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In the past ten years there has been a burst of theoretical and
empirical research on the topic of learning in international
relations. Russell J. Leng's new book is the latest addition to
this body of scholarship, and it builds on his past research on
learning and crisis bargaining. Leng examines the role of
learning in crisis bargaining strategies within ongoing, inter-
national rivalries. He asks a series of questions, including: Do
patterns of crisis behavior repeat from one crisis to the next?

Liberal international relations theory proposes that peace fosters democracy. This research note tests this & a related hypothesis, that defeat in war makes an authoritarian state's transition to democracy more likely. It uses Weibull event history models to analyze both the transition to & survival of democracy for states from 1960 to 1992, using the MID, COW, & Pearson/Baumann intervention data sets to measure international conflict. Important control variables such as economic prosperity are also included. It finds that lower levels of participation in international conflict do not facilitate democratic transition or survival, with the limited exception that participation in an international war blocks democratic transition. Also, in most models examined defeat in war does not make democratic transition more likely. The implications for liberalism are mixed: peace in general does not cause democracy, but spreading democracy is likely to spread peace. 2 Tables, 40 References. Adapted from the source document.

Argues that NATO membership has not advanced democratization in Europe, based on the cases of Turkey, Spain, Portugal, and Greece, and will not do so in the case of Eastern Europe, and that costs and risks of further enlargement, including deterioration of relations with Russia, caution against pursuit of this policy.

Military strategy is an area of growing interest in the study of international conflict. It is linked to the outbreak, duration, and outcome of wars. This article presents the first quantitative empirical tests of the proposition that military strategy affects the outbreak of international conflict. The focus is on maneuver-oriented military strategies, such as the German blitzkrieg in World War II, which are hypothesized to be particularly conflict prone. Tests were conducted on the initiation and escalation of militarized interstate disputes for a sample of states from 1903 to 1992. The results indicate that states with maneuver strategies were significantly more likely to initiate disputes in general, although not disputes that escalate to the use of force. However, dispute participants with maneuver strategies were significantly more likely to escalate a dispute to war if the adversary employed a military strategy that emphasized attrition.