Is This a Private Fight or Can Anybody Join?

Shirkey, Zachary C.

doi:10.4324/9781315589862

Cited by 5 publications

(18 citation statements)

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“…28 Though defense pacts are positively and significantly correlated with early intervention, they are not correlated with military intervention in general, late intervention, or involuntary intervention. This is broadly consistent with prior research which finds that the effect of defense pacts on intervention is concentrated in the early phases of wars (Joyce, Ghosn, and Bayer 2014;Melin and Koch 2010;Shirkey 2009;Stevenson 2011). There is likely a selection effect at work where by the mid stages of wars reliable defense pacts have already been honored, leaving mainly those defense pacts which were less likely to ever be honored.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

“…From a practical standpoint, the question matters as interstate wars which experience military intervention are longer and deadlier than those that do not (Shirkey 2012b;Slantchev 2004). While substantial progress has been made on which states are more likely to intervene (Altfeld and Bueno de Mesquita 1979;Richardson 1960;Siverson and Starr 1991;Valeriano and Vasquez 2010) 2 and when they are likely to do so (Joyce, Ghosn, and Bayer 2014;Melin and Koch 2010;Shirkey 2009;2012a), far less is known about which wars are likely to draw in outside states. I argue interstate wars caused by commitment problems are more likely to experience military intervention than are wars with other causes.…”

Section: Which Wars Spread? Commitment Problems and Military Intervenmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Belligerents should also be more willing to offer non-territorial spoils, such as aid or promises of future alignment, in order to induce states to intervene. For instance, US offers of military aid played an important role in inducing South Korea, Thailand, and the Philippines to intervene in the Vietnam War (1965)(1966)(1967)(1968)(1969)(1970)(1971)(1972)(1973)(1974)(1975) (Shirkey 2009). Of course, the high costs and risks associated with such wars may also deter potential interveners (Haldi 2003), but for many states the opportunities offered by intervention are likely to outweigh these greater costs.…”

Section: Wars Caused By Commitment Problems and Military Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Which wars spread? Commitment problems and military intervention

Shirkey

2017

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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This article argues that wars caused by commitment problems are more likely to experience outside military intervention than are wars with other causes. Wars caused by commitment problems are more likely to draw in outside states because they tend to be more severe and produce larger war aims. These larger stakes create both threats and opportunities for non-belligerent states thereby prompting military intervention. The greater stakes also generate incentives for belligerent states to seek outside aid. This relationship between commitment problems and intervention implies that while certain types of wars may be more likely to experience intervention, the same causes can explain both intervention and war initiation. The argument is tested on the Correlates of War Interstate War dataset using logit-based generalized linear models. The findings support the commitment problem hypothesis and have implications for the bargaining framework and for theories about the causes of multilateral and general wars.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 88%

Section: Which Wars Spread? Commitment Problems and Military Intervenmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Wars Caused By Commitment Problems and Military Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Which wars spread? Commitment problems and military intervention

Shirkey

2017

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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“…Alas, predicting exactly when new private information would be introduced into wars is quite difficult. For example, while interventions in the first few months of a war are somewhat predictable (Shirkey 2009; Melin and Koch 2010; Joyce, Ghosn, and Bayer 2014), such early interventions would not lengthen wars as the interveners' private information would be revealed at the same time as the private information held ante bellum by the initial belligerents. Later interventions would lengthen wars as additional battles would be required to reveal the new private information they introduce.…”

Section: When Private Information Is Likely To Endurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Later interventions would lengthen wars as additional battles would be required to reveal the new private information they introduce. Unfortunately, these later interventions appear to be driven by unexpected events (Shirkey 2009), meaning it is impossible to predict them with significant lead time. Likewise, predicting the exact timing of technological innovations is extremely difficult as scientific advances tend to occur through paradigm shifts not couched in previous theory and are therefore unpredictable (Kuhn 1962).…”

Section: When Private Information Is Likely To Endurementioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainty and War Duration

Shirkey

2016

int stud rev

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This article argues that private information plays an important role in explaining long wars. Existing rationalist explanations of long, intensely fought wars focus on commitment problems rather than private information as the cause of such wars. Commitment-problem explanations of long wars claim that while private information can explain short wars, battles and exchanges of offers for settlement should quickly reveal private information, thereby leading to an early peace. Commitment problems, on the other hand, may take years to resolve and therefore can explain long, intense wars for unitary actors. However, while commitment problems are an important explanation for long wars, private information can endure deep into lengthy conflicts because states create new private information during wars and because states often disagree about their relative ability to bear costs rather than their relative military capabilities. I explore this argument in cases on the end of the First World War and the Iran-Iraq War.

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Learning from the Battlefield: Information, Domestic Politics, and Interstate War Duration

Weisiger¹

2016

Int Org

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What drives leaders’ decisions about whether to continue or end an ongoing war? The private information explanation for war holds that leaders fight because they believe that doing so will advance national interests, and they settle hostilities when new information reduces their optimism about the possibility of long-term success. Yet significant theoretical disagreement exists about both the extent to which and the manner in which new information, especially battlefield information, promotes settlement. This article unpacks the logic of the informational mechanism, arguing that settlement will be more likely when there has been more extensive fighting and that countries are more likely to make concessions to end wars when battlefield results have deteriorated; short-term spikes in war intensity by contrast do not promote settlement. Moreover, building on work on leadership turnover and settlement, I show that leader replacement is sometimes part of the information-updating process, especially in autocracies: new leaders without political ties to the person in power at the start of the war are more likely both to come to power when war is going poorly and to end wars once in office. Tests of these arguments make use of new participant-level data on the timing of battle deaths for all Correlates of War interstate wars, which allows me to examine the effects of changing battlefield developments across a wide range of cases in a manner that was previously impossible.

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Is This a Private Fight or Can Anybody Join?

Cited by 5 publications

References 0 publications

Which wars spread? Commitment problems and military intervention

Which wars spread? Commitment problems and military intervention

Uncertainty and War Duration

Learning from the Battlefield: Information, Domestic Politics, and Interstate War Duration

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