Power Transitions as a Cause of War

Bibliographic Data

ID6283405
AuthorsHenk Houweling (University of Amsterdam), Jan G Siccama (Netherlands Institute of International Relations, The Hague)
Year1988
Volume32
Issue1
Pages87-102
Publication date1988-03-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Conflict Resolution (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-0027 • E-ISSN: 1552-8766
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0022002788032001004
OpenAlexW2018816462
LanguageEN
Citations received63
References cited6

In contradiction to balance-of-power thinking, in their book The War Ledger, Organski and Kugler claim to have proven that major war is caused by the overtaking of the dominant nation through the challenging major power(s). This regularity would still be valid in the nuclear era: According to Organski, nuclear weapons have no effect on deterring war. However, very serious objections may be raised against Organski and Kugler's test procedure. For this reason, we have replicated Organski and Kugler's analysis with a different data-set (collected by Doran and Parsons) and a more appropriate test procedure. The results show that the power transition hypothesis cannot be rejected (significance level, 5%). This result is obtained not only for the “top dogs” (the three or four strongest nations), but also for the complete subset of major powers. This latter result is different from Organski and Kugler's finding that power overtaking is significantly related to war outbreaks between contenders, but not in dyads encompassing the complete class of major powers

Contradiction · Economics · Epistemology · Nuclear weapon · Overtaking · Political science · Power (physics · Engineering · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · History · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Philosophy · Political Conflict and Governance

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