Systemic theorists emphasize the interplay of the distribution of power, the number of poles, and their tightness in predicting the occurrence of major-power war. The authors link individual-level incentives to these systemic constraints as factors that might affect the likelihood of war. They believe that their model specification is more comprehensive than any prior effort to evaluate the impact of structural attributes on the risk of major-power war. Empirical results from the individual-level prespective are encouraging when one examines European crises from 1816 to 1965, but there is no evidence that decision makers were significantly constrained by variations in the structural attributes. Neither the distribution of power nor the number or tightness of poles appears to influence the risk of war.

Contradictory findings, that economic inequality may have a positive, negative, or no impact on political conflict, are a puzzle for conflict studies. Three approaches have been used t o explain the inconsistent findings of the EI-PC (Economic Inequality-Political Conflict) nexus: statistical modeling, formal modeling, and theory building. Because analysts have tended to possess different research skills, these three approaches have been employed in isolation from one another. Singly, however, all three approaches have proved deficient and are unlikely to solve the EI-PC puzzle. The most fruitful approach is to combine the assumptions of the theory builders and the deductive approach of the formal modelers with the various empirical tests of the statistical modelers. Such an approach to the EI-PC puzzle produces a crucial test of the Deprived Actor and Rational Actor theories of conflict. The approach is also our best hope for solving the other long-standing puzzles in conflict studies.

Several recent books have argued that comparative case studies of crises demonstrate the failure of rational-deterrence theory; they have offered certain empirical generalizations as substitutes. This paper shows that such contentions are unwarranted. First, the empirical generalizations are impressive as historical insights, but they do not meet the standards for theory set out by the most sophisticated case-study analysts themselves. Second, the “tests” of rational deterrence used in the case studies violate standard principles of inference, and the ensuing procedures are so biased as to be useless. Rational deterrence, then, is a more successful theory than portrayed in this literature, and it remains the only intellectually powerful alternative available.

Case studies are essential to theory building: more efficiently than any other methods, they find suitable variables, suggest middle-range generalizations for theory to explain, and provide the prior knowledge that statistical tests require. Their loose constraints on admissible propositions and suitable evidence are appropriate and even necessary for these tasks. These same characteristics, however, inevitably undermine all attempts to construe case-study generalizations as bodies of theory or tests of hypotheses.

In defining international free trade as a public good, “hegemonic stability theory” posited early in the 1970s that its reliable supply depended upon a distribution of international power analogous to that within a privileged group. More recently, however, critics have challenged three assumptions fundamental to hegemonic theory: its premises of free trade, public goods, and privileged groups. They have concluded that hegemony is not necessary for, and indeed may be antithetical to, a stable world economy based on market exchange.

The author argues that the critics overstate their case. The assumptions they attack allow hegemonic theory to represent analytically several critically important barriers to free trade among states. Among these are the existence of strategic interdependence among the actors and the prevalence of informational asymmetries. The most significant flaw in hegemonic theory is its neglect of the essence of the domain to which it applies: the politics of inter-state trade in an anarchic world.

Much of the empirical research on war has been conducted using only one of a number of data sets that have been compiled by leading scholars of international politics. In view of the low correlation among the data sets, however, one must be cautious in choosing between them for whatever task is at hand. The preliminary findings indicate that, regardless of which data set is used, many of the central tests of important hypotheses concerning Kondratieff waves, international trade, and hegemony and war yield much the same results

Achen and Snidal's deductive theory of deterrence contributes very little to an understanding of the uses and limitations of deterrence strategy as an instrument of foreign policy. Lacking operationalization, their “rational deterrence theory” is incapable of predicting the outcome of individual cases. Furthermore, it has not yet addressed the need (i) to reconceptualize the problem of deterrence for different levels of conflict; (2) to refine the assumption of “rationality”; (3) to deal with the phenomenon of equifinality; (4) to develop a framework of strategic interaction between Initiator and Defender acknowledging that an Initiator often has multiple options for challenging the status quo from which to choose an action that meets his cost-benefit criteria; (5) to find a way of taking into account decision-making variables that, as case studies have demonstrated, often affect deterrence outcomes; and (6) to broaden the conceptualization of deterrence strategy to encompass the possible use of positive inducements as a means of discouraging challenges to a status quo situation.

Between the late eighteenth century and 1945, the economic and political differentiation of the European continent has followed a neatly regressive geographical pattern. The origin of this pattern goes back to the agricultural revolutions of the early modern age, and to the diffusion of agricultural technology along the Northwest-Southeast axis. It was subsequently reproduced by both market and political forces operating within the context of material aspirations, themselves the product of the economic revolutions of the Northwest. The experience suggests a potential model for peripheral societies in the Third World, though the relevance of the historical analogy may be limited by currently unfolding changes in the nature of technology and in the terms of exchange between core and peripheral regions in the contemporary world.

Analysis of the process of democratization should focus not on socioeconomic change, but on the origin and development of political opposition and on the structure of political bargaining between the regime and its challengers. The recent democratic breakthrough in Taiwan is attributable to the capabilities of the political opposition in agenda setting, the shifting of bargaining arenas, and the creation of incentives for the reformist leaders of the regime to play the game. Democratization in Taiwan will continue because the ruling party has been able to maintain its dominant position in new political frameworks.

The causes and effects of the use of force raise crucial questions of substance and method. Issues are multiple and often are confused with each other. Thus, while many case-study findings contradict “second-wave” deterrence theory, they are consistent with some rational deterrence theories. Many findings, however, cannot be squared with the assumptions of rationality. Policies are suboptimal and behavior is often inconsistent. Furthermore, the actor's values, beliefs, and calculations are exogenous to rational theories and can only be supplied by empirical analysis.

This essay addresses the question, “Why do different democracies pursue different public policies?” through an examination of taxation policy in the United States, Sweden, and Britain. The essay demonstrates how the different decision-making structures found in these three democracies (characterized as pluralist, corporatist, and party government systems, respectively) bias each polity toward different types of policy outcomes. The key argument is that institutional structures are the context in which political actors must necessarily define their policy preferences and determine their strategic objectives. Institutional structures thus provide a central link between individual choice behavior and macro policy outcomes.

Peasant-state relations in developing countries are often a function of the nature and extent of stratification in peasant populations. Where there is a rigid class structure, the prospects for cooperation by members of the peasantry are low, and large landowners tend to ally themselves with the state to exploit the rural poor. Where, on the other hand, the nature of rural stratification is ambiguous, “small” and “middle” peasants are able to organize themselves for collective action and to bargain effectively for state aid to their communities. The hypothesis is confirmed using survey data about the nature of peasant participation in the Harambee selfhelp development movement in rural Kenya. Effective peasant-state bargaining in Kenya has in turn contributed to the legitimacy of the Kenyan political system.

In the past three decades, the Suharto regime has presided over the rapid industrialization of Indonesia and the development of its capital-owning classes. A complex relationship between state and capital has emerged, based upon structural factors (the need to maintain investment, economic growth, and a revenue base) as well as instrumental factors (the involvement of officials in business as state managers of capital and private investors). Recently, however, significant tensions have emerged between the interests of the regime and its officials on the one hand, and the interests of various elements of the capital-owning classes on the other, in response to broader structural pressures for economic change.

These tensions and pressures are a challenge to the pact of domination between state officials and their corporate allies, the system monopolies and protection from which corporate capital emerged, and the nature of political domination exerted by officials over the state apparatus. Although the growing social and economic power of the capital-owning classes is not being converted into formal instrumental control over the state apparatus, economic strategies and political and economic alliances are being restructured, resulting in important shifts in the nature of Indonesian authoritarianism.

This paper analyzes the implications of social choice theory for the study of world politics. A view of the world system as a social choice mechanism leads to the observation that the outcomes of world politics are determined neither by structure nor by preferences alone, but rather by their interaction. Structural change occurs only when the actors cannot achieve their preferences through the current system. Three particular social choice mechanisms are analyzed to determine which conditions of Arrow's theorem they violate. The argument is illustrated by examining two salient theoretical works, Waltz's Theory of International Politics and Gilpin's War and Change in World Politics. The critique of Waltz illustrates that structure alone cannot determine outcome; the critique of Gilpin examines how structural change occurs in world politics and underlines the importance of preferences in such changes.

Deterrence theories purport to supply the auxiliary assumptions rational choice theories need to predict rational strategic behavior. They generally assume that would-be initiators are (i) instrumentally rational; (2) risk-prone gain-maximizers; (3) free of domestic constraints; and (4) able to identify themselves correctly as defenders or challengers. These assumptions are contradicted by empirical studies that indicate that risk-prone, gain-maximizing initiators are relatively uncommon; that leaders at times calculate as deterrence theories expect, but behave contrary to their predictions; and that the calculus of initiators generally depends on factors other than those identified by deterrence theories. Deductive theories of deterrence are also inadequate because they do not define their scope conditions. Nor can they accommodate deviation by initiators from processes of rational calculation. Rational deterrence theories are poorly specified theories about nonexistent decision makers operating in nonexistent environments.

Recent discussions whether or not the United States is strategically “overextended” raise two important questions. First, to what extent can the fiscal and industrial difficulties of the last several decades be attributed to the comparatively high military budgets of the post-1945 period? Second, can the United States continue to maintain something resembling its postwar strategic posture without doing itself grievous economic harm? Although the issue remains open, defense spending would appear to bear only a small part of the responsibility for present U.S. economic problems. As to the future, the question is not so much whether the burden of an extended posture can be borne as whether it should be borne, and who, precisely, should bear it. These are political issues: they are conditioned but not determined by economic factors.

The author analyzes the basic quanititative methodologies employed in the open literature to assess conventional forces and evaluates the extent to which they can be used to set military requirements with a new degree of reliability and accuracy. The recent proliferation of literature on conventional forces has begun to fill an important gap in the strategic studies field. Insufficient understanding of essential elements of ground combat, the context sensitivity of key variables, and inaccurate and unreliable data bases mean, however, that the output of both static and dynamic methodologies contains high levels of uncertainty. This seemingly irreducible uncertainty precludes the use of existing models to make definitive judgment about military needs. Nevertheless, because such uncertainty enhances deterrence, it may not only be unavoidable, but also preferable.

For a variety of reasons, explanations of Cuban foreign policy lack in persuasiveness. Some authors adopt a kitchen-sink approach in which any number of factors are adduced to explain Cuban behavior, but they do not pay adequate attention to how these various pieces fit together into a coherent whole. Other writers concentrate on a single factor to explain Cuba's globalism, but in the process load more explanatory power than it can bear onto a sole variable. Still others have a penchant for prescribing proper foreign policy for the United States, with the result that the study of Cuban policy in its own terms is often shortchanged. Only by studying the character, world view, and charismatic influence of Fidel Castro can a center of gravity be found for the study of Cuban foreign policy.

The current scholarly preoccupation with the state may obscure more than it reveals for students of politics in sub-Saharan Africa. The weakly formed state in Africa—beset by decline in economic production and political authority—is now retreating from overambitious attempts at social transformation. The time is therefore ripe for societal actors to play an enhanced role in political change. This article reviews the current literature on state-society relations in Africa with particular emphasis on the nature of African associational life and the extent to which it is taking on a politically organized form as an identifiable civil society. The author proposes a theoretical framework and research agenda that takes account of the capacity of either state or societal actors to exercise a range of options to engage or disengage.

Recent works on contemporary China stress the importance of the nonmarket economy in shaping a pattern of state-society relations quite unlike those found in capitalist economies. Nevertheless, these studies present strikingly different pictures of the Chinese case: a new, party-dominated, divided, yet compliant network society on the one hand; and an enduring, localistic, solidary, and resistant cellular society on the other. The author suggests that such divergent images may be partially reconciled if local variation (by region and social sector) is systematically incorporated into our models of Chinese politics. Calling for a nuanced and dynamic approach to state-society relations, the article argues for the importance of historically grounded research.

Although there are important differences between the rational theory of deterrence and the theory of deterrence that is emerging from the psychology and case-study literatures, it is necessary for adherents of both to appreciate the ways in which they complement each other and the problems they share. For example, rational deterrence theory will not describe the way the world works until certain heuristics and biases that can only be discovered through case studies and other inferential methods are either eliminated or integrated into the theory. On the other hand, psychologists and case-study researchers will find it difficult to trace through the implications of their discoveries for strategic behavior until they adopt some relative of formal methods.