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AbstractWhy do states engage in irredentism? Expanding on previous scholarship, this article advances a new theory with rationalist microfoundations that accounts for the incentives of both elites and citizens to support irredentism in democracies and dictatorships. Our model suggests irredentism is more likely when it enables political elites to provide a specific mix of private goods, public goods, and welfare transfers to citizens who desire them at the lowest tax rate. This leads to the prediction that irredentism is most likely in majoritarian democratic electoral systems and military dictatorships, and least likely in proportional electoral systems and single-party dictatorships. We test and find supportive evidence for these expectations using a comprehensive dataset covering all observed and potential irredentist cases from 1946 to 2014.

ObjectiveThe literature on indiscriminate violence has emphasized how information shapes state capacity and determines whether and where the government employs collective targeting. This article investigates the conditions that influence the government's ability to obtain intelligence in counterinsurgencies. Specifically, it suggests that the government is more likely to use indiscriminate violence in areas characterized by indigenous ethnic homogeneity and forested terrain. These features increase the cost of acquiring information about the insurgents, and reduce state capacity, thereby increasing the likelihood of indiscriminate violence.MethodWe examine district‐level data on the Russian government's use of indiscriminate violence and disaggregated data on ethnicity and terrain across the North Caucasus from 2000 to 2011.ResultsThe results indicate that ethnically homogeneous and forested areas are significantly more likely targets of indiscriminate violence, and that the effect of ethnicity is markedly stronger when the district is densely forested.ConclusionThis finding expands on previous studies by testing the observable implications of theories linking information to indiscriminate violence, and by providing new micro‐level evidence for important human and physical constraints on counterinsurgencies.

Abstract
This article analyzes North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – Russia dynamics in Eastern Europe, focusing on the competition for influence in Georgia and Montenegro with comparisons to Moldova and Ukraine. Whereas all four countries have expressed a desire to join NATO – and Russia has consistently communicated its disapproval – Moscow has pursued divergent means to curb NATO expansion and escalated with tit-for-tat strategies. We argue that whether Russia deployed military strategies, economic levers, political tactics or covert actions has varied according to its relative power projection capacity along with the responses of NATO and the target countries. Where power projection capacity is greater due to its contiguous geography (Georgia, Ukraine), Russia staged military interventions, and where it was weaker, in non-contiguous countries (Montenegro, Moldova), it resorted to non-military means. Russia may be uniformly opposed to NATO expansion, but its strategies to keep its neighbours out of NATO and in Russia's orbit are contingent upon its relative power.