On the morning of December 18, 2025, a lecture on “The Insiders' Game: How Elites Make War and Peace” was held simultaneously at the North Pavilion of Peking University (PKU) and online. The event was co-organized by the School of International Studies (SIS), PKU; the Institute of International and Strategic Studies (IISS), PKU; and Princeton University Press China.

The lecture was delivered by Elizabeth N. Saunders, Professor of Political Science at Columbia University. Discussants included Zuo Xiying, Professor at the School of International Studies, Renmin University of China; Jie Dalei, Senior Research Fellow at IISS, PKU and Associate Professor at SIS, PKU; Qi Haotian, Senior Research Fellow at IISS, PKU and Associate Professor at SIS, PKU; and Liu Lu, Assistant Professor at SIS, PKU. Li Lingxi, Managing Director of Princeton University Press China, also attended the lecture. The event was moderated by Prof. Yu Tiejun, President of IISS, PKU and Professor at SIS, PKU. The lecture drew an audience of over 3,000 participants both in person and online.

Prof. Saunders opened by presenting the main arguments and evidence of her new book, The Insiders' Game: How Elites Make War and Peace. She began by defining "elites" as those with access to critical information and involvement in decision-making processes, as well as those who provide cues to other elites and to the general public. Drawing on the realities of American politics, she examined three major elite groups — Congress, military leaders, and cabinet members — and explored how the insiders' game shapes decisions on the use of force, through both the toolkit of mutual constraint between elites and leaders, and the role of advisers in shaping policymakers' decisions. The four discussants offered their assessments of Prof. Saunders's book from a range of perspectives, including war decisions and partisan constraints, decision-making and misperception, decision-making research and the influence of political values, research design and evidence selection, and the institutions governing covert decision-making and oversight. In the closing exchange, Prof. Saunders and the audience discussed related questions including the divergence between mass and elite opinion, changes in democratic regimes, and the democratic peace.

The Insiders' Game: How Elites Make War and Peace was published by Princeton University Press in 2024 and has received multiple awards, including the Foreign Policy Best Book Award from the International Studies Association (ISA). Through an examination of U.S. wars and military interventions in countries such as North Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, Iraq, and Afghanistan, the book argues that elites constitute a unique group involved in decisions on the use of force, and that their presence make democratic leaders confront  political challenges distinct from those they face with the general electorate.

This seminar was the fifth session in the "Frontiers in International Relations Theory" lecture series, co-organized by SIS, PKU; IISS, PKU; and Princeton University Press China.

Editor: Li Fangqi    Photographer: Zheng Huaizhou