When states appease: British appeasement in the 1930s

Abstract

When do states appease their foes? In this article, we argue that governments are most likely to favour appeasing a foreign threat when their top leaders are severely cross–pressured: when the demands for increased security conflict sharply with their domestic political priorities. We develop the deductive argument through a detailed analysis of British appeasement in the 1930s. We show that Neville Chamberlain grappled with a classic dilemma of statecraft: how to reduce the risk of German expansionism while facing acute partisan and electoral incentives to invest resources at home. For Chamberlain, appeasement was a means to reconcile the demands for increased security with what he and his co-partisans were trying to achieve domestically. We conclude by discussing implications of the analysis for theorising about appeasement and about how leaders make grand strategy more generally.

Theorising indirect coercion: The logic of triangular strategies

“…The disagreement was on the ultimate extent of Hitler's ambitions; whether German ambitions would be satisfied through the incorporation of Czechoslovakian German-speaking regions into Germany, or whether Hitler's employment of a coercive strategy would continue further. 72 7. Secondary pressure: in the months leading up to the Munich Conference, Prague arguably felt more pressured indirectly by the British and the French than directly by the Germans.…”

Lost in Translation: Social Identity Theory and the Study of Status in World Politics

“…24 Debates over the wisdom of appeasing or accommodating rising or dissatisfied powers go back at least as far as Carr (1946) and Morgenthau (1948). For more recent entries, see Leng and Wheeler (1979), DiMuccio (1998), Rock (2000), Ripsman and Levy (2007), Trubowitz and Harris (2015), Nincic (2010), and Paul (2016. 25 For a recent optimistic treatment of appeasement or accommodation, see Nincic (2011).…”