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This article identifies three common flaws in the empirical literature on the diversionary use of force. First, while theoretical models of the diversionary use of force are built on the motivations of leaders to stay in power, the great majority of empirical studies employ datasets with the country or countryyear as their unit of analysis. Second, while theories of the diversionary use of force strongly suggest a reciprocal relationship between the probabilities of losing office and international conflict, almost no studies have explicitly modeled such a reciprocal relationship. Third, most empirical studies ignore how the diversionary incentives of leaders might affect the strategic calculus of their potential foreign opponents. This article explicitly addresses these common flaws by using a dataset with the leader-year as the unit of analysis and by employing a two-stage probit model to examine a reciprocal relationship between the probabilities of losing office and becoming a target, thus focusing on targets. The authors find only qualified support for the modified strategic theory of diversionary conflict. On the one hand, as the risk of losing office increases, leaders become less likely to be targets in an international crisis. On the other hand, however, the risk of becoming a target in an international crisis does not affect the probability of losing office.

The literature on diversionary war has long argued that a leader's tenure considerations play an important role in international conflict behavior. However, for the diversionary use of force to be rational, international conflict must in turn affect the leader's tenure. A two-stage probit model on a new data set of all leaders between 1919 and 1992 is used to examine this reciprocal relationship between the probability of losing office and the probability of crisis initiation. Contrary to theories of the diversionary use of force, results show that an increase in the risk of losing office makes leaders less likely to initiate a crisis, and an increase in the risk of an international crisis makes leaders more likely to lose office. Results also suggest that democracies are overall less likely to initiate a crisis because of the domestic political insecurity of democratic leaders.

Scholars for a long time theorized about the role of political leaders, but empirical research has been limited by the lack of systematic data about individual leaders. Archigos is a new dataset with information on leaders in 188 countries from 1875 to 2004. We provide an overview of the main features of this data. Archigos specifically identifies the effective leaders of each independent state; it codes when and how leaders came into power, their age, and their gender, as well as their personal fate one year after they lost office. We illustrate the utility of the Archigos dataset by demonstrating how leader attributes predict other features of interest in International Relations and Comparative Politics. Crisis interactions differ depending on whether leaders face each other for the first time or have had prior interactions. Irregular leader changes can help identify political change in autocracies not apparent from data that consider only the democratic nature of institutions. Finally, transitions to democracy in the third wave are more likely to fail in instances where autocratic rulers were punished after leaving office. Our examples illustrate new empirical findings that simply could not be explored in existing data sources. Although selective, our overview demonstrates how Archigos bears considerable promise in providing answers to new and old research questions and opens up new avenues for research on individual leaders as decisionmakers.

Ideas, networks and monetary politics in Japan -- Deflation, monetary policy responses, and the BOJ -- Monetary politics: interests, ideas and policy networks -- The BOJ worldview and its historical development -- The monetary policy network -- Ideas and monetary policy: a quantitative test -- Monetary policy making 1998-2012 -- Abenomics and the break with the BOJ orthodoxy