The Tragedy of Great Power Politics

One purpose of this report then is to look at past current and projected numbers proportions and growth rates of older populations. Older populations also have increased because of worldwide improvements in health services educational status and economic development. The characteristics of older people are likely to be increasingly heterogeneous within nations. A second purpose of An Aging World: 2008 is to summarize socioeconomic statistics for both developed and developing nations. Comparable data are included for as many as 52 nations when the categories are reasonably consistent. In 2008 these 52 nations (Appendix Table B-1) contained 77 percent of the world’s total population. (Excerpt)

An aging world: 2008.

▪ Abstract Prospect theory is the most influential behavioral theory of choice in the social sciences. Its creators won a Nobel Prize in economics, and it is largely responsible for the booming field of behavioral economics. Although international relations theorists who study security have used prospect theory extensively, Americanists, comparativists, and political economists have shown little interest in it. The dominant explanation for political scientists' tepid response focuses on the theoretical problems with extending a theory devised in the lab to explain political decisions in the field. This essay focuses on these problems and reviews suggested solutions. It suggests that prospect theory's failure to ignite the imagination of more political scientists probably results from their aversion to behavioral assumptions and not from problems unique to prospect theory.

https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev.polisci.8.082103.104911

Prospect theory and political science

We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History

Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War. By Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005. 300p. $32.95.Edward Mansfield and Jack Snyder's article “Democratization and War” (Foreign Affairs 74 [May/June 1995]: 79–97) arrived in 1995 like a thunderclap, riveting me to questions about domestic political changes and their implications for peace and conflict between states. The article appeared when the intellectual wars over the democratic peace were hot, and when research critical of democratic performance in general was receiving heightened scrutiny. In general, the early response to the authors' claim that democratization significantly increases the war-proneness of states focused narrowly on their research design. However, my review of Mansfield and Snyder's book-length treatment of the subject focuses on the broader weaknesses in the book, of which there are few, and the book's strengths, of which there are several.

Electing to Fight: Why Emerging Democracies Go to War

This article tests the predictions of expected-utility and prospect theories against the most important dimensions of the Cuban missile crisis. Largely through use of the most recently released information on the crisis from the American and Soviet governments, I attempt to ascertain the anticipated benefits, costs, and probabilities of success associated with each of the major policy choices that the key leaders in both superpowers perceived before each of the major decisions throughout the crisis was made. Using this information and the logic of extensive-form game-theoretic models of choice, I construct a baseline for expected-utility theory that helps us to understand when prospect or expected-utility theory provides the better explanation for a particular decision. Prospect theory predicts that when individuals perceive themselves to be experiencing losses at the time they make a decision, and when their probability estimates associated with their principal policy options are in the moderate to high range, they will tend to make excessively risky, non–value maximizing choices. I find that the evidence for the Cuban missile crisis supports this prediction for the most important decisions made by both Khrushchev and Kennedy.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/3096110

Prospect Theory and the Cuban Missile Crisis

How do leaders perceive threat levels in world politics, and what effects do those perceptions have on policy choices? Mark L. Haas focuses on how ideology shapes perception. He does not delineate the content of particular ideologies, but rather the degree of difference among them. Degree of ideological difference is, he believes, the crucial factor as leaders decide which nations threaten and which bolster their state's security and their own domestic power. These threat perceptions will in turn impel leaders to make particular foreign-policy choices. Haas examines great-power relations in five periods: the 1790s in Europe, the Concert of Europe (1815-1848), the 1930s in Europe, Sino-Soviet relations from 1949 to 1960, and the end of the Cold War. In each case he finds a clear relationship between the degree of ideological differences that divided state leaders and those leaders' perceptions of threat level (and so of appropriate foreign-policy choices). These relationships held in most cases, regardless of the nature of the ideologies in question, the offense-defense balance, and changes in the international distribution of power.

The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989

In the coming decades, the most powerful states in the international system will face a challenge unlike any experienced in the history of great power politics: significant aging of their populations. Global aging will be a potent force for the continuation of U.S. economic and military dominance. Aging populations are likely to produce a slowdown in states' economic growth at the same time that governments will face substantial pressure to pay for massive new expenditures for elderly care. This economic dilemma will create such an austere fiscal environment that the other great powers will lack the resources necessary to overtake the United States' huge power lead. Moreover, although the U.S. population is growing older, it is doing so to a lesser extent and less quickly than all of the other major actors in the system. Consequently, the economic and fiscal costs created by social aging—as well as their derivative effects on military spending—will be significantly lower for the United States than for pot...

A Geriatric Peace? The Future of U.S. Power in a World of Aging Populations

Introduction Mark L. Haas and David W. Lesch PART I: SPRING IN THE ARAB WORLD 1 From Sidi Bou Zid to Sidi Bou Said: A Longue Duree Approach to the Tunisian Revolutions Julia Clancy-Smith 2 Egypt: The Origins and Concepts of the January 25th Uprising Bruce Rutherford 3 The Arab Spring: Libya's Second Revolution Mary-Jane Deeb 4 The Uprising that Wasn't Supposed to Happen: Syria and the Arab Spring David W. Lesch 5 Oil, Saudi Arabia, and the Spring That Has Not Come Steve A. Yetiv 6 Jordan and the Arab Spring Curtis Ryan PART II: THE REGIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CONTEXT OF THE ARAB SPRING 7 The Gift and The Curse: Iran and the Arab Spring Reza Marashi and Trita Parsi 8 Turkey and the Arab Spring: Ideological Promotion in a Revolutionary Era Mark L. Haas 9 Israel and the Arab Spring: The Victory of Anxiety Ilan Peleg 10 Russia and the Arab Spring: A Preliminary Appraisal Robert O. Freedman 11 Same Old Story? Obama and the Arab Uprisings Jeremy Pressman 12 Conclusion: The Arab World at the Intersection of the National and Transnational James Gelvin

The Arab Spring: Change and Resistance in the Middle East

Acknowledgments Dedication Introduction 1. The Importance of Ideological Distance and Polarity to Foreign Policies 2. Iranian Ideological Factions and International Policies, 1997-2009 3. Ideologies and the History of the Syrian-Iranian Alliance 4. Ideologies and Turkish Foreign Policies after the Cold War 5. Ideologies and U.S.-Saudi Relations After the Cold War's End Conclusion

/pdf/the-clash-of-ideologies-middle-eastern-politics-and-american-4bivs0cl4r.pdf

Mark L. Haas

Papers

Prospect Theory and the Cuban Missile Crisis

The Ideological Origins of Great Power Politics, 1789–1989

A Geriatric Peace? The Future of U.S. Power in a World of Aging Populations

The Arab Spring: Change and Resistance in the Middle East

The Clash of Ideologies: Middle Eastern Politics and American Security