What you don’t know can hurt you: Information, external transparency, and interstate conflict, 1982–1999

Sam R. Bell

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2013, vol. 30, issue 5, 452-468

Abstract: This paper examines the role that information plays in conflict behavior by focusing on the external component of governmental transparency. Building from the crisis bargaining and the diversionary strategic conflict avoidance literature, I argue that governments that are more externally transparent are less likely to initiate conflict and are less likely to have the opportunity to use force for diversionary purposes. Using original data on the access that foreign media has to states, a large- N statistical analysis is implemented. The empirical analysis suggests that states that are more externally transparent are less likely to initiate conflict and that these same states are less likely to respond to domestic challenges with diversionary uses of force. This research demonstrates the important role of governmental transparency and provides support for some of the conclusions of crisis bargaining models and the strategic conflict avoidance argument in the diversionary literature.

Keywords: Crisis bargaining; interstate conflict; diversionary conflict; strategic avoidance; transparency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0738894213499659 (text/html)

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:sae:compsc:v:30:y:2013:i:5:p:452-468

DOI: 10.1177/0738894213499659

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Conflict Management and Peace Science from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().