Gender, sexism, and war

We analyze a model of leader gender and crisis bargaining under asymmetric information. There are no essential differences between the sexes in their willingness to use force, but sexist leaders receive a subjective boost for defeating female leaders in war and pay a subjective cost for defeat. We show that this hostile sexism can lead to war for two reasons, first by offering sufficient private benefits to make peace impossible and second by influencing an uninformed leader’s willingness to risk war. We also show that (a) the effect of leader sex on disputes and war depends on the distribution of power, (b) sexist leaders may initiate disputes at less favorable distributions of power than non-sexist leaders, and (c) sexist leaders adopt bargaining strategies that make it difficult for women to cultivate and benefit from reputations for resolve, even in the absence of sex differences in the willingness to use force.

Politics, audience costs, and signalling: Britain and the 1863–4 Schleswig-Holstein crisis

Audience costs theory posits that domestic audiences punish political leaders who make foreign threats but fail to follow through, and that anticipation of audience costs gives more accountable leaders greater leverage in crisis bargaining. We argue, contrary to the theory, that leaders are often unaware of audience costs and their impact on crisis bargaining. We emphasise the role of domestic opposition in undermining a foreign threat, note that opposition can emerge from policy disagreements within the governing party as well as from partisan oppositions, and argue that the resulting costs differ from audience costs. We argue that a leader's experience of audience costs can trigger learning about audience costs dynamics and alter future behaviour. We demonstrate the plausibility of these arguments through a case study of the 1863–4 Schleswig-Holstein crisis. Prime Minister Palmerston's threat against German intervention in the Danish dispute triggered a major domestic debate, which undercut the credibility of the British threat and contributed to both the failure of deterrence and to subsequent British inaction. Parliament formally censured Palmerston, contributing to a learning-driven reorientation in British foreign policy.

Reputations for Resolve and Higher-Order Beliefs in Crisis Bargaining

Reputations for resolve are said to be one of the few things worth fighting for, yet they remain inadequately understood. Discussions of reputation focus almost exclusively on first-order belief change— A stands firm, B updates its beliefs about A’s resolve. Such first-order reputational effects are important, but they are not the whole story. Higher-order beliefs—what A believes about B’s beliefs, and so on—matter a great deal as well. When A comes to believe that B is more resolved, this may decrease A’s resolve, and this in turn may increase B’s resolve, and so on. In other words, resolve is interdependent. We offer a framework for estimating higher-order effects, and find evidence of such reasoning in a survey experiment on quasi-elites. Our findings indicate both that states and leaders can develop potent reputations for resolve, and that higher-order beliefs are often responsible for a large proportion of these effects (40 percent to 70 percent in our experimental setting). We conclude by complementing the survey with qualitative evidence and laying the groundwork for future research.

Flexibility and Firmness in Crisis Bargaining

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.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter summarizes the findings of the experiments and case studies in the previous chapters, discussing their implications for the study of reputation for resolve and the debate between reputation supporters and skeptics. The evidence from across the experiments and case studies shows that leaders can indeed acquire individual reputations for resolve. While these reputations are rooted in a leader's statements and behavior, they can be influenced by certain contextual factors—primarily a preexisting state reputation for resolve and the state's strategic interest in an issue under dispute. Yet, these two contextual factors influence leader reputations by interacting with a leader's own statements and behavior. Moreover, these leader-specific reputational assessments can affect the negotiating and crisis bargaining strategies individual leaders pursue. Leaders, therefore, are not wrong to care about their personal reputations for resolve or to believe that their reputations for resolve influence international politics. The chapter then explains how policymakers can best communicate their resolve to make themselves and their states less vulnerable to international threats.

Reputation for Resolve

How do reputations form in international politics? What influence do these reputations have on the conduct of international affairs? This book takes a new approach to answering these enduring and hotly debated questions by shifting the focus away from the reputations of countries and instead examining the reputations of individual leaders. It argues that new leaders establish personal reputations for resolve that are separate from the reputations of their predecessors and from the reputations of their states. The book finds that leaders acquire personal reputations for resolve based on their foreign policy statements and behavior. It shows that statements create expectations of how leaders will react to foreign policy crises in the future and that leaders who fail to meet expectations of resolute action face harsh reputational consequences. The book challenges the view that reputations do not matter in international politics. In sharp contrast, it shows that the reputations for resolve of individual leaders influence the strategies statesmen pursue during diplomatic interactions and crises, and delineates specific steps policymakers can take to avoid developing reputations for irresolute action. The book demonstrates that reputations for resolve do exist and can influence the conduct of international security. Thus, it reframes our understanding of the influence of leaders and their rhetoric on crisis bargaining and the role reputations play in international politics.

Stylized Facts and Comparative Statics in (Social) Science Inquiry

In a recent article, David Blagden (2019) critiques our research published in the International Studies Quarterly (LeVeck and Narang 2017a), in which we draw on the well-known “wisdom of crowds” phenomenon to argue that, because democracies typically include a larger number of decision makers in the foreign policy process, they may produce fewer decision-making errors in situations of crisis bargaining. As a result, bargaining may fail less often. Blagden's critique focuses on two supposed flaws: first, that “[d]emocracies may have a larger number of more diverse policymakers, of course, but this relationship is not necessary,” and second, that “weighing against the superior ability of large groups to average towards accurate answers, meanwhile, is a substantial drawback of larger groups: the diminishing ability to take and implement decisions” due to additional veto players. In this article, we demonstrate the ways in which we believe Blagden's critique to be misguided in its approach to social science inquiry. In particular, we argue that much of his critique requires that we reject two hallmarks of scientific inquiry: the use of stylized facts in theory building; and the use of comparative statics to generate testable hypotheses.

War and diplomacy on the world stage: Crisis bargaining before third parties

I analyze a three-actor model of crisis bargaining with two key features. First, diplomatic opposition raises the costs of war, but an informed state can avoid it by conveying restraint to a supporter. Second, the means of conveying restraint may fail to convince an enemy tempted to risk war of the informed state’s willingness to fight. I derive three results. First, war is more likely when third parties believe the informed state to be generally restrained. Second, the threat of opposition that modestly affects the costs of war discourages risky bluffing. Third, the threat of opposition that substantially raises the costs of war can lead states to mask a true willingness to fight, securing diplomatic support at the price of an elevated risk of war despite the availability of a credible signal. Building diplomatic coalitions to prevent balancing can simultaneously make credible communication that averts war both easy and unattractive.