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Why does a third party become involved in an ongoing dispute? One important reason for involvement is often the third party's perception that the attacking country poses a significant threat to the status quo. Given the aggressor's aims in the war vis-a-vis a particular target, the third party worries that the changes wrought by the war will be too extreme. He enters an ongoing war in order to defend the threatened status quo. The attacking country, however, chooses the magnitude of the demands she makes of a targeted state. By moderating her demands, she can influence a third party's perception of the threat she poses & thereby influence the third party's willingness to intervene. The aggressor's ability to choose the stakes of the war thus creates the interesting possibility that demands can be chosen strategically in order to deter third-party intervention. In this article, I modify the classic extended-deterrence game in order to explore the implications of this strategic logic. My modified extended deterrence model suggests that the attacker's ability to choose the stakes of war can weaken the third-party defender's ability to deter an attack. An attacker may not be deterred from attacking because the attacker can deter the third party from intervening. The model suggests several important implications for both the stakes of war & the probability of third-party intervention. 2 Figures, 1 Appendix, 37 References. Adapted from the source document.

Historical evidence suggests that international conflicts often concern the management of domestic affairs. States frequently take issue with other states' human rights records & with the composition of their governments. If domestic politics are frequently the issue in dispute between states, then we should not expect such disagreements to be equally likely to arise between all pairs of states. Since politically similar states manage their domestic affairs in similar fashion, they are less likely to disagree over domestic politics & thus less likely to be involved in conflict. To test the hypothesis that politically similar states are less likely to engage in conflict than are politically disparate states, I use a hazard model that evaluates the risk that peace ends with the onset of a militarized dispute for all dyads in the international system from 1816 to 1985. I find strong support for the hypothesis, even when I control for the pacifying effects of similar democratic states & exclude data from the ideologically charged 20th century. I also find consistent evidence that conflict becomes more likely as the power of each state in the dyad increases, as the geographic distance between states declines, & as the number of past disputes increases. I find weaker support for the pacifying effects of alliances & the dangers of power parity. 3 Tables, 79 References. Adapted from the source document.

The idea that leaders choose their foreign policy strategically to accomplish their foreign policy goals is not new. The possibility that the goals themselves are chosen strategically is. Recent game theoretic models developed by Powell and Werner explore this possibility. Interestingly, both models show that when demands are chosen strategically, a perceived disparity between the underlying distribution of power and the status quo distribution of benefits creates a permissive condition for the onset of conflict. This prediction is tested by estimating the effects of changes in relative power on the onset of militarized interstate disputes. A hazard model to estimate the duration of peace for the set of all dyads existing between 1816 and 1992 shows that peace is more likely to end when the belligerents' relative power is changing. The results also show that powerful states, proximate states, states with prior disputes, nonjointly democratic states, and politically disparate states face greater risks of conflict and enjoy shorter periods of peace than do states with different characteristics.

How do we explain the wide variation in the terms of settlement that end wars? One possibility is that the terms of settlement merely reflect the belligerents' original aims. A second possibility is that the final terms arise out of negotiations to terminate the war and reflect each side's evaluation of the costs and political risks of continuing the war. The author tests hypotheses derived from both perspectives using ordered logit regression in the period 1816-1980. The results generally support both the aims and the bargaining hypotheses. In contrast, the author finds that the belligerents' regime type does not affect the final terms. The author concludes that belligerents generally use the bargaining leverage they have to demand as much as possible and to concede as little as possible, but their original aims can affect their bargaining leverage by increasing the political risks of continuing the war past a certain point.

Neorealists and neoliberals both agree that if states are primarily concerned about security, cooperation will be difficult to achieve and maintain. Cooperation is difficult because states worry that others may gain more from the agreement. I show, in contrast to these expectations, that security concerns do not necessarily impede, and can in fact provide the foundation for, cooperation between states. I suggest that the distributional battles often witnessed between states can be signs of negotiations along the Pareto frontier rather than evidence of relative gains concerns. My argument is based on the recognition that a state's security is not always, or even often, best served by maintaining its position in each dyadic relationship as the neorealists claim. If a state can utilize the resources gained from an agreement with one state to influence and protect itself against other states in the system or if a state anticipates that third parties may play a role in some disputes which may arise in the future, then the relationship between a state's security and the gains realized by another state is not straightforward. A state's security may be enhanced, dimished or remain unaffected by the gains realized by different states in the system. It is inappropriate then to assume that when security concerns predominate the chances for cooperation have diminished; security concerns may in fact provide the basis for cooperative relations. The analysis also suggests that empirical expectations about the cooperative or conflictual potential of different systems cannot be readily inferred as the incentive to cooperate will vary depending upon the dyad in question.