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Cited by 323

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 60 of the 60 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War

Levy, Jack S.·1987·World Politics

Abstract

The preventive motivation for war arises from political leaders' perceptions that their states' military power and potential are declining relative to those of a rising adversary, and from their fear of the consequences of that decline. It is conceptualized as an intervening variable between changing power differentials and the outbreak of war, and is distinguished from preemption and other sources of better-now-than-later logic. The strength of the preventive motivation is hypothesized to be a function of a state's expectations regarding its rate of military decline, the margin of its inferiority in the future, the probability of a future war, and the probability of a victorious war now with acceptable costs. It is also affected by the risk orientation of decision makers; the influence of the military in the political process; and domestic political factors that undermine the political security of decision makers as well as the military power and potential of the state.

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Metadata

Authors
Levy, J. S.
Venue
World Politics
Publisher
Project MUSE
Published
1987-10
Volume
40
Issue
1
Pages
82-107
ISSN
  • 0043-8871 (ISSN-L)
  • 1086-3338
OpenAlex
W2097184685
Cited by
323
References
60
FWCI
41.05
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/2010195
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Levy, J. S. (1987). Declining Power and the Preventive Motivation for War. World Politics. https://doi.org/10.2307/2010195

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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