Stall Wars: When Do States Fight to Hold onto the Status Quo?*

Abstract

In many wars, fighting allows states to hold onto some of the disputed good until the conflict is over. Indeed, war may look attractive to some actors for that purpose even if they will likely lose and incur substantial costs in the process. How does this incentive to stall alter the likelihood of conflict onset? We develop a model in which a delay exists between war’s initiation and termination. During that time, states maintain a division of the disputed good. If states value the future at different rates, no mutually preferable settlement may exist. War is more likely when a more patient state is powerful but holds a smaller share during the dispute. In addition, we show that the parameters for war are non-monotonic in the length of conflict: fighting only occurs when the delay falls in a middle range.

Rebel Strategies and the Prospects for Peace

“…Leading formal theories of civil war provide considerable insight into how conflicts begin. Theories of civil conflict adapt bargaining models of interstate war (Fearon 1995; Powell 2006) to civil wars and identify the underlying information (Walter 2009) or commitment problems (Fearon 2004; Powell 2012, 2013; Spaniel, Bils and Judd 2020) that prevent peaceful settlements. There is some, although less, formal theoretical research on how civil wars end (Fearon and Laitin 2008).…”

“…This mechanism differs from the commitment problem due to rebel disarmament postwar (Walter 1997), because in this model, rebels keep their capability after signing a peace agreement. The model also differs from stalling wars where impatient rebels fight to enjoy a disproportionately favorable status quo (Spaniel et al., 2020). Fighting in this model occurs only when rebels are patient.…”