Power, Preferences, and Balancing: The Durability of Coalitions and the Expansion of Conflict

Conflicts can expand when third parties perceive future threats from attackers, but how do they evaluate threats from coalitions rather than single states? Multilateral aggregations of power can generate fear in observers that coalitions may soon turn against them. Yet only some provoke opposition f...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:International studies quarterly 2014-03, Vol.58 (1), p.146-157
Main Author: Wolford, Scott
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Armed conflict
BALANCE OF POWER
Coalitions
Cold wars
Conflict
Conflict management
Durability
Foreign policy
International cooperation
International disputes
International relations
Mediation
Multilateralism
Neutrality
Political opposition
Political power
Preferences
Probabilities
Statistical significance
Third-party intervention
War
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Conflicts can expand when third parties perceive future threats from attackers, but how do they evaluate threats from coalitions rather than single states? Multilateral aggregations of power can generate fear in observers that coalitions may soon turn against them. Yet only some provoke opposition from observers, reducing their chances of success and expanding the conflict, while others do not. What accounts for this difference? I analyze a game-theoretic model of a third party's decision to intervene in an ongoing conflict and a coalition's decision to disband afterward, which is most likely when its preferences are diverse. When coalitions are powerful, an increasing diversity of foreign policy preferences reduces the probability that observer states balance against them, but when coalitions are weak, increasing diversity increases the probability of balancing. I find support for this conditional relationship between power, preferences, and balancing in a sample of 180 interstate crises from 1946 to 2000.
ISSN:0020-8833
1468-2478
DOI:10.1111/isqu.12036