Jacek Kugler

Jacek Kugler is the Elisabeth Helm Rosecrans Professor of International Relations in the Department of Politics and Policy, part of CGU’s Division of Politics and Economics. Through extensive publications on the causes and consequences of war, he has forged a reputation for innovative formal modeling and empirical analysis. His path-breaking work on political performance provides for the first time a comprehensive political measure to compare and assess the capacity of governments to implement goals regardless of regime type or economic development.

Kugler received his PhD from the University of Michigan and an MA and BA in political science from UCLA. He is the former president of the International Studies Association (ISA) and the past president of the Peace Science Society. He has served as the co-editor of International Interactions. Prior to his current appointment at Claremont Graduate University, he was a faculty member at Vanderbilt University and Boston University and a research scholar at Harvard University, as well as project director at the Center for Political Studies, University of Michigan. He was a visiting scholar at UCLA, the California Institute of Technology, and the Hatfield School of Policy. He has also consulted for UNAIDS, IMF, the State Department, and a number of U.S. governmental agencies and private businesses.

Kugler has co-founded many organizations, including Political Demography and Geography (of which he was also chair); Scientific Study of International Processes (SSIP) Sections at ISA; and the Conflict Process Section (CPS) at the American Political Science Association (of which he was also chair). He also co-founded Decision Insights, the Sentia Group and Senturion dedicated to the formal study of decision making.

The work that Kugler has conducted has had big effect on the research in his fields. For instance, his work on nuclear deterrence questioned the deduction that large threats could induce stability and anticipated the now-recognized danger of nuclear proliferation to rogue and terrorist groups; his work on power transition explained the peaceful relations among major powers during the Cold War, anticipated stability after the collapse of the Soviet Union and forecast the upcoming Asian challenge; and his work on political demography disclosed that political factors play a leading role in the decline of fertility, explaining the unexpected decline in China’s population, and anticipated that most of the developed world would face declining populations.

Office Location
Harper East 202