About

Kenneth A. Schultz is the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University. He holds a Ph.D. and an M.A. in political science from Stanford University, and an A.B. in Russian and Soviet Studies from Harvard University. His research examines international conflict and conflict resolution. Schultz is the author of the books Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy and World Politics: Interests, Interactions, and Institutions, co-authored with David Lake and Jeffry Frieden. He has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Recognized for his contributions, he received the 2003 Karl Deutsch Award from the International Studies Association and the 2025 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching. His academic and research interests include comparative politics and international relations.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Law
• Philosophy
• Physics
• Psychology
• Economics
• Epistemology
• Management science
• Environmental science
• Law and economics
• Mathematics
• Ecology
• Environmental resource management

Selected publications

• Closing Pandora’s Box: Can Shared Vulnerability Underpin Territorial Stability?

  International Organization · 2026-01-01

  articleSenior author

  Abstract Scholars and policymakers have argued that territorial revisionism is dangerous because it risks setting off a cascade of claims by states dissatisfied with their borders. This Pandora’s box logic suggests that states that are vulnerable to an unraveling of the status quo have incentives to restrain their territorial ambitions to preserve stability. This paper explores this claim theoretically and empirically. It provides descriptive evidence to determine whether vulnerability to territorial threats has historically been associated with a lower likelihood of initiating territorial disputes. We find some evidence of such an effect in postindependence Africa, where this logic is most frequently invoked, and to some extent in Asia, but not in other regions. To help explain these empirical observations, we develop a multistate model of territorial conflict that identifies the conditions under which cooperation to preserve the territorial status quo can be sustained. The model shows that while an equilibrium of mutual restraint can exist, the necessary conditions are quite restrictive, and this cooperative equilibrium is never unique. Thus while a Pandora’s box of potential claims can provide the basis for a norm of restraint, the emergence of such a norm is neither straightforward nor guaranteed.

  PublisherDOI

• Holding the World Together? The Future of Territorial Order

  International Organization · 2025-11-20

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Scholars and policymakers have expressed concern that the decline of territorial conquest, a central pillar of the postwar international order, is under strain. Do the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the rise of China, and retrenchment of the United States portend a return to earlier patterns of international politics when boundaries were more frequently redrawn by force? This essay evaluates the theories and evidence that speak to this question. It delineates several mechanisms through which recent developments could destabilize the territorial order: the growing power of revisionist states, the declining credibility of third-party guarantees, and the erosion of the normative prohibition against conquest. At the same time, institutionalized equilibria at the dyadic and regional levels are sources of stability that can cushion the effect of these threats. Although escalation of conflicts in already disputed areas is possible, the most destabilizing outcome—widespread contestation of settled borders—is also the least likely.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Endogenous Sources of Compliance with Territorial Agreements

  Quarterly Journal of Political Science · 2024-04-10

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This paper develops a theory of compliance with international agreements, with a specific application to treaties about territory. Even though the signing of a treaty is (by assumption) an act of cheap talk, this decision can alter the incentives for subsequent compliance through the reactions of domestic or transnational actors. If these actors make decisions based on expectations of compliance, and if their welfare is valued by at least one of the parties to the agreement, the signing of an agreement can endogenously increase the costs or decrease the benefits of non-compliant behavior. The models developed here demonstrate how the signing of a border treaty can stimulate cross-border economic activities or the migration of co-ethnics living on the contested territory, both of which reduce the likelihood of reneging in response to future shocks to relative power. In both models, expectations of compliance driven by a selection mechanism become self-fulfilling by triggering actions that strengthen the constituency in favor of compliance or weaken the constituency in favor of non-compliance. The logic of the model is explored through a study of the Italy–Yugoslavia border after World War II.

  PublisherDOI

• The Geography of Separatist Violence

  International Studies Quarterly · 2022-07-19 · 5 citations

  articleSenior author

  The literature on separatist groups has paid relatively little attention to groups’ exact territorial claims and their influence on strategies. We explain the geographic distribution of separatist violence using new geospatial data on the location and extent of groups’ territorial claims. We argue that variation in where separatists attack stems from variation in how groups allocate effort across two main objectives: control in the claimed region and the coercion of policy concessions from the center. We hypothesize that the relative importance of these objectives derives from features of the claim, the claimed region, and the separatist movement. We show that groups with “fuzzy” claims that do not follow administrative boundaries or clear geographic features attack more around their envisioned state's border, violence tends to concentrate within the claimed region when it is ethnically heterogeneous or the movement is fragmented, while relatively unified movements attack more in the national capital. La bibliografía sobre grupos separatistas ha pasado casi por alto los reclamos territoriales exactos y su repercusión en las estrategias que utilizan. Explicamos la distribución geográfica de la violencia separatista con información geoespacial nueva sobre la ubicación y la dimensión de los reclamos territoriales de los grupos. Sostenemos que la variación en los lugares donde atacan los grupos separatistas se debe a la variación en la forma en que los grupos distribuyen sus esfuerzos en base a dos objetivos principales: el control de la región reclamada y la coerción de las concesiones de política del centro. Nuestra hipótesis es que la importancia relativa de estos objetivos deriva de las características del reclamo, de la región reclamada y del movimiento separatista dado. Demostramos que los grupos con reclamos «difusos» que no siguen los límites administrativos o las características geográficas claras atacan más alrededor de su frontera de estado visualizada y que la violencia tiende a concentrarse dentro de la región reclamada cuando hay heterogeneidad étnica o cuando el movimiento está fragmentado, mientras que los movimientos relativamente unidos atacan más en la capital nacional. La littérature sur les groupes séparatistes a accordé relativement peu d'attention aux revendications territoriales précises de ces groupes et à leur influence sur les stratégies. Nous expliquons la répartition géographique de la violence séparatiste en nous appuyant sur de nouvelles données géospatiales sur la localisation et l’étendue des revendications territoriales des groupes. Nous soutenons que la variation des lieux d'attaque des séparatistes découle de la variation de la manière dont les groupes allouent leurs efforts entre deux objectifs principaux : le contrôle dans la région revendiquée et la coercition de concessions politiques de la part du pouvoir central. Nous émettons l'hypothèse que l'importance relative de ces objectifs découle des caractéristiques de la revendication, de la région revendiquée et du mouvement séparatiste. Nous montrons que les groupes dont les revendications sont « floues », c'est-à-dire qui ne suivent pas les frontières administratives ou de caractéristiques géographiques claires, attaquent davantage autour ’e la frontière de l’État qu'ils envisagent et que la violence tend à se concentrer dans la région revendiquée lorsqu'elle est ethniquement hétérogène ou que le mouvement est fragmenté, alors que les mouvements relativement unifiés attaquent davantage dans la capitale nationale.

  PublisherDOI

• INO volume 76 issue 2 Cover and Front matter

  International Organization · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• INO volume 76 issue 3 Cover and Front matter

  International Organization · 2022-01-01

  articleOpen access

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Off the Menu: Post-1945 Norms and the End of War Declarations

  Security Studies · 2021 · 6 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Sociology

  Why do states no longer declare war? In a provocative analysis, Tanisha M. Fazal argues that states stopped declaring war to evade the costs of complying with the growing body of international humanitarian laws. We argue instead that post-1945 normative and legal developments that sought to prohibit war changed the meaning of war declarations in a way that made them at best irrelevant and at worst counterproductive. Although war-making did not end, a once routine feature of warfare came to be seen as a signal of extreme aims that could complicate escalation management and coalition building. Moreover, the United Nations (UN) system provided more desirable ways for states to justify military operations, particularly through self-defense claims. We support this argument through a reassessment of the empirical pattern of war declarations, an analysis of self-defense claims made under Article 51 of the UN Charter, and case studies of undeclared wars in the post-1945 period.

  PublisherDOI

• Preface

  International Organization · 2021 · 6 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  • Mathematics

  An abstract is not available for this content. As you have access to this content, full HTML content is provided on this page. A PDF of this content is also available in through the 'Save PDF' action button.

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• INO volume 75 issue 4 Cover and Front matter

  International Organization · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access

  An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Replication Data for: Off the Menu: Post-1945 Norms and the End of War Declarations

  Harvard Dataverse · 2021-06-21

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Contains replication data and code for "Off the Menu: Post-1945 Norms and the End of War Declarations"

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Judith Goldstein

  Princeton University

  123 shared

• David A. Lake

  113 shared

• Martha Finnemore

  113 shared

• Robert O. Keohane

  University of Oxford

  112 shared

• Peter Gourevitch

  112 shared

• John Odell

  112 shared

• Peter J. Katzenstein

  Cornell University

  108 shared

• Helen V. Milner

  Princeton Public Schools

  108 shared

Education

• PhD, Political Science

  Stanford University

Awards & honors

• 2003 Karl Deutsch Award, given by the International Studies…
• 2025 Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Teaching, award…