Drawing upon two alternative versions of the institutional explanation for the democratic peace, we suggest competing hypotheses about the relationship between democratic political institutions and the length of dispute participation. One set of hypotheses originates in the argument that because...

In this article, we reconsider the rarity of the Long Peace in the light of a probability model that targets the collective experience of major powers. Our examination shows that consecutive periods of peace equal to the forty-two years of the so-called Long Peace are not uncommon over the past...

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...

Broad analytic assessments of research areas can be invaluable for scholars because they can inform the ongoing feedback process between theory and research that is at the heart of scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, Simowitz's (1998) evaluation of diffusion analyses of conflict has several...

A large amount of recent research points to the importance of domestic political institutions in shaping foreign policy, most of it turning on the distinction between democratic and nondemocratic regimes. However, fundamental characteristics differentiate regime types beyond the distinction...

Most wars do not expand beyond the initial two participants. Why is this so? We argue that wars remain small because initiators select as targets states that they believe will not receive third-party help and that they can defeat without such help. Drawing on the idea of selection effect, a...

One of the axioms of political analysis is that office-holders desire to continue to hold office and behave accordingly. A key implication of this view is that if the policies chosen by leaders are selected because leaders believe the policies will enhance their position, then the wars we see in...

An examination of the alliance choices of democratic states between 1920 and 1939 and between 1946 and 1965 is undertaken to answer the question, do democracies have a tendency to ally with each other more than they ought to according to probability? The analysis of the data indicates that...