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Why do some near crises tip over into full-blown crisis and others do not? This paper considers existing scholarship and identifies four key barriers to using quantitative analysis for tipping-point analyses: strategic indeterminacy; the incentives for conflict parties to avoid inefficiencies; the paucity of cases; and the availability of quality data. Due to these challenges, many do not perform well as immediate causes for crisis escalation. We also argue and demonstrate through two quantitative models of crisis escalation that some variables, particularly related to domestic politics, can do well in explaining why some disputes tip into crisis and others do not. As we illustrate with reference to the 1995–1996 Third Taiwan Straits Crisis, qualitative approaches that analyze the processes by which leaders and foreign policy institutions make decisions add needed explanatory power to purely quantitative models of the potential for near crises to tip into crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commercial liberalism would suggest that whereas globalization was conducive to great power cooperation—or at least moderated competition—deglobalization is likely to ignite greater competition amongst the Great Powers. In reality, however, the picture is much more complex. To begin with, the intense globalization of the 1990s and 2000s is not responsible for moderating Great Power tensions; instead, it is itself a product of the security situation resulting from the end of the Cold War. Furthermore, while globalization did serve to reinforce cooperation between the United States and rising challengers, such as China, which sought to harness the economic gains of globalization to accelerate their rise, it also created or intensified fault-lines that have led to heightening tensions between the Great Powers. Finally, while we are currently witnessing increasing tensions between the US and both China and Russia, deglobalization does not appear to be the primary cause. Thus, geoeconomic conditions do not drive security relations; instead, the geoeconomic environment, which is itself influenced by Great Power politics, is better understood as a medium of Great Power competition, which may affect the character of Great Power competition and its intensity, but does not determine it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An assumption runs through this symposium that peaceful change is desirable and ought to be encouraged. We do not believe it is that simple. The term "peaceful change" itself is not well defined. The article, therefore, narrowly defines peaceful change as a process whereby a hegemon voluntarily cedes its dominant geopolitical role to a challenger in one or more regions. Drawing on neoclassical realism, we hypothesize that a declining hegemon will only accept peaceful change if: (1) it has high confidence change is inevitable because it lacks the military, economic, or political means to resist it; or (2) when domestic political or economic costs of resistance of prohibitively high; or (3) when the leadership of the hegemonic state faces domestic constraints in its ability to enact policies to resist the challenger. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When can economic sanctions and incentives achieve important political objectives? Why do they often fail? We propose a political theory of economic statecraft, arguing that the success of economic statecraft does not depend on the magnitude of its economic effect. Instead, it succeeds when the economic pain or gain it engenders translates into political costs or opportunities. We argue that the political effects of economic signals will depend on a variety of international and domestic political factors, the most important of which is the target state’s level of stateness, comprised of three components: autonomy, capacity, and legitimacy. When economic statecraft motivates key domestic coalitions to push for policy change, high stateness enables target state leaders to resist their calls and defy the sender. Conversely, when economic statecraft convinces target leaders that they ought to comply with the sender’s demands, high stateness enable them to overcome domestic opposition to compromise. To evaluate the usefulness of our theory, we employ a plausibility probe, testing our approach against three leading alternatives (the realist, economic liberal, and domestic conditionalist approaches) with case studies of Western economic incentives to Hungary and Romania after the Cold War and Indian sanctions against Nepal in the late 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do war-prone regions stabilize? This article tests realist, liberal, and constructivist hypotheses against the paradigmatic case of regional peacemaking, Western Europe after World War II. It concludes that none of the three theories perfectly explains the process of Franco-German reconciliation after 75 years of bitter conflict. Instead, the transition to stability occurred in two stages. The first stage, the transition, was driven by realist factors, principally the existence of a common Soviet threat and active American hegemonic participation. In the second stage, however, stability and cooperation were entrenched by liberal mechanisms, notably the institution of democratic political regimes and cooperative international institutions. I thus inductively arrive at the novel theoretical position that realist mechanisms may initially be required to compel regional rivals to put aside their differences, at least temporarily, and cooperate on the grounds of realpolitik, but liberal mechanisms are ultimately useful to sustain and deepen regional peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of scholarly literature argues that globalization has weakened the national security state. In this essay, we examine the globalization school's main propositions by analyzing the national security strategies of four categories of states: (1) major powers, (2) states in stable regions, (3) states in regions of enduring rivalries, and (4) weak and failed states. We conclude that the globalizations school's claims are overstated given that states of all types pursue more traditional security policies than they would expect. To the extent that globalization has affected the pursuit of national security, it has done so unevenly. States in stable regions appear to have embraced the changes rendered by globalization the most, states in regions of enduring rivalries the least. Although the weak and failed states also show signs of having been affected by globalization, many of the “symptoms” they manifest have more to do with internal difficulties than external challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]