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.

The book proceeds in two parts, beginning with three chapters of introductory and theoretical material and concluding with six chapters of empirics and final conclusions. Maoz and Mor begin with a general discussion of rivalries and how other scholars have approached the study of rivalry dynamics. The authors' view of rivalries differs from the two most prominent conceptualizations of rivalry in the extant literature. Rather than considering them to be exclusively behavioral or exclusively psychological in nature, rivalries in this book are seen as bargaining processes that combine the behavioral and psychological aspects. This is a fundamentally important point, as it is the foundation of the authors' treatment of rivalries as repeated and connected games. This point becomes explicit when the authors compare their evolutionary approach to other prominent theoretical views of this phenomenon. Appropriately, they consider this treatment of rivalries to be an improvement over existing evolutionary models.

Chapters 2 and 3 provide the heart of the theory underlying the evolutionary approach to rivalry dynamics. In Chapter 2, Maoz and Mor consider rivalries from the “supergame” perspective, a perspective that is chosen to capture the fact that rivalries are long-term relationships. The supergame consists of 25 2 × 2 rivalry games (15 of which are unique in terms of strategy) that define the strategic context of rivals over time. The key to comprehending where the rivals fall at any given time in the supergame (which game the players are playing) is to know the preferences of each player. The authors posit that preferences are formed on the basis of two key considerations: a player's satisfaction with the status quo and the player's perception of its own capability to alter or keep the status quo.

Chapter 3 builds in the dynamic component of the theory. The supergame perspective provides the context at each time period in the rivalry, but says little about how the players move between games over time. The process by which states move between 2 × 2 games within the supergame is through experiential learning. According to this theory, leaders assess the expected outcome of the game with the actual behavior of the opponent. Learning occurs when a leader reconciles expected and actual behavior and adjusts preferences accordingly, the result of which is a new game being defined by the new set of preferences. Pulling the different components of Chapters 2 and 3 together puts Maoz and Mor in a position to provide expectations about which dyads will develop into rivalries, which will develop into proto-rivalries, and which will be relatively peaceful. Rivalries, in contrast to other types of dyads, should be characterized by shifts in the game structures that are typified by alternating periods of conflict and cooperation.

The first three chapters present a very detailed and complex theoretical picture of rivalry evolution. Given the rigorous nature of the theory, one would expect similarly rigorous testing of the hypotheses. This is precisely what Maoz and Mor provide for the reader. Using both case studies and quantitative methods, the authors go to great lengths to present compelling evidence for their model. Chapter 4 introduces a basic research design that provides the background for the case studies that appear in the subsequent three chapters. The authors are interested in using the case studies as tests of their theoretical propositions and do not settle for merely illustrative case studies. The research design for the comparative cases are as structured as some quantitative chapters, a fact that is necessary when one is exposed to the detailed nature of the data gleaned from the case studies and the more in-depth case studies of Israel-Syria and Israel-Egypt (see Figure 4.1 on page 103 for a schematic of the case study data structure). The final empirical chapter presents quantitative tests of the hypotheses produced by the evolutionary model and provides additional support for the argument.

By all accounts Bound by Struggle is a strong contribution to the study of enduring rivalries. It provides a new and interesting deductive theoretical framework that addresses the entire life span of rivalries and in doing so pays more or less equal attention to the onset, evolution, and termination of rivalries. Perhaps one element of the book that will stimulate future work is the relationship between the game structure presented in the theory and the role of exogenous factors. The approach taken by Maoz and Mor, with its focus on learning as the source of preference change, cannot fully incorporate private information, such as issues of domestic politics or a sudden change in capabilities. Thus, while hypotheses concerning exogenous factors are not directly produced by the model, the authors must—and do—consider these factors to be important in the evolution of rivalries (especially in the termination). As it turns out, experiential learning is not the only source of preference change. Instead, the authors allow changes in private information to affect actors' preferences and perceptions. Still, the relative parsimony of the learning and preference-based model is compromised a bit by the role of exogenous factors.

Maoz and Mor present a lot of detailed material as they take the reader through the theoretical and empirical parts of the study. At times, this makes the book somewhat cumbersome to read. However, the authors do a commendable job of being clear in their assumptions and include numerous tables and figures that provide summaries of complex arguments and detailed nuances of the study. The reader should be prepared to utilize the tables as he or she moves through the text. While a couple of the tables are themselves quite packed with information, this provides a nice outreach to those readers who are less technically oriented.