Bargaining Conflict Research Articles

Leadership Preferences, Minimum Acceptable Nationalist Demands, and Duration of Ethno-territorial Civil Wars

In standard conflict bargaining models, internal ethno-territorial dispute outcomes should be influenced not only by status quo conditions and relative military power, but also by leadership preferences. Since direct, large-sample measures of leadership preferences on both sides of conflicts have not hitherto been available, statistical research typically diverges from case study research in omitting leadership preferences. This paper utilizes a database that measures the ideological nationalist dimension of variation in state and ethnic minority group leadership preferences by examining and ranking leaders’ minimum acceptable nationalist demands. Controlling for the impact of other factors, more extreme minimum nationalist demands, on both the state and the rebel group sides, are robust predictors of longer war duration.

Seeing what you want: How goal‐oriented descriptions of the status quo alter outcomes in ethno‐territorial conflict bargaining experiments

AbstractIn conflict bargaining models, variation in initial conditions is expected to have a significant impact. Better initial conditions should make the status quo more acceptable and likely to persist, and worse initial conditions should make crisis and conflict more likely. At the same time, players' preferences over the different possible bargaining outcomes are expected to influence perceptions of initial conditions. We use conflict bargaining experiments in ethno‐territorial conflict settings—in which participants are asked to advise leaders—to investigate these relationships. First, we find that variation in leaders' nationalist preferences indeed affects perception of initial conditions. Next, preference‐influenced, goal‐oriented descriptions reduce the effect of variation in initial conditions by making factually better initial conditions seem more similar to factually worse ones. As a result, the conflict‐reducing effects of better initial conditions are weakened. In addition, and perhaps counter‐intuitively, those advising moderate nationalists react more confrontationally to goal‐oriented descriptions of initial conditions than those advising extreme nationalists. The main policy implication is that, as a general rule, more factual, less goal‐oriented description of initial conditions is likely to improve conflict outcomes.

Alle Jahre wieder: zum aktuellen Tarifkonflikt bei der Bahn

Abstract The paper deals with the present collective bargaining conflict at the railway. First, we summarize the development and legal preconditions. Next, we focus on different demands (wages, especially inflation compensation bonus, weekly working hours) and some possible solutions of the conflict. Then, we deal with strikes and their consequences. Finally, we identify the foundation of a new temporary employment agency as a potential cause for future conflicts.

Governance of dependency relationships in mandated networks

ABSTRACT Mandated service delivery networks have become common in both developing and developed worlds; however, our understanding of what makes these arrangements work is still limited. In this study, we draw upon existing business literature, specifically focusing on dependency relationships and resulting opportunism within mandated networks, a critical but often overlooked aspect. Further, within mandated networks characterised by limited autonomy and trust, ways in which network members navigate dependency relationships remain unexplored. We conduct a comparative case analysis, examining network arrangements within India’s National Health Insurance Programme. Based on our findings, we propose that the nature of interdependence among network members and the resultant dependency relationships impact the conduct of network members and, thereby, network performance. If the dependency relationships are not governed effectively, conflict bargaining and opportunistic behaviours get manifested. Contrary to expectation, network performance tends to be higher in jurisdictions where dependency relationships are effectively governed through hierarchical authority. These findings hold significant relevance; as mandated networks are created under the shadow of hierarchy but governed through clan or trust-based mechanisms.

An Informational Theory of Genocide and Politicide During Civil War

Why do some governments engage in genocide or politicide against their civilian population during civil war? Scholarship on this important question views such brutality as a strategic tool the government can use to maintain power through military victory. Returning to the logic of conflict bargaining, I re-conceptualize genocide and politicide as a means to extract information about one’s opponent. I argue that a government is more likely to employ these atrocities during conflict when it is more uncertain about its probability of victory to reveal better information more quickly from the battlefield. I test this argument on all civil wars since 1945 and find support for this claim. These dynamics are more pronounced when the rebels rely on the civilian population to mobilize fighters. My argument helps bridge significant works in the genocide and conflict-bargaining literatures.

Party over Pocketbook? How Party Cues Influence Opinion When Citizens Have a Stake in Policy

Do political parties influence opinion when citizens have a personal stake in policy? With an experimental design that exploits a naturally occurring, sharp variation in party cues, we study the effects of party cues during a collective bargaining conflict over the salary and work rights for public employees in Denmark. Even in this context—where the self-interest of public employees was strongly mobilized and where their party went against it—we find that party cues move opinion among partisans at least as much as in previous studies. But party cues do not lead citizens to go against their self-interest. Rather, we show that party cues temper the pursuit of self-interest among public employees by moderating the most extreme policy demands. These findings highlight an unappreciated potential of political parties to moderate—not fuel—extreme opinion.

United Nations peacekeeping and terrorism: short-term risks and long-term benefits

ABSTRACTDoes the introduction of UN forces impact terrorism? We argue that at least initially, UN peacekeeping missions may significantly shift the local conflict bargaining process, creating incentives for terrorist and insurgent groups to increase their attacks against civilians. UN missions create a symbolic endpoint to initial negotiations, alter the balance of power between combatants, and may change the relationship between local combatants and the civilian population they rely on for support. We test this argument using monthly data from 12 African countries, analyzing the risk of terrorism at the local level. We find that the introduction of UN forces in an area significantly increases the short-term risk of terrorism, but longer missions in the country reduce this risk.

Conflict negotiations and rebel leader selection

The international community often calls for negotiations in civil wars. Yet, we have limited understanding of when and why specific rebels enter into negotiations. The emergence of a new leader in a rebel group can provide an opportunity for the state seeking to end war, but this is conditional on how leaders take power. Rebel leaders who come to power through a local selection process (such as an election) provide information to the state about the likely cohesion of the rebel group. This affects state perceptions of the viability of a rebel group as a bargaining partner in civil war negotiations. Using original data on rebel leaders in civil wars, we show that new leaders coming to power through a local selection process are more likely to get to the negotiating table than leaders coming to power in other ways. We find that the election of a rebel group leader has a particularly strong and positive effect on the chance of getting to the table. Rebel leaders that founded their own group or brought together disparate rebels to create a single group are less likely to get to the negotiating table. This article advances our understanding of conflict dynamics by offering a novel argument of rebel leader ascension and its impact on conflict bargaining and has critical implications for parties external to the conflict interested in conflict resolution. External actors seeking to facilitate lasting peace may benefit from observing patterns of rebel leadership.

Honest Abe or Doc Holliday? Bluffing in Bargaining

We consider a bargaining environment where there is asymmetric information regarding whether the two players have common or conflicting preferences. If the cost of strategic communication is independent of the state, then signaling is not expected to be effective. If the uninformed agent believes, though, a (non-credible) signal has been sent, then the informed agents are incentivized to engage in deceptive bluffing. Alternatively, if bluffing is not too prevalent, honest communication can be worthwhile. We explore this theoretically and experimentally. We present a bargaining model where state-dependent mixed strategies arise as equilibria, i.e., bluffing. We then design an experimental game to assess the validity of the theoretical model’s predictions. We show that agents attempt to strategically transmit information even when (asymmetrically costly) signaling is not possible. Across rounds of the game honest, but not credible, signaling and bluffing co-move in that as the former becomes more prevalent so too does the latter. Furthermore, we document a contagion effect in the laboratory. Bluffing not only creates deadweight loss in a particular dyad, but leads the agent who was bluffed to engage in more bargaining conflict in future rounds against a new, randomly-selected opponent. Aggregate wealth is higher prior to the introduction of deception in the lab.

Tenure, Faculty Contracts and Bargaining Conflict

Tenure is sometimes charged as giving faculty lifetime job security, with little accountability and sporadic monitoring of performance. Scholars have traditionally defended tenure as necessary for academic freedom. This paper takes a different approach by examining the academic "employment contract relationship," and explaining how tenure can lead to bargaining conflict. Tenure is costly to the university but extremely valued by the faculty member. The opportunity cost of granting tenure to someone is the lost teaching and research output of younger people who cannot be hired in future. Tenure is necessary because without it, incumbents would never recommend hiring people who might be better than they are, for fear of being replaced. Tenure is also efficient because faculty have better information about incumbents than either university administrators or outside consultants. Tenure is therefore necessary to motivate older faculty to hire the best. With staff budget dollars able to be shifted back or forwards across time periods, tenure secures the truthful revelation of who are the good candidates over all periods, and the university is guaranteed that those who are in the best position to judge (namely, faculty rather than administrators) have every incentive to make the best decisions. It follows, then, that the naive suggestion to get rid of tenure so that older, expensive professors can be fired and replaced with younger, cheaper professors would be disastrous in the long run. A simple model is presented explaining why (a) recent cutbacks in government grants, (b) cost pressures on university budgets, (c) limits to tuition increases, and (d) declining interests in attending a less "excellent" university have all resulted in pressure on tenure. Because there is no previously agreed-to mechanism in place to adjust staff, university administrations and faculty unions are not so much bargaining over an acceptable contract outcome as they are contesting the very rules of the bargaining game. Accordingly, unless tenure is reconsidered, universities may increasingly face bargaining conflict. Tenure could be reformed by making the term of tenure limited but related to rank, and establishing a maximum eligibility period during which a faculty may apply for promotion.

Spillovers and conflict in wage bargaining: Experimental evidence

We investigate how information spillovers from other negotiations affect conflict in bargaining. Two theoretical mechanisms are studied: (1) social comparisons, which are hypothesized to increase conflict due to self-serving biases, and (2) rational learning, which is hypothesized to decrease conflict by reducing information asymmetries. Our experimental design allows for an interactive bargaining process and offers full control over the information available to negotiators. Consistent with studies of one-shot games, we find that spillovers resulting from social comparisons increase conflict; however, the bargaining process mitigates this effect. In bargaining situations in which spillovers also allow for rational learning, the conflict-increasing effects of spillovers are prevented.

Competing for the Crown

What factors contribute to the victimization of civilians during civil war? Drawing on research from various disciplines, we argue that increasing competition within a civil conflict system brought on by the entrance of new factions contributes to an increase in civilian targeting by existing rebel groups. Specifically, we argue that existing groups are more likely to target civilians immediately upon the entrance of new rivals due to the perceived threat to control over resources and because the arrival of new groups diminishes the gains existing groups expect from either victory or successful conflict bargaining. We further argue that violence against civilians increases during periods in which rival factions engage in direct, violent conflict with one another. Our analysis diverges from existing studies by arguing and demonstrating that fluctuations in competition rather than the simple presence of competing groups produce spikes in civilian targeting by nonstate actors. We evaluate and find support for our argument using monthly data for African conflicts between 1989 and 2010.

Fighting words

This article examines the effectiveness of public statements of resolve in international conflict. Several prominent theories, including domestic audience cost theory and theories regarding international reputation, suggest that issuing resolved statements can help a leader achieve a more favorable outcome in conflict bargaining. Because they entail costs for backing down, these statements are believed to credibly convey resolve to an adversary. This can help to alleviate the uncertainty created by private information about resolve and persuade the adversary to back down. Despite the prevalence of this theoretical logic, the effectiveness of statements of resolve at influencing conflict outcomes has rarely been subjected to direct tests, and some recent empirical work has raised doubts about statements’ effectiveness. This article is the first to directly examine the effect of resolved statements on conflict outcomes using large-N analysis. It introduces original data, created using content analysis, which directly measure the level of resolved statements made by US presidents during militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). Analysis of these data demonstrates that a higher level of resolved statements is indeed associated with a greater chance of prevailing in disputes. This finding is substantively significant and robust, providing support for the argument that public statements play an important role in international conflict.

Conflict bargaining as a signal to third parties

Within the international system, states frequently fight even when opponents have little or nothing to offer them. Yet, international relations scholars envision conflict as a means for states to acquire some amount of a desired good, and view bargaining through this lens. This paper presents a model in which war and conflict bargaining can serve as signals to potentially hostile third parties. The analysis indicates that states sometimes have incentives to bargain harder than they would otherwise, in order to conceal information from future enemies. This can lead to war, even when a peaceful settlement should be possible.

An Experimental Analysis of Asymmetric Power in Conflict Bargaining

Demands and concessions in a multi-stage bargaining process are shaped by the probabilities that each side will prevail in an impasse. Standard game-theoretic predictions are quite sharp: demands are pushed to the precipice with nothing left on the table, but there is no conflict regardless of the degree of power asymmetry. Indeed, there is no delay in reaching an agreement that incorporates the (unrealized) costs of delay and conflict. A laboratory experiment has been used to investigate the effects of power asymmetries on conflict rates in a two-stage bargaining game that is (if necessary) followed by conflict with a random outcome. Observed demands at each stage are significantly correlated with power, as measured by the probability of winning in the event of disagreement. Demand patterns, however, are flatter than theoretical predictions, and conflict occurs in a significant proportion of the interactions, regardless of the degree of the power asymmetry. To address these deviations from the standard game-theoretic predictions, we also estimated a logit quantal response model, which generated the qualitative patterns that are observed in the data. This one-parameter generalization of the Nash equilibrium permits a deconstruction of the strategic incentives that cause demands to be less responsive to power asymmetries than Nash predictions.

‘‘We Don’t Talk to Terrorists’’: On the Rhetoric and Practice of Secret Negotiations

Political actors sometimes make public commitments not to negotiate with adversaries whom they label as being beneath diplomacy. Such commitments are sometimes made even as they are being broken. Why do actors sometimes publicly denounce adversaries with whom they intend to negotiate? What effect does such prenegotiation rhetoric have on the prospects for successful negotiated settlements? In this paper, the authors present a novel game-theoretic model of conflict bargaining, in which actors can make public commitments not to negotiate before deciding whether to engage in secret negotiations with adversaries. The authors model such commitments as affecting actors’ audience costs; a denunciation increases an actor’s motivation to reach a negotiated settlement if negotiations are undertaken. Although such a decision weakens an actor’s bargaining power, in equilibrium actors sometimes publicly denounce their counterparts. The authors present and interpret equilibrium behavior in their model and discuss the implications of their results for future research.

Prejudice and truth about the effect of testosterone on human bargaining behaviour

Both biosociological and psychological models, as well as animal research, suggest that testosterone has a key role in social interactions. Evidence from animal studies in rodents shows that testosterone causes aggressive behaviour towards conspecifics. Folk wisdom generalizes and adapts these findings to humans, suggesting that testosterone induces antisocial, egoistic, or even aggressive human behaviours. However, many researchers have questioned this folk hypothesis, arguing that testosterone is primarily involved in status-related behaviours in challenging social interactions, but causal evidence that discriminates between these views is sparse. Here we show that the sublingual administration of a single dose of testosterone in women causes a substantial increase in fair bargaining behaviour, thereby reducing bargaining conflicts and increasing the efficiency of social interactions. However, subjects who believed that they received testosterone-regardless of whether they actually received it or not-behaved much more unfairly than those who believed that they were treated with placebo. Thus, the folk hypothesis seems to generate a strong negative association between subjects' beliefs and the fairness of their offers, even though testosterone administration actually causes a substantial increase in the frequency of fair bargaining offers in our experiment.

The Strategy of Boilerplate

Boilerplate is everywhere. Its use in contracts among unsophisticated parties - and in standard-form contracts between dominant repeat-players and their inexperienced and uncounseled customers - may not be surprising. Yet is also pervasive in contracts among sophisticated and recurrent contracting parties, ably represented by well-compensated counsel. While various explanations have been offered for this phenomenon - including transaction cost and network effect theories - the incompleteness of each approach invites further attention to the sources of standardization in contracting. Here, I offer a strategic conception of in facilitating communication among sophisticated parties. Contrary to our common emphasis on the element of conflict in bargaining, its essential feature is a dynamic of coordination. Given the resulting mixed-motive game, direct communication may not be the primary means of communication in bargaining. Both the use of and deviations from it, by contrast, may speak worlds. Perhaps most significantly, for all the sense of boilerplate as somehow passive or inert, it may - in appropriate circumstances - constitute an effective weapon in bargaining parties' efforts to advance their contracting interests.

THE INTERNATIONAL TEA CARTEL DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION, 1929–1933

An international sample of 349 British-owned firms is analyzed to test the effectiveness of the International Tea Agreements of 1930 and 1933. Although the agreements reduced output overall, in 1930 there were significant regional differences in the extent of compliance, with firms in Eastern India reducing output more than did firms in Ceylon. These differences can be attributed to regional differences in organizational structure. Archival evidence suggests that the breakdown of collusion in 1931 and 1932 was due to a bargaining conflict between established producers in India and Ceylon and the newer plantations of Java and Sumatra.Producers of commodities like wheat and sugar may envy the facility with which the tea growing industry obtained a 30 percent rise in average tea prices and a 90 percent enhancement of tea share values—all within the space of a little more than six months.The Economist, 26 August 1933

Management Chief Negotiators, Bargaining Strategies, and the Likelihood of Impasse in Public Sector Collective Bargaining

Chief negotiators are uniquely positioned to affect the level of collective bargaining conflict because of their roles as external representatives and information processors during negotiations. The nature of these effects should be of special interest to government administrators who are concerned about improving their self-resolution track record in collective bargaining. In this article, the authors use a unique 1992 survey of municipal chief negotiators to examine the impact of various chief negotiator characteristics on the likelihood of impasses occurring in negotiations with municipal police unions. The findings support two major conclusions. First, chief negotiators who are positioned higher in the management hierarchy experience fewer collective bargaining impasses than do those who are lower in the organization. Second, negotiators' strategies and personality characteristics significantly influence the likelihood of an impasse but, in general, demographic characteristics of negotiators and environmental factors do not.