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Although the empirical pattern of democratic peace is well-established, debate continues over its theoretical explanation. While theory tends to focus on specific institutional or normative characteristics within regimes, empirical studies often test this indirectly, using aggregate measures of types of political regimes as a whole. The analysis in this paper more directly assesses expectations about core characteristics of regime type for the likelihood of interstate conflict initiation. We advance a theory about political competition which leads to expectations that it, rather than political participation or constraining institutions, is the most important source of the observed democratic peace. Specifically, leaders facing a viable opposition are most concerned with forestalling potential criticism of their foreign policies. Initiating conflict with a democracy would leave them vulnerable to opposition criticism on normative and costs-of-war bases. Potential vulnerability to such opposition criticism can be seen as a necessary condition for the operation of mechanisms such as audience costs or public-goods logic proposed by existing theories. We present robust statistical and machine-learning based results for directed dyads in the post-World War II era supporting our argument that high-competition states avoid initiating fights with democracies. ; Benjamin Goldsmith gratefully acknowledges support from the Australian Research Council through a Future Fellowship (FT140100763).

Ensuring internal security is one of the core objectives of European integration in the context of the establishment of an area of freedom, security and justice of the European Union (E.U.). The aim of the internal security policy of the E.U. is to support Member States with regard to the maintenance of law and order and the safeguarding of internal security. In the last 20 years in the area of internal security of the E.U. many important initiatives, political agendas and legal instruments at the E.U. level have arisen. This article aims to show the development of the internal security policy of the E.U., its most important guidelines and the challenges in the coming years.

Third parties are thought to face a trade-off in that those actions most likely to bring peace in the short run appear least likely to ensure its long-run stability. Yet the trade-off between conflict management and conflict resolution may be overstated. Analyzing an iterated three-player bargaining model with both information and commitment problems, we first demonstrate two conditions under which third parties may produce lasting peace through conditional subsidies, even without addressing underlying informational or commitment problems. Second, we illustrate this possibility by analyzing the impact of US foreign aid on patterns of conflict and peace between Israel and her neighbors. Our analysis indicates that the termination of the rivalry between Israel and Egypt was most likely not brought about by the Camp David accords or peacekeeping operations, but by sustained foreign aid provision. We discuss the implications for both this conflict and conflict management more broadly.

In the last five years, tensions have increased between China and a number of neighboring states over territorial disputes in the East and South China Sea. In some cases, there have even been threats of armed conflicts. China's increasingly aggressive behavior has stoked fears that long-simmering conflicts could escalate. This dismal picture began to brighten considerably, however, in the last half of 2014. In November, in the run-up to several important international summit meetings in the region, including the ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit (EAS), the parties to the conflicts began cautiously moving closer to one another and the security situation improved. Nevertheless, the drivers of the conflicts remain unchanged. They include conflicting territorial claims, strategic misperceptions, and contested regional orders. (author's abstract)

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- 1 Introduction: Prospects and Problems in the New Century -- 2 Corporations and States: Factor Flows in the Twenty-First Century -- 3 The World Economy at the End of the Millennium -- 4 The Rise of the Politically Incorrect One-Handed Economist -- 5 The Economic Consequences of the Peace -- 6 Dancing with the Giant: The Transformation of North American Sovereignties Approaching the Twenty-First Century -- 7 Fifty Years of Peace and Prosperity -- 8 China, Japan, and Germany in the New World Polity -- 9 Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century -- 10 The Continuing Conundrum of Internal Conflict -- 11 Trading Up and Trading Down: The Impact of Technological Change on the International System -- 12 The Justifying State: Why Anarchy Doesn't Mean No Excuses -- 13 The Cold War and Its Ending in "Long-Duration" International History -- About the Editor and Contributors -- Index

While analysts hail the democratic peace as an empirical vindication of neoidealist precepts of world politics, actually it is inconsistent with them. Neoidealism focuses on the role of international regimes - not shared political regime type - in reducing the probability of interstate conflict. In this article, I suggest a more consistent neoidealist conceptualization of the stability among democratic dyads. Focusing on the postwar era, I maintain that a combination of factors, including bipolarity, nuclear deterrence, alliance membership, and trade links, contributed to the formation of an international security regime among the major power democracies and their minor power democratic allies. Further, I maintain that the presence of this international regime and not simply joint democracy allowed for the postwar stability among democratic dyads. While democracy may have been associated with the creation of a security regime at the behest of the Western democracies led by the USA, the expansion and maintenance of this regime (and its conflict dampening attributes) are rooted, to a greater extent, in the interplay of alliance-aggregation and security externalities of trade. This argument is consistent with neoidealist precepts and by focusing on the role of security regimes it contributes to the neoidealist research program.