Portrait of 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. His work on formal agent based models has wide application in Foreign Policy decision making.

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 the Political Demography and Geography (PDG); and the Scientific Study of International Processes (SSIP) Sections at ISA; and the Conflict Process Section (CPS) at the American Political Science Association. Chairing each at the start. He co-founded with Ronald Tammen the TransResearch Consortium dedicated to student support, data collection and the systematic analysis of international politics. He also co-founded Decision Insights, the Setia Group and Senturion dedicated to the formal study of applied decision making.

The work that Kugler conducted has had big effect on the research in his fields. His latest work on nuclear deterrence questioned the deduction that large threats could induce stability and proposes a reconsideration of global structures to avert war; his work on power transition accounts for the peaceful relations among major powers during the Cold War, anticipated stability after the collapse of the Soviet Union, explains the process of integration and forecast the challenge generated by the upcoming rise of Asian. His work on political demography disclosed that political factors play a leading role in the decline of fertility, anticipated that most of the developed world would face declining populations, accounts for the demographic consequences of war  and links demographic changes to development.

Office Location
Harper East 202

Co-Authored with KyungKook Kang Averting Nuclear War (2023), Springer

Co-Edited with Ronald L. Tammen, Rise of Regions (2020) Rowman Littlefield

Co-Authored  with B. Yesilada, G. Genna and O. Tanrikulu, Global Power Transitions and the Future of the European Union (2017)  Routledge

Co-edited with Ronald L. Tammen. Performance of Nations. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2012.

Co-authored with Ronald L. Tammen, et al. Power Transitions. New York: Seven Bridges Press, 2000.

Co-authored with A. F. K. Organski. The War Ledger. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1980.

World Politics
Seminar in Conflict & Peace
Political Demography
Seminar on Nuclear Stability