National Security Institutions and Interstate Crisis

• In Event: The Sources of Interstate Signaling Failures

Abstract

Why do interstate crises occur? Existing scholarship posits that states use crises to reveal information about capabilities, resolve, and preferences. This paper instead argues that interstate crisis propensity is in part a function of the design of national security institutions, defined as the rules and procedures for deciding and executing national security strategy. When states design national security institutions that integrate defense, diplomatic, and intelligence bureaucracies into a dedicated forum for deliberation and information sharing—such as the U.S. National Security Council—domestic capacity to reveal information absent a high-stakes crisis improves. However, when states design fragmented or exclusionary institutions, states are prone to inadvertently miss vital intelligence or send contradictory messages. Institutional inefficiencies in signal reception and transmission increase the probability that states select into interstate crisis. This paper tests the argument through statistical analyses that employ an original cross-national time series dataset on national security institutions across the world from 1946 to 2012. These data include 857 unique decision-making and coordination bodies, as well as 5,339 chief executives, defense ministers, foreign ministers, and senior intelligence advisers. The findings demonstrate a strong, negative relationship between the strength of national security institutions and propensity for interstate crisis. Complementary case analysis of the 1962 Sino-Indian Border War illustrates the proposed signaling mechanism, leveraging new archival evidence from China and India.

Author

• Tyler C. Jost, Brown University