Bound by Struggle: The Strategic Evolution of Enduring International Rivalries. By Zeev Maoz and Ben D. Mor. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2002. 368p. $60.00.

One of the most intriguing empirical facts about international conflict is that a vast majority of militarized disputes and wars occur within a very small subset of pairs of states. Scholars have noted the very intense nature of relations within these dyads—dubbed rivalries—and have provided numerous studies of what causes the frequent conflicts between them. In this book, Zeev Maoz and Ben D. Mor move away from this segment of the literature by treating rivalries, not the conflicts that occur within them, as the unit of analysis. They provide a study of how rivalries start, develop, and terminate, using an evolutionary model of interstate relations. This analytical orientation provides the basis for an ambitious, thorough, and complex portrayal of rivalry development.