War is an inefficient outcome and therefore states ought to prefer to bargain over areas of conflict instead of fighting. However, in the anarchy of international relations there is no actor with a monopoly of power to enforce contracts between states. States then face a commitment problem when bargaining to prevent war. This dissertation explores three models where this commitment problem can lead to war. The first chapter presents a model that allows for shifts in the distribution of power which play out over an arbitrary number of time periods. This leads to a sufficient condition that implies war under a broader set of conditions than previously shown in the literature. This condition implies that preventive war may be caused by relatively slow, but persistent shifts in the distribution of power. As theorized in power transition theory, differential rates of economic growth can potentially cause war under this mechanism. Relaxing the unitary actor assumption of the first chapter, the second chapter analyzes how the domestic institutional structure of countries affects the likelihood of war. We model institutional divergence by comparing an infinitely lived dictatorship to a democracy with a replaceable leader and allow a range of leader incentives within these institutional frameworks. We show that dictators, even welfare maximizing ones, may lead to war if the initial distribution of resources is highly imbalanced whereas a democracy with a forward looking electorate is always peaceful. Yet when a democratic electorate is myopic, preventive war may result. Political parties act as a mechanism to prevent this outcome. In the third chapter, I investigate adding a third actor to the bargaining model of war. In a static setting, the model uses a notion of cooperative stability to predict balancing and bandwagoning behavior in alliance formation. When extended to a dynamic setting, changes to the system that result in alliance shifting may cause war. Additionally, alliance formation need not correspond to the static solutions, suggesting that the dynamics of power are as important as the distribution of power in alliance formation. / text

<p>Orsakerna till andra världskriget är väl analyserade och finns berättat om i många verk. Det här arbetet applicerar två klassiska teorier, realism och liberalism på de orsaker till krig som Stephen Van Everas bok ”<em>Causes of War”</em> förtäljer. Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka, om det är möjligt, vilken av två utvalda teorier som bäst förklarar orsakerna <em>till krigen</em> under andra världskriget. Min problemformulering är: <em>Vad har realismen och liberalismen för syn på orsakerna till varför ett krig bryter ut och hur förklarar de i sådana fall orsakerna till andra världskriget?</em></p><p>  För att ge svar på de här frågorna kommer jag att använda mig av en kvalitativ textanalys. Metoden har två syften i arbetet. Det första är att ta reda på vad liberalismen och realismen har för syn på orsaker till krig. Det andra syftet är att utifrån <em>”Causes of War” </em>finna orsakerna till krigen som utspelades under det andra världskriget.</p><p>  De slutsatser jag kommit fram till genom appliceringen av teorierna på orsaker till krig, är att stater agerade utifrån ett realistiskt säkerhetspolitiskt tänk, vilket även bekräftar tidigare forskning inom ämnet. Det finns dock en spårbarhet av liberalism i orsakerna till varför länderna gick i krig med varandra. De liberalistiska förklaringarna av orsaker till krig har visat sig bestå av kollektiv säkerhet eller ett misslyckande i överstatliga överenskommelser. De realistiska förklaringarna av orsaker till krig utgörs av den egna statens säkerhet gentemot andra stater.</p> / <p>The causes of the Second World War are well analyzed and are described in several literatures. In this study two classical theories, realism and liberalism, are applied on the causes of war described in Stephan Van Everas book “<em>Causes of War”</em>. This essay aims to examine, if possible, which one of the above mentioned theories that best describes what caused the Second World War.</p><p>  Presentation of the problem: <em>What are the causes of war from a realistic and liberal perspective, and how can the theories explain the causes of the Second World War?</em></p><p>In order to answer these questions I use a qualitative text analysis. In the essay this method has two purposes. The first is to find out what realism and liberalism describes as causes of war. The second purpose is to find out, on basis of Stephen Van Everas <em>“Causes of War”,</em> what caused the wars during the Second World War.</p><p>  My conclusion is that states act on a basis of realism when they justify an act of war. This conclusion corresponds with former studies. However, there are also conclusions based on liberalism that describes causes of war between countries. These conclusions constitute collective security and failure of international agreements between states. According to the realist theory, the security of the state versus other states is a possible cause of war.</p>

Orsakerna till andra världskriget är väl analyserade och finns berättat om i många verk. Det här arbetet applicerar två klassiska teorier, realism och liberalism på de orsaker till krig som Stephen Van Everas bok ”Causes of War” förtäljer. Syftet med arbetet är att undersöka, om det är möjligt, vilken av två utvalda teorier som bäst förklarar orsakerna till krigen under andra världskriget. Min problemformulering är: Vad har realismen och liberalismen för syn på orsakerna till varför ett krig bryter ut och hur förklarar de i sådana fall orsakerna till andra världskriget?   För att ge svar på de här frågorna kommer jag att använda mig av en kvalitativ textanalys. Metoden har två syften i arbetet. Det första är att ta reda på vad liberalismen och realismen har för syn på orsaker till krig. Det andra syftet är att utifrån ”Causes of War” finna orsakerna till krigen som utspelades under det andra världskriget.   De slutsatser jag kommit fram till genom appliceringen av teorierna på orsaker till krig, är att stater agerade utifrån ett realistiskt säkerhetspolitiskt tänk, vilket även bekräftar tidigare forskning inom ämnet. Det finns dock en spårbarhet av liberalism i orsakerna till varför länderna gick i krig med varandra. De liberalistiska förklaringarna av orsaker till krig har visat sig bestå av kollektiv säkerhet eller ett misslyckande i överstatliga överenskommelser. De realistiska förklaringarna av orsaker till krig utgörs av den egna statens säkerhet gentemot andra stater. / The causes of the Second World War are well analyzed and are described in several literatures. In this study two classical theories, realism and liberalism, are applied on the causes of war described in Stephan Van Everas book “Causes of War”. This essay aims to examine, if possible, which one of the above mentioned theories that best describes what caused the Second World War.   Presentation of the problem: What are the causes of war from a realistic and liberal perspective, and how can the theories explain the causes of the Second World War? In order to answer these questions I use a qualitative text analysis. In the essay this method has two purposes. The first is to find out what realism and liberalism describes as causes of war. The second purpose is to find out, on basis of Stephen Van Everas “Causes of War”, what caused the wars during the Second World War.   My conclusion is that states act on a basis of realism when they justify an act of war. This conclusion corresponds with former studies. However, there are also conclusions based on liberalism that describes causes of war between countries. These conclusions constitute collective security and failure of international agreements between states. According to the realist theory, the security of the state versus other states is a possible cause of war.

Israel have been a particularly war-ridden state, since its inception in 1948 the Israelis had already fought five different wars in its first 30 years of existence. This essay aims to investigate the cause of two of these wars that had both been fought with Egypt. The 1967 six-days war and the Yom-Kippur war of 1973.To try and answer this question this essay uses Stephen Van Everas stability theory which tries to explain how states act when presented with a first move advantage. The study concludes that the main causes of these wars was hasty and truncated diplomacy combined with a lucrative first-strike advantage. The six-day war started as a result of Egyptian posturing turned to dreams of conquest and the Yom-kippur as a result of bitter resentment for the new status quo and total lack of diplomatic negotiations.

The thesis: "The Causes of Iraqi War: Why the US Administration decided to invade Iraq in 2003" focuses on explanation why the administration of the USA made that step. The specification of the roots of war is based on five causes and seventeen subcauses according to the essay of Stephen Van Evera and other scholars, and the paper trough the methodology of text's analyzes investigates behavior, decision-making process and motivations of the US administration (the level of units) and some steps of the US president G. W. Bush (individual level) in the process leading to the war in Iraq. Concerning the causes of war, the paper introduces different concepts of the offense-defense balance and analyzes whether the balance was disrupted. Secondly, it examines the role of cumulative resources in Iraq like oil, territory and state structures and it shows how they influenced the decision. Third, it searches for the linkage among an emergence of a new threat and responses to it which mouthed to the acceptance of the concept of the first move advantage. Fourth, the thesis accounts for the roots of misperception, where they originate and how they operated in perception of the US administration of the Iraqi threat. Finally, the investigation of the last root of conflict explains why and how windows of...