 Useful ignorance: The benefits of uncertainty during power shiftsKyle Haynes International Interactions, 2019, vol. 45, issue 3, 421-446 Abstract: This paper develops a formal model exploring how declining states allocate scarce military resources across multiple commitments under uncertainty. The model reveals that under certain conditions, states might actually benefit from their own uncertainty. In the model, a declining state’s uncertainty creates incentives for a revisionist rising power to misrepresent its intentions. But importantly, this misrepresentation requires the rising state to act cooperatively, implementing policies that immediately benefit the declining state. The model reveals how declining states can exploit these incentives in order to maximize the short-term benefits of their counterpart’s cooperation. Under some conditions, the benefits of this deceptive cooperation can outweigh the long-term costs of being deceived. These dynamics do not operate when the declining state is certain of the rising state’s type. I illustrate this logic through a case study of Great Britain’s pre-WWI naval withdrawal from East Asia. Date: 2019 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:45:y:2019:i:3:p:421-446 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2019.1554572 Access Statistics for this article International Interactions is currently edited by Michael Colaresi and Gerald Schneider More articles in International Interactions from Taylor & Francis Journals |
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