Randolph Siverson

• PhD
• Wine taster at University of California, Davis

Carefully selected and first translated into Polish excerpts from academic works, which shaped the international relations science. The anthology reflects the plurality of theoretical, normative and methodological approaches, characteristic of modern international relations science.

Drawing upon earlier research on the post failed coup survival of political leaders, we offer an ex ante in sample estimate of the likely political survival of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan following the fail coup of 2016. Depending on the assumption made about when he entered office, we conclude that his tenure is likely to endure until 2...

What factors explain variation in the tenure of political leaders who survive a coup d’état? Our main hypothesis is that leaders who survive a coup attempt take the opportunity to purge known and potential rivals while also deterring future coup conspirators. The severity of the purge is also hypothesized to be positively associated with longer pos...

The proclivity of military regimes and their leaders for more frequent involvement in international conflict than other autocracies has been shown in several studies. The question raised here is not whether they participate in more conflicts and disputes, but rather whether after the leaders of military regimes enter office they initiate these acts...

We examine a problem that is confronted frequently by political science researchers seeking to model longitudinal data: what to do when one suspects a lag between the realization of a regressor and its effect on the outcome variable, but one has no theoretical reason to suspect a particular lag length. We examine the theoretical challenges posed by...

We address the consequences of corruption within a state on the extent to which populations have shortened life expectancy due to political corruption. Using three variables to estimate corruption, the results support the expectation that corruption increases average disability shortened life years (DALY). The results persist when estimating the mo...

Gee! I';ve Never Spent $5.5 Million Before:1. The Six Fallacies of NSF Proposal Writing - Volume 31 Issue 1 - Russell Dalton, Randolph Siverson

WALTER POHL, IAN WOOD, and HELMUT REIMITZ, eds. The Transformation of Frontiers: From Late Antiquity to the Carolingians. Leiden: Brill, 2001. Pp. vi, 299. $98.00 (US). Reviewed by Fergus Millar

NATHAN S. ROSENSTEIN. Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Pp. xii, 224. $28.00 (US). Reviewed by Fergus Millar

MICHAEL RICHTER. Ireland and Her Neighbours in the Seventh Century. New York: St Martin's Press, 1999. Pp. 256. $55.00 (US). Reviewed by Dáibhí Ó Cróinín

Drawing upon two alternative versions of the institutional explanation for the democratic peace, we suggest competing hypotheses about the relationship between democratic political institutions and the length of dispute participation. One set of hypotheses originates in the argument that because of the bargaining arrangements internal to democratic...

Robert W. Jackman, Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Davis, died peacefully in San Francisco on October 8, 2009, after a long, courageous struggle with pancreatic cancer.

Kevin Clarke and Randall Stone (2008) offer a methodological critique of some of our tests of the selectorate theory in The Logic of Political Survival (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003). We accept their critique of residualization for control variables in those tests, but reject the contention that the size of the winning coalition does not predict t...

We examine the propensity of states to initiate international conflict conditioned on four primary explanatory variables: (1) changes in population over varying lags, (2) democratic status of the state, (3) the power status of the state, and (4) changes in the state's level of energy consumption. We hypothesize that the responsiveness of a governme...

This review essay examines a number of areas in the study of war management. First, current work on war bargaining combines previous models of prewar bargaining with intra-war bargaining. These models attempt to depict both the elements of intra-war bargaining and its possible outcome within a dynamic setting in which battles as well as diplomacy p...

Militarized interstate disputes are widely thought to be less likely among democratic countries that have high levels of trade and extensive participation in international organizations. We reexamine this broad finding of the Kantian peace literature in the context of a model that incorporates the high degree of dependency among countries. Based on...

We explore how the sizes of the winning coalition and selectorate influence the war aims of states. Leaders who answer to a small winning coalition are more likely to seek territorial gain as a way to increase state resources. Nonterritorial war aims produce a commitment problem in that after the war the defeated state may not comply with the victo...

Research in international politics may have produced misleading results because (1) typical data contain dependencies that have been ignored, (2) popula- tions are treated as samples, with unwarranted reliance on misleading significance tests, and (3) scant attention is devoted to how well the model can predict the events of interest. Using the dem...

The authors tested five novel hypotheses derived from the selectorate theory of war with data for up to about 140 states and spanning the years 1816-1993. The hypotheses point to subtle differences in selection effects across regime types that should operate during crises that fall short of war and also during wars. Leaders who rely on a large coal...

A number of critiques of social science research methods have beenadvanced. One strand in these critiques relates to the manner in whichselection bias can inadvertently produce fundamentally misleadingresults. A related concern has been the tendency for research designsto focus on the occurrence of war rather than on a comparison of war andpeace. F...

The authors of this ambitious book address a fundamental political question: why are leaders who produce peace and prosperity turned out of office while those who preside over corruption, war, and misery endure? Considering this political puzzle, they also answer the related economic question of why some countries experience successful economic dev...

Institutional arrangements influence the type of policies that leaders pursue. We examine two institutional variables: size of the selectorate (S) and the size of the winning coalition (W) – the minimal set of people whose support the incumbent needs in order to remain in power. The larger the winning coalition, the greater the emphasis leaders pla...

Under many nondemocratic systems, good policy is bad politics, and bad policy helps leaders stay in office. The result is poorer performance in terms of economic growth.

Institutional arrangements inuence the type of policies that leaders pursue. We examine two institutional variables: the size of the selectorate (S){the set of people who have an institutional say in choosing leaders{and the size of the winning coalition (W){the minimal set of people whose support the incumbent needs in order to remain in power. Th...

We examine formally the link between domestic political institutions and policy choices in the context of eight empirical regularities that constitute the democratic peace. We demonstrate that democratic leaders, when faced with war, are more inclined to shift extra resources into the war efforts than are autocrats. This follows because the surviva...

Efforts to replicate our study of the effects of politics on trade flows between the major powers have revealed that the computer program written to calculate the estimates produced errors in both the coefficients and the standard errors. Furthermore, these errors have some consequences for the results. In this brief corrigendum, we present correct...

The authors advance a theory of the effects of political institutions on state policy. The theory explains how political institutions affect the ability of leaders to maintain themselves in office, why some political systems are more prone to policy failure than others, and why autocrats create mass political systems. The key characteristics of ins...

We test three arguments about the effect of international politics on trade flows. The first argument states that trade flows are greater between states with similar interests than those with dissimilar interests, the second that trade flows are greater in democratic dyads than nondemocratic dyads, and the third that trade flows are greater between...

Broad analytic assessments of research areas can be invaluable for scholars because they can inform the ongoing feedback process between theory and research that is at the heart of scientific inquiry. Unfortunately, Simowitz's (1998) evaluation of diffusion analyses of conflict has several problematic characteristics that make it less useful to the...

J. F. LAZENBY. The First Punic War: A Military History. London: UCL Press, 1996. Pp. xi, 205. £12.95, paper. Reviewed by Richard E. MitchellBRENT D. SHAW. Rulers, Nomads, and Christians in Roman North Africa. Alder-shot: Variorum, 1995; dist. Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing. Pp. xii, 338. $89.95 (US). Reviewed by C. R. WhitakkerGEOFF KING. Mapp...

A large amount of recent research points to the importance of domestic political institutions in shaping foreign policy, most of it turning on the distinction between democratic and nondemocratic regimes. However, fundamental characteristics differentiate regime types beyond the distinction between democratic and nondemocratic. Drawing a distinctio...

One of the axioms of political analysis is that office-holders desire to continue to hold office and behave accordingly. A key implication of this view is that if the policies chosen by leaders are selected because leaders believe the policies will enhance their position, then the wars we see in history do not represent a random sample of all possi...

Not surprisingly, the ratings of doctoral programs in the United States by the National Research Council (NRC 1995) are controversial. Some interpret the ratings as an indicator of relative program quality; others view them as little more than a gauge of the size and age of graduate programs, and still others deem them to be simply a popularity bar...

Not surprisingly, the ratings of doctoral programs in the United States by the National Research Council (NRC 1995) are controversial. Some interpret the ratings as an indicator of relative program quality; others view them as little more than a gauge of the size and age of graduate programs, and still others deem them to be simply a popularity bar...

Most wars do not expand beyond the initial two participants. Why is this so? We argue that wars remain small because initiators select as targets states that they believe will not receive third-party help and that they can defeat without such help. Drawing on the idea of selection effect, a model of this choice is presented and a hypothesis is deri...

Two explanations have been advanced for the `democratic peace'; one is built on shared values and norms of democratic political systems, the other focuses on the constraints under which democratic political leaders make decisions or hold office. Constraints theory implies that democracies should be generally more peaceful, while previous analyses i...

We seek to answer the question, What effect does international war participation have on the ability of political leaders to survive in office? We develop a model of political reliability and derive seven related hypotheses from it that anticipate variation in the time a national political leader will survive in office after the onset of a war. Dra...

Morrow (1991) claims that alliances can shift because of changes in the policy preferences of the regimes that control states. This is counter to the central theoretical position of neorealist theory that sees alliances as the outgrowth of particular distributions of power in an anarchic international system. Drawing on regime changes in Europe bet...

While most militarized international disputes do not escalate to war others do. Why is this so? This paper reviews two broad bodies of research that attempt to provide partial answers to this question. First, contextual variables, such as power capabilities, arms races and polarity provide some insight into the conditions under which escalation tak...

Governments are likely to be held accountable for the success or failure of their foreign policies. Consequently, we claim that international wars can, under specified conditions, have domestically instigated consequences for violent regime change in the political systems of the participants. Drawing upon all international war participation between...

An examination of the alliance choices of democratic states between 1920 and 1939 and between 1946 and 1965 is undertaken to answer the question, do democracies have a tendency to ally with each other more than they ought to according to probability? The analysis of the data indicates that during the first period there was an initial tendency for d...

Following the admonition of Most and Starr (1984) that international relations scholars ‘need to reconceptualize exactly what it is that we want to study, and why’ the authors attempt to understand alliances through the broader context of geopolitics and geopolitical perspectives on international relations. Using the ecological triad framework of t...

Using borders and alliances as indicators of opportunity and willingness, respectively, we test the relationship between these and the diffusion of war during the 1816—1965 period. The impact of borders and alliances, individually and in combination, on the growth of ongoing war through “infectious” diffusion is shown through the comparison of base...

The authors investigate the expectations generated by the “interaction opportunity” model initially developed by Most and Starr for the study of diffusion. The impact that borders and alliances have as “treatments” on the overall war behavior of states is the focus of study, looking at both individual and interactive effects. Using the war behavior...

States interested in reducing the level of arms competition with a rival can employ a variety of strategies designed to promote cooperation. We examine the ability of three important strategies—unilateral action, tacit bargaining, and negotiation—to reduce the intensity of arms races motivated by different patterns of preferences and complicated by...

A considerable amount of the international politics literature attempts to explain international conflict on the basis of the distribution of power between and among nations. There are, however, divergent views of this linkage. One view argues that wars are most likely to take place between nations of similar power, while another asserts that wars...

The relationship between the distribution of power among nations and the outbreak of war has been a question of perennial interest to students of international politics. Although recent empirical studies seem to support the idea that equal power will lead to the outbreak of war, a review of these studies reveals that the findings are heavily influe...

International system theorists usually hypothesize great flexibility of alliance partner choice among the major powers in a multipolar system. To test for the existence of such flexibility, three statistically testable hypotheses of alliance partner choice in a multipolar system are derived. Log-linear model procedures are developed for testing hyp...

This paper addresses an inconsistency in various research findings concerning alliance initiations in the period 1919-1939. One recent study indicates that alliance initiations during this period were random, while earlier research indicates that the pattern was heterogeneous. A reexamination of the data using new techniques indicates that the proc...

This paper reports the creation of a data set of 256 cases of international conflict between 1815 and 1965. These conflicts consisted of (1) international disputes and crises in which the use of force appeared likely, (2) the unreciprocated use of violence, and (3) the reciprocated use of violence. The paper includes some statistics describing patt...

Recent research indicates that war initiations are influenced by a process of infectious contagion and that alliances may be the agent of contagion. However, it is evident that some alliances are more likely to spread war than others. This research is aimed at identifying those attributes of national alliance membership which tend to be associated...

Riker's theory of the minimal winning coalition has found relatively little use in explaining international alliances. One reason for this is that international alliances, unlike coalitions in political systems which have established authority structures, must bear the cost of implementing decisions. In so doing they may be liable to great costs (e...

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Stochastic models are constructed to illuminate the dynamic incidence of international warfare during the period from 1816 to 1965. It is argued that the probabilistic structure of this incidence is revealed most clearly through an analysis based on dyads of nations, thereby disassembling multilateral wars such as World War II. The conceptual focus...

This research reports an exploration of the relationship between a decision maker’s role and his perception during an international crisis. Research on the social and political processes of the United Nations suggests that a variety of factors, including communication patterns, nonnational roles, and learning experiences may produce a role orientat...

Research in international politics may have produced misleading results because (1) typical data contain dependencies that have been ignored, (2) populations are treated as samples, with unwarranted reliance on misleading significance tests, and (3) scant attention is devoted to how well the model can predict the events of interest. Using the democ...

Institutional arrangements in°uence the type of policies that leaders pursue. We examine two institutional variables: the size of the selectorate (S){the set of people whohaveaninstitutionalsayinchoosingleaders{andthesizeofthewinningcoalition (W){theminimalsetofpeoplewhosesupporttheincumbentneedsinordertoremain inpower. Thelargerthewinningcoalition...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Dept. of Political Science, Stanford University. Bibliography: leaves 220-229.

Thesis--Stanford University. Source: DAI, Feb. 1970, p. 3530-A. Microfilm of typescript.

The report represents an interim statement on the third phase of a study of Arab-Israeli conflict undertaken during the period October 1, 1966-September 30, 1967. Coding and keypunching of all documents for the 1956-57 period of the conflict were completed and content analysis was undertaken on the IBM 7090 computer. Further developments in scaling...