The Distribution of Power and the Onset of War

Abstract

The relationship between the distribution of power among nations and the outbreak of war has been a question of perennial interest to students of international politics. Although recent empirical studies seem to support the idea that equal power will lead to the outbreak of war, a review of these studies reveals that the findings are heavily influenced by research designs that (1) include data not closely connected to the theory, (2) reduce the variance in the independent variables, (3) exclude cases of potential power disparity by using only conflicts between contiguous nations, and (4) provide analysis of a restricted range of cases. The article concludes by calling for the analysis of larger data sets with greater variance in both independent and dependent variables.