Preface

The conference on “The Scientific Study of Interstate Conflict” that was held at the University at Buffalo in the latter part of October 2021 was clearly the highlight of my career. But it was much more than a personal honor. The papers that were presented, most of which are included in this special issue of Conflict Management and Peace Science, constitute incontrovertible proof of the important contributions made by the membership of the Peace Science Society (International) over the past 60 years or so to our understanding of political conflict and its resolution. It is noteworthy that among the authors of the presented papers are five past presidents of PSS(I): Steven J. Brams, Raymond Dacey, D. Marc Kilgour, Jacek Kugler, and John Vasquez. When I began my professional career many years ago, there was but a small vanguard of scholars who approached the field scientifically, either quantitatively or formally. Yet that is no longer the case as the papers included in this special issue obviously demonstrate. Much more gratifying, then, than the personal honor bestowed on me by the willingness of my colleagues and friends to travel to Buffalo, New York in the middle of a pandemic was the realization that, in some small way, I have been part of the transformation of our field that Walter Isard and a small group of like-minded scholars envisioned in 1964 when they joined together to formally approve the constitution of what is now the most important professional organization devoted to “the empirical testing of hypotheses and theories and the employment of scientific approaches for the development of conflict management procedures”. It has been a very rewarding ride.