Understanding War and Peace

This chapter presents the bargaining model of war. The basic approach of the bargaining model is to frame the onset, prosecution, and termination of war as a bargaining process: war represents a failure of two sides to reach a peaceful bargain settling a dispute over an issue such as a territorial border, and during war states continue to bargain, searching for a peace settlement both sides prefer over continuing to fight. Using very little math, the chapter introduces a number of key concepts, such as ideal points, reservation points, reversion outcomes, and bargaining space. It also lays out three possible bargaining model explanations as to why wars break out: when the sides disagree about the likely outcome of a war; when at least one side doubts the credibility of the other side to abide by commitments to peace; and when the issue under dispute is perceived to be indivisible. The chapter also develops information and commitment credibility perspectives on bargaining during wartime, and how wars eventually end. It applies these ideas to a summary of a quantitative study of the effects of peacekeeping on civil war outcomes, and to a case study of World War II in the Pacific.