This essay presents a theoretical model for explaining great power cooperation in conflict management. The model refines recent cooperation theory by distinguishing between types and degrees of international cooperation. It also challenges the dominance of decisionmaking analysis in the crisis literature and supplements it with structural factors. In brief, the model suggests that whereas crisis cooperation (crisis management) is conditioned by structural elements, cooperation in normal diplomacy (conflict resolution) depends on state attributes and cognitive factors. Such a model can account for the fact that unintended wars can break out between relatively moderate and similar actors whereas immoderate and dissimilar states can manage crises effectively. At the same time the model explains why some states are able to cooperate in normal diplomacy better than others, even when more actors are cooperating.

This article examines three Western European cases from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and shows that political liberalization does not necessarily require a reformer's commitment to democracy. Under the right circumstances, even conservative politicians may find liberalization to be a rational and acceptable means to secure their power and to defeat powerful opponents, despite the risk of future upheavals. Such circumstances were present in the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, when Mikhail Gorbachev and his supporters used the strategy of political liberalization to remove the threat posed by their rivals in the party apparatus.

The totalitarian model remained the best analytic concept for studying Soviet politics because it offered clear empirical referents, provided a yardstick for measuring change, and could be adapted to explain the nature of change. Alternative models emphasizing pluralism encouraged the impression that “political development” was occurring rather than the ”political decay” that led to the Soviet Union's collapse. The study of the successor states must now be brought within a more general approach to comparative political analysis. Yet the totalitarian model retains utility for understanding the legacies those states still confront.

In the 1980s fiscal reform in China provided localities with strong incentives and a heightened capacity to pursue industrial growth. As a result, local governments have responded vigorously to economic reform, managing rural collective-owned enterprises as diversified corporations, with local officials performing the role of a board of directors. This article analyzes the incentives that have led to the development of this form of local state corporatism and rapid rural industrialization, and it describes the ways in which local governments coordinate economic activity and reallocate revenues from industrial production. These developments are important for two reasons: they show that local government involvement in the economy does not necessarily decline with the expansion of market coordination; and they offer a successful model of reform that serves as a counterpoint to privatization proposals.

Leadership long-cycle analyses emphasize the global political economy, sea power, and the cyclical rise and fall of maritime powers. Ludwig Dehio's interpretation of European international politics stressed regional politics, land power, and the cyclical rise and fall of continental powers. Since neither framework totally ignores what the other accentuates, a merger of the two perspectives is quite feasible and results in improved explanatory power. As an illustration, several of Dehio's generalizations about the nature and timing of regional power concentration are tested for the period 1494–1945. The outcome suggests that peaks of regional and global power concentration alternate. Global reconcentration is stimulated, at least in part, by the threat posed by a rising regional challenger.

This study extends recent research on the power transition and hegemonic stability theory to the preindustrial era. It improves on the original power transition theory by relaxing an assumption and by extending the empirical domain. Unlike the original power transition theory, the revised version is not restricted to the period after the industrial revolution and can therefore be applied to the preindustrial era. This study examines the empirical record prior to the industrial revolution to see whether the power transition and hegemonic stability theory holds for that period. The data for 1648 to 1815 indicate strong support for the power transition contention that a rough equality of power between rival sides increases the likelihood of war. That is, when the challenging great power, with its allies' support, catches up with the dominant power, great power war is most likely.