Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T20:17:45.308Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Multidimensional Diplomacy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2011

Robert F. Trager
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access

Abstract

States often negotiate with each other over more than one issue at the same time. This article presents a model of multidimensional international crisis bargaining. Unlike unidimensional bargaining, with two issue dimensions states can send costless signals about their resolve that have dramatic effects on other states' beliefs and actions. One reason is that when states claim a willingness to fight over an issue they in fact are not willing to fight over, they may lose the opportunity to get what they really want without conflict. As a result, when there is a chance that adversaries may each be willing to fight over two issues, the states can even sometimes convey with certainty when they will fight for both issues. The model also leads to some surprising comparative statics, for example, decreases in the probability that the target is willing to fight can increase the probability of war.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2011

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

REFERENCES

Aumann, Robert J., and Hart, Sergiu. 2003. Long Cheap Talk. Econometrica 71 (6):1619–60.Google Scholar
Battaglini, Marco. 2002. Multiple Referrals and Multidimensional Cheap Talk. Econometrica 70 (4):1379–401.Google Scholar
Brands, H. W. 2004. George Bush and the Gulf War of 1991. Presidential Studies Quarterly 34 (1):113–31.Google Scholar
Brown, Roger H. 1964. The Republic in Peril: 1812. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Chakraborty, Archishman, and Harbaugh, Rick. 2007. Comparative Cheap Talk. Journal of Economic Theory 132 (1):7094.Google Scholar
Crawford, Vincent P., and Sobel, Joel. 1982. Strategic Information Transmission. Econometrica 50 (6):1431–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Christina L. 2004. International Institutions and Issue Linkage: Building Support for Agricultural Trade Liberalization. American Political Science Review 98 (1):153–69.Google Scholar
Der Derian, James. 1987. On Diplomacy: A Genealogy of Western Estrangement. New York: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Fan, Xibo. 2000. Seeking Honor Under Strong Symmetry in the Korean War Armistice Negotiations. In Power and Negotiation, edited by Zartman, I. William and Rubin, Jeffrey Z., 225–52. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D. 1994a. Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes. American Political Science Review 88 (3):577–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, James D. 1994b. Signaling Versus the Balance of Power and Interests. An Empirical Test of a Crisis Bargaining Model. Journal of Conflict Resolution 38 (2):236–69.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D. 1995. Rationalist Explanations for War. International Organization 49 (3):379414.Google Scholar
Fearon, James D. 1997. Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands Versus Sinking Costs. Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (1):6890.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Federal Republic of Germany Auswärtiges Amt. 1956. Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–1945: From the Archives of the German Foreign Ministry. Series D, Vol. VII. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Freedman, Lawrence. 2000. Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freedman, Lawrence, and Karsh, Efraim. 1991. How Kuwait Was Won: Strategy in the Gulf War. International Security 16 (2):541.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Naftali, Timothy J.. 2006. Khrushchev's Cold War: The Inside Story of an American Adversary. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Guisinger, Alexandra, and Smith, Alastair. 2002. Honest Threats: The Interaction of Reputation and Political Institutions in International Crises. Journal of Conflict Resolution 46 (2):175200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hickey, Donald R. 1989. The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, Matthew O., and Sonnenschein, Hugo F.. 2007. Overcoming Incentive Constraints by Linking Decisions. Econometrica 75 (1):241–57.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1970. The Logic of Images in International Relations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Koremenos, Barbara, Lipson, Charles, and Snidal, Duncan. 2001. The Rational Design of International Institutions. International Organization 55 (4):761–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krishna, Vijay, and Morgan, John. 2004. The Art of Conversation: Eliciting Information From Experts Through Multi-Stage Communication. Journal of Economic Theory 117 (2):147–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kurizaki, Shuhei. 2007. Efficient Secrecy: Public Versus Private Threats in Crisis Diplomacy. American Political Science Review 101 (3):543–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kydd, Andrew H. 1997. Game Theory and the Spiral Model. World Politics 49 (3):371400.Google Scholar
Kydd, Andrew H. 2005. Trust and Mistrust in International Relations. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Lacy, Dean, and Niou, Emerson M. S.. 2004. A Theory of Economic Sanctions and Issue Linkage: The Roles of Preferences, Information, and Threats. Journal of Politics 66 (1):2542.Google Scholar
Levenotoğlu, Bahar, and Tarar, Ahmer. 2005. Prenegotiation Public Commitment in Domestic and International Bargaining. American Political Science Review 99 (3):419–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levy, Gilat, and Razin, Ronny. 2007. On the Limits of Communication in Multidimensional Cheap Talk: A Comment. Econometrica 75 (3):885–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lewis, Jeffrey B., and Schultz, Kenneth A.. 2003. Revealing Preferences: Empirical Estimation of a Crisis Bargaining Game with Incomplete Information. Political Analysis 11 (4):345–67.Google Scholar
Lohmann, Susanne. 1997. Linkage Politics. Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (1):3867.Google Scholar
MacMillan, Margaret. 2003. Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Mearsheimer, John J. 2001. “Guns Won't Win the Afghan War,” New York Times, 4 November 2001, 14.Google Scholar
Morgan, T. Clifton. 1990. Issue Linkages in International Crisis Bargaining. American Journal of Political Science 34 (2):311–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morrow, James D. 1986. A Spatial Model of International Conflict. American Political Science Review 80 (4):1131–50.Google Scholar
Morrow, James D. 1989. Capabilities, Uncertainty, and Resolve: A Limited Information Model of Crisis Bargaining. American Journal of Political Science 33 (4):941–72.Google Scholar
Morrow, James D. 1992. Signaling Difficulties with Linkage in Crisis Bargaining. International Studies Quarterly 36 (2):153–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nicolson, Harold G. 1963. Diplomacy. 3d ed.London: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pape, Robert A. 1996. Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Perkins, Bradford. 1963. Prologue to War: England and the United States, 1805–1812. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Powell, Robert. 1988. Nuclear Brinkmanship with Two-Sided Incomplete Information. American Political Science Review 82 (1):155–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Robert. 1990. Nuclear Deterrence Theory: The Search for Credibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Powell, Robert. 1999. In the Shadow of Power: States and Strategies in International Politics. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, Robert. 2006. War as a Commitment Problem. International Organization 60 (1):169203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Press, Daryl G. 2005. Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Raiffa, Howard. 1982. The Art and Science of Negotiation: How to Resolve Conflicts and Get the Best Out of Bargaining. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Ramsay, Kristopher W. 2004. Politics at the Water's Edge: Crisis Bargaining and Electoral Competition. Journal of Conflict Resolution 48 (4):459–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, Anne E. 2002. The Might of the Pen: A Reputational Theory of Communication in International Disputes. International Organization 56 (1):121–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sartori, Anne E. 2005. Deterrence by Diplomacy. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas C. 1966. Arms and Influence. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas C. 1980. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Schorske, Carl E. 1994. Two German Ambassadors: Dirksen and Schulenburg. In The Diplomats, 1919–1939, edited by Craig, Gordon A. and Gilbert, Felix, 477511. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Schultz, Kenneth A. 2001. Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sebenius, James K. 1983. Negotiation Arithmetic: Adding and Subtracting Issues and Parties. International Organization 37 (2):281316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Signorino, Curtis S., and Tarar, Ahmer. 2006. A Unified Theory and Test of Extended Immediate Deterrence. American Journal of Political Science 50 (3):586605.Google Scholar
Smyser, William R. 2009. Kennedy and the Berlin Wall: A Hell of a Lot Better Than a War. New York: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Spence, Michael. 1973. Job Market Signaling. Quarterly Journal of Economics 87 (3):355–74.Google Scholar
Stagg, John C. A. 1976. James Madison and the “Malcontents”: The Political Origins of the War of 1812. William and Mary Quarterly 33 (4):557–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, Arthur A. 1980. The Politics of Linkage. World Politics 33 (1):6281.Google Scholar
Stein, Janice Gross. 1992. Deterrence and Compellence in the Gulf, 1990–91: A Failed or Impossible Task? International Security 17 (2):147–79.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marc. 1999. A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945–1963. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Trachtenberg, Marc. 2008. The United States and Eastern Europe in 1945: A Reassessment. Journal of Cold War Studies 10 (4):94132.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trager, Robert F. 2010a. Diplomatic Calculus in Anarchy: How Diplomacy Matters. American Political Science Review 104 (2):347–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Trager, Robert F. 2010b. Inference from Diplomatic Communication. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Trager, Robert F. 2011. Anglo-German Signaling in the 1930s. Unpublished manuscript, University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of State. 1998. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963. Vol. 5, Soviet Union, edited by Sampson, Charles S. and Joyce, John Michael. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office.Google Scholar
Zagare, Frank C., and Kilgour, D. Mark. 2000. Perfect Deterrence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar