Citation

Long WJ, Brecke P. Polit. Life Sci. 2003; 22(1): 24-35.

Affiliation

Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332-0610, USA. william.long@inta.gatech.edu.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2003, Association for Politics and the Life Sciences)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

16859358

Abstract

Many international conflicts are recurrent, and many of these are characterized by periods of violence, including wars, that are hard to describe as planned products of rational decision-making. Analysis of these conflicts according to rational-choice international-relations theory or constructivist approaches has been less revealing than might have been hoped. We consider the possibility that emotive causes could better explain, or at least improve the explanation of, observed patterns. We offer three emotive models of recurrent conflict and we outline a method by which the reliability of emotive explanations derived from these models could be tested prospectively.

Language: en