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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.

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.

This article develops a model of the strategic interaction between a regime and its domestic opposition. The author formally explores the strategic nature of the decision to pursue a transition. Specifically, the model incorporates the notion of uncertainty in the sense that the opposition does not know whether hard-liners or soft-liners control the regime. Liberalization then becomes a signal to the opposition, which may or may not convey meaningful information about the regime's type. An important result of the analysis is that in a scenario in which the opposition seeks a transition but wishes to avoid violence, conflict between the opposition and the regime can still occur. The model also provides an explanation for the occurrence of pacted transitions (negotiated transitions without violence) as well as why some transition opportunities do not materialize even when conditions are ripe for a peaceful transition. In addition, the model explains why and under what circumstances regimes liberalize. Empirical analysis of the Hungarian revolt of 1956 and pretransition Brazil during the late 1970s lends support to the model.

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.

This text explores how market power competition between states can create disruptions in the global political economy and potentially lead to territorial aggression and war.

How are the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the Russian incursions into Ukraine and Georgia, and China's occupation of islands in the South China Sea related? In this book, Mark Crescenzi and Stephen Gent show how all three important moments in history are driven by the motivation to capture market power. Whether it was oil for Iraq, natural gas for Russia, or rare earth minerals for China, the goal isn't just the commodities themselves-it is the power to determine their price on the global market. They develop a new theory of market power politics that explains when and why states will delay cooperation or even fight wars in pursuit of this elusive goal.