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Why do democracies sometimes fight long, politically divisive wars that end poorly? I argue that electoral accountability, induced by party competition, can sometimes promote this and other tragic outcomes. To demonstrate this, I analyze a bargaining model in which one state is conceived of as a unitary actor while the other consists of a government and an opposition that is motivated both by electoral ambition and concern for the national interest. Perhaps surprisingly, it is the opposition's concern for the national interest that causes the most tragic outcomes, as they may choose not to advocate peace when doing so would prevent war so as to avoid undercutting the government's bargaining position. I close with a discussion of why the United States appears to be particularly prone to such tragic outcomes, treating the Vietnam War as an illustrative example.

Diversionary approaches rarely explain why leaders use force in response to economic turmoil rather than addressing the problem directly. Those few studies that do address this often assume leaders can either respond with foreign policy or economic policy, but not both. I develop a formal model in which governments may employ macroeconomic policy tools, enter into an international crisis, or both. The results indicate that the relationship between economic conditions and the decision to use force may be either positive or negative. I discuss the implications with respect to recent empirical studies of the link between economic conditions and international conflict. Adapted from the source document.

War outcomes are unlikely to effect elections if the major parties did not disagree over the war. Leaders who enter into wars are more likely to be punished for defeat or rewarded for victory if the opposition did not support the government during the war. Employing original data on legislative opposition during interstate wars, this paper examines all elections since WWII in the United States, the United Kingdom, Israel, and India. The results confirm that leaders are far more likely to be punished (rewarded) for bad (good) outcomes if the opposition did not support the war. Further, there is no direct effect of either war outcomes or the position of the opposition. It is only when considered in conjunction with the opposition's behavior that the important link between war outcomes and elections is revealed.

The possibility that actors strategically condition their behavior on partially unobservable factors poses a grave challenge to causal inference, particularly if only some of the actors whose behavior we analyze are at risk of experiencing the outcome of interest. We present a crisis bargaining model that indicates that targets can generally prevent war by arming. We then create a simulated data set where the model is assumed to perfectly describe interactions for those states engaged in crisis bargaining, which we assume most pairs of states arenot. We further assume researchers cannot observe which states are engaged in crisis bargaining, although observable variables might serve as proxies. We demonstrate that a naïve design would falsely (and unsurprisingly) indicate a positive relationship between arming and war. More importantly, we then evaluate the performance of matching, instrumental variables, and statistical backwards induction. The latter two show some promise, but matching fares poorly.

We do not yet have strong evidence that the rally effect motivates domestically vulnerable leaders to become engaged in international conflict. We draw upon mechanism design to argue that, if anything, diversionary incentives should be associated with a greater likelihood of being the target of disputes, though the conditions under which the result obtains are restrictive. Our analysis of all dyad-months involving the United States and its rivals for the period from 1956-1996 yields suggestive evidence of the unconventional behavior anticipated by our model, while failing to find evidence of patterns anticipated by either traditional diversionary accounts or strategic conflict avoidance. These results suggest that if we are to better understand international conflict by focusing on diversionary incentives, which may not be very useful, we should focus on the behavior described by our formal model rather than that anticipated by either traditional diversionary accounts or strategic conflict avoidance. Adapted from the source document.

To fully understand the effects of factors that encourage rebellion, we must differentiate between the way such factors influence mass decisions to join an ongoing rebellion and the way they influence the level of concessions offered by the government. We analyze a three-player bargaining model that allows us to do so. Our results indicate that governments tolerate a greater risk of conflict with their chosen concessions when any conflict that does occur is likely to take the form of a limited, rather than popular, rebellion. We demonstrate that rebellions are more likely to be popular when the general populace is relatively dissatisfied with the status quo and when the government is relatively incapable of putting down rebellions. Widespread poverty and low state capacity might therefore be associated with a lower likelihood of conflict, but a greater probability that the general populace will participate in any conflict that does occur. (International Interactions (London)/ FUB)