Recent scholarship suggests that democracies tend to fight shorter conflicts that can be easily won. This is most likely due to the accountability incentives that constrain democratic leaders. Fearing removal from office, democratic leaders will try to choose short conflicts against weaker...

This study evaluates the relationship between foreign direct investment (FDI) and interstate conflict, focusing on four prominent causal mechanisms: the declining benefits of territorial conquest, increasing preference similarity, increasing opportunity costs of violence, and improved...

We explore states’ decisions to escalate disputes over their territorial claims or settle them peacefully. We complement existing arguments by accounting for the fact that states are often simultaneously entangled in multiple territorial claims. We build on previous scholarship in...

The effects of economies of scale in government, trade openness, preference heterogeneity, and regime type are used to explain why the average size of states within the international system nearly doubled between 1816 and 1876 and then contracted over the 20th century. No one variable appears to...