IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v80y1986i04p1113-1129_18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reason and War

Author

Listed:
  • Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce
  • Lalman, David

Abstract

A new specification of the expected utility model of international conflict places expected utilities within a polar coordinate system; treats third-party choices in a manner more consistent with classical forms; estimates the expected utilities derived from not challenging existing policies; more fully represents the expected costs of conflict; and normalizes expected utilities regardless of system size. By assuming that the probability of escalation of a dispute increases monotonically with leaders' expectations of gain, we derive continuous functions for the probabilities of war, intervention, violence, and peace. The revised theory significantly improves our ability to discriminate between violent and nonviolent disputes and between violent disputes that escalated to warfare and those that did not in Europe between 1816 and 1970.

Suggested Citation

  • Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce & Lalman, David, 1986. "Reason and War," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 80(4), pages 1113-1129, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:80:y:1986:i:04:p:1113-1129_18
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400185028/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Chae-Han Kim, 1991. "Third-Party Participation in Wars," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(4), pages 659-677, December.
    2. Murray Wolfson & Anil Puri & Mario Martelli, 1992. "The Nonlinear Dynamics of International Conflict," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 36(1), pages 119-149, March.
    3. Eguia, Jon X., 2022. "Multilateral regime change," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 205(C).
    4. Bruce J. Bueno De Mesquita & Robert W. Jackman & Randolph M. Siverson, 1991. "Introduction," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(2), pages 181-186, June.
    5. Jason B Scholz & Gregory J Calbert & Glen A Smith, 2011. "Unravelling Bueno De Mesquita’s group decision model," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 23(4), pages 510-531, October.
    6. Susumu Suzuki & Volker Krause & J. David Singer, 2002. "The Correlates of War Project: a Bibliographic History of the Scientific Study of War and Peace, 1964-2000," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 19(2), pages 69-107, September.
    7. Marcel van Assen & Frans Stokman & Reinier van Oosten, 2003. "Conflict Measures in Cooperative Exchange Models of Collective Decision-making," Rationality and Society, , vol. 15(1), pages 85-112, February.
    8. Samuel S. G. Wu, 1990. "To Attack or Not to Attack," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 34(3), pages 531-552, September.
    9. Kurt Taylor Gaubatz, 1991. "Election Cycles and War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(2), pages 212-244, June.
    10. Samuel Vuchinich & Jay Teachman, 1993. "Influences on the Duration of Wars, Strikes, Riots, and Family Arguments," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 37(3), pages 544-568, September.
    11. Frans N. Stokman & Jaco Berveling, 1998. "Dynamic Modeling of Policy Networks in Amsterdam," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 10(4), pages 577-601, October.
    12. Michelle Benson & Jacek Kugler, 1998. "Power Parity, Democracy, and the Severity of Internal Violence," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 42(2), pages 196-209, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:80:y:1986:i:04:p:1113-1129_18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.