Although students of world politics have come increasingly to speak of their empirical domain as a social system, little effort has gone into the systematic observation and measurement of its formal or informal structure. One structural attribute of the inter national system which leaves a definite trace and is therefore readily measurable, is that of alliance patterns. This paper examines all written (peacetime only) alliances among system members, describes the procedures for classifying them, and then transforms such information into quantitative indicators of alliance aggregation for various forms of the international system for every year between 1815 and 1939. Such data make it possible to treat this particular system attribute as either a dependent or an inde pendent variable for purposes of hypothesis testing or exploration in world politics.

Formal alliances, 1815—1939 A Quantitative Description

Are insurgents affected by new information about the United States' sensitivity to costs? Using data on attacks and variation in access to international news across Iraqi provinces, we identify an "emboldenment" effect by comparing the rate of insurgent attacks in areas with higher and lower access to information about U.S news after public statements critical of the war. We find that in periods after a spike in war-critical statements, insurgent attacks increases by 7-10 percent, but that this effect dissipates within a month. Additionally, we find that insurgents shift attacks from Iraqi civilian to U.S. military targets following new information about the United States' sensitivity to costs, resulting in more U.S. fatalities but fewer deaths overall. These results suggest that there is a small but measurable cost to open public debate in the form of higher attacks in the short-term, and that Iraqi insurgent organizations - even those motivated by religious or ideological goals - are strategic actors that respond rationally to the expected probability of US withdrawal. However, the implied costs of open, public debate must be weighed against the potential gains. We conclude that to the extent insurgent groups respond rationally to the incentives set by the policies of pro-government forces, effective counterinsurgency should prioritize manipulating costs and inducements, rather than focus simply on search and destroy missions.

Is There an

Every Citizen a Statesman Building a Democracy for Foreign Policy in the American Century

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Every Citizen a Statesman: Building a Democracy for Foreign Policy in the American Century

Contemporary International Relations (IR) typically treats anarchy as a fundamental, defining, and analytically central feature of international relations. Furthermore, it is usually held that IR since its inception has been structured around a discourse of anarchy. In fact, however, until the 1980s anarchy was rarely employed as a central analytical concept, as I show by examining 145 books published between 1895 and 1978. The conceptual and analytic centrality of anarchy is not imposed on us by international reality. Rather, it is a recent and contingent construction. Given the shortcomings of standard uses of ‘anarchy’ – especially the facts that there is no clear, generally agreed upon definition, that ‘the effects of anarchy’ are not effects of anarchy (alone), and that anarchy is not the structural ordering principle of international systems – I argue for returning to earlier practice and putting anarchy back in the background of IR.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S1752971915000111

The discourse of anarchy in IR

The politics of civil rights in the Truman administration

The United States and the Caribbean

The American approach to foreign policy

Memoirs by Harry S. Truman. Volume II, Years of Trial and Hope

The author presents Hughes not only as a remarkable jurist but also as one of the most remarkable statesmen in American history. A well-rounded picture of the man and his career is presented.

Dexter Perkins

Papers

The United States and the Caribbean

The American approach to foreign policy

Memoirs by Harry S. Truman. Volume II, Years of Trial and Hope

Charles Evans Hughes and American Democratic Statesmanship

The American Approach to Foreign Policy