Through the use of logic, simulation, and empirical data, Most and Starr develop and demonstrate a new and more appropriate conceptualization of explanation in international relations and foreign policy. They demonstrate that a concern with the logical underpinnings of research raises a series of theoretical, conceptual and epistemological issues that must be addressed if theory and research are to meet the challenges of cumulation in the study of international relations. The authors argue for understanding the critical, yet subtle, interplay of the elements within a research triad composed...

The idea that political and economic power moves in coordinated cycles has long intrigued political scientists and political economists, for if a pattern exists in the rise and fall of international political power, a model explaining this pattern gains predictive qualities. In Leading Sectors and World Powers, George Modelski and William R. Thompson venture beyond previous attempts to explain why major powers rise, fall, and fight about their changing status to establish an explicit connection between war, economic innovation, and world leadership. They argue that surges in economic...

In Democracy and International Conflict, James Lee Ray defends the idea, so optimistically advanced by diplomats in the wake of the Soviet Union's demise and so hotly debated by international relations scholars, that democratic states do not initiate war against one another and therefore offer an avenue to universal peace. Ray acknowledges that despite persuasive theoretical arguments and empirical evidence in favor of this idea, the democratic peace proposition is susceptible to attack on three points: the statistical rarity of both international wars and democracies; the difficulty in...