The Bargaining Model and Additional Explanations for War

• In Event: Advances in Understanding Bargaining and Conflict

Abstract

The bargaining model of conflict is a central theoretical framework explaining why wars occur. After making a number of basic assumptions, the bargaining model shows that there always exists a negotiated settlement that both sides prefer to war. War would only occur if there is private information or credible commitment issues. It is certainly possible that the assumptions of the bargaining model are wrong, and other explanations are possible. In this paper, I show that the bargaining model can be extended to identify a set of necessary conditions for war. I.e. one condition in this set must be true for war to occur. The bargaining model makes one statement that is unambiguously true: given a set of assumptions, there would always exist a negotiated settlement that both sides prefer to war. For war to occur, this statement must be false, which means one of the assumptions must be wrong. Accordingly, any explanation for war must identify a specific assumption of the bargaining model that is incorrect, show how the explanation leads the assumption to be violated, and show that the violation is severe enough to cause war. In this paper, I will develop this list of assumptions, and use it to identify and clarify some of the most prominent alternate explanations for war.

Author

• Steven Beard, University of Colorado - Boulder