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This article introduces an altemative to the study of economic interdependence and interstate conflict. Typically, scholars have relied upon relative levels of economic activity to characterize symmetry in interdependence. Instead, I argue that the key to understanding the role of symmetry in interdependence and conflict lies in the relationship between a state's exit (opportunity) costs and the costs it is willing to bear in the face of political conflict with another state. Asymmetry with respect to two states' exit costs/threshold relationships can generate bargaining power that constrains the use of force. This approach improves our understanding of the complex relationship between interdependence and conflict. It also suggests that current measurements of economic interdependence may fail to identify situations where interdependence plays a role in conflict.

Reputations abound in world politics, but we know little about how reputations form and evolve: namely, how do countries form reputations? Do these reputations affect interstate politics in the global arena? In this work, Crescenzi develops a theory of reputation dynamics to help identify when reputations form in ways that affect world politics, both in the realms of international conflict and cooperation.

It is well established that state reputations impact international politics, but less is known about how these reputations change. We investigate one form of change by examining how individuals process new information. Using a logic of discordant learning, we expect good reputations to survive new and incongruent information that counters expectations. Good reputations can help states "weather the storm" in times of crisis. Such buffers have their limits, however, as strong incongruent signals can trigger large corrections in a state's reputation. To analyze these expectations, we focus on alliance reliability. Using a pair of survey experiments, we find that individuals alter their perceptions of a state's reputation when observing signals that deviate from the state's prior reputation, and that good reputations are able to "weather the storm". We also find that strongly incongruent signals affect good reputations more than others, suggesting "the bigger they are, the harder they fall" may also apply. Even in these large corrections, however, a reputation for reliability has lasting benefits. The analysis helps us understand when to expect changes in reputations for alliance reliability, which in turn may inform when reputation loss can influence alliance politics.

In international politics, states learn from the behavior of other nations, including the reputations states form through their actions in the international system. This article presents a model of how states process this information and examines how this learning affects international conflict. The model builds off of cognitive balance theory and foreign policy learning models and breaks new ground in its ability to provide a contextual assessment of reputation in world politics. The article then investigates whether a dyad is more likely to experience conflict if at least one state has a reputation for hostility. This hypothesis is tested empirically across all dyads in the international system from 1817 to 2000. The results indicate that states do engage in this learning behavior and that the information generated by extra‐dyadic interaction of states has a significant bearing upon the likelihood of dyadic conflict.