When Do They Stop? Modeling the Termination of War

This paper deals with war termination. We develop a formal model based on the logic of domestic political accountability. We assume that leaders seek to maximize the likelihood that they will stay in office and that their decisions regarding war termination are responsive to their winning coalition&...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inConflict management and peace science Vol. 21; no. 3; pp. 179 - 193
Main Authors MATTES, MICHAELA, MORGAN, T. CLIFTON
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London, England Taylor & Francis, Inc 01.10.2004
SAGE Publications
Sage Publications Ltd
Subjects
Accountability
Civil wars
Conflict resolution
Costs
Democracy
Domestic politics
Expectations
Mathematical moments
Modeling
Peacetime
Politicians
Prediction
Queens
War
Warfare
war termination
principal/agent models
domestic politics
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Summary:This paper deals with war termination. We develop a formal model based on the logic of domestic political accountability. We assume that leaders seek to maximize the likelihood that they will stay in office and that their decisions regarding war termination are responsive to their winning coalition's expectations and sensitivity to costs and to the costs of war. Our model generates predictions about when state leaders will prefer to terminate an ongoing war, given specific terms of settlement. By applying these results to both sides in a war, we can use the model to develop propositions regarding the terms of settlement and the duration of war given varying expectations, costs, and sensitivity to costs.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-1
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
ObjectType-Feature-2
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ISSN:0738-8942
1549-9219
DOI:10.1080/07388940490487261