The Principle of Convergence in Wartime Negotiations (original) (raw)
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Does the Principle of Convergence Really Hold? War, Uncertainty and the Failure of Bargaining
British Journal of Political Science, 2012
Convergence occurs in war and bargaining models as uninformed rivals discover their opponent's type by fighting and making calibrated offers that only the weaker party would accept. Fighting ends with the compromise that reveals the other side's type. This article shows that, if the protagonists are free to fight and bargain in the time continuum, they no longer make increasing concessions in an attempt to end the war promptly and on fair terms. Instead, the rivals stand firm on extreme bargaining positions, fighting it out in the hope that the other side will give in, until much of the war has been fought. Despite ongoing resolution of uncertainty by virtue of time passing, the rivals choose not to try to narrow their differences by negotiating.
The Armed Peace: A Punctuated Equilibrium Theory of War
American Journal of Political Science, 2005
According to a leading rationalist explanation, war can break out when a large, rapid shift of power causes a credible commitment problem. This mechanism does not specify how inefficient fighting can resolve this cause, so it is an incomplete explanation of war. We present a complete information model of war as a sequence of battles and show that although opportunities for a negotiated settlement arise throughout, the very desirability of peace creates a commitment problem that undermines its likelihood. Because players have incentives to settle as soon as possible, they cannot credibly threaten to fight long enough if an opponent launches a surprise attack. This decreases the expected duration and costs of war and causes mutual deterrence to fail. Fighting's destructiveness improves the credibility of these threats by decreasing the benefits from continuing the war and can eventually lead to peace. In equilibrium players can only terminate war at specific windows of opportunity and fighting results in escalating costs that can leave both players worse off at the time peace is negotiated than a full concession would have before the war began.
Bargaining, communication, and limited war
Limited war requires limits; so do strategic maneuvers if they are to be stabilized short of war. But limits require agreement or at least some kind of mutual recognition and acquiescence. And agreement on limits is difficult to reach, not only because of the uncertainties and the acute divergence of interests but because negotiation is severe-
Bargaining Rigidities and the Rationality of War
2005
Theories of crisis bargaining implausibly assume that negotiations can take place at any time without any cost. Yet when rigidities such as the cost of changing the status quo or signaling costs, for example, are taken into account, negotiations can become too costly to revise frequently: agreements are “sticky” and extend for discrete periods of time. Non-continuous bargains leave the rising state with an opportunity loss, defined as the gains it would obtain if negotiations were updated continuously so as to ensure a perfect fit between the distribution of power and the distribution of benefits. Quick changes in relative power in a dyad and rigidities in the bargaining process can lead the rising actor to anticipate a large opportunity loss between two consecutive bargains, in which case there is no deal that both actors prefer to fighting. Ex ante negotiations can break down into war, even with complete information. 1 Contact information: Thomas Chadefaux, Ph.D. Student, Departme...
Information, Commitment, and War
Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2011
The authors analyze a bargaining model of war that incorporates both commitment problems due to shifting power and asymmetric information. Four results emerge when both bargaining problems are present. First, in contrast to asymmetric information models, the resolution of uncertainty through fighting can lead to the continuation of war rather than its termination. Second, wars can be less—not more—likely to end in settlement the longer they last. Third, war aims increase over time as a belligerent becomes more confident that its opponent will grow unacceptably strong in the future. Finally, the dynamics that characterize wars in purely asymmetric information or commitment models should exist only when the other factor is absent.
British Journal of Political Science, 2006
Why would fully informed, rational actors fight over possession of a valued asset when they could negotiate a settlement in peace? Our explanation of the decision to fight highlights the incentives that are present when the defender holds a valued asset coveted by the challenger. The defender receives utility from possession of the contested asset and sees any compromise as a loss that is lower if postponed. The challenger, instead, sees any compromise as a gain that is more valuable if reached earlier. Faced with the defender's vested interest in the status quo, the challenger needs to threaten war and may have no choice but to implement the threat to force a settlement. For the defender, the threat of war is a deterrent that might incite the challenger to back down. In the perfect equilibria that we describe, the players' ability to threaten each other credibly allows them to maintain incompatible bargaining positions instead of helping them narrow their differences. But the very credibility of these threats leads our rivals to engage in what can become lengthy protracted wars. , respectively. The authors, considering their contribution to be equal, have listed their names alphabetically. We thank James Morrow, Keith Ord and Dennis Quinn for their comments and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback. 1 We therefore look at an asymmetric deterrence situation which allows us to incorporate the simplest possible escalation ladder into our model. Moreover, as Zagare and Kilgour point out, such 'one-sided deterrence relationships have obvious empirical and theoretical import': Frank Zagare and Marc Kilgour, Perfect Deterrence
Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2006
We propose that fully informed rivals' ability to bargain on the terms of an alternative status quo can lead to the failure of asymmetric deterrence. The model we develop to support this claim allows repeated rounds of bargaining, crisis, and war until one of the rivals agrees to the other side's last offer. The defender holds and enjoys possession of the prize coveted by the challenger. We argue that the defender's incentive to drag his feet and the challenger's resulting need to resort to threats if she is to obtain anything at all, yield inefficient equilibria that involve costly wars. Credibility requires that the rivals make good on their deterrent threats of war with some probability, and this probability depends on the two sides respective bargaining positions. We therefore identify a tradeoff between bargaining and deterrence that leave the rivals indifferent between a whole continuum of possible inefficient equilibria. However, we distinguish between the ex ante expected utility calculations on which the rivals make forward looking, optimal, decisions and the evaluation of the ex post consequences of these choices. The ex post evaluation captures the expected consequence of a strategy choice by evaluating the endgame outcome net of all costs incurred. In those equilibrium strategies that also optimize expected ex post prospects, the defender may well choose to make low compromise offers in case of challenge despite the risk of war, while the challenger remains aggressive but contains his demands.
The Power to Hurt: Costly Conflict with Completely Informed States
American Political Science Review, 2003
Because war is costly and risky, states have incentives to negotiate and avoid conflict. The common rationalist explanation is that war results from private information and incentives to misrepresent it. By modeling warfare as a costly bargaining process, I show that inefficient fighting can occur in equilibrium under complete information and very general assumptions favoring peace. Specifically, I assume that peace can be supported in equilibrium, and that fighting brings no benefits to either state, only costs. Although there exist agreements that Pareto-dominate the final settlement, states may prefer to fight. The result turns on the ability of states to impose costs on their opponents, and bear costs in return. The existence of a range of acceptable settlements and the threat to revert to particularly disadvantageous ones make inefficient equilibria possible. A diminished ability to hurt the enemy, not simply military victory, is a major reason to stop fighting.
Military Coercion in Interstate Crises and the Price of Peace
2004
Military mobilization has a dual role in crisis bargaining: it simultaneously sinks costs (because it must be paid for regardless of the outcome), and ties hands (because it increases the probability of winning should war occur). Existing studies neglect this dualism and cannot explain signaling behavior and tacit bargaining well. I present a model that incorporates this dualism and show that many existing conclusions have to be qualified. General results that relate the probability of war to an informed player's expected payoff from war do not extend to this environment. Because military means function in a way akin to audience costs but do not depend on regime type, foreign policy theories relying on signaling ability that depends on domestic political institutions face a serious challenge in explaining state crisis behavior. The model also provides a new two-step rationalist explanation for war illustrated by the Chinese entry in the Korean War.