Power, Alliance, and the Escalation of International Conflict, 1815-1965

1984 ◽  
Vol 78 (4) ◽  
pp. 1057-1069 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randolph M. Siverson ◽  
Michael R. Tennefoss

A considerable amount of the international politics literature attempts to explain international conflict on the basis of the distribution of power between and among nations. There are, however, divergent views of this linkage. One view argues that wars are most likely to take place between nations of similar power, while another asserts that wars are most likely when power is unequal. Research seeking to explore this phenomenon has not investigated the capability augmenting effects of alliances on power relationships and has tended to focus its attention upon the occurrence of wars. This research examines the individual and joint effects of power and alliance upon the probability of 256 conflicts to escalate to reciprocated military action. The main finding is that equality of power, supplemented by alliance with a major power for those nations that are weak, tends to restrain the likelihood that a conflict will escalate.

1988 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita ◽  
David Lalman

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.


2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (2) ◽  
pp. 513-514
Author(s):  
William Reed

Studies of the relationship between the distribution of power and prospects for conflict or cooperation have a distinguished history in the field of international politics. Several competing theories have been offered to explain variation in foreign policy behavior as a function of power distributions. Moreover, a wealth of empirical evidence suggests the crucial role that power plays in international bargaining. The Origins of Major War is a deeply penetrat- ing, extraordinarily wide-ranging, and judicious treatment of the onset of major conflict, and it offers an explanation and some evidence for the relationship between power differentials and major power conflict. Copeland provides a dynamic theory of major power war, building upon classic realism. In my view, his diagnosis and combination of prescription are substantially correct.


2009 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 333-358 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Leiber ◽  
Sarah Jane Brubaker ◽  
Kristan C. Fox

Author(s):  
Hongyu Wang ◽  
Jo Flory

Curriculum in a third space has become an important theory in the field of curriculum studies in the postcolonial and postmodern context, in which new approaches to social and cultural differences in education have been developed. Curriculum and education in the early 21st century face the challenging tasks of responding in a time of uncertainty, complexity, paradoxes, and crisis: How do educators navigate the central relationship between the knower and the known while both are destabilized in a postmodern condition? What are curricular responses to the issue of identity, difference, and power relationships at schools in order to carve out alternative pathways beyond dualistic either/or thinking? How can differences and tensions be transformed into productive sites for curriculum and pedagogical creativity? The notion of the third space characterized by the alterity of psychical and social difference, the necessity for cultural translation, and the creativity of dynamic hybridity, addresses such critical questions. Curriculum in a third space embraces creative tensionality, decentering and estrangement, and making passages in the midst of hybridity. Translating between the planned curriculum and experienced curriculum mobilizes the highly contested site of identity, difference, and community into an ongoing process of attending to the language of the (maternal) other, building connections between the human subject and the academic subject, and nurturing a curriculum community that welcomes the stranger. As the notion of a third space is often formulated in intercultural, transnational, and global situations, internationalizing curriculum studies becomes a movement of differentiating and passaging within, between, and among the individual, the local, the national, and the global in a third space. Aligned with such a vision of curriculum, a pedagogy of a third space is also set in motion by hybrid resistance, openness to displacement, and fluid interdisciplinary collaboration. Pedagogies in specific subject areas open up third possibilities through building dynamic relationships between school knowledge and home experiences, transforming pedagogical relationships, and navigating blended classrooms of face-to-face and digital interactions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 186-202
Author(s):  
Clarissa W. Confer

American Indians residing in Indian Territory fought for both the Union and the Confederacy in the American Civil War. When war came to the region in 1861, the Five Nations—Creek, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole—made choices derived from their cultural, political, and economic interests as sovereign nations. Military action ebbed and flowed through Indian Territory over four years, which displaced significant portions of the population at different times. At war’s end the Natives found themselves on opposing sides, both between and within the individual nations. The external as well as internal civil war deepened tribal divisions and caused substantial physical destruction and considerable human suffering.


Author(s):  
Thomas J. Volgy ◽  
Renato Corbetta ◽  
Keith A. Grant ◽  
Ryan G. Baird

Author(s):  
Shadrack B. Ramokgadi

The individual choice to decide where to live bears directly on personal freedom, and the desire for survival and economic development. The right to geographic mobility is ideally safeguarded by international migration regulatory frameworks that derive from country-specific constitutions and inter-states arrangements. On the other hand, empirical evidence suggests that some countries restrict human mobility to take predetermined migration patterns. This chapter presents that the historical evolution in the relationship between the natural environment and human activities offers the opportunity to explore requirements for the successful implementation of any International Migration Regulatory Framework (IMRF). In doing so, the author contends that extant geopolitical conditions defining such relations need to be explored within state-centric political practices and civil society perceptions, put differently, through the dialogue between the state and civil society on migration processes necessary for successful implementation of regulatory framework while surfacing resources-power relationship between migratory states and citizens.


2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 137-167
Author(s):  
Andrei Melville ◽  
Andrei Akhremenko ◽  
Mikhail Mironyuk

There is a striking opposition within the current discourse on Russia’s position in the world. On the one hand, there are well-known arguments about Russia’s “weak hand” (relatively small and stagnating economy, vulnerability to sanctions, technological backwardness, deteriorating demography, corruption, bad institutions, etc.). On the other hand, Russia is accused of “global revisionism”, attempts to reshape and undermine the liberal world order, and Western democracy itself. There seems to be a paradox: Russia with a perceived decline of major resources of national power, exercises dramatically increased international influence. This paradox of power and/or influence is further explored. This paper introduces a new complex Index of national power. On the basis of ratings of countries authors compare the dynamics of distribution of power in the world with a focus on Russia’s national power in world politics since 1995. The analysis brings evidence that the cumulative resources of Russia’s power in international affairs did not increase during the last two decades. However, Russia’s influence in world politics has significantly increased as demonstrated by assertive foreign policy in different parts of the world and its perception by the international political community and the public. Russia remains a major power in today’s world, although some of its power resources are stagnating or decreasing in comparison to the US and rising China. To compensate for weaknesses Russia is using both traditional and nontraditional capabilities of international influence.


2006 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 362-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Horace A Bartilow ◽  
D Stephen Voss

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 172-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shane P. Singh ◽  
Jaroslav Tir

Comparative politics scholarship often neglects to consider how militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) shape political behavior. In this project, we advance an argument that considers voter responses to international conflict at the individual level. In particular, we consider how the well-known conditioning effects of partisanship manifest in relation to militarized international conflict. Examining individual- and macro-level data across ninety-seven elections in forty-two countries over the 1996–2011 period, we find consistent evidence of militarized conflict impacting vote choice. This relationship is, however, moderated by partisanship, conflict side (initiator or target), and conflict hostility level. Among non-copartisan voters, the incumbent benefits the most electorally from initiating low-hostility MIDs or when the country is a target of a high-hostility MID; the opposite scenarios (initiator of a high-hostility MID or target of a low-hostility MID) lead to punishment among this voter group. Copartisans, meanwhile, tend to either maintain or intensify their support in most scenarios we examine; when a country is targeted in a low-hostility MID, copartisan support erodes mildly.


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