Eight generalizations are extracted from two partially competing perspectives (Johan Galtung's “feudal interaction” and Jorge Dominguez's “international fragmentation”) on center-periphery interaction patterns. Seven of these generalizations are tested by examining head of state,...

The popularity of Kondratieff long waves fluctuates according to the economic climate. Periods of slow growth help make long wave explanations more attractive. While their popularity may oscillate, the evidence associated with the existence of long waves continues to be disputed. A review of the...

Processes of war, trade, and systemic leadership are often examined in isolation from one another. Sometimes, two of the three are studied together. Does war interrupt trade? Does systemic leadership reduce the level of warfare? Does systemic leadership lead to freer trade? While these are...

Underlying the emerging interest in the role of rivalry processes as antecedents to interstate conflict is the simple idea that conflict within the constraints of rivalry works differently than conflict outside of rivalry. In this article, we inspect the concepts of protracted conflict, as...

Strategic rivalry dyads facilitate conflict, while democratic dyads constrain conflict. Which effect is more powerful? Examining conflict (militarized disputes and war) in the major power subsystem (1816-1992), both types of relationships are statistically significant predictors of conflict, and...

The distribution of wealth in the world is manifested by the polarization of a rich North and a poor South. Is the North-South conflict increasing or decreasing, and does it depend on such variables as major power conflict, intra-Northern conflict, and world prosperity, as some schools of...

Alcock's (1972) two-phase theory of war and an earlier test of the theory are critically reviewed. Two pendulum hypotheses linking the onset of war (defined both broadly and narrowly), the formation of alliances, and changes in military expenditures are derived, operationalized, and tested....

There is little consensus and some degree of confusion over the meanings of the polarity and polarization concepts. An argument is advanced for viewing these phenomena as distinctly separate with polarity referring to the distribution of power among states and polarization referring to the...

This paper attempts to examine the extent to which military coups in one country influence in some fashion the occurrence of coups in other countries. The examination is conducted primarily via the application of three stochastic models (the Poisson, the "contagious Poisson," and the Gaussian...

Should peace be attributed mainly to democracy or to some intervening variable that influences both democracy and conflict? A second, perhaps related question is whether or to what extent democratization is driven by external drivers of threat. If regime type helps explain external conflict,...