Mutual Optimism as a Cause of Conflict: Secret Alliances and Conflict Onset

Bas, Muhammet Ali; Schub, Robert

doi:10.1093/isq/sqw002

Cited by 59 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 62 publications

(55 reference statements)

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“…Accordingly, researchers can use secret allies as an indicator of type. Consistent with theoretical expectations, states that are tougher than observers expect are more likely to get into conflicts (Bas and Schub, 2016b).…”

Section: Empirics: Hurdles and Findingssupporting

confidence: 75%

The Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Uncertainty and Conflict in International Relations

Bas¹,

Schub²

2017

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics

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Uncertainty is pervasive in international politics. This uncertainty can have many sources. Each source has different origins and implications for the likelihood of conflict. Existing theories focus on three sources: (1) uncertainty due to asymmetric information about adversary traits that affect war payoffs, (2) uncertainty about adversary intentions, and (3) fundamental uncertainty about conflict-relevant processes. Scholarship details the implications of each type of uncertainty for war and peace as well as the prospects for reducing the uncertainty. While theoretical work is quite rich, empirical studies generally lag behind due to measurement challenges and difficulties in specifying clear, testable implications. Nonetheless, using novel proxies for different forms of uncertainty has generated notable progress.

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Section: Empirics: Hurdles and Findingssupporting

confidence: 75%

The Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Uncertainty and Conflict in International Relations

Bas¹,

Schub²

2017

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics

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“…If a prospective buyer fails to realize that a bid will only be accepted if the seller's valuation is less than the bid, then the buyer might incur a loss (e.g., Holt and Sherman, 1994)[10] 26. See Lindsey (2018)[34] for a recent contribution overcoming the issue of the difficulty of observing country leaders' beliefs.See alsoLai (2004) [35] and Bas and Schub (2016)[36] for similar empirical evidence. For laboratory experiments directly manipulating information, see Tingley and Wang (2010)[37] and Quek (2015)[38].…”

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confidence: 73%

A Game-Free Microfoundation of Mutual Optimism

Serena

2019

Games

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One of the most widely accepted explanations for why wars occur despite its Pareto-suboptimality is mutual optimism: if both sides expect to gain a lot by fighting, war becomes inevitable. The literature on mutual optimism typically assumes mutually optimistic beliefs and shows that, under such an assumption, war may occur despite its Pareto-suboptimality. In a war–peace model, we show that, if players neglect the correlation between other players’ actions and their types—a well-established concept in economics—then players’ expected payoffs from war increase relative to conventional informational sophistication predictions, hence providing a microfoundation of mutual optimism.

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“…Blainey's often-cited argument, for example, is that 'wars usually begin when two nations disagree on their relative strength' (Blainey 1988, 246). Similarly, Fearon (1995, 18) focuses on 'disagreements about relative power and uncertainty about a 2 Some of the proxies for uncertainty rely on the military balance (Bas and Schub 2016a;Reed 2003;Slantchev 2004), while others are based on private capabilities such as secret alliances (Bas and Schub 2016b) or secret mobilization (Lai 2004).…”

Section: Uncertain Uncertaintymentioning

confidence: 99%

What the Enemy Knows: Common Knowledge and the Rationality of War

Chadefaux

2018

Brit. J. Polit. Sci.

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Information has played a central role in understanding why international negotiations may break down into costly conflict. Barring indivisibilities or commitment problems, the literature finds that war can only occur between rational unitary actors because of private information about fundamentals such as capabilities, resolve, or costs. I show here, however, that negotiations may fail despite complete information about these fundamentals. All that is needed is for A to not know whether B knows-uncertainty about uncertainty. To ensure peace, then, states need not only know each other's attributes, but also the other's knowledge thereof, and potentially his knowledge of her own knowledge, and so on. Existing models, however, focus on first-order uncertainty and assume common knowledge of information partitions-an unlikely assumption, as states rarely know how much the other knows. This requirement of higher-order complete information illustrates the importance of explicitly incorporating information structures in bargaining models of conflict.

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Mutual Optimism as a Cause of Conflict: Secret Alliances and Conflict Onset

Cited by 59 publications

References 62 publications

The Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Uncertainty and Conflict in International Relations

The Theoretical and Empirical Approaches to Uncertainty and Conflict in International Relations

A Game-Free Microfoundation of Mutual Optimism

What the Enemy Knows: Common Knowledge and the Rationality of War

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