Although centralization is thought to be a common response to external threats to the state, few theories develop the mechanisms by which domestic centralization occurs. Fewer still consistently demonstrate that centralization is indeed a common response to external threats in all states. This article therefore develops a comprehensive theory of domestic change in the shadow of external threat. Salient threats to the state create strong incentives for opposition forces to support the leader in power, even in non-democracies. The leadership then uses these favorable domestic political climates to decrease the number of institutional veto points that can stop future leader-driven policy changes. Collectively, this two-part theory provides a unified model of domestic behavioral change (also known as rally effects) and institutional centralization (defined by a declining number of veto players). In addition, by defining salient threats as challenges to homeland territory, the article provides some of the first domestic-level evidence that territorial disputes are fundamentally different from other types of international conflicts.

Selectorate theory posits that leader accountability increases with the size of the winning coalition. Recent research contends that capitalism also increases leader accountability because leaders are more dependent on the public for revenue in more capitalist economies. The authors argue that extant tests of accountability arguments of interstate conflict initiation and targeting are flawed. Accountability theories of foreign policy expect leaders to selectively initiate disputes based on their probability of winning. Accountability arguments, then, expect a conditional relationship between the accountability mechanism and the balance of power. For example, if capitalism produces peace through accountability, then more capitalist states should be less likely to initiate militarized disputes as their power advantage decreases. The authors find that this is not the case. At the same time, the authors find robust support for selectorate theory’s contention that larger winning coalitions are more selective about using military force. Political institutions induce accountability; capitalism does not.

If trade affects the costs of conflict, does it also influence the likelihood of mediation attempts? This article argues that dense bilateral trade between antagonists yields high opportunity costs since it is expensive to seek alternative markets and the belligerents will be highly vulnerable to sanctions from their counterpart. This creates incentives for combatants to limit hostility and settle conflicts through mediation. By contrast, the extent to which belligerents trade with other states decreases the likelihood of mediation since antagonists with alternative partners can mitigate the consequences of sanctions and substitute for markets, which may be at risk or even lost because of the outbreak of a dispute. The divergent effects of different trade ties imply that the impact of bilateral trade on the prospects for mediation should vary conditional on countries’ trade with states outside the dyad and vice versa. This article demonstrates that this is partially valid.

Nearly every international arms embargo has been systemically violated by arms exporting states. Although much work has been done exploring why states transfer arms, little has been done to answer the question of why states choose to violate arms embargoes. Earlier studies have found that states transfer arms to one another for a variety of economic and strategic reasons. This study constructs a time series cross-section data set to test whether the same interests that drive dyadic arms transfers also influence the likelihood and size of arms embargo violations. Using a two-stage model of dyadic arms transfers, this study finds that measures for arms import dependence and alliance portfolio similarity best predict the likelihood and size of arms embargo violations. These results provide evidence that state decisions to violate embargoes are driven by political interests more than economic interests.

The authors apply the theory of collective action and alliance behavior first developed by Olson and Zeckhauser and later extended by Sandler in a series of studies to test whether the nature of refugee protection influences state motivations to provide contributions. The authors investigate whether refugee protection can be viewed as a pure public good with the concomitant problem of free riding leading to suboptimal outcomes or whether contributions provide states private benefits that transform the nature of the good. Using a Heckman selection model, they test for the determinants of state contributions to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and find that refugee protection offers several private benefits, indicating that it is best understood as an impure public good. They conclude, however, that even when states are able to secure these private benefits, it does not necessarily lead to the optimal provision of refugee protection.

This study presents an analytical model of budget allocation into military and civilian expenditures within an arms race between two rival countries and compares the consequences of shortsighted (period-by-period) planning versus forward-looking (long-term) planning. The authors show that although shortsighted planning is favorable for both countries, they are likely to be locked in a prisoner’s dilemma in which both overinvest in arms procurement. The likelihood of overinvestment in arms procurement is higher when the perceived benefit from security is higher and when future benefits from existing arms stocks are ‘‘high’’; that is, when the rate of technology improvement over time is lower, the depreciation rate of existing arms is lower and the discount factor is higher. A dynamic version of Kagan et al., employing real-world data, finds evidence for the existence of a prisoner’s dilemma in the Israeli—Syrian arms race.

Political actors sometimes make public commitments not to negotiate with adversaries whom they label as being beneath diplomacy. Such commitments are sometimes made even as they are being broken. Why do actors sometimes publicly denounce adversaries with whom they intend to negotiate? What effect does such prenegotiation rhetoric have on the prospects for successful negotiated settlements? In this paper, the authors present a novel game-theoretic model of conflict bargaining, in which actors can make public commitments not to negotiate before deciding whether to engage in secret negotiations with adversaries. The authors model such commitments as affecting actors’ audience costs; a denunciation increases an actor’s motivation to reach a negotiated settlement if negotiations are undertaken. Although such a decision weakens an actor’s bargaining power, in equilibrium actors sometimes publicly denounce their counterparts. The authors present and interpret equilibrium behavior in their model and discuss the implications of their results for future research.

Truth telling has come to play a pivotal role in postconflict reconciliation processes around the world. A common claim is that truth telling is healing and will lead to reconciliation. The present study applies recent psychological research to this issue by examining whether witnessing in the gacaca, the Rwandan village tribunals for truth and reconciliation after the 1994 genocide, was beneficial for psychological health. The results from the multistage, stratified cluster random survey of 1,200 Rwandans demonstrate that gacaca witnesses suffer from higher levels of depression and PTSD than do nonwitnesses, also when controlling for important predictors of psychological ill health. Furthermore, longer exposure to truth telling has not lowered the levels of psychological ill health, nor has the prevalence of depression and PTSD decreased over time. This study strongly challenges the claim that truth telling is healing and presents a novel understanding of the complexity of truth-telling processes in postconflict peace building.

Tsebelis’ veto players theory predicts that legislative veto players constrain the executive’s political decisions because their approval is needed to implement policy change. This study extends the veto players argument into international conflict literature, specifically in regard to legislative constraints emanating from the number of legislative veto players, their policy preferences, and their internal cohesion. A cross-sectional, time-series dyadic data analysis shows that, in general, an increase of legislative constraints notably reduces the likelihood of the onset of militarized interstate disputes. However, while legislative constraints in democratic and mixed dyads are likely to discourage democratic executives’ use of force, those in autocratic dyads do not produce effective pacifying effects.

Isolationism has long been seen as a reaction against domestic economic conditions or a threatening international environment, but domestic politics could equally spur such a reaction. Disagreement with current foreign policy or opposition to political parties directing foreign policy may provoke negative feelings on the general prospect of international engagement. Some of what appears to be isolationism, then, is not a universal rejection of international intervention but is instead contingent on partisan control of the executive. Data from the American National Election Studies confirms this: copartisans of the president are substantially less likely to agree with isolationist statements or simultaneously to support isolationism and specific interventionist policies. In addition to further illuminating the sources of public opinion about foreign policy, these findings suggest that some common measures of isolationism may not measure what they intend to measure.

States in an international dispute sometimes choose to attack their enemies with their own military forces but other times choose to empower domestic insurgent groups. What explains the decision to act through rebel proxies rather than directly engage a rival? Theories and empirical analyses of international conflict have adopted a state-centric bias, ignoring the substitution between direct uses of force and indirect action through rebel organizations. This note examines the decision to delegate conflict to rebels through the lens of principal—agent theory. While states support rebel groups to forgo some of the costs of conflict, they also lose a degree of foreign policy autonomy. Preliminary evidence of conflict delegation is presented, along with a number of empirically testable propositions. Finally, the consequences of delegation from the rebels’ perspective are explored. This framework serves as a starting point for future research on rebel—patron interactions.