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Reason and War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 December 1986

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and
David Lalman
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Affiliation:
Stanford University
David Lalman
Affiliation:
University of California, Davis
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Abstract

A new specification of the expected utility model of international conflict places expected utilities within a polar coordinate system; treats third-party choices in a manner more consistent with classical forms; estimates the expected utilities derived from not challenging existing policies; more fully represents the expected costs of conflict; and normalizes expected utilities regardless of system size. By assuming that the probability of escalation of a dispute increases monotonically with leaders' expectations of gain, we derive continuous functions for the probabilities of war, intervention, violence, and peace. The revised theory significantly improves our ability to discriminate between violent and nonviolent disputes and between violent disputes that escalated to warfare and those that did not in Europe between 1816 and 1970.

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Type
Articles
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American Political Science Review , Volume 80 , Issue 4 , December 1986, pp. 1113 - 1129
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1986

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References

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