Table of Contents

Introduction 1. Authoritarian Regimes and the Domestic Politics of War and Peace Audiences, Preferences, and Decisions about War Hypotheses, Implications, and Cases 2. Initiating International Conflict Measuring Authoritarian Regime Type Modeling the Initiation of International Conflict Results 3. Winners, Losers, and Survival Selecting Wars War Outcomes in the Past Century Outcomes of Militarized Interstate Disputes, 1946-2000 The Consequences of Defeat 4. Personalist Dictators: Shooting from the Hip Saddam Hussein and the 1990 Invasion of Kuwait Josef Stalin: A Powerful but Loose Cannon 5. Juntas: Using the Only Language They Understand Argentina and the Falklands/Malvinas War Japan's Road to World War II 6. Machines: Looking Before They Leap The North Vietnamese Wars against the US, South Vietnam, and Cambodia The Soviet Union in the Post-Stalin Era Conclusion: Dictatorship, War, and Peace Appendix Notes Works Cited Index

About the Author

Jessica L. P. Weeks is Assistant Professor and Trice Faculty Scholar in the Department of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Reviews

"[Weeks] makes readers insightfully aware of the key differences among 'dictatorships' that may account for alternative foreign policies. With a good review of extant literature and innovative data-based and case studies on regime types and conflict behavior, she examines theories that distinguish between authoritarian leaders who nevertheless answer to significant elite constituencies and those who behave like unrestrained 'bosses' or 'strongmen'...[T]his study, and its main findings... are a significant contribution to the scientific study of war and peace."-F. S. Pearson,CHOICE(July 2015) "Dictators at War and Peace by Jessica L. P. Weeks is one of the most significant contributions to this literature. Weeks argues that not all authoritarian regimes are created equal, and this difference affects their likelihood of initiating and winning military conflicts... Week's typology and analysis have laid the foundation for understanding the diversity of authoritarian international politics, and Dictators at War and Peace will undoubtedly become the standard for such analysis."-Michael McKoy, H-Diplo (September 2015) "Dictators is an excellent book that constitutes a significant leap forward in the study of authoritarian regimes and international security. Importantly, the book reveals that not all dictators are alike... The book deserves to be read broadly in the academy and amongpolicymakers. Its relevance for U.S. foreign policy is clear as the United States wranges with several different types of authoritarian governments in China, Russia, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and elsewhere."-Alexander B. Downes, Political Science Quarterly (Winter 2015-16) "Dictators at War and Peace is an excellent book that makes a significant contribution to empirically tested theory in international relations. Jessica L. P. Weeks has made a state-of-the-art appraisal of dictators' foreign policy behavior."-Bruce Russett, Dean Acheson Research Professor of International Relations and Political Science, Yale University, author of Controlling the Sword: The Democratic Governance of National Security "In this cogent analysis of the important variation among autocratic regimes when it comes to decisions about war and peace, Jessica L. P. Weeks shows that the usual dichotomy between democracies and autocracies is too simplistic. By focusing on not only domestic accountability but also the predilections of leaders and, crucially, the preferences of the domestic audiences they are accountable to, Weeks shows that some autocrats face incentives much like democracies, and therefore behave much like their democratic counterparts when it comes to questions of war and peace. Others are constrained by strong domestic audiences that have relatively hawkish views. Still other leaders face few constraints, and it is their own preferences and predilections that matter. Weeks' theory helps explain not only conflict initiation but also war outcomes and the fates of wartime leaders. This book combines parsimonious yet powerful theorizing with rigorous and thoughtful multimethod analysis, to answer crucial policy questions about war and peace. It is a model of what good IR scholarship should be."-Virginia Page Fortna, Columbia University, author of Does Peacekeeping Work? Shaping Belligerents' Choices after Civil War