IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jocore/v68y2024i7-8p1332-1357.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Less Is More? Shifting Power and Third-Party Military Assistance

Author

Listed:
  • William Spaniel
  • Burcu Savun

Abstract

In contexts as diverse as civil war interventions, alliances, and military coalitions, states often militarily assist protégés to counteract unfavorable power shifts. Existing theoretical work finds that such assistance mitigates commitment problems and reduces the probability of war. We develop a model that captures this but also includes information asymmetries. In many cases, overcoming the commitment problem encourages the protégé to take greater risks in bargaining, thereby increasing the probability of war due to incomplete information. Using mechanism design, we show that in some cases, no feasible transfer can reduce the probability of war to zero. More broadly, our results indicate that encouraging policymakers to further expand military assistance can backfire despite empirical relationships that may appear otherwise.

Suggested Citation

  • William Spaniel & Burcu Savun, 2024. "Less Is More? Shifting Power and Third-Party Military Assistance," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 68(7-8), pages 1332-1357, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jocore:v:68:y:2024:i:7-8:p:1332-1357
    DOI: 10.1177/00220027231202797
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027231202797
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/00220027231202797?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    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:sae:jocore:v:68:y:2024:i:7-8:p:1332-1357. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://pss.la.psu.edu/ .

    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.