Bargaining and the Nature of War

Abstract

A model of bargaining embedded within a random-walk model of warfare is developed. The conflict model contains aspects of both lottery-based and war-of-attrition models of conflict. Results show that future disputes are less likely to lead to armed conflict following long rather than short wars. Furthermore, should a subsequent dispute lead to armed conflict, the higher the cost and the longer the previous war, the shorter the conflict is likely to last. Nationsfightwhentheydisagreeaboutthenatureofwhatawarbetweenthemwould be like. In particular, when states disagree about who is likely to win or the costs of fighting, then they can fail to find a bargain that settles their differences (Blainey 1973). Nations therefore fight to resolve their differences of opinions. The act of waging war reveals information about the relative strengths of each side. As a war progresses, each side's beliefs about the likely outcome of continuing the war converge. Once the warring parties'beliefs have converged sufficiently, they can find a bargained solution to the conflict.The contemporary modeling tradition in international relations has conventionally thought of war as the breakdown of bargaining. Early models portrayed war as a oneshot lottery. Empirically, however, wars vary vastly in their intensity and duration. Moreover, few wars are fought to complete disarmament of one side or the other. Instead, most wars end when both sides prefer a division of the stakes at issue to continued conflict. Rather than continuing to fight until one side eliminates the other, the two sides reach a bargain or negotiated settlement. Our model is one of a growing number of models that opens the black box of warfare and treats conflict as part of the bargaining process rather than the end of the bargaining process (

Relative rebel strength and the onset and outcome of civil war mediation

“…However, parties within conflict often have incentives to misrepresent information (Filson & Werner, 2007;Fearon, 1995;Smith & Stam, 2004). For example, actors seeking to secure a more favorable arrangement might exaggerate their military strength and political resolve.…”

War as a Commitment Problem

“…modeling intra-war bargaining more fully (e.g., Fearon 2004;Filson and Werner 2004;Heifetz and Segev 2002;Powell 2004a;Slantchev 2003a,b;Smith and Stam 2004;Wagner 2000). These more explicit formulations are beginning to make it possible to study prolonged conflict.…”

On the Dynamics of Extremist Violence

“…Asymmetric information (e.g. see Filson and Werner 2002;Powell 2004;Slantchev 2003;Smith and Stam 2004) and commitment problems (e.g. McBride and Skaperdas 2007;Powell 2006;Walter 1997).…”