Bøger i Innovations in the Study of World Politics serien

Redrawing the Map to Promote Peace, by Jaroslav Tir, focuses on the management of territorial disputes and how they are altered by territorial change. Territorial shiftscan sometimes lead to war, which is why Tir explores the contributing factors that lead to these disputes.

Acting Alone: A Scientific Study of American Hegemony and Unilateral Use-of-Force Decision Making is a straight-forward analysis of unilateral U.S. military actions, which are dependent upon the power disparity between the U.S. and the rest of the world. In solving the puzzle as to why individual presidents have made the "e;wrong"e; decision to act alone, the author lays out a president's behavior, during a crisis, as a two-step decision process. Acting Alone reviews the well-studied first decision, deciding to use force, based on international conflict literature and organized along traditional lines. The author then details the second decision, deciding to use unilateral force, with an explanation of the criticisms of multilateralism and the reasons for unilateralism. To test a new theory of unilateral use of force decision making, Acting Alone devises a definition and coding rules for unilateral use of force, develops a sequential model of presidential use of force decision making, and constructs a new, alternative measure of military power, a Composite Indicator of Military Revolutions (CIMR). It then uses three methods - a statistical test with a heckman probit model, an experiment, and case studies - to test U.S. crisis behavior since 1937. By applying these three methods, the author finds that presidents are realists and make expected utility calculations to act unilaterally or multilaterally after their decision to use force. The unilateral decision, in particular, positively correlates with a wide military gap with an opponent, an opponent located in the Western hemisphere, and a national security threat.

Focusing on the regime governing Israeli use of limited military force and using quantitative historical analysis as well as qualitative historical surveys, this work utilises documents from the 1950s and 1960s to generate a fresh interpretation of historical events.

Given the appalling consequences of civil wars, why are the competing actors within a state unable to come to a settlement to avoid the costs of conflict? How might external parties affect the likelihood that a civil war begins? How do their actions affect the duration and outcome of civil conflicts that are already underway? How International Relations Affect Civil Conflict draws on three main approaches_bargaining theory, signaling theory, and rational expectations_to examine how external actors might affect the onset, duration and outcome of civil wars. Signals from external actors are important because they represent a potential increase (or decrease) in fighting capabilities for the government or the opposition if a war were to begin. Costly signals should not affect the probability of civil war onset because they are readily observable ex ante, which allows the government and opposition to peacefully adjust their bargaining positions based on changes in relative capabilities. In contrast, cheap hostile signals make civil war more likely by increasing the risk that an opposition group overestimates its ability to stage a successful rebellion with external support. Cheap supportive signals work in the opposite manner because they represent increased fighting capabilities for the government. Furthermore, signals sent in the pre-war period have important implications for the duration and outcome of civil conflicts because competing intrastate actors develop expectations for future interventions prior to deciding to fight. In this book, Clayton L. Thyne tests this theory by examining the likelihood of civil war onset, the duration, and the outcome of all civil wars since 1945, finding strong support from empirical tests for each component of this theory. The conclusion offers specific advice to US policy-makers to prevent the outbreak of civil conflict in states most at-risk for civil war and to help end those that are currently underway. This book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students and scholars interested in political science, international studies, conflict resolution, and peace science.

Why does the academic study of international relations have limited impact on the policy community? In New Directions for International Relations, Mintz and Russett identify differences in methods of analysis as one cause of problematic, unreliable results. They discuss the problem and set the stage for nine chapters by diverse scholars to demonstrate innovative new developments in IR theory and creative new methods that can lay the basis for greater consensus.

Explains the fluctuations in Israel's military policies during the 1990s-2000s from the Oslo Accords to the al-Aqsa Intifada and the Second Lebanon War. This book offers a conceptual framework that relies on materialist militarism.

Administration and the Other examines the social construction of groups of people and resultant policy impacts in the discourse of the American Republic from before its founding to the present. The book suggests that from pre-revolutionary interactions between early colonialists and Native Americans to recent immigration debates, discourse on The Other has resulted in the development of policies that have led to further marginalization, community division, and harm to scores of innocents within the public sphere. Ultimately,Administration and the Other examines the construction of The Other from a sociological and historical framework to engage students and scholars of political and administrative processes in using the often unspoken history of the field, as part of a larger historical framework, to explore how policy has been shaped in relation to marginalized communities. By presenting elements of history that are frequently not entered into the administrative and political discourse, the book aims to frame a conversation that might lead to the integration of thoughts about the often marginalized Other into discussions of policy-making and policy-implementation processes.

Multiple Paths to Knowledge in International Relations provides a uniquely valuable view of current approaches and findings in conflict studies. While expanding our knowledge of particular conflicts, from the Crimean War to the Vietnam War to ongoing Palestinian-Israeli instability, the notable contributors also further our understanding of how to conduct research in international relations.