Hawks, Doves, and International Cooperation

Abstract

How does the hawkish or dovish nature of the domestic opposition in one state influence its own, as well as an international opponent's, negotiating behavior? I show that doves, when negotiating in the presence of a hawkish opposition, have more bargaining leverage in international negotiations. The key is to understand an international opponent's preference to deal with a dove rather than a hawk in future negotiations. I argue that adversaries have an incentive to concede more in negotiations to doves in order to sustain them in office, because failing to give concessions may lead to their replacement by less conciliatory (more hawkish) governments in the future. For this reason, doves are more likely than hawks to extract critical concessions from adversaries. The empirical results support this argument, which altogether suggests that doves are more successful in international negotiations not because they are more conciliatory, but rather because, for domestic reasons, they have greater bargaining leverage to extract counter-concessions from adversaries.

Hawks, Doves, and Peace: An Experimental Approach

“…Studies such as Sigelman and Sigelman (), Cuckierman and Tommasi (), and Cowen and Sutter () assume that the “election” or “poll” happens before the response by the other state is known and thus before the policy can be deemed successful or not. More recent work (e.g., Clare ; Colaresi ; Davies and Johns ; Schultz ) takes into consideration that voters might update their opinions based on the adversary's reaction. Interestingly, these studies formulate quite different expectations about how voters respond to success and failure of conciliatory policies by hawks and doves.…”

“…By contrast, Clare () argues that voters would reward, not penalize, a dove for successful rapprochement. At the same time, unsuccessful efforts by a hawk should be punished since they suggest foreign policy failure.…”

“…The thesis that hawks possess a domestic political advantage at initiating rapprochement has inspired a robust literature. Scholars have researched the specific mechanisms that could make voters respond more favorably to peace initiatives by hawks than by doves (Cowen and Sutter ; Cuckierman and Tommasi ; Nincic ; Russett ; Schultz ); developed counterarguments for why hawks should not have a public opinion advantage (Clare ; Fehrs ); and tested these ideas empirically (Chiozza and Choi ; Clare ; Colaresi ; Fehrs ; Schultz ; Sigelman and Sigelman ; Trager and Vavreck ). However, findings are mixed; we currently lack compelling evidence for whether hawks indeed have a domestic political advantage at making peace, and we do not know why and when this advantage may exist.…”

Party politics at the water’s edge: contestation of military operations in Europe

“…More recently, however, research on foreign policy has suggested that foreign and security policy is indeed an important area of disagreement among political parties (see, e.g., Bjereld and Demker, 2000;Özkeçeci-Taner, 2005;Schuster and Maier, 2006;Devine, 2009;Kaarbo, 2012;Calossi et al, 2013;Clare, 2014;Verbeek and Zaslove, 2015;Pijovic, 2016;Chryssogelos, 2018;Hofmann, 2017). Because foreign policy, including military missions, can be salient to voters and influence voting behaviour (cf.…”

“…Therefore, political parties that promote the welfare state tend to oppose large armies, expensive military procurement as well as the actual use of armed force abroad. Studies on the actual use of force find support for a left/right cleavage as 'right governments are more likely to be involved in militarized disputes than are left governments' (Palmer et al, 2004: 13; see also Rathbun, 2004;Arena and Palmer, 2009;Clare, 2010Clare, , 2014Oktay, 2014;Williams, 2014). Changing values in society, globalization, migration and the emergence of supranational authority have led students of party politics to consider additional cleavages that pit winners of globalization against losers (Kriesi et al, 2008) and/or proponents of post-materialist and cosmopolitan values against traditionalists and communitarians (Zürn and de Wilde, 2016;Hooghe and Marks, 2018).…”