What do we know about crisis, escalation and war? A visual assessment of the International Crisis Behavior Project

Abstract

This study uses a visualization technique, systemism, to integrate ICB Project findings about crisis, escalation and war in particular. The domain of the analysis, 1999–2017, is the period following the authoritative review of research in Michael Brecher (1999; International studies in the twentieth century and beyond: Flawed dichotomies, syntheses, cumulation, International Studies Quarterly 43: 213–264) up to the present. Systemism is used to combine, in graphic form, substantively significant results from ICB Project research. Insights about cause and effect for escalation processes are obtained that would not readily be available in the absence of graphic representation. This learning is made possible through application of systemism, a visualization technique, to convey a network of variables leading into war.