Model Of Crisis Bargaining Research Articles

Endogenous military strategy and crisis bargaining

When states fight wars, they choose between multiple military strategies, e.g. whether to place boots on the ground or restrict efforts to an air campaign. We modify the standard crisis bargaining model to account for this by endogenizing a state's war strategy. Intuitively, states choose the more powerful strategy when the additional strength gained covers the additional costs of doing so. However, there is a counterintuitive second-order consequence of this. When stronger campaigns are expensive but still credible, states are more likely to reach a negotiated settlement to avoid the corresponding high costs. As the cost of the more powerful option increases, states substitute their actions with cheaper but weaker alternatives. Because of these lower costs, states become less likely to reach a settlement. In some cases, both parties may be worse off as a result.

Crisis Bargaining in the Shadow of Third-Party Opportunism

Abstract The prospect of a rival opportunistically pressing for gains while one is at war with another rival highly influenced Britain's “two-power standard” as well as the US's “two-war standard.” Conflict scholars have documented numerous instances of third-party opportunism. I analyze a game-theoretic model of crisis bargaining in the shadow of third-party opportunism. Under complete information, a country with multiple rivals, that lacks overwhelming military power, incurs bargaining vulnerabilities with each rival due to potential opportunism by the others. Under incomplete information, uncertainty across dyads can lead to war even if there is complete information within dyads, adding more uncertainty to the interaction can actually reduce the likelihood of war, resolve across disputes can be endogenously correlated in equilibrium (in contrast to the exogenous assumption of reputational models), and a commitment problem can be conducive to peace rather than war.

Signaling and perception in international crises: Two approaches

This study contrasts the rationalist and psychologist approaches to information failure as the cause of crisis escalation and war. Building on the psychological insights on misperception, it presents a simple game-theoretic model of crisis bargaining, where signals are subject to perceptual errors and thereby multiple interpretations. The model allows us to analyze the interplay between the problem of misrepresentation in sending signals and the problem of misperception in forming beliefs. The analysis offers a rationalist logic of signaling and perception, which links Bayesian learning, incentive problems, misperception, and war. The analysis also shows that misperception generates more than pathologies in crises—misperception, under the right condition, makes signals fully informative, reduces the risk of war, and attenuates the adverse impact of incomplete information on the risk of crisis escalation and war.

Challenges to Inference in the Study of Crisis Bargaining

The possibility that actors strategically condition their behavior on partially unobservable factors poses a grave challenge to causal inference, particularly if only some of the actors whose behavior we analyze are at risk of experiencing the outcome of interest. We present a crisis bargaining model that indicates that targets can generally prevent war by arming. We then create a simulated data set where the model is assumed to perfectly describe interactions for those states engaged in crisis bargaining, which we assume most pairs of states arenot. We further assume researchers cannot observe which states are engaged in crisis bargaining, although observable variables might serve as proxies. We demonstrate that a naïve design would falsely (and unsurprisingly) indicate a positive relationship between arming and war. More importantly, we then evaluate the performance of matching, instrumental variables, and statistical backwards induction. The latter two show some promise, but matching fares poorly.

Military Mobilization and Commitment Problems

Because of its costliness, military mobilization is generally seen as a mechanism by which high-resolve leaders can credibly signal their high resolve in international crises, thereby possibly overcoming informational asymmetries that can lead to costly and inefficient war. I examine how power-shifts caused by mobilization within a crisis can lead to commitment-problem wars. In a simple ultimatum-offer crisis bargaining model of complete information, war occurs if and only if the power-shift caused by mobilization exceeds the bargaining surplus, which is Powell's (2004, 2006) general inefficiency condition for commitment-problem wars. When private information is added, and hence mobilization potentially has a stabilizing signaling role, under certain conditions the commitment problem overwhelms the signaling role and mobilization leads to certain war. Finally, I analyze an infinite-horizon model that captures the reality that mobilizing takes time, and find that commitment-problem wars occur under broader conditions than the general inefficiency condition implies.

Credibility and Commitment in Crisis Bargaining

Although scholars of international security share a skepticism for the extent to which agreements can be externally enforced, much existing game-theoretic work involves strong forms of commitment. Building on the canonical model of crisis bargaining, this article analyzes the role of two forms of commitment in bargaining: the ability to commit to a settlement and the ability to commit to end negotiations and initiate war fighting. The findings show that, contrary to expectations, allowing a proposer to retract their offer after learning of its acceptance does not lead to greater demands. Instead, a rational actor can be best off if he or she honors the accepted agreement in crisis bargaining, even though the act of accepting an offer changes the proposer's beliefs about the probability that an offer is acceptable. However, allowing a proposer to continue bargaining in lieu of fighting does change the dynamics of bargaining, although this effect diminishes as players become more patient. Finally, when there is no commitment to offers (or fighting after a rejected proposal), the behavior is the same as that found in the model with only renegotiation of agreements, and thus mirrors the behavior in the model in which both forms of commitment are present.

Alignment Patterns and Crisis Bargaining: A Model of Entrapment and Abandonment

Why are some interstate alignments closer than others? Under what conditions does the Defender support or abandon the Protege? This article examines the variation of alignment patterns and how the Defender chooses to support or abandon the Protege in different patterns. I develop a tripartite crisis-bargaining model which starts from the challenge of the Protege against the Adversary with which the Defender has the mixed relationship. Bilateral relations (the Defender vs. the Protege; the Defender vs. the Adversary) and their concerns of international reputation shape the three patterns of alignment, which affect how states behave in the crisis bargaining. The Defender constantly abandons the Protege’s challenge of the status quo in Pattern One while always supporting the Protege in Pattern Three. The second pattern highlights the Defender’s semi-separating strategy. In particular, the Defender abandons the Protege when the latter stands firm without a sufficiently high expected utility from war, as the Defender does not have enough incentives to be involved in a war against the Adversary. The abandonment of the Defender, however, delivers the Adversary a credible signal about the Protege’s strong resolution and makes the Adversary more likely to concede. Using the cross-Taiwan Strait crisis and the North Korea nuclear crisis, I illustrate how the interactions among states are consistent with the predictions of my model.

Limited Audience Costs in International Crises

Do audience costs have to be extremely large in order to credibly signal resolve and affect international crises? Existing theoretical work on audience costs suggests an affirmative answer, and recent empirical work on audience costs focuses on whether a leader can generate such large audience costs as to create a commitment to fight where no such commitment previously existed. We analyze a richer crisis bargaining model with audience costs and find that (1) audience costs can have war-reducing effects on incomplete-information crisis bargaining through a noninformative, bargaining-leverage mechanism and (2) audience costs can have war-reducing effects even when such large audience costs are not being generated as to create a commitment to fight where no such commitment previously existed. Even more limited audience costs can have war-reducing effects in international crises. We discuss how the bargaining-leverage mechanism is consistent with a number of prominent historical cases.

Incumbents, successors, and crisis bargaining

Leadership turnover may produce significant foreign policy changes when leaders differ from their predecessors in their preferences over the resort to war and when they cannot commit to implement inherited policies. How, then, does the expected behavior of an incumbent leader's successor affect crisis bargaining in the present? I analyze a leader-centric model of crisis bargaining in which (a) the distributive outcomes of crises affect political survival, (b) leadership turnover implies the accession of a new leader with potentially different preferences, and (c) successors can renegotiate inherited settlements. In equilibrium, the sensitivity of an incumbent’s political survival to making concessions interacts with the resolve of the successor to affect both the terms of settlement and the occurrence of war. First, political survival incentives can lead an incumbent to demand more than her adversary is willing to concede, provoking war when the successor is of similar resolve. Second, when a politically sensitive incumbent will be followed by a resolute successor, her adversary may grant otherwise unnecessary concessions to bolster the relatively irresolute incumbent in office. Finally, when a politically sensitive incumbent will be followed by an irresolute successor, her adversary may attack in order to depose the incumbent, hastening her replacement to secure better bargains in the future. Predictions about the present balance of resolve and leaders’ survival incentives may thus be fundamentally altered in light of the future balance of resolve.

Arms, Intelligence, and War

Arena, Philip and Scott Wolford. (2012) Arms, Intelligence, and War. International Studies Quarterly, doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2478.2012.00724.x © 2012 International Studies Association How do states respond to uncertainty over their opponents’ military strength? We analyze a model of crisis bargaining in which, prior to negotiation, an uninformed state chooses how to allocate scarce resources across armaments and intelligence gathering. Arming improves military capabilities, while intelligence gathering improves estimates of the other state's military capabilities. Our model thus allows both the distribution of power and the level of uncertainty in the crisis to be determined endogenously. We derive some notable results. First, the relationship between information revelation and war is conditional on beliefs held before the information is received, as more accurate information can reduce the probability of war for optimistic states but increase it for pessimistic ones. Second, the allocations that minimize the probability of war are often not those made in equilibrium. Finally, considering the interdependence between the two allocations yields unique insights into the relationship between the distribution of capabilities, uncertainty, and the risk of war.

Feigning Weakness

AbstractIn typical crisis bargaining models, strong actors must convince the opponent that they are not bluffing and the only way to do so is through costly signaling. However, in a war, strong actors can benefit from tactical surprise when their opponent mistakenly believes that they are weak. This creates contradictory incentives during the pre-war crisis: actors want to persuade the opponent of their strength to gain a better deal but, should war break out, they would rather have the opponent believe they are weak. I present an ultimatum crisis bargaining model that incorporates this dilemma and show that a strong actor may feign weakness during the bargaining phase. This implies that (1) absence of a costly signal is not an unambiguous revelation of weakness, (2) the problem of uncertainty is worse because the only actor with incentives to overcome it may be unwilling to do so, and (3) because of the difficulty with concealing resolve, democracies might be seriously disadvantaged in a crisis.

Diplomatic Calculus in Anarchy: How Communication Matters

When states come to believe that other states are hostile to their interests, they often reorient their foreign policies by realigning alliance commitments, building arms, striking first, mobilizing troops, or adopting policies to drain the resources of states that menace them. This article presents a crisis bargaining model that allows threatened states a wider array of responses than the choice to back down or not. Two implications are that (1) “cheap talk” diplomatic statements by adversaries can affect perceptions of intentions, and (2) war can occur because resolved states decline to communicate their intentions, even though they could, and even though doing so would avoid a war. The model relates the content and quality of diplomatic signals to the context of prior beliefs about intentions and strategic options. In simulations, this form of diplomatic communication reduces the likelihood of conflict.

International Organizations, Strategy, and Crisis Bargaining

We analyze a game-theoretic model of crisis bargaining in which a challenger state can consult an international organization whose decisions can affect its costs for war. We demonstrate that, first, while multilateral opposition lowers the probability of war by coordinating international opposition and increasing the costs of fighting multilateral support can increase the probability of war by coordinating support and lowering those costs. Second, the aggregate effect of IO involvement on the probability of war is conditional on the strategic decisions of challengers to initially consult the organization, implying that any empirical analysis of the pacific effects of IOs should take this selection process seriously. Finally, we provide a more nuanced explanation for why states seek multilateral support and fail; rather than a lack of material power to influence IO decisions, it is a strategic incentive to take greater risks of opposition in order to garner the benefits multilateral support. This allows us...

The Turnover Trap: New Leaders, Reputation, and International Conflict

A formal model of crisis bargaining in the shadow of leadership turnover is analyzed where (1) successive leaders of the same state may differ in their resolve, (2) their resolve is private information, and (3) the probability of leadership turnover depends on bargaining behavior and conflict outcomes. The model provides novel answers to a number of questions about the relationship between an incumbent's time in office, the prospects of losing office, the anticipated behavior of future leaders, and the current probability of conflict. Taken together, these results add further weight to recent claims that leaders, not states, should be considered the fundamental units of analysis in international relations.

Issue Linkages in International Crisis Bargaining

Students of international relations have long been concerned with questions regarding the impact of issue linkages on bargaining outcomes; unfortunately, the body of theory attempting to provide a systematic and rigorous analysis of issue linkages is woefully underdeveloped. In this study I contribute to the development of this theory with a particular emphasis on accounting for cases in which issue linkage fails in international crisis bargaining. The spatial model of crisis bargaining (which is a formal model constituting a synthesis of the spatial theory of voting and traditional, utility-based bargaining theory) is used to develop a theory of issue linkages and to address a number of points regarding linkage strategy that are found in the literature. After demonstrating how linking issues can affect the outcome of an international crisis, I argue that existing explanations for linkage failure are inadequate. The majority of the paper is devoted to determining what characteristics of the issues involved and of the disputants determine the likelihood that a linkage attempt will be successful. I conclude with a brief discussion relating these results to the literature on crisis management.

Power, resolve and bargaining in international crises: A spatial theory

In this paper the spatial model of crisis bargaining is utilized to derive a number of hypotheses relating the relative power and resolve of crisis participants to crisis outcomes. The resolve and two power variables are defined and the manner in which they are incorporated into the model is demonstrated. The model, which represents a synthesis of traditional utility based bargaining models and the spatial theory of voting, is then used to establish the theoretical linkages among these variables and all possible outcomes of international crises. Among the more interesting results is that crises in which one party is much more likely to win a war should one occur and the other party is much more resolved are extremely likely to end in war. The paper concludes with a discussion of the relevance of these findings to a number of topics in the international relations literature, including Schelling's strategy of commitment.

Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve: A Limited Information Model of Crisis Bargaining

This paper presents and solves a crisis bargaining game under limited information. The sides alternate offers from three possible offers, with war and its costs starting if the target's counteroffer is rejected. The equilibrium of the model falls into four different cases. These four cases are analyzed to determine how the sides communicate through their offers and how the costs of war, initial beliefs, misperceptions, and distribution of capabilities drive the probabilities of a crisis and war. The model demonstrates a joint selection bias-misspecification problem in empirical studies of crises arising from the unobservable nature of beliefs. Several empirical studies of crisis bargaining are discussed in the light of this methodological problem, new patterns of evidence are found that support the presence of the selection problem, and their conclusions are reexamined.

A Spatial Model of Crisis Bargaining

This study deals with the problem of determining whether states engaged in an international crisis will arrive at a negotiated settlement or go to war. A formal model of crisis bargaining that is based on a spatial representation of the theory of games is proposed as an analytical tool. The paper shows how the model can be used to derive probabilistic predictions regarding crisis outcomes and that these predictions are identical to the Nash bargaining solution when restrictive assumptions similar to Nash's are imposed on the model. A case study of the Fashoda crisis of 1898 is used to demonstrate the utility of the model as a conceptual framework.