IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/intorg/v66y2012i04p679-707_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Reputation, Symmetry, and Alliance Design

Author

Listed:
  • Mattes, Michaela

Abstract

There is significant variation in the design of military alliances but scholars currently do not have a good understanding of when members choose one design over another. This article argues that alliance design is motivated, at least in part, by reliability considerations. If concerns about opportunism are high—when prospective members have a history of alliance violation—the signatories should be more willing to implement costly reliability-enhancing provisions such as greater precision in when alliance obligations apply, issue linkage, and increased institutionalization. However, this should be more likely in symmetric alliances where members of similar power levels rely on the support of their partners and thus sensitivity to opportunism is high. In asymmetric alliances, major powers may not find reliability-enhancing provisions necessary and minor powers, who do worry about the reliability of their partners, are unable to force more costly alliance designs given their limited bargaining power. The theoretical expectations are tested using data on bilateral alliances between 1919 and 2001 and the results are generally supportive of the hypotheses.

Suggested Citation

  • Mattes, Michaela, 2012. "Reputation, Symmetry, and Alliance Design," International Organization, Cambridge University Press, vol. 66(4), pages 679-707, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:66:y:2012:i:04:p:679-707_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S002081831200029X/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Cohen, 2023. "Different fears, same alliance: Multilateralism, assurance and the origins of the 1951 United States–New Zealand–Australia alliance," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 60(2), pages 322-336, March.
    2. Jeehye Kim & Jiyoung Ko, 2020. "To condone, condemn, or ‘no comment’? Explaining a patron’s reaction to a client’s unilateral provocations," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 57(3), pages 452-465, May.
    3. Aaron Rapport & Brian Rathbun, 2021. "Parties to an alliance: Ideology and the domestic politics of international institutionalization," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 58(2), pages 279-293, March.
    4. Jesse C Johnson & Stephen Joiner, 2021. "Power changes, alliance credibility, and extended deterrence," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 38(2), pages 178-199, March.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:intorg:v:66:y:2012:i:04:p:679-707_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/ino .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.