Flexibility and Firmness in Crisis Bargaining

2021 ◽  
pp. 002200272199417
Author(s):  
Vesna Danilovic ◽  
Joe Clare

Our study compares the efficacy of mixed bargaining strategies to strict coercion or accommodation. While mixed strategies can be approached from different conceptual angles, we focus on flexible and/or firm postures as signaling properties of bargaining. In our theory and empirical analysis, we show that the combination of firmness with flexibility on both sides, without necessarily scripted rules as in tit-for-tat, leads to peaceful resolution without unilateral concessions. Its opposite, resolute firmness is unlikely to make the opponent yield, as assumed in influential literature of the traditional canon. If anything, war is most likely when both sides opt for it. We provide the theoretical rationale for these expectations, which are validated in our empirical analysis of the ICB crisis dataset for the 1918 to 2015 period. Our study also points to the bargaining process as a potential causal mechanism between democracy and peace, and therefore has relevant implications for several research strands.

2011 ◽  
Vol 105 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
JACK SNYDER ◽  
ERICA D. BORGHARD

A large literature in political science takes for granted that democratic leaders would pay substantial domestic political costs for failing to carry out the public threats they make in international crises, and consequently that making threats substantially enhances their leverage in crisis bargaining. And yet proponents of this audience costs theory have presented very little evidence that this causal mechanism actually operates in real—as opposed to simulated—crises. We look for such evidence in post-1945 crises and find hardly any. Audience cost mechanisms are rare because (1) leaders see unambiguously committing threats as imprudent, (2) domestic audiences care more about policy substance than about consistency between the leader's words and deeds, (3) domestic audiences care about their country's reputation for resolve and national honor independent of whether the leader has issued an explicit threat, and (4) authoritarian targets of democratic threats do not perceive audience costs dynamics in the same way that audience costs theorists do. We found domestic audience costs as secondary mechanisms in a few cases where the public already had hawkish preferences before any threats were made.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (7) ◽  
pp. 445-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hsueh-Liang Fan ◽  
Sheng-Tsung Hou ◽  
Yu-Hui Lin

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore flow as an underlying mechanism linking psychological ownership (PO) and subjective happiness and identify how flow affects employees’ subjective happiness. Design/methodology/approach Two separate samples were used. Sample 1 examined the responses of 120 female spa workers. Sample 2 examined the responses of 334 male logistics technicians. Data were collected through paper-based questionnaires across two time points. Findings PO was positively related to employees’ subjective happiness across both samples. Furthermore, PO has distinct impacts on employees’ subjective happiness through two distinct measures of flow: immersion and mastery. The authors found that immersion fully mediates the relationship between PO and employee subjective happiness in Sample 1, and mastery in Sample 2. Originality/value This is one of the first empirical studies to examine whether and how PO increases employees’ subjective happiness. The results contribute to the literature by providing a theoretical rationale for and an empirical analysis of a model wherein flow mediates the linkage between employees’ feelings of PO and their subjective happiness.


1996 ◽  
Vol 04 (02) ◽  
pp. 219-237
Author(s):  
J.F. GERARD ◽  
P.Y. QUENETTE ◽  
P. LOISEL ◽  
R. CHALMEAU

Contrary to what often seems to be accepted, 100% Tit-for-Tat is not an ESS, even in the three-pure-strategy game Tit-for-Tat-Always Cooperate-Always Defect, for which 100% Always Defect finally remains the only attractor for the composition of “asexual” populations. The present paper firstly investigates the dynamics of the Tit-for-Tat-Always Cooperate-Always Defect game for asexual populations, with the more realistic assumption that Tit-for-Tat sometimes fails to apply its algorithm. Surprisingly, this perturbation of the original game leads to different attractor patterns, in relation to the numerical values of the expected number of meetings and of Tit-for-Tat’s failure rate. These patterns generally include one punctual attractor for which most dyads at least partially cooperate. Nevertheless, the attractor alternative to 100% Always Defect in each pattern may become unstable when certain mixed strategies (cooperating and defecting at random) are introduced into the game, and the whole flow of strategy frequencies may then converge towards 100% Always Defect. Beyond the reiterated Prisoner’s Dilemma, the present analysis illustrates how self-organizing processes at infra-populational levels, like that occurring in dyads including at least one fallible Tit-for-Tat, can influence the evolution of populations.


This chapter explores the satanic pact, the voluntary decision to sell one's soul to the devil, which emerged as an important plank in European witch lore in the early modern period. The trope of the satanic pact dates back to the early Middle Ages, and was generally associated with some kind of tit-for-tat: a sinful human would exchange his soul — and in the earliest versions it is usually a man entering such a deal — for money, career advancement, knowledge, power, or sexual favors. The idea of a satanic pact provided early modern demonologists with the causal mechanism they wanted. Fueled by invidious notions about female bodies and minds, demonologists adumbrated ideas about how women were driven by envy, greed, and insatiable lust to turn to demons to satisfy their desires. Legends of male pacts with the devil circulated in Byzantium as well as in the medieval West, and some of these stories crossed over into the Slavic Orthodox world, but they never rose to the fore in trials of witches in Russia as they did in the West. Building on this observation, subsequent scholarship has confirmed that this finding held true both in the Russian and in the Ukrainian lands and continued through the eighteenth century.


2008 ◽  
Vol 98 (4) ◽  
pp. 1591-1604 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A Jaeger ◽  
M. Daniele Paserman

This paper examines the dynamics of violence in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict during the Second Intifada. Using data on the daily number of fatalities between September 2000 and January 2005, we estimate reaction functions for both Israelis and Palestinians and find evidence of Granger causality from Palestinian to Israeli violence, but not vice versa. This finding is consistent using either the incidence or level of fatalities and is robust to the specification of the lag structure and the level of time aggregation. We find no evidence that the Palestinians and Israelis are engaged in a predictable “tit-for-tat” cycle of violence. (JEL D74, H56, O17)


Crisis ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 232-235 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. DeCou ◽  
Monica C. Skewes

Abstract. Background: Previous research has demonstrated an association between alcohol-related problems and suicidal ideation (SI). Aims: The present study evaluated, simultaneously, alcohol consequences and symptoms of alcohol dependence as predictors of SI after adjusting for depressive symptoms and alcohol consumption. Method: A sample of 298 Alaskan undergraduates completed survey measures, including the Young Adult Alcohol Consequences Questionnaire, the Short Alcohol Dependence Data Questionnaire, and the Beck Depression Inventory – II. The association between alcohol problems and SI status was evaluated using sequential logistic regression. Results: Symptoms of alcohol dependence (OR = 1.88, p < .05), but not alcohol-related consequences (OR = 1.01, p = .95), emerged as an independent predictor of SI status above and beyond depressive symptoms (OR = 2.39, p < .001) and alcohol consumption (OR = 1.08, p = .39). Conclusion: Alcohol dependence symptoms represented a unique risk for SI relative to alcohol-related consequences and alcohol consumption. Future research should examine the causal mechanism behind the relationship between alcohol dependence and suicidality among university students. Assessing the presence of dependence symptoms may improve the accuracy of identifying students at risk of SI.


2007 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 248-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthias R. Mehl ◽  
Shannon E. Holleran

Abstract. In this article, the authors provide an empirical analysis of the obtrusiveness of and participants' compliance with a relatively new psychological ambulatory assessment method, called the electronically activated recorder or EAR. The EAR is a modified portable audio-recorder that periodically records snippets of ambient sounds from participants' daily environments. In tracking moment-to-moment ambient sounds, the EAR yields an acoustic log of a person's day as it unfolds. As a naturalistic observation sampling method, it provides an observer's account of daily life and is optimized for the assessment of audible aspects of participants' naturally-occurring social behaviors and interactions. Measures of self-reported and behaviorally-assessed EAR obtrusiveness and compliance were analyzed in two samples. After an initial 2-h period of relative obtrusiveness, participants habituated to wearing the EAR and perceived it as fairly unobtrusive both in a short-term (2 days, N = 96) and a longer-term (10-11 days, N = 11) monitoring. Compliance with the method was high both during the short-term and longer-term monitoring. Somewhat reduced compliance was identified over the weekend; this effect appears to be specific to student populations. Important privacy and data confidentiality considerations around the EAR method are discussed.


2000 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Felix ◽  
Anjali T. Naik-Polan ◽  
Christine Sloss ◽  
Lashaunda Poindexter ◽  
Karen S. Budd

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