It is a puzzle that while academic research has increased in specialization, the important and complex problems facing humans urgently require a synthesis of understanding. This unique collaboration attempts to address such a problem by bringing together a host of prominent scholars from across the sciences to offer new insights into predicting the future. They demonstrate that long-term trends and short-term incentives need to be understood in order to adopt effective policies, or even to comprehend where we currently stand and the sort of future that awaits us.Developing novel techniques to forecast global conditions, the authors tackle important questions such as: What does the future hold? How can we sustain prosperity? Are we likely to have less war and genocide? Are nuclear weapons destined to spread to unstable countries? What environmental scarcities and conflicts are we likely to face? Each chapter is built around cause and effect relationships based on empirical evidence that creates a unified predictive model of global economic and political conditions. The limits and possibilities of scientific prediction are also explored, as are the physical, biological, and social properties of the global system. This book will have a wide appeal among physical and social scientists interested in the linkages between scientific method and the prediction of future human behavior and global conditions. Contributors: R.D. Alexander, B. Bueno de Mesquita, J.D. Farmer, J. Geanakoplos, J. Holland, S. di Iorio, M.S. Karasik, U. Luterbacher, S.W. Polachek, D. Rohner, G. Schneider, J.D. Singer, D.F. Sprinz, A. Tago, F.W. Wayman, E. Wiegandt, D. Wilkinson, P.R. Williamson, E.O. Wilson

Renowned scholar Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, who set the standard for the scientific approach to international relations and transformed the field, has returned with a reformulated fifth edition based on extensive reviewer feedback and guided by an emphasis on questions about the causes and consequences of war, peace, and world order. More than ever before, the strategic perspective in international relations is examined with complete clarity, precision, and accessibility. What hasn't changed is Bueno de Mesquita's commitment to covering the fundamentals of IR. The foundational topics and examination are all there: the major theories of war, the domestic sources of international politics, an exploration of the democratic peace, the problems of terrorism, the role of foreign aid, democratization, international political economy, globalization, international organizations, international law, and the global environment. The first part of the book, "Foundations"offers highly accessible coverage of key concepts, introducing students to different ways to think about the national interest and showing them how to use game theory and the strategic perspective/selectorate theory to better understand what happens in all aspects of international affairs. This section uses debate over North Korea's nuclear weapons development as an ongoing example to build concepts and build confidence in the student's how of basic modeling ideas. Also covered is a basic, intuitive introduction to game theory and other evidence and logic based tools for analyzing international relations. Part II, "War," next provides a more thorough evaluation of how domestic political incentives and the domestic institutions of governance shape choices about conflict initiation, escalation, and termination. It also surveys major theories of war and conflict, working through hypotheses derived from constructivism, neo-realism, liberalism and selectorate theory and evaluating them against the evidence to see what actually works and what doesn't.Chapters in Part III, "Peace," build on the logic of collective action to help students see why it is so difficult to get national governments to do "what is right" even when they can agree on what is right, with chapters covering the effectiveness of international organizations and international law, as well as a thorough evaluation of environmental issues, human rights enforcement and the domestic and the international political economy of trade. Part IV, "World Order" emphasizes efforts to promote the spread of democracy and economic prosperity. It also addresses how to understand and deal with terrorism. Whether examining terrorism, the spread of democracy or the alleviation of poverty, chapters in this section carefully examine which strategies work, which do not, and why. The Arab Spring provides a useful ongoing example of the strengths and weaknesses of foreign aid policy and military intervention policies. No other introductory text delivers such an easily-understood contemporary explanation of international politics, while truly enabling students to learn how to mobilize the key concepts and models themselves-thus develop a new method for thinking about world affairs. More than ever before, Principles provides a comprehensive evaluation of all aspects of international affairs, systematically compares the accuracy of competing approaches to international relations, and walks students through the simple, intuitive models and games that capture the essence of the strategic, selectorate viewpoint.

Since the development of the modern state system in Europe four centuries ago, there have been ten general wars involving a majority of the major powers and a high level of casualties. Another major war is difficult to conceive of, since it would presumably be the last such conflict, and yet it is not an impossibility. In this volume a distinguished group of political scientists and historians examine the origins of major wars and discuss the problems in preventing a nuclear war.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita can predict the future. From international terrorism to corporate fraud, from climate change to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita has been predicting the future for decades. Using Game Theory (a theory based on the rationale that everyone acts in their own self-interest) he can foretell and even engineer events. His forecasts, for everyone from the CIA to major international companies, have an extraordinary 90% success rate. In this fascinating and immensely readable book he explains how you can use Game Theory to your own advantage - to win a legal dispute, advance your career and even get the best possible price for your car. Prediction will change your understanding of the world - both now and in the future.

This pathbreaking book illuminates the politics of issue resolution within the European Community with evaluations and comparisons of competing models of decision making across twenty-two policy issues. Written by American and Dutch scholars, the book will be of great interest to students of comparative politics, public policy analysts, mathematic modelers, and all those concerned with the development of the European Community. One set of models explored in this volume - the expected utility model - treats politics as a conflictual activity, while the other, the exchange or log rolling model, emphasizes the cooperative nature of political processes. The alternative approaches model decision making in fundamentally different ways and make very different predictions about how issues in the European Community will be resolved. To facilitate direct comparison of their predictive and explanatory value, the models in this volume are based on the same variables: the potential control of actors over outcomes, the salience of the issues for the actors, and the outcomes preferred by the actors. The contributors test their models in the context of sixteen issues already resolved by the Council of Ministers and six issues currently under consideration, providing the reader with considerable knowledge about the controversies surrounding European Community policy on such topics as automobile emissions, nuclear radiation norms, air transport liberalization, and the European banking system. They conclude that the conflictual model and the cooperative model are less competitive and more complementary than has been thought, and they explain in detail how the models can be fruitfully combined.

This book, originally published in 1975, presents a theory of behaviour in coalitions and presents an application of the theory to Indian political party coalitions. The major findings of the study are (a) the size of political parties is unimportant when important benefits are distributed in coalitions; (b) behaviour that combines a moderate degree of cooperation and competition with one's allies leads to a much greater political success than either highly competitive or highly cooperative behaviour; and (c) political parties with leaders whose personalities can be characterised as having a high need to achieve enjoy much greater electoral success than parties whose leaders are relatively low in need for achievement. The book is important because the theory is able to explain long term and short term consequences of coalitions; it presents a careful analysis of political party behaviour in India and it combines elements of positive political theory, empirical political science and psychology in explaining coalition behaviour.

How do political institutions help promote prosperity in some countries and poverty in others? What can be done to encourage leaders to govern not for patronage but for economic growth? In this book, such distinguished political economists as Douglass North, Robert Barro, and Stephen Haber answer these questions, providing a solution to one of the most important policy puzzles of the new century: how to govern for prosperity.

The authors begin from a premise that political leaders are self-interested politicians rather than benign agents of the people they lead. When leaders depend on only a few backers to stay in power, they dole out privileges to those people, thereby dissipating their country's total resources and national growth potential. On the other hand, leaders who need large coalitions to stay in office implement policies that generally foster growth and political competition over ideas. The result is that those who promote politics that lead to stagnation tend to stay in office for a long time, and those who produce prosperity tend to lose their jobs. Analyzing countries in North and South America and Asia, the authors discuss the range of political regimes that permit or even encourage leaders to rule by mismanaging their nation's resources. And they show that nations must forge institutions that allow all social groups to participate in and benefit from the economy as well as force political leaders to be responsible for policy outcomes.

This widely used and acclaimed text reader brings together some of the best work on the onset of war, the expansion of war, the conditions of peace, and the termination and impact of war. Editorial commentary on the major findings and the statistical analysis used in each study teaches students how to read the article so that they can become literate in social science methods. A learning package in the appendix provides a programmed text to teach students how to interpret tables, read basic statistics, and conduct elementary data analysis. Correlates of War data on European countries is provided, and a methodological table of contents allows instructors to assign articles from the easiest (simple percentages) to the most advanced (time series and formal modeling).

Updated and revised, this volume offers a forward-looking analysis of the international political scene in the post-Cold War era. With a new preface, the argument is strengthened and restated that no prior attempt to describe the post-Cold War world order has succeeded because none has divided the apparent disarray into its two parts: zones of peace and democracy, in which the authors discern a new basis for international relations; and zones of turmoil and development, where the future will be be like the past. This edition examines how the democracies should respond to the challenge of events in the former Yugoslavia.

On 1 July 1997 the red flag with five yellow stars of the People's Republic of China will be hoisted over Government House in Hong Kong, replacing the Union Jack and symbolizing the culmination of a profound political transition. The United Kingdom, which has governed the colony since 1841, will have transferred sovereignty and administrative responsibility over Hong Kong to mainland China's Communist party. Hong Kong is in for a rocky road in the years ahead. Future treatment of Hong Kong will be caught up in the political competition for control of China. Victims of that competition will include the free press, academic freedom, open and fair elections, and some portion of market freedom. Hong Kong will not be as tightly controlled as the rest of China, but neither will it be the free and vivacious place it has been for the past half century. The political and economic landscape will be filled with uncertainty, cronyism, lost freedoms, and more corruption than has been known in the recent past. It is a bleak picture indeed. Such is the dire prophecy of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, David Newman, and Alvin Rabushka, whose Red Flag over Hong Kong casts a cold eye on the future prospects of "the world's best example of the free-market economy, working as textbooks say it should". Applying to that unknown future a dynamic model of decision making that rests on the collection of data from a wide range of expert observers, the authors boldly seek to quantify human behavior and so derive a precise and reliable early forecast of Hong Kong's destiny at the hands of its communist masters.

In this landmark work, two leading theorists of international relations analyze the strategies designed to avoid international conflict. Using a combination of game theory, statistical analysis, and detailed case histories, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman evaluate the conditions that promote negotiation, the status quo, capitulation, acquiescence, and war. The authors assess two competing theories on the role that domestic politics plays in foreign policy choices: one states that national decision makers are constrained only by the exigencies of the international system, and the other views leaders as additionally constrained by domestic political considerations. Finding the second theory to be more consistent with historical events, they use it to examine enduring puzzles such as why democracies do not appear to fight one another, whether balance of power or power preponderance promotes peaceful resolution of disputes, and what conditions are necessary and sufficient for nations to cooperate with one another. They conclude by speculating about the implications of their theory for foreign policy strategies in the post-Cold War world.

"This illuminating work is a masterful study that delves into the causes of war using a wholly new approach. Utilizing the assumptions of rational behavior, de Mesquita focuses on the perspective of decision making as an attempt to understand the phenomenon of war. . . . The book is highly stimulating. . . provocative, and certainly quite timely. . . a superb example of methodological exposition. . . Likely to appeal to the serious scholar of social sciences in general and of international relations in particular."-Ghulam M. Haniff, The annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science "A major work. It is certain to inspire theoretical elaboration and refinement, additional testing of its propositions, and fruitful application. Moreover, it is destined to be considered a classic contribution to the scientific understanding of interstate conflict and war."-Frank C. Zagare, American Political Science Review "Rigorous and insightful analysis. . . . An important contribution to our theories of choice, relevant to all students of politics. The study is an exemplar in its development of systemic mini-theory accomplished by empirical tests of its propositions, completely worthy of emulation by those of us who profess to be political scientists, young and old."-Harold Guetzkow "A tour de force of theory, testing, and illustration."-Brice M. Russett

CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2004 and Winner of the 2004 Best Book Award presented by the Conflict Processes section of the American Political Science Association (APSA) 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 development and others do not. The authors construct a provocative theory on the selection of leaders and present specific formal models from which their central claims can be deduced. They show how political leaders allocate resources and how institutions for selecting leaders create incentives for leaders to pursue good and bad public policy. They also extend the model to explain the consequences of war on political survival. Throughout the book, they provide illustrations from history, ranging from ancient Sparta to Vichy France, and test the model against statistics gathered from cross-national data. The authors explain the political intuition underlying their theory in nontechnical language, reserving formal proofs for chapter appendixes. They conclude by presenting policy prescriptions based on what has been demonstrated theoretically and empirically.

"The Strategy of Campaigning" explores the political careers of Ronald Reagan and Boris Yeltsin, two of the most galvanizing and often controversial political figures of our time. Both men overcame defeat early in their political careers and rose to the highest elected offices in their respective countries. The authors demonstrate how and why Reagan and Yeltsin succeeded in their political aspirations, despite--or perhaps because of--their apparent "policy extremism": that is, their advocacy of policy positions far from the mainstream. The book analyzes the viability of policy extremism as a political strategy that enables candidates to forge new coalitions and outflank conventional political allegiances.

Kiron K. Skinner is Associate Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Carnegie Mellon University, a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, and a member of the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel and the National Security Education Board. Serhiy Kudelia is Lecturer of Politics at Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Ukraine and advisor to Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is Julius Silver Professor and Director of the Alexander Hamilton Center for Political Economy at New York University and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. Condoleezza Rice is on a leave of absence from Stanford University, where she was a Professor of Political Science and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. She is currently serving as U.S. Secretary of State.