xiii, 247 pages ; 24 cm

Includes bibliographical references (p. 221-239) and index

Authoritarian regimes and the domestic politics of war and peace -- Audiences, preferences, and decisions about war -- Hypotheses, implications, and cases -- Initiating international conflict -- Measuring authoritarian regime type -- Modeling the initiation of international conflict -- Results -- Winners, losers, and survival -- Selecting wars -- War outcomes in the past century -- Outcomes of militarized interstate disputes, 1946-2000 -- The consequences of defeat -- Personalist dictators: shooting from the hip -- Saddam Hussein and the 1990 invasion of Kuwait -- Josef Stalin: a powerful but loose cannon -- Juntas: using the only language they understand -- Argentina and the Falklands/Malvinas war -- Japan's road to World War II -- 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

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