Public Commitment in Crisis Bargaining Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • The "audience cost" literature argues that highly-resolved leaders can use public threats to credibly signal their resolve in incomplete-information crisis bargaining, thereby overcoming informational asymmetries that lead to war. If democracies are better able to generate audience costs, then audience costs help explain the democratic peace. We use a game-theoretic model to show how public commitments can be used coercively as a source of bargaining leverage, even in a complete-information setting in which they have no signaling role. When both sides use public commitments for bargaining leverage, war becomes an equilibrium outcome. The results provide a rationale for secret negotiations as well as hypotheses about when leaders will claim that the disputed good is indivisible, recognized as a rationalist explanation for war. Claims of indivisibility may just be bargaining tactics to get the other side to make big concessions, and compromise is still possible in equilibrium. 2009 International Studies Association.

published proceedings

  • International Studies Quarterly

author list (cited authors)

  • Tarar, A., & Leventolu, B.

citation count

  • 41

complete list of authors

  • Tarar, Ahmer||Leventoğlu, Bahar

publication date

  • September 2009