Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-9nwgx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-26T15:05:45.482Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

James D. Fearon
James D. Fearon
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

International crises are modeled as a political “war of attrition” in which state leaders choose at each moment whether to attack, back down, or escalate. A leader who backs down suffers audience costs that increase as the public confrontation proceeds. Equilibrium analysis shows how audience costs enable leaders to learn an adversary's true preferences concerning settlement versus war and thus whether and when attack is rational. The model also generates strong comparative statics results, mainly on the question of which side is most likely to back down. Publicly observable measures of relative military capabilities and relative interests prove to have no direct effect once a crisis begins. Instead, relative audience costs matter: the side with a stronger domestic audience (e.g., a democracy) is always less likely to back down than the side less able to generate audience costs (a nondemocracy). More broadly, the analysis suggests that democracies should be able to signal their intentions to other states more credibly and clearly than authoritarian states can, perhaps ameliorating the security dilemma between democratic states.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 88 , Issue 3 , September 1994 , pp. 577 - 592
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Banks, Jeffrey. 1990. “Equilibrium Behavior in Crisis Bargaining Games.” American Journal of Political Science 34:579–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Betts, Richard. 1987. Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance. Washington: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Billingsley, Patrick. 1986. Probability and Measure. 2d ed.New York: Wiley & Sons.Google Scholar
Blainey, Geoffrey. 1973. The Causes of War. New York: Free Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blight, James, and Welch, David. 1990. On the Brink: Americans and Soviets Reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: Noonday.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, and Lalman, David. 1992. War and Reason. New Haven: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chan, Steve. 1984. “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, … Are Freer Countries More Pacific?” Journal of Conflict Resolution 28:617–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cho, In-Koo, and Kreps, David. 1987. “Signaling Games and Stable Equilibria.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 102:179–222.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crawford, Vince, and Sobel, Joel. 1982. “Strategic Information Transmission.” Econometrica 50:1431–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farrell, Joseph. 1988. “Communication, Coordination, and Nash Equilibrium.” Economic Letters 27:209–14.Google Scholar
Fearon, James. 1990. “Deterrence and the Spiral Model: The Role of Costly Signals in Crisis Bargaining.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco.Google Scholar
Fearon, James. 1992. “Threats to Use Force: The Role of Costly Signals in International Crises.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Fearon, James. 1993. “Rationalist Explanations for War.” Presented at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington.Google Scholar
Fudenberg, Drew, and Tirole, Jean. 1991. Game Theory. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Gaubautz, Kurt Taylor. 1992. “Democratic States and Commitment in International Relations.” Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Chicago.Google Scholar
Gelb, Leslie, and Betts, Richard. 1979. The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked. Washington: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
George, Alexander L., and Smoke, Richard. 1974. Deterrence in American Foreign Policy. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Glaser, Charles. 1992. “Political Consequences of Military Strategy: Expanding and Refining the Spiral and Deterrence Models.” World Politics 44:497–538.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herz, John. 1950. “Idealist Internationalism and the Security Dilemma.” World Politics 2:157–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higonnet, P. L. R. 1968. “The Origins of the Seven Years' War.” Journal of Modern History 40:57–90.Google Scholar
Howard, Michael. 1983. The Causes of Wars. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1970. The Logic of Images in International Relations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1971. “Bargaining and Bargaining Tactics.” In Nomos: Coercion, ed. Roland Pennock, J. and Chapman, J.. Chicago: Aldine.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1978. “Cooperation under the Security Dilemma.” World Politics 30:167–214.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jervis, Robert, Lebow, Richard N., and Stein, Janice Gross. 1985. Psychology and Deterrence. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Katz, Michael. 1991. “Game Playing Agents: Unobservable Contracts as Precommitments.” Rand Journal of Economics 22:307–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kilgour, D. Marc. 1991. “Domestic Political Structure and War Behavior: A Game-theoretic Approach.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 35:266–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreps, David, and Wilson, Robert. 1982. “Sequential Equilibrium.” Econometrica 50:863–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kydd, Andrew. 1993. “The Security Dilemma, Game Theory, and World War I.” Presented at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington.Google Scholar
Lebow, Richard Ned. 1981. Between Peace and War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manning, William Ray. 1904. “The Nootka Sound Controversy.” Annual Report of the American Historical Association. Washington: GPO.Google Scholar
Maoz, Zeev, and Russett, Bruce. 1992. “Alliance, Contiguity, Wealth, and Political Stability: Is the Lack of Conflict among Democracies a Statistical Artifact?” International Interactions 17:245–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martin, Lisa. 1993. “Credibility, Costs, and Institutions: Cooperation on Economic Sanctions.” World Politics 45:406–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, Stephen. 1968. Rationality in Deterrence. Adelphi Paper No. 50. London: Institute for Strategic Studies.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, John. 1982. Evolution and the Theory of Games. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morgenthau, Hans. 1956. Politics among Nations, 2d ed.New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Morrow, James D. 1989. “Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve: A Limited Information Model of Crisis Bargaining.” American Journal of Political Science 33:941–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nalebuff, Barry. 1986. “Brinkmanship and Nuclear Deterrence: The Neutrality of Escalation.” Conflict Management and Peace Science 9:19–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norris, J. M. 1955. “The Policy of the British Cabinet in the Nootka Crisis.” English Historical Review 70:562–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Neill, Barry. N.d. “The Diplomacy of Insults.” In Signals, Symbols, and War. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Powell, Robert. 1985. “The Theoretical Foundations of Strategic Nuclear Deterrence.” Political Science Quarterly 100:75–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Robert. 1990. Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Problem of Credibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Robert. 1993. “Bargaining in the Shadow of Power.” University of California at Berkeley. Typescript.Google Scholar
Rabin, Matthew. 1990. “Communication between Rational Agents.” Journal of Economic Theory 51:144–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russett, Bruce. 1993. Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post–Cold War World. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schweller, Randolph. 1992. “Domestic Structure and Preventive War: Are Democracies More Pacific?” World Politics 44:235–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shimshoni, Jonathan. 1988. Israel and Conventional Deterrence: Border Warfare from 1953 to 1970. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Smoke, Richard. 1977. War: Controlling Escalation. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snyder, Glenn, and Diesing, Paul. 1977. Conflict among Nations. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Spence, A. Michael. 1973. “Job Market Signalling.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 87:355–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tirole, Jean. 1989. The Theory of Industrial Organization. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marc. 1991. History and Strategy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagner, R. Harrison. 1989. “Uncertainty, Rational Learning, and Bargaining in the Cuban Missile Crisis.” In Models of Strategic Choice in Politics, ed. Ordeshook, Peter. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, R. Harrison. 1991. “Nuclear Deterrence, Counterforce Strategies, and the Incentive to Strike First.” American Political Science Review 85:727–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth. 1959. Man, the State, and War. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Waltz, Kenneth. 1979. Theory of International Politics. Reading, MA: Addison–Wesley.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.