OPPORTUNITY, WILLINGNESS AND POLITICAL UNCERTAINTY - THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS OF POLITICS

Political behavior - social events and processes concerning the govern ance and life of a collectivity, whether domestic or international - i s caused by two fundamental, necessary conditions: the operational opp ortunity to act and the willingness to do so. We also assume that both conditions always occur with multiple, substitutable, and uncertain m odes (probabilistically) not with certainty (deterministically). We de velop foundations for a formal theory with unified principles for unde rstanding political behavior. Given the authors' area of expertise, th e theory is illustrated primarily with examples from deterrence, coali tions and war. Although strongly nonlinear, the probabilistic causalit y of political behavior is shown to be scientifically tractable and to contain greater theoretical interest and empirical complexity than pr eviously understood. We also show how real-world political uncertainty differs from that of a counterfactual world with antithetical causal structure. Our theory offers, for example, an explanation for the obse rved 'turbulence' in recent world politics.