| While national leaders bear the brunt of the blame and receive most of the credit for decisions over war and peace, extant international relations scholarship provides no insight into the relationship between the rise and fall of national leaders and patterns of international conflict. To answer this question, I break with long tradition in the field by assuming that successive leaders of the same state can differ in their preferences over the resort to war in crisis bargaining. In other words, leadership turnover brings to power new leaders more or less willing to use force than their predecessors. In two game-theoretic models, I examine these consequences of leadership turnover as a source of (1) private information, where leaders take office with reputational incentives to demonstrate resolve, and (2) commitment problems due to shifting bargaining power, where an incumbent's successor may attempt to overturn his settlements with other leaders. I derive novel predictions over the effects of leaders' time in office, their ability to survive conflicts in office, and, most notably, the anticipated behavior of future leaders on present patterns of war and peace. Statistical analyses are broadly consistent with the implications of this leader-centric approach, adding further weight to recent arguments that leaders---not states---should be the fundamental units of analysis in international relations. |
