Issue Linkages in International Crisis Bargaining

AbstractStates typically issue compellent threats against considerably weaker adversaries, yet their threats often fail. Why? Expanding on a standard model of international crisis bargaining, I argue that a theory of reputation-building can help shed light on this puzzle. The model casts reputation as a strategic problem, showing that challengers issuing compellent threats have incentives to anticipate the reputation costs that target states incur when appeasing aggressors. If challengers can recognize these costs and offset them with side payments or smaller demands, then even reputation-conscious targets will acquiesce. I argue, however, that military strength contributes to information problems that make challengers more likely to underestimate their targets' reputation costs and insufficiently compensate them. In this way, military power can undermine the effectiveness of compellent threats. The logic is illustrated by the 1939 Russo-Finnish crisis, and the argument's implications for the study of coercive diplomacy are explored.

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Superpower risk-taking in the context of international crisis bargaining; the Middle East 1967-1973.

10.22215/etd/1984-00945 ◽

1984 ◽

Author(s):

James LeBlanc

Keyword(s):

Middle East ◽

Risk Taking ◽

International Crisis ◽

Crisis Bargaining

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Crisis Bargaining and Nuclear Blackmail

International Organization ◽

10.1017/s0020818312000392 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 67 (1) ◽

pp. 173-195 ◽

Cited By ~ 39

Author(s):

Todd S. Sechser ◽

Matthew Fuhrmann

Keyword(s):

Nuclear Weapons ◽

Low Cost ◽

Strong Support ◽

Nuclear Deterrence ◽

Selection Effects ◽

International Crisis ◽

Crisis Bargaining ◽

Nuclear Age ◽

Compellent Threats ◽

Significant Attention

AbstractDo nuclear weapons offer coercive advantages in international crisis bargaining? Almost seventy years into the nuclear age, we still lack a complete answer to this question. While scholars have devoted significant attention to questions about nuclear deterrence, we know comparatively little about whether nuclear weapons can help compel states to change their behavior. This study argues that, despite their extraordinary power, nuclear weapons are uniquely poor instruments of compellence. Compellent threats are more likely to be effective under two conditions: first, if a challenger can credibly threaten to seize the item in dispute; and second, if enacting the threat would entail few costs to the challenger. Nuclear weapons, however, meet neither of these conditions. They are neither useful tools of conquest nor low-cost tools of punishment. Using a new dataset of more than 200 militarized compellent threats from 1918 to 2001, we find strong support for our theory: compellent threats from nuclear states are no more likely to succeed, even after accounting for possible selection effects in the data. While nuclear weapons may carry coercive weight as instruments of deterrence, it appears that these effects do not extend to compellence.

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Multidimensional Diplomacy

International Organization ◽

10.1017/s0020818311000178 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 65 (3) ◽

pp. 469-506 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Robert F. Trager

Keyword(s):

Comparative Statics ◽

International Crisis ◽

Crisis Bargaining ◽

Issue Dimensions

AbstractStates 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.

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Empirical Implications of Signaling Models: Estimation of Belief Updating in International Crisis Bargaining

Political Analysis ◽

10.1093/pan/mpq014 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 18 (3) ◽

pp. 381-402 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Taehee Whang

Keyword(s):

Statistical Models ◽

Strategic Choice ◽

Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium ◽

Belief Updating ◽

Essential Characteristic ◽

International Crisis ◽

Crisis Bargaining ◽

Bayesian Equilibrium ◽

True Type ◽

Empirical Implications

Signaling models are ubiquitous in political science. An essential characteristic of these models is that actors can update their beliefs about their opponents. An actor observes the behavior of his opponent, and this behavior functions as a signal that allows the actor to learn more about his opponent's true “type.” As a result, the actor is able to adapt his own behavior. Current statistical models of strategic choice based on perfect Bayesian equilibrium, however, allow for very little, if any, belief updating. I explain why current models allow for little updating and offer in their stead a new, fully strategic choice estimator that calculates the correct amount of belief updating.

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