Are democracies more transparent than other types of political regimes? The answer to this question is often assumed to be yes. The contestability of elections and transparency of policy-making are however, analytically distinct concepts. We investigate theoretically the willingness of...

In a two-player proactive response game the level of proactive activity and the choice of terrorist target is endogenized. The targeted government first chooses its measures to weaken the terrorists, and the terrorists then choose the type of event—normal or spectacular. Unlike previous...

How does variation in the strength of a court’s jurisdiction and enforcement affect strategic behavior by states involved in international disputes? The authors construct a formal model and identify three important ways that legal institutions can have a deleterious effect on...

Traditional international relations theory holds that states will join only those international institutions with which they generally intend to comply. Here we show when this claim might not hold. We construct a model of an authoritarian government's decision to sign the UN Convention Against...