Suchergebnisse

Can nuclear agreements like the Iran deal work? This book develops formal bargaining models to show that they can over time, despite apparent incentives to cheat. Existing theories of nuclear proliferation fail to account for the impact of bargaining on the process. William Spaniel explores how credible agreements exist in which rival states make concessions to convince rising states not to proliferate and argues in support of nuclear negotiations as effective counter-proliferation tools. This book proves not only the existence of settlements but also the robustness of the inefficiency puzzle. In addition to examining existing agreements, the model used by Spaniel serves as a baseline for modeling other concerns about nuclear weapons.

Members of the non-proliferation regime give technical assistance to countries contemplating nuclear weapons. This is puzzling: it facilitates the behavior donors wish to stop, and other forms of concessions do not have this drawback. Why do it? I develop a model of uncertainty, bargaining, and nuclear proliferation. In it, assistance hastens acquisition time but also generates a signal about the recipient's domestic nuclear proficiency. This allows donors to better calibrate other concessions to the recipient. In equilibrium, donors sometimes find the information worth sacrificing bargaining leverage for. However, despite providing information, assistance can cause proliferation if donors believe that the recipient is competent but observe a misleading signal indicating incompetence. This paper works toward understanding how scientific intelligence affects international negotiations, an underexplored subject matter for political scientists.

Members of the non-proliferation regime give technical assistance to countries contemplating nuclear weapons. This is puzzling: it facilitates the behavior donors wish to stop, and other forms of concessions do not have this drawback. Why do it? I develop a model of uncertainty, bargaining, and nuclear proliferation. In it, assistance hastens acquisition time but also generates a signal about the recipient's domestic nuclear proficiency. This allows donors to better calibrate other concessions to the recipient. In equilibrium, donors sometimes find the information worth sacrificing bargaining leverage for. However, despite providing information, assistance can cause proliferation if donors believe that the recipient is competent but observe a misleading signal indicating incompetence. This paper works toward understanding how scientific intelligence affects international negotiations, an underexplored subject matter for political scientists.

In many contexts, patrons wish to simultaneously increase a protégé's military power while reducing the probability of war between that protégé and its enemy. Are these goals compatible? I show that the answer is yes when states face uncertainty over a class of military allotments. Arms transfers mitigate the information problem by making both strong and weak types behave more similarly. This encourages uninformed states to make safer demands, which decreases the probability of war. As a result, transfers to the informed actor both increase bargaining power and enhance efficiency under these conditions.

Some terrorist organizations provoke their targets into deploying massive countermeasures, allowing terrorists to mobilize a greater share of their audience. Why would a government pursue such a costly strategy if it only strengthens the opponent? I develop a signaling model of terrorism, counterterrorism, and recruitment. If a target government is unsure whether the terrorists' audience is sympathetic to the cause, weaker groups sometimes bluff strength by attacking. To check this bluff, governments sometimes respond to attacks with large-scale operations, even though they know they might be overreacting. Comparative statics reveal that overreaction regret is most likely when the target is wealthy and large operations are more effective. Thus, a selection effect creates the false impression that provocation is most effective against geopolitically privileged targets.

Some terrorist organizations provoke their targets into deploying massive countermeasures, allowing terrorists to mobilize a greater share of their audience. Why would a government pursue such a costly strategy if it only strengthens the opponent? I develop a signaling model of terrorism, counterterrorism, and recruitment. If a target government is unsure whether the terrorists' audience is sympathetic to the cause, weaker groups sometimes bluff strength by attacking. To check this bluff, governments sometimes respond to attacks with large-scale operations, even though they know they might be overreacting. Comparative statics reveal that overreaction regret is most likely when the target is wealthy and large operations are more effective. Thus, a selection effect creates the false impression that provocation is most effective against geopolitically privileged targets.

Many international organizations reduce the costs states incur from conflict. Critics argue that the expectation of such aid, by mitigating potential suffering, perversely incentivizes states to initiate conflict more often. I develop a model that formalizes this intuition. It shows that institutions may still ameliorate suffering in two ways. First, they may absorb so many of the expected costs that they compensate for the fact that conflicts occur more often. Second, aid can have a second-order effect of reducing uncertainty about the costs of conflict; to the extent that this uncertainty explains why parties cannot negotiate a cooperative alternative, aid might actually reduce the incentive to initiate conflict. Whether aid ultimately helps or hurts therefore depends on how it interacts with the informational challenges states face.

Why do some states agree to suspend their weapons programs in exchange for compensation while others fail to come to terms? I argue that the changing credibility of preventive war is an important determinant of arms construction. If preventive war is never an option, states can reach mutually preferable settlements. However, if preventive war is not credible today but will be credible in the future, a commitment problem results: the state considering investment faces a "window of opportunity" and must build the arms or it will not receive concessions later on. Thus, agreements fail under these conditions. I then apply the theoretical findings to the Soviet Union's decision to build nuclear weapons in 1949. War exhaustion made preventive war not credible for the United States immediately following World War II, but lingering concerns about future preventive action induced Moscow to proliferate. (International Interactions (London)/ FUB)

Militant groups often use violence, perversely, to gain attention and resources. In this book, the authors analyze how terrorist and rebel organizations compete with one another to secure funding and supporters. The authors develop a strategic model of competitive violence among militant groups and test the model's implications with statistical analysis and case studies. A series of model extensions allow the authors to incorporate the full range of strategic actors, focusing in particular on government efforts to counter and deter violence. The results indicate that the direct effects of competition are not as clear as they may seem, and interventions to alter competitive incentives may backfire if states are not careful. This is a timely contribution to a growing body of political economy research on militant group fragmentation, rivalry, fratricide and demonstrative violence.

This paper explores the role of asymmetric information as a cause of Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine. In the classic bargaining model of war, negotiations break down when one side privately believes that it is sufficiently more likely perform better in battle than the other side expects. There is strong evidence that this mechanism was at play on the eve of the invasion. Chronic problems with Russian civil–military institutions created both an army unprepared for the conflict and a lack of awareness of this within the Kremlin. In contrast, Ukraine had reports of these problems and also had private information regarding its own resolve. Consequently, the Kremlin's demands on the eve of the conflict exceeded what Ukraine was willing to concede. Russia invaded as a result.

In contexts as diverse as civil war interventions, alliances, and military coalitions, states often militarily assist protégés to counteract unfavorable power shifts. Existing theoretical work finds that such assistance mitigates commitment problems and reduces the probability of war. We develop a model that captures this but also includes information asymmetries. In many cases, overcoming the commitment problem encourages the protégé to take greater risks in bargaining, thereby increasing the probability of war due to incomplete information. Using mechanism design, we show that in some cases, no feasible transfer can reduce the probability of war to zero. More broadly, our results indicate that encouraging policymakers to further expand military assistance can backfire despite empirical relationships that may appear otherwise.