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Given the current redistributions in the global balance of power, power transition theory (PTT) has once again become an important intellectual factor. Many observers employing PTT are anxious about China's ascendance and expect serious conflicts between Washington and Beijing in the coming years. Such skepticism, however, is problematic for three reasons. First, it is false theoretically; PTT does not claim that all rising powers will resort to war or that all power transitions will result in war. Second, it is false empirically; not all power transitions in history have resulted in Great Power wars. Third, it leads to flawed policy advice; if rising powers are not always dissatisfied and do not always challenge the status quo, then policies meant to oppose them might breed dangerous dissatisfaction in the first place.This article amends PTT by adding a variable, the "will to power" (WTP), that captures the willingness of rising powers to commit themselves to changing the status quo. Furthermore, it scrutinizes two historical power transition constellations (United Kingdom–United States and United Kingdom–Imperial Germany). In both cases the new variable is consistent with the outcome and particularly in the United Kingdom–United States case the WTP variable broadens our understanding by making it possible to see this relationship as "missed" or "eschewed" instead of as a peaceful power transition. Doing so extends the power transition dichotomy to a much more complex and realistic typology of power transition constellations.

It is a commonly held view that democracy is better at safeguarding environment while autocracy is predatory in nature, and is thus insensitive towards environment. However, others argue that democracy leads to environmental degradation. We revisit this contentious relationship between regime type and environment degradation in the context of deforestation. Using panel data on 139 countries during the 1990–2012 period, we find that democracy is associated with lower levels of forest coverage. Although our results appear counter-intuitive, further analyses reveal the positive effect of democracy on forest area coverage is conditional upon the level of economic development. Roughly, at per capita income of about US$8200, the impact of democracy on forest coverage becomes positive. Our results suggest that a democratic government's priority to tackle environmental problems depends on its level of economic development. These results also highlight the fundamental reason as to why there is a lack of coordinated effort between developing and developed countries in addressing environmental issues.

What kind of policy goals and orientation would a unified Korea adopt? A concerned US asks, would it become a China-friendly state? Or, would it be an anchor for the American–Asian alliance network at the expense of China's security interests? To address these questions, this article begins by identifying six possible scenarios for the US-Sino relationship at the time of a unification that result from the combination of (1) the relative power capabilities between the US and China and (2) whether the US and China cooperate or conflict with each other. After describing the six scenarios, this article examines what policies the US and China would pursue toward the Korean peninsula in each scenario. Also, it contemplates how a unified Korea should respond to policies of the US and China in each scenario.

AbstractEnfranchising emigrants implicitly involves inviting them to have a voice and increasing engagement in home politics, thus maintaining active membership of their nation of origin. However, in the Latin American Southern Cone (as well as in several other countries in the region), both state policies and expats' responses have fallen short of making that invitation effective. What explains this inclusion paradox? Why, while franchise is expanding has effective political inclusion of citizens living abroad not materialized? This article addresses these questions for the cases of Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. Conclusions highlight relatively unexplored explanatory factors and enhance our understanding of the links between migration policy innovation and political inclusion beyond borders in some of the least studied cases in the literature.

AbstractThe paper focuses on what is old and what is new in transnationalism by analyzing extraterritorial attempts of the Italian and Mexican governments. During the large southern/ eastern European immigration to the US from 1890 to the 1920s, Italian immigrants reached 24 percent of the immigrant wave. Mexican documented and undocumented immigrants from the 1980s until 2010s made up 30 percent of the immigrant wave almost a century later. Transnational immigrants live in a country in which they do not claim citizenship rights and claim citizenship rights in a country they do not live in. Therefore migration and immigrant policies challenge both sending and receiving states. Foreign governments are limited in the policies and practices that they can enforce. A comparison of state policies from Italy and Mexico challenges the fact that transnationalism is significantly different and new.

This analysis differentiates two Arctic actors, Denmark and Russia, according to their centrality in the global Regional Trade Agreements network and the strength of their ties to other states in this system, in order to determine whether their positions coincide and have been stable throughout the last 24 years. The analysis reveals a significant stable heterogeneity between the Arctic actors not only in all three parameters of centrality (degree centrality, closeness centrality and betweenness centrality), but also in strength of the institutionalized ties these actors are involved in, and identifies the major sources of adjustment of regional (Arctic) policy preferences based on these global positions.