Contingency in War Termination: The Role of Hard-liners and Moderates.

Recent war termination studies have done much to explain war termination processes. However, recent studies largely assume belligerents to be unitary actors. Moreover, even analyses relaxing the unitary actor assumption in order to investigate how regime-type variations affect belligerents' behavior mostly treat belligerents' governments as unitary actors. This paper argues that fuller explanations of war termination processes require an accounting of the contingent nature of belligerents' decision-making processes. Specifically, via a case study of the Philippine-American War, this study proposes that the positioning and relative influence of hard-liners and moderates within belligerents is a crucial factor in wartime decision-making and war termination. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]