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We conduct a survey experiment to examine the effects of international compromise on presidential approval and to investigate the role of foreign government rhetoric in shaping the political incentives of leaders. We find that if leaders prefer to maximize voter approval, their preferences over disputed goods are not well represented by increasing, risk-averse utility functions. We also show that aggressive rhetoric on the part of foreign leaders increases the expected utility of war, decreases the value of substantial compromise, and provides leaders with a powerful incentive to fight harder. Overall, the findings suggest a contradiction between two commonly made assumptions: that leaders seek to maximize their chances of election and that leader preferences can be represented by increasing, risk-averse utility functions defined over fractions of some objective good. The rhetorical framing of disputes during the conflict process may be at least as important as material factors in understanding why some disputes result in war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The material structure of the international system is usually not sufficient to determine a unique international social equilibrium. The dynamics of international conflicts are determined by the shared understandings that have developed over time about how other states react to each others' behavior. We show that how states believe reputation is recovered is a key to understanding international crisis behavior. We contrast the case where tarnished reputations recover naturally over time (Sartori 2005) or attach to leaders whose political demise is imminent to the case where states must take action to recover their bargaining reputations. In the prior case, war is most likely when states have not been caught bluffing, while in the latter case, the probability of war is not related to bluffing behavior. Surprisingly, the shared expectation that states must take action to recover reputation diminishes the value of diplomatic communication, and when states need to go to war in order to recover a lost reputation for being willing to go to war, war is less likely. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The domestic politics of challenging states is thought to convey information to target states about the credibility of deterrent threats. This paper analyzes a model similar to Schultz (1998 and 2001) of two parties in electoral competition in the context of an international crisis. The content and quality of the inferences the target can draw from the domestic politics of the challenging state are shown to be a function of the relative popularity of the parties prior to the international crisis and thus a function of the state of the economy and candidate locations on domestic issue dimensions. Several conclusions are drawn: (1) lack of support from a democratic opposition signals that an unpopular government is more likely to follow through on a threat; (2) oppositions sometimes support bluffs of unpopular governments; (3) unpopular oppositions sometimes fail to support government policies they believe will be quite popular. A case study of U.S. politics prior to the War of 1812 illustrates some of the dynamics predicted by the model. The opposition Federalists were consistently opposed to war with England even when it appeared the war might be popular. The most plausible explanation is that opposition along this important issue dimension provided the Federalists with their only chance at influence on national politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The domestic politics of challenging states is thought to convey information to target states about the credibility of deterrent threats. This paper analyzes a model similar to Schultz (2001) of two parties in electoral competition in the context of an international crisis. The content and quality of the inferences the target can draw from the domestic politics of the challenging state are shown to be a function of the relative popularity of the parties prior to the international crisis and thus a function of the state of the economy and candidate locations on domestic issue dimensions. Several conclusions are drawn: (1) lack of support from a democratic opposition signals that an unpopular government is more likely to follow through on a threat; (2) oppositions sometimes support bluffs of unpopular governments; (3) unpopular oppositions sometimes fail to support government policies they believe will be quite popular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]