Preventive war and sovereign debt

The preventive motive for war arises because states cannot commit to limit the use of their growing power. This commitment problem can lead to war when there are not enough resources available to compensate the declining state for their expected losses. In this article, we show how capital markets affect preventive war incentives by introducing a profit-maximizing bond market to the canonical bargaining model of war. We find that the nature of the power shift and fundamentals of the market for debt interact to determine when a preventive motive is more likely to lead to war. Two main results show that (1) less probable but more extreme power shifts are most dangerous and (2) unlike the direct effect of interest rates on the cost of war, higher interest on sovereign debt makes war more likely. We present evidence for the latter effect by extending Lemke’s (2003) study of preventive war for major-power dyads between 1816 and 1992.

Streaming the Battlefield: A Theory of the Internet's Effect on Negotiation Onset

This article explores the effects of social media penetration and internet connectivity on the likelihood that parties within a conventional intra-state conflict will enter negotiations. The proliferation of advanced information communications technologies, coupled with violent political collective action, calls for further examination of how these variables intertwine to affect conflict patterns. Beginning with a discussion on communications technology and the bargaining model of war, the author presents a theoretical model that seeks to create a foundation that can be used for future empirical testing.

Zionism and Identity Crisis: Ethnic Conflict between Israelis and Palestinians

The Palestine issue is attributed to be the most complicated problem in the region of the Middle East. However, few researchers analyze the problem through the lens of ethnic conflict. This research paper investigates that the use of Zionism as a metaphor for colonialism and its role in fostering an ethnic conflict between Israeli and Palestinians. Qualitative content analysis is used to analyze secondary data on ethnic conflict in present Israel. In addition to that bargaining model of war is used to identify the underlying issues of the ethnic conflict. The findings reveal that Zionism and identity contribute to accelerating the ethnic conflict between Israeli and Palestinians. Despite international interventions and signing many peace agreements, the problem remains unresolved due to a trust deficit between both ethnicities.

Aims, claims, and the bargaining model of war

Although in principle states can bargain over the entire extent of their combined territory, we observe historically that states bargain within far more limited confines defined by well-bounded claims. We argue that this observation stems from the fact that states generally have limited territorial aims due either to limited benefits of obtaining additional territory and/or the costs of absorbing and controlling new territories and their inhabitants. Using a formal model, we show that introducing states with limited aims over territory has strategic implications for bargaining that have not been appreciated in canonical models that do not consider heterogeneity in state preferences. Whereas traditional models generally imply that small demands undermine the credibility of a challenger's threat, the existence of states with limited territorial aims makes limited demands credible, effective, and stable in the face of shocks to relative power. We then employ geospatial data on the geographic extent of territorial disputes in the period 1947–2000 to establish two results: the size of claims is weakly related to the relative power of disputants and unaffected by dramatic changes in power, and smaller claims are associated with a higher probability that the challenger will receive any concession.

Predicting the costs of war

The expected cost of war is a foundational concept in the study of international conflict. However, the field currently lacks a measure of the expected costs of war, and thereby any measure of the bargaining range. In this paper, I develop a proxy for the expected costs of war by focusing on one aspect of war costs – battle deaths. I train a variety of machine learning algorithms on battle deaths for all countries participating in fatal military disputes and interstate wars between 1816 and 2007 in order to maximize out-of-sample predictive performance. The best performing model (random forest) improves performance over that of a null model by 25% and a linear model with all predictors by 9%. I apply the random forest to all interstate dyads in the Correlates of War dataverse from 1816 to 2007 in order to produce an estimate of the expected costs of war for all existing country pairs in the international system. The resulting measure, which I refer to as Dispute Casualty Expectations, can be used to fully explore the implications of the bargaining model of war, as well as allow applied researchers to develop and test new theories in the study of international relations.

5. The Causes of War and the Conditions of Peace

This chapter examines theories that explain the causes of war. It considers ideas advanced by political scientists, sociologists, biologists and philosophers, showing that different explanations of war give rise to different requirements or conditions for peace. After highlighting the difficulties in studying war, the chapter discusses human nature explanations of war, citing such factors as frustration, misperception, misunderstanding, miscalculation, and errors of judgement as well as the role of human collectives including factions, tribes, nations and states. It then describes the bargaining model of war before turning to inter-state wars, intra-state conflicts, and ethnic conflicts. It also explores the debate over whether ‘greed’ or ‘grievance’ are the main causes of civil wars. The chapter concludes that identifying a single cause appropriate to all wars is an exercise in futility and that a worldwide ‘just’ peace is unattainable.

Economic Interdependence and Conflict

Recent studies on commercial liberalism have paid more attention to microfoundations linking economic interdependence to peace. Using a bargaining model of war, these studies have specified and tested different causal mechanisms through which economic ties function as a constraint, a source of information, or a transformative agent. Recent scholarly efforts in theoretical development and some empirical testing of different causal processes suggest the need to consider scope conditions to see when an opportunity cost or a signaling mechanism is likely to be salient. Future research can be best benefited by focusing on how economic interdependence affects commitment problems and empirically assessing the relative explanatory power of different causal arguments.

Power Shifts and War

A large body of theoretical work posits that power shifts or expected power shifts cause war. Power transition theory, cyclic theories of war, preventive war arguments, and the bargaining model of war are discussed in this article. Indeed, shifting power is one of the most popular and venerable explanations for war. Its origins go at least as far back as Thucydides, who famously wrote, “What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear this caused in Sparta.” Two major points must be discussed. First, there is an impressive correlation between major power war and shifting power, a correlation consistent with the arguments of several systemic theories of war. Second, much of the empirical research examining power shifts and war suffers from endogeneity and model specification concerns. Regarding endogeneity, more effort should be placed on identifying valid instruments and conducting experiments. Regarding model specification, more attention needs to be paid to scope conditions. Shifting power is not expected to cause war in all contexts. Precisely defining the relevant contexts and modeling them empirically is necessary to evaluate the shifting power and war hypothesis.

Policy bargaining and militarized conflict

Studies of bargaining and war generally focus on two sources of incomplete information: uncertainty over the probability of victory and uncertainty over the costs of fighting. We introduce uncertainty over preferences of a spatial policy and argue for its relevance in crisis bargaining. Under these conditions, standard results from the bargaining model of war break down: peace can be Pareto inefficient and it may be impossible to avoid war. We then extend the model to allow for cheap talk pre-play communication. Whereas incentives to misrepresent normally render cheap talk irrelevant, here communication can cause peace and ensure that agreements are efficient. Moreover, peace can become more likely as (1) the variance in the proposer’s belief about its opponent’s type increases and (2) the costs of war decrease. Our results indicate that one major purpose of diplomacy is simply to communicate preferences and that such communications can be credible.