ALLIANCES IN THE SHADOW OF CONFLICT

Victorious alliances often fight about the spoils of war. This article presents an experiment on the determinants of whether alliances break up and fight internally after having defeated a joint enemy. First, if peaceful sharing yields an asymmetric rent distribution, this increases the likelihood o...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEconomic inquiry Vol. 53; no. 2; pp. 854 - 871
Main Authors Ke, Changxia, Konrad, Kai A., Morath, Florian
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Boston, USA Wiley Periodicals, Inc 01.04.2015
Blackwell Publishers Ltd
Western Economic Association
Subjects
Alliances
Analysis
Asymmetric information
Conflict
Difference
Economic rent
Economic theory
Forecasts and trends
Military policy
Peace negotiations
Peaceful co-existence
Political alliances
Studies
War
Germany
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Summary:Victorious alliances often fight about the spoils of war. This article presents an experiment on the determinants of whether alliances break up and fight internally after having defeated a joint enemy. First, if peaceful sharing yields an asymmetric rent distribution, this increases the likelihood of fighting. In turn, anticipation of the higher likelihood of internal fight reduces the alliance's ability to succeed against the outside enemy. Second, the option to make nonbinding nonaggression declarations between alliance members does not make peaceful settlement within the alliance more likely. Third, higher differences in the alliance players' contributions to alliance effort lead to more internal conflict and more intense fighting. (JEL D72, D74)
Bibliography:Appendix S1. A: Choices of "fight" versus "split" conditional on the initial declaration. B: Average effort in the internal conflict. C: Average effort in the conflict between the alliance and the stand-alone player. D: Experimental Instructions (a sample for the PUBLIC treatment).
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ISSN:0095-2583
1465-7295
DOI:10.1111/ecin.12151