Key variables in typology dictatorship:
• Personalist/closed oligarchy
• Military/civilian
• Gives us: Machines vs. Juntas; Bosses vs. Strongmen
Hypotheses:
• H1: Machines as likely to initiate war as democs
• H2: Machines much less war than juntas;
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H2: Strongmen the most dangerous;
• H3: Personalism and militarism partially redundant effects
Measurement/classification of leaders, depend variable (prob of starting conflict in a given year)
Control variables: (1) Capabilities of dyad A&B; (2) Alliances of
A&B; (3) geographic contiguity (4) trade dependence; (5)
Regime stability; (6) Side B regime type
Regression method: Fancy logistic… And the bottom line charts

Thinking about cause and effect: Do weak & divided states attract or create civil and/or international conflict?:
• The “endogeneity” problem: Weak states = war? Or is it the reverse? Or is there a causal loop?
• “Missing variable bias”: Does something else cause both weak states and war?
What evidence is there to support scapegoat/diversionary theory? Not as much as you would think
Military structure arguments: Graham Allison’s discussion of SOPs and bureaucratic politics as an explanation of the Cuban Missile Crisis
The interaction between nationalism, state structure, and geography: The US and Britain versus Germany and Russia (different “in-group/out-group” pressures?)
Why are multinational states more prone to war? Irridentialism, separatism
Nationalist/aggressive cultures and especially “national narratives” dramatically vary and they seem to be linked to aggression: Japan, China, US,
Russia; generally linked to societies over-estimating themselves, under estimating opponents.
Relative deprivation and the willingness to fight wars

• Kant: Why should democracies fight less? Do they?
• Updates to the democratic peace theory:
• How can checks & balances and the role of oppositional politics impact the propensity to war? Do civil liberties (esp. freedom of the press) mean fewer conflicts?
• Are some types of democracies less susceptible to group think? Are some types of authoritarian regimes, too (Weeks article: Machines/Juntas,
Boss/Strongman)
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Public opinion & electoral cycles: Are there incentives to engage in scapegoating in presidential democracies because of the forced timing of elections?
• If democracies are less inclined to start wars (at least with non democracies), are they less prone to joining them? Are they less likely to be targeted by other countries?
• Are democracies going to be more likely to fight in a world that takes human rights seriously?
• New democracies: What happens when your voters are stupid or divided along ethnic lines?
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What happens when democracies choose to fight? Do they fight more nicely? Do they end wars more nicely?

What was Karl Marx’s theory of inter-state war? He didn’t have much of one
What was Vladimir Lenin’s theory of imperialism? Why would rich states fight in and over developing countries?
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Why did pacifying the local working classes depend on exporting brutality?
• What was the fighting all about? Finding markets for surplus of goods and capital that could have a high return on investment
• Other reasons to fight in and over countries in the economic periphery: The need for raw materials and the internal politics of rich states’ military industrial complex
• What does the evidence suggest? Causality issues… Do poor countries fight because they are poor or stay poor because they fight?
What is interdependency theory, and why do liberals assume advanced capitalist countries will fight a lot less (at least each other)?:
• What are the economic stakes and vulnerability of states that are highly interconnected economically? (Why would we be fools to fight China?)
• Subnational actor stakes: Even if politicians want to fight, why don’t businessmen?
• How does globalization give us all a shared vision of reality and the future?