Shuhei Kurizaki

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I am an associate professor in the School of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan. Before taking up this position, I was an assistant professor in the department of political science at Texas A&M University and a Pre-Doctoral Fellow in National Security at the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies at Harvard University.  My primary research interests are diplomacy, the origins of war and peace, and political economy.  I am the recipient of the Carl Beck Award, given by the International Studies Association in 2005, the Dina Zinnes Award, given by the Scientific Study of International Processes (SSIP) Section of the International Studies Association in 2006, and the Miyake Ichiro Award for the best article published in 2007 by Japanese political scientists. My work recently appeared in the American Political Science Review and International Organization among others.  My courses explore international relations, the causes of war and peace, the history of diplomacy, and formal models in political science.

I am currently working on a book manuscript, When Diplomacy Works, which explores when and why diplomacy facilitates (and sometimes hinders) peaceful settlements of international disputes. This book (1) describes a natural history of diplomacy and its institutions to identify several distinctive classes of diplomatic mechanisms at work in international conflict and (inter)national security strategy, (2) maps each mechanism onto a well-established (game-theoretic) model of international conflict, and (3) examines how, why, and when each mechanism shapes conflict behavior and outcomes through the combination of game-theoretic analysis, statistical analysis, and historical analysis. Providing a micro-foundational explanation for three distinctive classes of diplomatic mechanisms (communication, negotiation, and manipulation), this book presents the first comprehensive theory of diplomatic statecraft.