint democracy and regime similarity are related by definition, any confounding impact regime similarity appears to have is produced in p…
Ally provocateur: Why allies do not always behave
The primary purpose of many alliances is to deter attacks on members of the alliance by potentially antagonistic states. Yet some alliances can increase the probability of conflict that may be initiated by alliance members. Cognizant of that possibility, states that wish to sustain peace may nevertheless intentionally form alliance commitments with revisionist leaders of other states. Faced with the partially conflicting goals of deterring antago…
Raymond Cohen on pacific unions: A response and a reply
Raymond Cohen ends his ‘reappraisal’ of the democratic-peace proposition by calling it ‘a formula that looks to be the product of both conceptual imprecision and wishful thinking’. Fortunately for the proposition, however, Professor Cohen's glass house is too fragile for him to be safe in throwing stones. Although he raises important issues, the substance of his critique violates some elementary rules of evidence and logic required for any schola…
Understanding Rummel
Democratic peace versus contractualism
If contractualism causes both democracy and peace, the correlation between democracy and peace is spurious. But the definition of contractualism is sufficiently unclear as to create doubts that it has such an impact. In addition, if democracy has an impact on contractualism, then, even with an otherwise perfectly specified model, controlling for contractualism will bias estimates of the effect of democracy on peace. International trade involves c…
Power Concentration and Interstate Conflict: Is There a Connection
Singer et al. (1972) hypothesized that the distribution of military—industrial capabilities among the major powers, as reflected in an index referred to as CON, would have an impact on the incidence of war for those states. Subsequent research on the possible connection between CON and interstate conflict has continued for almost four decades. A recent book declares that CON is the single most potent predictor of interstate conflict. However, the…
Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization
Journal Article Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization Get access Democracy from Above: Regional Organizations and Democratization by Jon C. Pevehouse. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2005. 262 pp. Cloth, $75.00; paper, $29.99. James Lee Ray James Lee Ray Vanderbilt University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 120, Issue 4, Winter 2005, Page…
The Future of American-Israeli Relations: A Parting of the Ways
Measuring the Concentration of Power in the International System
The purpose of this paper is to examine some earlier efforts to measure the inequality of distribution within several different substantive contexts and to see how appropriate these different measures might be if they were applied to the distribution of 'power potential' in the international system or any of its subsystems. We discuss several measures which we find would not be appropriate. We then present a measure which we find better suited fo…
A Generalized Index of Concentration
A generalized nth power index of concentration is defined; for n = 1 it yields the entropy-based "relative redundancy, " and for n = 2 it yields the Ray and Singer (1973) concentration coefficient. Relations are established with a dozen other indices of concentration, diversity, fragmentation, differentiation, and inequality used in social science literature. Explicit conversion formulas are given for these often apparently unrelated indices. For…
Dependency and Economic Growth in Latin America
Journal Article Dependency and Economic Growth in Latin America Get access James Lee Ray, James Lee Ray University of New Mexico Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Thomas Webster Thomas Webster University of New Mexico Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar International Studies Quarterly, Volume 22, Issue 3, September 1978, Pages 409–434, https://doi.org/10.2307/2600322 Publ…
Structural Disparities in Latin America and Eastern Europe, 1950—1970
This paper reports the results of several comparisons of operationally defined structural characteristics of the US - Latin American and the Soviet - East European subsystems during the years 1950-1970. Relationships between (1) the distribution of power capabilities and the distribution of diplomatic importance and (2) the distribution of power capabilities and the pattern of international trade are examined in both subsystems. The authors argue…
Understanding Rummel
Designing Research on the World-System
World-system analysis can bring several benefits to the study of international and comparative politics, including an increased appreciation of the important relationship between large-scale comparative analyses and the study of single cases, as well as the basis for vigorous, healthy debate between scholars with a radical perspective and their critics in the academic community. But it is not clear to this writer that Chase-Dunn et al.'s discussi…
Pan Americanism
The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities. Mancur Olson
Power disparities and paradoxical conflict outcomes∗
The “paradox of unrealized power” arises when weaker states defeat more powerful states in military conflicts. Such conflict outcomes can be accounted for by stressing the lack of will or skill on the part of the apparently more powerful states, or by focusing on the extent to which power resources effective within some polity‐contingency frameworks are relatively useless in others. The fact that the former type of explanation can be unfalsifiabl…
U.S.-CENTRAL American Relations: Dilemmas, Prophets, and Solutions
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The Future of American-Israeli Relations: A Parting of the Ways
Power in World Politics
Explores power relationships in world politics, focusing on what power is and what it is not, on the ways in which power has been assessed, and on the major lessons for international politics that can be gleaned through an analysis of power.
The abolition of slavery and the end of international war
Slavery and war have both historically been considered inevitable consequences of human nature. Yet slavery has been abolished, and moral progress may have contributed to slavery's disappearance. Both realists and Marxists are skeptical about the impact of ethical constraints on political decisions, while idealists as well as at least some regime analysts emphasize the role of those constraints. However, elements of all of these approaches suppor…
Wars between democracies: Rare, or nonexistent
It is often asserted that democratic states never fight wars against each other, but there is a rather lengthy list of exceptions to that rule that are consistently or prominently mentioned in the literature on the democratic peace phenomenon. The controversy regarding whether democratic states never, or only rarely fight wears against each other is unlikely to move in the direction of satisfactory resolution unless an attempt is made to evaluate…
Beginners and Winners: The Fate of Initiators of Interstate Wars Involving Great Powers Since 1495
All interstate wars involving Great Powers from 1495 to 1991 are analyzed in order to investigate a controversy about the success rate of war initiators and factors that might have an impact on that success rate. We find that the initiators of wars involving Great Powers won only slightly more than half the time in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, whereas they have been about twice as likely to win as targets in the 19th and 20th centuries. Th…
Democracy and international conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition
In Democracy and International Conflict James Lee Ray defends the idea, so optimistically advanced by diplomats in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise and so hotly debated by international relations scholars, that democratic states do not initiate war against one another and therefore offer an avenue to universal peace. Arguing that advocates of the democratic peace proposition have not adequately evaluated the impact of regime transition on de…
Raymond Cohen on pacific unions: A response and a reply
Raymond Cohen ends his ‘reappraisal’ of the democratic-peace proposition by calling it ‘a formula that looks to be the product of both conceptual imprecision and wishful thinking’. Fortunately for the proposition, however, Professor Cohen's glass house is too fragile for him to be safe in throwing stones. Although he raises important issues, the substance of his critique violates some elementary rules of evidence and logic required for any schola…
Broken Covenant: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis between the U.S. and Israel, by Moshe Arens
Global Trends, State-Specific Factors and Regime Transitions, 1825-1993
If democratic states are significantly less conflict prone in their relationships with each other than are pairs of states involving at least one autocratic regime, then global trends in regime transitions have important implications for international politics. Analysts of international politics, then, might fruitfully pay increased attention to such global trends. Predominant approaches to regime transitions emphasize differences between regime …
Activities and Appointments
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Movement
The Future as Arbiter of Theoretical Controversies: Predictions, Explanations and the End of the Cold War
Some analysts assert that a failure by the discipline of international relations to predict the end of the Cold War reinforces their conviction that predominant theories as well as systematic empirical analyses of international politics have proved fruitless. Accurate predictions are an important product of useful theory, partly because predictions cannot be modified in order to accommodate the events upon which they focus, since the outcomes to …
A post‐mortem on the predictions: Criteria, complaints, and compliments
Rational choice, or expected utility models have garnered considerable skepticism in many quarters in recent years. Much of that skepticism is deserved. However, the model on which the forecasts in this collection are based is different from many of its competitors in ways which address quite directly the shortcomings that have generated most of the skepticism. Attempts to apply this model can be evaluated according to several criteria, such as t…
New Tests of the Democratic Peace: Controlling for Economic Interdependence, 1950-85
Maoz and Russett (1993) reported that democratic states after World War II were unlikely to engage in militarized disputes with one another, but their continuous measure of joint democracy is problematic. It can decrease if one of a pair of states becomes more democratic, even if the political regime of the other does not change. Thus, results using this index are difficult to interpret. In this study we estimate the likelihood of dyadic conflict…
The Democratic Path to Peace
Political science (37 works) · Law (33 works) · Politics (30 works) · Law (28 works) · Economics (25 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (19 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (19 works) · Political economy (19 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Democracy (16 works)