Kicking the Can Down the Road: Strategic Delay in Interstate Crisis Bargaining (Pre-Recorded)

• In Event: Causes of War (Pre-Recorded)

Abstract

Countries bargaining over a disputed issue or territory often agree to “kick the can down the road” or essentially freeze the status quo and delay resolution until some unspecified time in the future. When players discount the future, standard models predict immediate settlement. Under what conditions then do states that discount the future and have diametrically opposed political interests agree to wait? This paper models delay in a dynamic framework when one state is a rising power and the value of the disputed issue might change over time. When the anticipated power shift is large enough to induce a preventive attack from the declining power, growing the pie for the declining power induces delay rather than fighting in the short term. Three implications follow from the analysis. First, delays that freeze the status quo in the short-term can mean tolerating short-term bargaining concessions so as to avoid fighting and to realize future benefits. Second, delay in this context is pareto improving, raising the potential that states facing conflict through commitment problems and preventive war might collude to manipulate future stakes to permit delay and avoid fighting. Third, dangerous sizable potential power shifts create the greatest potential for disputants to agree to delay. Implications from the model are examined in depth with evidence of the agreement to delay bargaining between China and Taiwan in the “1992 Consensus”.

Authors

• Brett V. Benson, Vanderbilt University

• Emerson M. S. Niou, Duke University