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Department of Political Science

James Lee Ray

Professor Emeritus

Ray, author of Democracy and International Conflict: An Evaluation of the Democratic Peace Proposition (University of South Carolina Press, 1995, 1998), is also the author of Global Politics, recently published in its 10th edition, and American Foreign Policy and Political Ambition, with a second edition in preparation. His published work has focused on the causes of war and interstate conflict, as well as various methodological and epistemological issues. His recent article on "Power Concentration and Interstate Conflict: Is There a Connection" (with Patrick Bentley) reviews research relying on a measure of the concentration of power in the international system that he devised (with J. David Singer), that continues to appear regularly in published work more than 35 years after its appearance (in 1973). He has served as the President of the Peace Science Society, and is a winner of Vanderbilt's Ernest Jones Faculty Adviser Award.

Representative publications

  • Ray, James Lee. “Democratic Peace versus Contractualism: An Uneven Contest.”  Conflict Management and Peace Science  (Submitted).      
  • Ray, James Lee. “R.J.Rummel’s Understanding Conflict and War: A Overlooked Classic?” (Revised) R.J. Rummel—An Assessment of His Many Contributions, edited by Nils Petter Gleditsch.  Berlin: Springer. (Forthcoming)  
  • Ray, James Lee. “Presidential Political Ambition and US Foreign Conflict Behavior, 1816-2010.” (with Matthew DiLorenzo and Becca McBride) Conflict Management and Peace Science (Forthcoming)
  • Ray, James Lee. "War on Democratic Peace." International Studies Quarterly 57(2013): 198-200.  
  • Brett Benson, Patrick Bentley and James Lee Ray. “Ally provocateur: Why allies do not always behave.” Journal of Peace Research  50 (2012): 47-58.  
  • Ray, James Lee, and Patrick Bentley. "Power Concentration and International Conflict: Is There a Connection." Journal of Theoretical Politics 22(2010): 407-429.