Contact Information:

Travers Department of Political Science
210 Social Sciences Building, MC#1950
University of California
Berkeley, CA  94720-1950
Tel: 510-642-4635
Email: RPowell [at] Berkeley.edu
 

Robert Powell is Robson Professor in the Travers Department of Political Science at UC Berkeley. His research focuses mainly on the causes of war and political conflict more generally. He is especially interested in how the limited ability of actors to make binding commitments in weakly institutionalized settings affects the likelihood of conflict.
 
He is the author of Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility (Cambridge University Press, 1990); In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 1999); “The Inefficient Use of Power: Costly Conflict with Complete Information,” American Political Science Review (June 2004); “War as a Commitment Problem,” International Organization (Winter 2006); “Monopolizing Violence and Consolidating Power” (Quarterly Journal of Economics 2013); and “Why Some Persistent Problems Persist” American Political Science Review (November 2019) .
 
He has previously taught at the University of Michigan and Harvard. He holds a B.S. in mathematics from Harvey Mudd College; an M.Phil in international relations from Cambridge University; and a PhD in economics from Berkeley. He has been a Fulbright Scholar to the United Kingdom and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2012, he won the National Academy of Science’s prize for behavior research relevant to the prevention of nuclear war.