Abstract
In canonical accounts of war, conflict outcomes are inherently uncertain. Contesting literatures posit that this uncertainty, arising from stochastic elements of the war-fighting process, may induce conflict due to greater risks of miscalculation or foster peace by breeding caution. We theorize that states, on average, exhibit prudence when confronting greater uncertainty. Despite its conceptual importance, extant proxies for uncertainty at various levels of analysis—such as polarity, balance of power, system concentration, and dyadic relative capabilities—are imprecise and theoretically inappropriate indicators. To overcome this shortcoming, we theorize the conditions that elevate the magnitude of uncertainty over conflict outcomes and introduce a novel measure that captures this uncertainty within any k-state system. Through extensive empirical analysis, we confirm uncertainty’s pacifying effect and show how this effect operates at different levels of analysis.
Highlights
In canonical accounts of war, conflict outcomes are inherently uncertain
Reflecting on the uncertainty that accompanies military conflict, Churchill wrote “The Statesman who yields to war fever must realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.”1 Does awareness of this inherent uncertainty over a conflict’s course and outcome affect whether conflict occurs at all? If so, is this a pacifying or incendiary effect? Prominent debates in security studies address whether outcome uncertainty induces conflict through miscalculation or peace due to caution and whether uncertainty is a function of dyadic or multilateral factors (Waltz, 1979; Blainey, 1988; Kugler and Lemke, 1996)
We develop a theory specifying the conditions that elevate the magnitude of outcome uncertainty and linking this uncertainty to state behavior
Summary
In canonical accounts of war, conflict outcomes are inherently uncertain. Contesting literatures posit that this uncertainty, arising from stochastic elements of the war-fighting process, may induce conflict due to greater risks of miscalculation or foster peace by breeding caution. Extant proxies for uncertainty at various levels of analysis— such as polarity, balance-of-power, system concentration, and dyadic relative capabilities— are imprecise and theoretically inappropriate indicators To overcome this shortcoming, we theorize the conditions that elevate the magnitude of uncertainty over conflict outcomes and introduce a novel measure that captures this uncertainty within any k-state system. The second, uncertainty concerning a state’s resolve or capabilities, when coupled with incentives to misrepresent the truth, generate information asymmetries and one of the primary rationalist explanations for war (Fearon, 1995; Powell, 1999; Slantchev, 2003; Fey and Ramsay, 2011) Both types of uncertainty are difficult to measure and relegated to the error term in statistical analyses of conflict (Gartzke, 1999). Everything else being equal, certainty induces state leaders to exhibit less caution due to the relative simplicity of this estimation task, increasing the probability of conflict
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