The forthcoming article “Competitive diplomacy in bargaining and war” by Joseph J. Ruggiero is summarized by the author below.
Diplomacy can advance state interests; however, if each side of a zero-sum dispute can use diplomacy to improve its terms of peace, these efforts are fundamentally competitive. This paper introduces the concept of competitive diplomacy to crisis bargaining, which is defined by three core properties: (1) it is costly, (2) it does not enhance a country’s war payoffs, and (3) it can improve a country’s payoff from cooperation. Competitive diplomacy as such becomes a channel through which characteristics of a potential war can affect the quality of peace, makes cooperation less efficient, and affects a country’s propensity to fight. How does the incentive to compete in diplomacy affect the prospects of cooperation? Which settings fare well at averting conflict while simultaneously preserving the largest gains from peace?
To answer these questions, I develop a game-theoretic model of war that captures the core trade-off between internalizing the gains from cooperation and exerting costly effort to reach preferable peace deals. There are two key ingredients of the model that establish novel results. First, while existing models treat proposers as either predetermined or randomly recognized by exogenous probability, my approach treats agenda-setting power as endogenous to a country’s performance in pre-bargaining competition. Second, this paper allows periodic outcomes to persist into the future at varying rates, which affects a country’s incentive to cooperate and their willingness to compete.
The analysis reveals new insights. First, I find that costly wars endogenously create costly peace. Even if wars never occur on the path of play, greater costs of war imply a larger surplus from cooperation. As the surplus expands, agenda-setting power becomes more valuable, creating a stronger incentive to engage in competitive diplomacy. The model also identifies when war is more efficient than cooperation. After a division of the pie is reached, through war or cooperation, it persists until an opportunity to renegotiate arises. Countries are then driven to fight efficient wars by two forces: the (exogenous) differential persistence of outcomes and the (endogenous) equilibrium effort in competitive diplomacy. The logic is analogous to that of “ripping off the bandage.”
I then extend the model to examine how frictions to cooperation affect the incentives for diplomatic competition and conflict, finding that states may risk delay in attempt to free ride on their adversary’s efforts in obtaining peace. As a result, frictions simultaneously protect against the erosion of the bargaining surplus caused by competitive diplomacy. Likewise, the model suggests that the Pareto optimal level of competition counterintuitively maximizes the probability of delay when peace deals are reliable. Reliable peace deals that avert efficient wars therefore create a trade-off between welfare and timely settlement.
The model predicts that there will not be an association between competitive diplomatic efforts and cooperative gains in equilibrium across cases. The analysis also highlights that changes to the international environment, as opposed to specific characteristics of a bilateral relationship, can give rise to war. Further, the extension to consider settlement frictions has implications on how peace mediators should approach conflict resolution in contemporary crisis situations: the model suggests that reducing frictions to cooperation—while reducing delay—can actually make both sides worse off.
About the Author: Joseph J. Ruggiero is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Their research “Competitive diplomacy in bargaining and war” is now available in Early View and will appear in a forthcoming issue of the American Journal of Political Science.