Ostrom and Job (1986) found that domestic, political factors are more influential on the president's decision to use military force than characteristics of the international environment. These results pose a serious challenge to realists' assumptions regarding the motives of states and the separability of domestic and foreign policy. This article reexamines Ostrom and Job's arguments and introduces a new indicator, a measure of the severity of ongoing international crises, to provide a better assessment of the relative effect of the international environment on presidential decision making. This severity index is significantly associated with the use of force by the United States from 1949 through 1976, and proves to be more influential than the international indicators used by Ostrom and Job. Nevertheless, domestic political factors remain most consequential in the president's decision to use force short of war.

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Democracy and territory are two of the most important factors that affect conflict and war. Yet no research design looks directly at a possible interaction between these two variables to influence occurrence of armed conflict. This study seeks to answer the following question: “How do two democracies behave when a contentious issue such as territory arises as the source of conflict between them?” Results based on Militarized Interstate Dispute data from 1920 to 1996 produce the conclusion that the pacifying effect of democracy stands up for both territorial dyads and non‐territorial ones in spite of the imperatives toward militarization created by territorial conflict. However, territory of high salience still appears to increase the likelihood of armed conflict between two democracies.

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Consultants in clinical specialties break bad news frequently. Although many have not received formal training, the majority believe it is useful and are increasingly willing to undertake experiential approaches. This augurs well for future training programmes.

This study assesses the effects of U.S. involvement in international cri ses on the domestic popularity of American presidents for all major classes of voters. Using a time series analysis of monthly presidential approval and crisis involvement between 1953 and 1994, and controlling for eco nomic conditions and structural features of presidential popularity, it is apparent that crisis activity does increase the president's popularity, albeit by a very small margin. This result holds for both overall approval levels and within each president's "ruling coalition" of partisans as well as inde pendent voters; opposition party voters generally do not "rally 'round the flag." The small rally effect for crisis activity diminishes, however, when the U.S. president uses force, and when the Soviets are not involved. Furthermore, the rally effect actually seems to depend on the level of presidential response to a crisis; higher levels of response would account for rally effects. Taking the analysis one step further, it is revealed that outcomes of international crises (that is, how the U.S. fared) generally do not affect presidential popularity, even when examined with various lags. The investigation concludes with suggestions for further research on link age politics.

Research confirms that interdemocratic conflicts are more likely to be resolved peacefully. However, do the usual results hold up for especially contentious issues such as territory? We use issue correlates of war (ICOW) data from 1816 to 1992 to build on Hensel (2001) and related studies to investigate the relationships between and among democracy, conflict management, and territory as an issue. The results create a puzzle for the democratic or neo-Kantian peace: When territory is at stake, issue-related variables come to the fore and matter more than regime type in explaining states' settlement strategies. The most important finding is that war experience between adversaries increases the likelihood of peaceful resolution, but decreases that of militarized disputes.

In Perpetual Peace, Immanuel Kant presents six preliminary articles for perpetual peace beforethe three well-known definitive articles about republic constitutions, commercial relations, and international organizations. In his third preliminary article, Kant argues that “Standing Armies ( miles perpetuus) Shall in Time be Totally Abolished” because they are themselves “a cause of offensive war.” Empirical results based on state-of-the-art data analysis that refers to both peace-years correction and distributed-lags logistic regression showthat the most obvious among the neglected preliminary articles by Kant—military manpower system—is indeed connected to involvement in militarized interstate disputes during the period from 1886 to 1992. For neo-Kantian peace theory and research, this means that a military manpower system with conscripted, notstanding (i.e., professional or voluntary), soldiers is associated with disputes.