Power is not Satisfaction: A Comment on de Soysa, Oneal, and Park

In an otherwise careful and thorough replication and reevaluation of empirical findings reported by Organski and Kugler (1980) and by Houweling and Siccama (1988), de Soysa, Oneal, and Park (1997) suggest that power transition theory suffers from a problematic interconnection between its two principal explanatory variables: relative power and status quo evaluations. We argue that there is no such problematic interconnection within the theory and demonstrate empirically that there is no such interconnection in reality. The article by de Soysa, Oneal, and Park (1997) is not about this problematic interconnection, and our comment is not exactly a critique of their work. We believe their empirical conclusions are correct. Rather, we comment on their misinterpretation of an existing theory. Such commentary is important, we believe, because the theory in question offers one of the more promising explanatory tools available to international relations scholars. We hope that de Soysa, Oneal, and Park's misrepresentation of power transition theory will not discourage researchers from working within the power transition tradition. We begin by quoting de Soysa, Oneal, and Park (1997, 512) at some length