Bargaining, Domestic Politics, and International Context in the Management of War: A Review Essay

This review essay examines a number of areas in the study of war management. First, current work on war bargaining combines previous models of prewar bargaining with intra-war bargaining. These models attempt to depict both the elements of intra-war bargaining and its possible outcome within a dynamic setting in which battles as well as diplomacy provide combatants with information about the possible military outcome of the war. Second, studies of the domestic politics of war management focused primarily on the interrelations between war progress, casualties, and public opinion. As such these studies are strongly biased towards democratic politics of war management. We know very little about the domestic process of war management in non-democratic states. Nor is there much systematic empirical work on civil-military relations during wartime. Third, war expansion models have expanded our knowledge on the factors that increase the probability of third party intervention, as well as on the domestic and international factors that prohibit intervention. Fourth, the literature on the relationship between war management and war outcomes focused on selection models and performance models that attempt to account for the disproportionate tendency of democracies to win the war they fight. Finally, mediation studies have expanded our knowledge of the conditions under which third parties are likely to enter the war as peaceful mediators, the strategies of mediation they select, and the effect of these factors on the outcome of the mediation process. We evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of these literatures and identify several important lacunae that may stimulate future research on war management.