Dispute Resolution Institutions and Strategic Militarization

Adam Meirowitz, Massimo Morelli (), Kristopher W. Ramsay and Francesco Squintani ()

No 540, Working Papers from IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University

Abstract: Existant studies of confl ict, negotiation and international relations do not take into account that the institutions used to resolve disputes shape the incentives for entering disputes in the first place. Because engagement in a costly and destructive war is the `punishment' for entering a dispute, institutions that reduce the chances that a dispute lead to open con flict may make more disputes emerge and incentivize militarization. We provide a simple model in which the support for unmediated peace talks, while effective in improving the chance of peace for a given distribution of military strength, ultimately leads to the emergence of more disputes and to higher con flict outbreak. Happily, we find that not all con flict resolution institutions suffer from these, apparently paradoxical, but actually quite intuitive drawbacks. We identify a form of third-party intervention inspired by the celebrated work by Myerson, and show that it can broker peace in emerged disputes effectively and also avoid perverse militarization incentives.

Date: 2015
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Journal Article: Dispute Resolution Institutions and Strategic Militarization (2019)
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