Inducing Deterrence through Moral Hazard in Alliance Contracts

@article{Benson2014InducingDT,
  title={Inducing Deterrence through Moral Hazard in Alliance Contracts},
  author={Brett V. Benson and Adam Meirowitz and Kristopher W Ramsay},
  journal={Journal of Conflict Resolution},
  year={2014},
  volume={58},
  pages={307 - 335}
}
Do military alliances foster aggressive behavior in allies to the point of undermining the security goal of the alliance? Like others, we find that alliance commitments may cause moral hazard because allies do not fully internalize the costs of actions that can lead to war. But unlike others, we show that the effect of moral hazard can improve security. Moral hazard can be the driving force behind generating deterrence and avoiding costly conflict. Aggressors may refrain from initiating crises… 
View on SAGE
scholar.princeton.edu
37 Citations
Highly Influential Citations
3
Background Citations
8

Figures from this paper

37 Citations

The Unforeseen Consequences of Extended Deterrence: Moral Hazard in a Nuclear Client State
Do “nuclear umbrellas” create a moral hazard that can increase the risk of war? In this article, we investigate whether situations of extended deterrence in which a nuclear patron makes a defensive…
Defence Commitment and Deterrence in the Theory of War
The article shows that a defending army, particularly a small one, can fight hard when attacked by a predator. The result arises in the commitment equilibrium of a model with intergenerational…
Secrecy among Friends: Covert Military Alliances and Portfolio Consistency
  • R. Kuo
  • Political Science
    Journal of Conflict Resolution
  • 2019
Scholars think that friendly nations adopt secrecy to avoid domestic costs and facilitate cooperation. But this article uncovers a historical puzzle. Between 1870 and 1916, over 80 percent of…
Political Institutions and Political Conflict: Alliances and Preventive War
Do alliances prevent preventive war? Preventive war motivations are an important cause of interstate war. Recent research finds that alliances deter less intense forms of militarized conflict.…
Corrigendum to: Defence Commitment and Deterrence in the Theory of War
The paper shows that a defending army, particularly a small one, can fight hard when attacked by a predator. The result arises in the commitment equilibrium of a model with intergenerational…
Defense Pacts and Deterrence: Caveat Emptor
In a previous study, we provided a novel empirical test that indicated that alliance formation is often a poor means of deterring militarized disputes or preventing war. In this issue, Leeds and…
Do Alliances Really Deter?
The scholarly literature is still divided on the relationship between defensive alliances and interstate conflict. While some scholars argue that defensive alliances can deter conflict, others posit…
Political Instability and the Failure of Deterrence
To study the conceptual foundations of deterrence, we develop a model of an international crisis between a country seeking to maintain a peaceful status quo (Defender), and a potential aggressor…
Military Coalitions and the Politics of Information
When can diplomatic communication facilitate military cooperation? I analyze a formal model in which states may form coalitions for war but are uncertain about a partner’s willingness to fight. I…
Domestic Signaling of Commitment Credibility: Military Recruitment and Alliance Formation
We provide a new perspective on how domestic factors shape the prospects for international cooperation. Internal arms, specifically conscription, signals a willingness and suitability to be a…
...
...

References

SHOWING 1-10 OF 44 REFERENCES
Extended deterrence and alliance formation
Inductive approaches have little conclusive to say about whether alliances make war more or less likely. Moreover, the empirical associations are ambiguous. Modeling alliance formation in an…
Reevaluating Alliance Reliability
Previously reported empirical evidence suggests that when conflict arises, military alliances are not reliable; state leaders should only expect their alliance partners to join them in war about 25%…
Alliances, Credibility, and Peacetime Costs
Alliances are not perfectly credible. Although alliances raise the probability of intervention into war, many allies do not honor their promise in wartime. A formal model of alliances as signals of…
Principal‐Agent Problems in Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazards, Adverse Selection, and the Commitment Dilemma
A number of recent studies have concluded that humanitarian intervention can produce unintended consequences that reduce or completely undermine conflict management efforts. Some analysts have argued…
Signaling Foreign Policy Interests
The author distinguishes between two types of costly signals that state leaders might employ in trying to credibly communicate their foreign policy interests to other states, whether in the realm of…
The Deterrence-Versus-Restraint Dilemma in Extended Deterrence: Explaining British Policy in 1914
This essay explores the deterrence-versus-restraint dilemma in extended deterrence in the context of the Tripartite Crisis Game under incomplete information. This model was developed specifically to…
Can Issue Linkage Improve Treaty Credibility?
Can issue linkage, the combining of multiple issues into a single agreement, enhance the credibility of an agreement? I use the alliance relations of buffer states (states located between two…
Stable Alliance Formation in Distributional Conflict
Moral hazard, intervention and internal war: A conceptual analysis
Abstract Intervention may cause as well as calm internal wars. One way it may cause them is captured by the concept of moral hazard, which suggests that domestic groups which would not otherwise…
Alignment Patterns, Crisis Bargaining, and Extended Deterrence: A Game‐Theoretic Analysis
TLDR
This model captures some of the tensions implicit in the ''Alliance'' and ''Adversary'' games, two related but theoretically isolated models due to Snyder, and delineates and explores the circumstances that give rise to the ''deterrence versus restraint'' dilemma.
...
...