Escalation to conflict as an ongoing process: the case of July 1914

Noël Bonneuil

The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 2024, vol. 48, issue 4, 398-423

Abstract: The sequence leading to conflict, as specifically in July 1914, reveals the changes in each protagonist’s propensity to wage war. To characterize its timing, escalation is viewed as a viability (differential) game in progress under the protagonists’ actions. The chronicle of confrontations and accommodations allows for estimating a responsiveness structure at the heart of the game. As the moves, which are the controls, are observed, and not the state variables, the game reduces to the minimization of a viability criterion under dynamics. Early estimation of the responsiveness structure operationalizes the procedure for crisis management and provides a way to anticipate the consequences of possible moves in escalations to conflict. The application to July 1914 shows the strength of the method.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/0022250X.2024.2340133 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:gmasxx:v:48:y:2024:i:4:p:398-423

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/gmas20

DOI: 10.1080/0022250X.2024.2340133

Access Statistics for this article

The Journal of Mathematical Sociology is currently edited by Noah Friedkin

More articles in The Journal of Mathematical Sociology from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().