Preventive War as a Result of Long-Term Shifts in Power

Krainin, Colin

doi:10.1017/psrm.2015.35

Cited by 21 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…With positive probability, Nature does not change the state of the world in the next period; but with complementary probability, Nature draws from the same underlying distribution of threats as in the baseline model. Although our model does not nest all forms of path dependence or deterministic shifts (Gibilisco, 2021; Krainin, 2017), this extension demonstrates that our core findings do not require iid shocks.…”

Section: Formal Modelmentioning

confidence: 87%

Stronger Challengers can Cause More (or Less) Conflict and Institutional Reform

Little

Paine

2023

Comparative Political Studies

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Prominent theories propose that commitment problems drive phenomena such as war and democratization. However, existing work disagrees about a basic question: how does a challenger’s coercive strength affect prospects for conflict and/or institutional reform? We establish that the relationship depends on how challenger strength affects the average and maximum probability of winning a conflict in a given period (“threat”). We analyze a formal model with a general distribution of threats, and conceptualize challenger strength as affecting this distribution. If the maximum threat is fixed and stronger challengers pose a higher average threat, then weak challengers will rebel (absent reform) during the rare periods they pose a high threat. However, if stronger challengers pose a greater maximum threat, then they are harder to buy off. Applying these insights advances theoretical and empirical debates about democratization.

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Section: Formal Modelmentioning

confidence: 87%

Stronger Challengers can Cause More (or Less) Conflict and Institutional Reform

Little

Paine

2023

Comparative Political Studies

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“…The international relations literature on commitment problems in crisis bargaining begins with Fearon (1995) and is theoretically developed in subsequent papers (Bas and Coe 2012; Chassang and Padró i Miquel, 2019; Debs and Monteiro, 2014; Fearon, 1996, 2004; Krainin and Wiseman, 2016; Krainin, 2017; Krainin and Slinkman, 2017; Leventoglu and Slantchev, 2007; Powell, 1999, 2004, 2006, 2012, 2013; Wiseman, 2017). 7 Commitment problem models have recently been utilized to understand a number of applied issues, including civil wars (Paine, 2016) and the interactions between domestic politics and the potential for interstate war (Chapman et al, 2015).…”

Section: Commitment Problems and Sovereign Debtmentioning

confidence: 99%

Preventive war and sovereign debt

Krainin

Ramsay

Wang³

et al. 2021

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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The preventive motive for war arises because states cannot commit to limit the use of their growing power. This commitment problem can lead to war when there are not enough resources available to compensate the declining state for their expected losses. In this article, we show how capital markets affect preventive war incentives by introducing a profit-maximizing bond market to the canonical bargaining model of war. We find that the nature of the power shift and fundamentals of the market for debt interact to determine when a preventive motive is more likely to lead to war. Two main results show that (1) less probable but more extreme power shifts are most dangerous and (2) unlike the direct effect of interest rates on the cost of war, higher interest on sovereign debt makes war more likely. We present evidence for the latter effect by extending Lemke’s (2003) study of preventive war for major-power dyads between 1816 and 1992.

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“…By contrast, models of intervention or more generally alliance formation center on the effect that taking sides has on the ultimate outcome. These analyses typically lack a time dimension and consequently cannot address the effect that taking sides has on how long the fighting lasts and the related effect that this has on the cost of fighting and the incentive to intervene (e.g., Gent 2008; Krainin 2014b; Morrow 1991; Powell 1999; Smith 1995; Werner 2000). As a result of these theoretical limitations, empirical work on the effects of intervention on duration and outcome must rely on testing hypotheses that, while theoretically plausible, cannot be derived from an underlying theoretical framework 2 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Taking Sides in Wars of Attrition

Powell

2017

Am Polit Sci Rev

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Third parties often have a stake in the outcome of a conflict and can affect that outcome by taking sides. This article studies the factors that affect a third party's decision to take sides in a civil or interstate war by adding a third actor to a standard continuous-time war of attrition with two-sided asymmetric information. The third actor has preferences over which of the other two actors wins and for being on the winning side conditional on having taken sides. The third party also gets a flow payoff during the fighting which can be positive when fighting is profitable or negative when fighting is costly. The article makes four main contributions: First, it provides a formal framework for analyzing the effects of endogenous intervention on the duration and outcome of the conflict. Second, it identifies a “boomerang” effect that tends to make alignment decisions unpredictable and coalitions dynamically unstable. Third, it yields several clear comparative-static results. Finally, the formal analysis has implications for empirical efforts to estimate the effects of intervention, showing that there may be significant selection and identification issues.

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Preventive War as a Result of Long-Term Shifts in Power

Cited by 21 publications

References 27 publications

Stronger Challengers can Cause More (or Less) Conflict and Institutional Reform

Stronger Challengers can Cause More (or Less) Conflict and Institutional Reform

Preventive war and sovereign debt

Taking Sides in Wars of Attrition

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