Political Instability and the Failure of Deterrence

Abstract

We focus on the interaction of an incumbent leader, an elite who can seize power, and a separate country wanting to maintain a peaceful status quo. Both leaders and elites are distinguished between hawks, who benefit from conflict, and doves, who prefer peace. We show that while deterrence is successful when leaders are perfectly secure, it breaks down when leaders are insecure because hawks can escape punishment and doves use the threat of international conflict to quell internal challenges. These deterrence failures have important implications for various foreign policy positions that conceptually rely on the logic of deterrence.