The Dilemma of Coercive Assurance in International Politics

• In Event: The Sources of Interstate Signaling Failures

Abstract

There is a dilemma at the heart of coercion. Successful coercion requires not only that I credibly threaten you until you comply, but also that I credibly assure you that I will not punish you after you comply. In this paper I develop and test Coercive Assurance Theory to show that coercion succeeds when credible threats are paired with credible assurance. I then test competing theories of the causes of coercive assurance credibility. Existing literature on commitment-making in international politics implies an inverse linear relationship—a tradeoff—between threat and assurance credibility. Instead, I propose that the credibility of threats and assurances may vary independently. In particular, I argue that states can generate credible assurances through three strategies: Disentangling Demands, Exerting Coercive Control, and Reducing Visibility. To investigate these competing theories, I turn to process tracing and comparative analysis of coercive bargaining over the nuclear weapons programs of South Africa and Libya, drawing out implications for the cases of Iran and North Korea. The ingredients of credible threats are distinct from the ingredients of credible assurance. Understanding coercion success and failure demands that we treat these concepts distinctly.

Author

• Reid Pauly, Massachusetts Institute of Technology