Selection institutions and war aims

James Morrow (), Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Randolph Siverson and Alastair Smith

Economics of Governance, 2006, vol. 7, issue 1, 52 pages

Abstract: We explore how the sizes of the winning coalition and selectorate influence the war aims of states. Leaders who answer to a small winning coalition are more likely to seek territorial gain as a way to increase state resources. Nonterritorial war aims produce a commitment problem in that after the war the defeated state may not comply with the victor's demands. States with large winning coalitions are more willing to continue the war to remove the enemy leader as a solution to this commitment problem. We test our hypotheses against the Militarized Interstate Dispute data set, and we find some support for our argument. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2006

Keywords: Winning coalition; war aims; postwar commitment problem; interstate conflict (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
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DOI: 10.1007/s10101-005-0108-z

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