著者

山本 吉宣

出版者

JAPAN ASSOCIATION OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

雑誌

国際政治 (ISSN:04542215)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.1976, no.55, pp.27-43,L2, 1976-07-20 (Released:2010-09-01)

参考文献数

29

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The aim of this article is to construct several plausible models of war expansion in the major power system, to test them against the empirical data, and to obtain implications from these models for our ever continuing efforts to control war expansion.Among the models developed, the Polya model turns out the best. In the Polya model, it is assumed that once a war occurs, each remaining non-participant major power has an equal probability of entering the war, and that this probability increases as the number of the major powers that have entered the war increases.We find from the Polya model that the major power that makes a decision first whether it enters the war or not has the crucial role in war expansion and that in a multipolar system as compared to a bipolar system, while the probability of a world war will decrease, wars into which one or two major powers enter from the non-participant status will become more likely to occur.