Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-2l2gl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-28T07:17:29.646Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Reason and War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1986

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita  and
David Lalman
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Affiliation:
Stanford University
David Lalman
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A new specification of the expected utility model of international conflict places expected utilities within a polar coordinate system; treats third-party choices in a manner more consistent with classical forms; estimates the expected utilities derived from not challenging existing policies; more fully represents the expected costs of conflict; and normalizes expected utilities regardless of system size. By assuming that the probability of escalation of a dispute increases monotonically with leaders' expectations of gain, we derive continuous functions for the probabilities of war, intervention, violence, and peace. The revised theory significantly improves our ability to discriminate between violent and nonviolent disputes and between violent disputes that escalated to warfare and those that did not in Europe between 1816 and 1970.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 80 , Issue 4 , December 1986 , pp. 1113 - 1129
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Altfeld, Michael, and Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce. 1979. Choosing Sides in Wars. International Studies Quarterly, 23:87–112.10.2307/2600275CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Black, Duncan. 1958. The Theory of Committees and Elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Blainey, Geoffrey. 1973. The Causes of War. New York: Free Press.10.1007/978-1-349-01690-7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce. 1981. The War Trap. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce. 1983. The Costs of War: A Rational Expectations Approach. American Political Science Review, 77:347–57.10.2307/1958920CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce. 1985. The War Trap Revisited. American Political Science Review, 79:157–76.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, Newman, David, and Rabushka, Alvin. 1985. Forecasting Political Events: Hong Kong's Future. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Gochman, Charles. 1975. Status, Conflict, War: The Major Powers, 1820–1979. Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan.Google Scholar
Iusi, Grace, and Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce. 1985. Threat and Alignment Behavior. Unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
Lalman, David. 1985. Conflict, Resolution and Peace. Presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, LA.Google Scholar
Newman, David. 1982. Security and Alliances: A Theoretical Study of Alliance Formation. Presented at the annual meeting of the International Studies Association, Cincinnati, OH.Google Scholar
Petersen, Walter. 1983. International Conflict Resolution: An Expected Utility Approach to the Analysis of Decisions During Crisis. Ph.D. diss., University of Rochester.Google Scholar
Singer, J. David, and Small, Melvin. 1972. The Wages of War: 1816–1965, A Statistical Handbook. New York: John Wiley.Google Scholar

A correction has been issued for this article:

Erratum

Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.