Frederick\u27s Chessboard: Domestic Institutions and the Origins of the Seven Years\u27 War

This thesis explores why the states involved in the Seven Years’ War chose to go to war in 1756 by analyzing the relationship between the individual leader, domestic institutions and state action. Through a structured-focus comparison of Frederick the Great’s Prussia and Newcastle’s Britain, this thesis argues that the domestic institutional structure determines the level of influence held over state action by the individual leader and their preferences