War and Reason: Domestic and International Imperatives
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, David Lalman
Language: English
Pages: 347
ISBN: B01JXVBPLO
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Publish Year note: First published in 1992
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In this landmark work, two leading theorists of international relations analyze the strategies designed to avoid international conflict. Using a combination of game theory, statistical analysis, and detailed case histories, Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and David Lalman evaluate the conditions that promote negotiation, the status quo, capitulation, acquiescence, and war.
The authors assess two competing theories on the role that domestic politics plays in foreign policy choices: one states that national decision makers are constrained only by the exigencies of the international system, and the other views leaders as additionally constrained by domestic political considerations. Finding the second theory to be more consistent with historical events, they use it to examine enduring puzzles such as why democracies do not appear to fight one another, whether balance of power or power preponderance promotes peaceful resolution of disputes, and what conditions are necessary and sufficient for nations to cooperate with one another.
They conclude by speculating about the implications of their theory for foreign policy strategies in the post-Cold War world.
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use of force to alter an already-attractive state of affairs is assumed to prompt greater domestic opposition than the use of force in circumstances in which the status quo is unattractive or irksome. Furthermore, we assume that powerful nations face greater opposition to the use of force than do weaker nations, all else being equal. The rationale behind this assumption is that strong nations are in a better position to get what they want through negotiation and to control relations with other
information set A will not obtain new information (beyond its prior belief) about B’s type.1 The equilibrium is In the event that the initial belief θ is less than (d - e)/(b - e), type I B and type II B will behave differently prior to A’s choice at its information set. Type I B nations are better off acquiescing to A’s, demands than they are fighting a war with A, whereas type II B nations, with their lower domestic costs for resorting to force, are better off fighting than they are giving in
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The democratic political culture places a high value on individual rights and freedoms. This attachment to human rights leads to the abhorrence of the use of violence as a means of settling disputes. Consequently, liberal democracies are culturally biased in favor of peaceful means of conflict resolution. 3. Liberal democratic institutions ensure that opponents of government policies incur lower costs for their actions than in nondemocratic states. This makes it easy for domestic political
the Seven Weeks’ War, recall from chapter 6 that the basic war theorem implies that wars in which the rivals are satisfied with the status quo have special characteristics. A partial equilibrium condition of the war theorem is that the probability of success must be greater than a positive function of the ratio of the expected costs to the expected stakes, with the stakes defined as the difference between the utility attached to obtaining one’s objectives and the utility attached to giving in to