Prewar Mobilization and the Termination of Interstate Wars

Abstract

Recent work on interstate crisis bargaining focuses on the inefficiency of public statements of resolve. This article reevaluates the inefficiency of public threats by examining how public-versus-private crisis mobilization affects the duration and outcome of interstate wars. Private mobilization is a purely material move that only provides capability benefits after war onset, which makes it necessary to examine how private mobilization eventually effects a war-ending bargain instead of how private mobilization makes bargaining failure more likely. The empirical results find that private mobilization only increases the initiator's war outcome in the early months of the war, and has little effect on the outcome in lengthy, protracted wars. Using data on 75 wars from 1823 to 2000, the analysis estimates a competing risks duration model to evaluate the effect of private mobilization on the outcome of interstate wars.