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872 democracy, peace, and war

The need for policy success may introduce perverse incentives. Leaders facing

dwindling political fortunes due to failing policies may feel impelled to resort to war

or adopt suboptimal military strategies, “gambling for resurrection,” since winning

might increase their chances of retaining power, while a loss would not matter for

domestic political fortunes because the leader would lose power or face even greater

sanction anyway (Smith 1996; Goemans 2000). Others argue that leaders of newly

formed democracies may initiate conﬂicts with their neighbors to consolidate their

domestic political support (Mansﬁeld and Snyder 2002).

A third line of research concerns the stakes of war. Most public constraint theories

do not proposethatdemocraciesaremoreorlesslikelytoﬁghtwarsofempireor

genocide. Sometimes those wars are proﬁtable and popular (Bueno de Mesquita et al.

2003;ReiterandStam2002;Henderson2002). One model predicts that democracies

are more likely to pursue war aims best characterized as public goods, while autocra-

cies are more likely to pursue aims more easily translated into private goods (Bueno

de Mesquita et al. 2003).

Public constraints arguments have attracted substantial empirical support. The

popularity of elected leaders declines as casualties mount (Gartner and Segura 1998),

though publics are willing to accept casualties for important stakes and when victory

seems likely (Feaver and Gelpi 2004). Anticipation of the electoral consequences of

declining support for war in the face of mounting casualties also aﬀects the nature

of war. Democracies ﬁght shorter wars (Bennett and Stam 1996) in part because

of the strategies they ﬁght with (Reiter and Meek 1999) and in part because of the

type of wars they choose to ﬁght in the ﬁrst place (Slantchev 2004). In these wars,

democracies suﬀer fewer casualties (Siverson 1995; Goemans 2000, 65)andmore

readily compromise in longer wars (Bennett and Stam 1998).

Studies show that leaders understand how political institutions shape the domestic

political consequences of military defeat. This leads elected leaders to be much more

likely to win the international crises (Rioux 1998; Gelpi and Griesdorf 2001)and

wars (Reiter and Stam 2002) they start. Dictators are less likely to win the crises and

wars they start because they are more likely to launch risky ventures with ex ante

lower probabilities of victory. These ﬁndings are quite robust (Reed and Clark

2000; Clark and Reed 2003;ReiterandStam2003a). Consistent with the rational

expectations view, because democracies anticipate the electoral consequences of war,

they avoid disastrous wars and, as a result, we do not observe that elected lead-

ers lose power faster than non-elected leaders after wars (Chiozza and Goemans

2004). Some theoretical models that extend the public opinion logic in a strategic

setting predict that authoritarian states may seek to exploit this democratic cost

sensitivity, and may be especially likely to initiate international disputes against

democracies, hoping the democracy will back down rather than risk war (Filson and

Wer ne r 2004).

Though democracies are less likely to ﬁght each other, the evidence on whether

democracies are generally more peaceful is mixed. Recognizing that publics may be

motivated to ﬁght for nationalistic reasons, Braumoeller (1997) argues that liberalism

dan reiter & allan c. stam 873

may provide fewer protections against war than many surmise. Some have found that

democracies are more conﬂictual in their relations with non-democratic states than

non-democratic states are with each other (Werner 2000;ReiterandStam2003a;

Bennett and Stam 2004). Some found that democracies are more likely to be targeted

by other states (Rousseau et al. 1996;Schultz2001, 135), though others report diﬀerent

results (Pickering 2002; Huth and Allee 2002, 153; Bennett and Stam 2004, 128–31).

Gelpi and Grieco (2001) found that after controlling for leaders’ tenure, democracies

are no more likely to be the target of other states’ aggression. Some claim that

democracies are less likely to initiate crises or the use of force (Schultz 2001, 135;Huth

and Allee 2002, 152).

The evidence on other implications derived from the public opinion con-

straints approach is also mixed. Regarding whether democracies extract more during

wartime, Bueno de Mesquita et al. (2003, 2004) found that in certain cases democra-

cies do extract more during wartime, though other tests report the opposite (Reiter

and Stam 2002). Some have speculated that representative political institutions may

make citizens more willing to consent to conscription (Levi 1997). Others have argued

that the soldiers of democracies are no more or less willing to sacriﬁce themselves,

though they may ﬁght with better initiative and leadership (Reiter and Stam 2002,

ch. 3). An intriguing twist on this line of reasoning is that representative institutions

may push democracies to invest more and more broadly in education (Lake and

Baum 2001) and better-educated soldiers and oﬃcers appear to ﬁght better (Biddle

and Long 2004).

The evidence on exactly how institutional variations aﬀect conﬂict behavior is

also mixed. Some have proposed that elected leaders with broader legislative sup-

port might be less vulnerable to domestic political challenges, and hence might

be more willing to take risks and initiate force. Though there is some supportive

evidence for this claim (Howell and Pevehouse 2005;Clark2000; Ireland and Gartner

2001), other studies found no relationship between legislative support and pro-

clivity to use force (Reiter and Tillman 2002;LeblangandChan2003; Palmer,

London, and Regan 2004). Others have proposed that the key institutional check

lies in the state’s need to serve the preferences of the fraction of society whose

support the leader needs to stay in power (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003;Reiterand

Tillman 2002).

The evidence that declining political fortunes cause leaders to initiate conﬂict is

also weak and inconsistent (Fordham 2002;Meernik

2001;Miller1995;Gelpi1997).

Others ﬁnd evidence that potential attackers are less likely to initiate conﬂict against

democracies facing internal strife, suggesting that these potential attackers anticipate

that troubled leaders are more inclined to escalate conﬂict, and hence avoid giving

such roiled states an excuse for war (Leeds and Davis 1997;Miller1999;Clarkand

Reed 2003). Many authors are skeptical of the claim that states with newly minted

democratic institutions are more conﬂict prone (Russett and Oneal 2000), though

there is empirical support for the narrower claim that states with new partly demo-

cratic institutions are more conﬂict prone (Mansﬁeld and Snyder 2002).

874 democracy, peace, and war

1.2 Audience Costs

Fearon’s (1994) “audience costs” model is closely related to but theoretically distinct

from the public constraints argument. Starting from a somewhat diﬀerent premiss

from the public opinion literature, the “audience costs” literature begins with the

assumption that war is an ineﬃcient solution to a bargaining problem (Fearon

1995). One reason states might adopt an ineﬃcient policy is because state A cannot

credibly signal to state B what A’s true resolve or cost tolerance is. This line of

reasoning is explicitly strategic, in that the problem or cause of war or peace lies in one

side’s strategic incentives to misrepresent its own capabilities. The theoretical focus is

on leaders’ ability or lack thereof to decipher their opponent’s resolve.

The audience costs permutation of the signaling model of war is based on the

indirect eﬀects of anticipated electoral punishments, and assumes that during inter-

national crises states are uncertain about each other’s resolve for war (resolve here

refers to how willing the opposing sides are to ﬁght and therefore bear the high costs

of war to defend their interests). Because a state’s costs of ﬁghting are related to both

its own resolve as well as its opponent’s, states have incentives to adopt policies short

of war to try to force their opponents to reveal credible information about their levels

of resolve. Escalating a diplomatic crisis by mobilizing one’s military forces is one way

in which a state can attempt to communicate its resolve to the other side, that it will

ﬁght to defend its interests, and in doing so, hopefully get the other side to back down.

In the audience costs approach, domestic politics enters the picture when leaders

consider what might happen if they back down after precipitating or escalating a

crisis. The audience costs model proposes that potential voters will view backing

down in a crisis as a policy failure, and when able, will therefore punish at the polls

leaders that back down in a crisis. Institutions matter in that citizens of authoritarian

states are less able to inﬂict political costs on their leaders than voters are in states with

elected leaders. Notably, some audience costs models have focused on the political

opposition rather than on the public (Schultz 2001).

From the audience costs perspective, all leaders know that dictators are freer to

back down, and hence more likely to bluﬀ, than are elected leaders. In turn, according

to this logic, because a democratic leader will suﬀer greater punishment from backing

down than an authoritarian counterpart will, the democrat will be likely to step up the

escalatory ladder only when he or she is unlikely to back down; that is, when he or she

has a high resolve for war. Ironically, this becomes an advantage for democracies, as a

democracy’s decision to escalate a crisis is a stronger signal of its resolve for war than

is an autocrat’s decision to escalate. When democracies escalate they really “mean it,”

but when autocrats escalate, they are more likely than democracies to be bluﬃng.

Relatedly, some have proposed that democratic domestic audiences are more likely to

punish political leaders for reneging on international agreements like alliances, which

in turn makes cooperation between democracies more likely (Leeds 1999).

Empirical testing of audience costs models is at this stage preliminary. However,

one central audience costs hypothesis is that when a democracy escalates a crisis,

the other side should be signiﬁcantly more likely to back down, as the prospective

dan reiter & allan c. stam 875

audience costs to a democracy of escalating and then backing down are high enough

that a democracy would only escalate if it had a high resolve for war The empiri-

cal evidence in support of this prediction, however, is mixed. Schultz (2001) ﬁnds

that escalatory moves made by democratic states, such as increasing the level of

military mobilization in a crisis, are less likely to meet resistance by non-democratic

opponents than is the case in pairs of non-democracies in similar settings. There

are, however, limits to the empirical reach of this result. Eyerman and Hart (1996)

found that crises involving two democracies involve fewer steps, oﬀering indirect

support for the audience costs proposition that democracies communicate during

crises more eﬀectively. Partell and Palmer (1999) also found that democracies are

less likely to back down in crises, and that democracies are less likely to launch so-

called “limited probes” of opponents’ resolve. However, using an improved research

design, Lai (2004) found that democrats’ opponents are more likely to back down

in the face of a democratic crisis initiation but not escalation. Further, democracies

are signiﬁcantly less likely to become involved in non-violent international disputes,

meaning that democracies are not using such disputes to signal resolve to each other

(Kinsella and Russett 2002).Theevidenceondemocraticalliancebehaviorisalso

mixed, as some have found that democracies are more likely to ally with each other

and honor alliance agreements (Leeds et al. 2002; Leeds 2003), while others have

found a weak or negative relationship (Lai and Reiter 2000;GiblerandSarkees2004;

Gartzke and Gleditsch 2004;ReiterandStam2002).

Some of the work grounded in the public opinion constraint model oﬀers direct

theoretical challenges to the audience costs perspective. In an intriguing paper linking

bargaining and war, Filson and Werner (2004) challenge the audience costs view that

targets of democratic challenge and escalation are more likely to back down because

they are convinced that the democracies are resolved for war. Filson and Werner

propose that such episodes of democratic challenges are more likely to end peacefully

because democracies make lower demands, which their opponents are more likely to

accept, not because the democracies are more capable or resolved.

2 New Directions

.............................................................................

Many theoretical and empirical gaps remain in the study of domestic politics and war.

One major undeveloped area concerns how political institutions may aﬀect the qual-

ity of information provided to leaders. When leaders have higher-quality informa-

tion, they may be able to assess more accurately international conditions, including

the resolve of the opponent, the likely costs of a prospective war, and the chances

of victory if war does come. Some have proposed that because democracies protect

freedoms of speech and press, they enjoy a more vibrant marketplace of ideas. These

in turn provide liberal leaders with more robust policy debates and analyses, enabling

elected leaders to be more likely to avoid military disasters. Authoritarian leaders do

876 democracy, peace, and war

not enjoy these beneﬁts. Further, tyrants may suﬀer greater intelligence shortcom-

ings because their fears of domestic political threats may cause them to purge their

militaries, and surround themselves with yes-men and toadies rather than apolitical

professionals (Reiter and Stam 2002;Snyder1991; Quinlivan 1999). The role of the

marketplace of ideas informing foreign policy has received only the barest empirical

attention, though one study argued that the marketplace in the USA failed in the

months before the 2003 Iraq War (Kaufmann 2004).

Other important areas of enquiry remain. Scholars are just beginning to un-

derstand the causal arrow reversed: how international factors aﬀect democracy

(Gleditsch 2002; Russett and Oneal 2000;Reiter2001; Pevehouse 2002). Oddly, au-

thoritarianism itself besides being portrayed as the opposite of democracy is only

just beginning to receive study, and one useful path is the exploration of how dif-

ferent kinds of authoritarianism lead to diﬀerent foreign policy behaviors (Lai and

Slater 2006; Peceny and Beer 2003). In the public opinion and signaling debates,

there is no consensus about the timing of the constraint, whether voters evaluate

policy prospectively, retrospectively, or contemporaneously. Smith and Stam (2004)

develop a model of war built on disagreement with non-common priors that calls

into question the logic of the signaling games from which the audience cost literature

evolved.

One last puzzle is the odd tendency of democracies to perform quite well in crises

and wars, but also to attract attackers. If democracies are quite powerful, and this is

well known, this fact should deter potential predators. Instead, they seem to be more

likely to strike. If the audience costs perspective is correct, then democracies ought

to do quite well at fending oﬀ attackers by demonstrating their resolve eﬀectively and

eﬃciently. As noted, Filson and Werner (2004) speculate that the presumed higher

casualty sensitivity of democracies trumps increased audience costs credibility. This

eﬀect works counter to the audience eﬀect and suggests that autocratic leaders may

believe that democrats will back down quickly rather than ﬁght or settle for lesser

gains in wars under way (Bennett and Stam 1998). However, the repeated willingness

of democracies to stand, ﬁght, and win seems to be a lesson ignored by autocrats,

as potential attackers look to the occasional instance of apparent democratic faint-

heartedness for encouragement. This puzzle deserves closer examination. In a related

vein, the rational expectations approach implies that we should see little advantage

accrue to states that initiate wars, as being willing to initiate should signal to potential

targets that the target is likely to lose, and so should sweeten its oﬀer in order to

prevent the costs associated with ﬁghting a losing war. Empirically, however, war

initiators in general, and democratic ones in particular, enjoy a signiﬁcant edge in

the disproportionate number of wars they go on to win (Reiter and Stam 1998, 2002).

Scholarly consideration of the connection between domestic politics and war is

far from complete. Several diﬀerent theoretical perspectives compete with each other,

and the substantial body of empirical results resembles a tangled ball of yarn rather

than a completed sweater. Students and scholars of international relations should not

see this as a sign of a dying argument, but rather as an open invitation to participate

in the debate and help advance our understanding in this crucial area.

dan reiter & allan c. stam 877

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chapter 49

..............................................................

ANARCHY

..............................................................

stergios skaperdas

Relations between states are often characterized as anarchic, in the sense that there

is no ultimate authority regulating these relations. Especially in the realist and neo-

realist traditions of international relations thought, states are viewed as purposive

actors with material interests and objectives; their interactions under anarchy would

thus appear amenable to the formal modeling typically pursued by economists and

other social scientists who follow a rational choice approach. Up until relatively

recently, though, there had been surprisingly little such work on formally model-

ing anarchy in general, and there is still even less work on modeling anarchy in

international relations speciﬁcally. This could be partly explained by the rooting of

neoclassical economics in the liberal tradition of thought that assumes away anar-

chy, any imperfections in contracting, or the costly enforcement of property rights.

For example, all received models of international trade abstract away from security

considerations and thus the possible connections between trade and security policies

cannot even be considered within such models.

In this chapter I will introduce recent research from economics that models anar-

chy. Although relations between states are not its main concern, this research clearly

has implications for thinking about interstate relations and there are indications that

such relations are becoming a greater as well as a fruitful concern. The starting point

of the approach is that under anarchy parties cannot write enforceable contracts that

would eliminate arming and the possibility of using violence. That starting point goes

against a long tradition of neoclassical economics that assumes property rights are

perfectly and costlessly enforced but it is consistent with the more basic assumption

∗

I am thankful to the editors for their helpful comments and to Michelle Garﬁnkel for her very

careful reading that prevented a number of errors appearing in the ﬁnal version of this chapter. My

research was partly supported by a research and writing grant from the John D. and Catherine T.

MacArthur Foundation.