A Unified Model of War Onset and Outcome

Recent work regarding what influences the chances that states either win or lose wars focuses on two primary explanations. The first suggests that states win or lose largely on the merits of their war-fighting strategies and capabilities. The second explanation asserts that successful states simply...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of politics 2003-02, Vol.65 (1), p.69-91
Main Authors: Clark, David H., Reed, William
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Alliances
Battlefields
Censorship
Decision Models
Democracy
Empirical evidence
Estimation bias
Foreign policy
Government
International Conflict
International relations
Military Strategy
Modeling
Simulations
State
Statistical models
War
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Summary:Recent work regarding what influences the chances that states either win or lose wars focuses on two primary explanations. The first suggests that states win or lose largely on the merits of their war-fighting strategies and capabilities. The second explanation asserts that successful states simply choose their fights more carefully, thus selecting opponents they are more likely to defeat. Although these approaches are often perceived as contending theories, they actually are complementary in that both contribute to a unified explanation of why states win wars. This article provides a theoretical explanation of success in war by joining these two approaches and arguing that because the explanations are complementary, analyses ignoring one or the other are incomplete. We report a series of censored probit models that unify these explanations. The results of the unified model support the argument that the theories should be considered complementary. Our conclusions point to the importance of conceiving of international phenomena including conflict as processes rather than as discrete events.
ISSN:0022-3816
1468-2508
DOI:10.1111/1468-2508.t01-1-00004