The Decision to Ally: A Theory and Test

Alliance formation has been an area of major interest in international relations. Unfortunately, most work in this area has been either speculative, theoretical, or done at the systemic level. I present a simple theory of the process by which decision-makers choose to form military alliances. Using...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Western political quarterly 1984-12, Vol.37 (4), p.523-544
Main Author: Altfeld, Michael F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alliances
ARMED FORCES AND POLICE
Decision theory
DECISION-MAKING AND GAME THEORY
Dyadic relations
International alliances
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Marginal utility
Margined securities
Military alliances
MILITARY, POLITICAL, OR ECONOMIC ALLIANCE
NATIONS, PEOPLES, ETC
POWER, PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING
Test theory
THEORY AND USES OF TESTS AND SCALES
THEORY BUILDING OR THEORETICAL APPROACH
Treaties
War
WESTERN EUROPE
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Summary:Alliance formation has been an area of major interest in international relations. Unfortunately, most work in this area has been either speculative, theoretical, or done at the systemic level. I present a simple theory of the process by which decision-makers choose to form military alliances. Using this theory, I am able to derive a necessary but not sufficient condition for the formation of military alliances among dyads of nations. I test this condition on 705 decisions to ally or not made by European major power dyads in the 19th century. The results of this test are quite encouraging with the rate of formation among those dyads which meet the condition being three times the rate among those which do not. In addition, this condition reduces the number of possible dyadic alliances by 20 percent.
ISSN:0043-4078
1065-9129
2325-8675
1938-274X
DOI:10.1177/106591298403700402