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Kristopher Ramsay

Datos Biográficos

ID4386046
NOMBREKristopher Ramsay
NOMBRESKristopher
APELLIDORamsay
FIRMARAMSAY K
AFILIACIONESPrinceton University
ORCID0000-0002-3446-1820
VERIFICADOSí
TOTAL DE OBRAS25
TOTAL DE CITAS468
TOTAL COMO AUTOR25
TOTAL COMO EDITOR0
PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN2004
AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN2026
ÍNDICE H10
  • Political Polarization and Compromise in Secession Politics1

    Open Access•Kristopher Ramsay, Iztok Prezelj•ARTICLE•International Studies Quarterly•2026

    Why do some secession movements lead to violent conflict, others are resolved through policy concessions, while still others end in peaceful separation? Existing theories focused on information asymmetries or commitment problems cannot fully explain this variation in outcomes. We propose a bargaining theory of secession incorporating three critical factors: policy polarization, credible exit, and resource rents. We demonstrate that secessions dif…

  • Quantifying theory in politics

    Open Access•Nathan Canen, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Journal of Theoretical Politics•2024•Referencias: 69

    The best empirical research in political science clearly defines substantive parameters of interest, presents a set of assumptions that guarantees their identification, and uses an appropriate estimator. We argue for the importance of explicitly integrating rigorous theory into this process and focus on the advantages of doing so. By integrating a theoretical structure into one’s empirical strategy, researchers can quantify the effects of competi…

  • The Effective Power of Military Coalitions

    Brenton Kenkel, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Politics•2024•Citada por: 1•Referencias: 48

  • Fanatical Peace

    Peter Bils, Richard Jordan et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Politics•2024•Referencias: 32

  • The accountability of politicians in international crises and the nature of audience cost

    Open Access•Scott Ashworth, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Political Science Research and…•2024•Citada por: 1•Referencias: 48

    We study the problem of how citizens should punish or reward a leader's choices during international crises. Audiences should impose costs rooted in citizens’ preferences over policy outcomes, but that need not mean that these costs directly reflect the citizens’ preferences over actions. Instead, rewards and punishments are valued for their equilibrium consequences. To understand how citizens’ policy preferences shape electoral accountability, w…

  • Dyadic Conflict

    Colin Krainin, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Politics•2022•Citada por: 2•Referencias: 34

    From the democratic peace to the authoritarian peace to the conflict-prone behavior of democratizing states, empirical evidence shows that regime types influence the decision to go to war. The only way distinct regimes can behave differently in similar circumstances is if they have different tastes for settlements. Moreover, dyadic negotiation is dependent on the regime types of both participants. Here we offer a dyadic theory of conflict where s…

  • Preventive war and sovereign debt

    Open Access•Colin Krainin, Kristopher Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•Conflict Management and Peace…•2021•Citada por: 3•Referencias: 27

    The preventive motive for war arises because states cannot commit to limit the use of their growing power. This commitment problem can lead to war when there are not enough resources available to compensate the declining state for their expected losses. In this article, we show how capital markets affect preventive war incentives by introducing a profit-maximizing bond market to the canonical bargaining model of war. We find that the nature of th…

  • Third Party Intervention and Strategic Militarization

    Adam Meirowitz, Massimo Morelli et al.•ARTICLE•Quarterly Journal of Political…•2019•Citada por: 1

    Codified at the 2005 United Nations World Summit, the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect articulates an ideal of international interventions motivated by compassion for victims and a desire to bring stability to hot-spots around the world. Despite this consensus, practitioners and scholars have debated the importance of unintended consequences stemming from the expectation of third-party intervention. We analyze how third-party intervention sh…

  • Dispute Resolution Institutions and Strategic Militarization

    Adam Meirowitz, Massimo Morelli et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Political Economy•2018•Citada por: 8•Referencias: 25

    Engagement in a costly and destructive war can be understood as the punishment for entering into a dispute. Institutions that reduce the chance that disputes lead to war make this punishment less severe. This may incentivize hawkish political choices like militarization, and potentially offset the benefits of peace-brokering institutions. We analyze a simple model in which unmediated peace talks are effective at improving the chances of peace for…

  • Gulliver Untied

    Open Access•Joanne Gowa, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•International Organization•2017•Citada por: 3•Referencias: 33

    That the anarchic system generates incentives for states to balance each other's power is conventional wisdom in international relations. As such, the contemporary unipolar system is an anomaly. Observers explain its existence in several ways, including the benevolence of US hegemony and the constraints international institutions impose on the exercise of US power. None of them, however, explain what is perhaps the most puzzling outcome of the So…

  • Information, Uncertainty, and War

    Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Annual Review of Political Science•2017•Citada por: 28•Referencias: 71

    Uncertainty about capabilities, intent, or resolve has long been linked to war. More recently, the bargaining model of war has established uncertainty, also referred to as asymmetric information, as one of the two major causes of costly conflict, the other being the dynamics of commitment in anarchy. A growing theoretical literature has made significant strides in fleshing out causal mechanisms and expanding our understanding of the role of infor…

  • Changing capabilities, uncertainty, and the risk of war in crisis bargaining

    Open Access•Brett V Benson, Adam Meirowitz et al.•ARTICLE•Research & Politics•2016•Citada por: 5•Referencias: 19

    Understanding how changes to war-fighting technology influence the probability of war is central to security studies. Yet the effects of changes in the distribution of power are not obvious. All else equal, increasing a country’s power makes it more aggressive when making demands or more resistant to accepting offers, but all else is not equal. Changes in power influence the behavior of both countries and can generate countervailing incentives. I…

  • Inducing Deterrence through Moral Hazard in Alliance Contracts

    Open Access•Brett V Benson, Adam Meirowitz et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2014•Citada por: 36•Referencias: 30

    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 conflic…

  • The Calculus of the Security Dilemma

    Avidit Acharya, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•Quarterly Journal of Political…•2013•Citada por: 8•Referencias: 8

    Some scholars known as offensive realists claim that in the uncertainty of world politics, trust and cooperation between states is extremely unlikely. Others, such as defensive realists, claim that rational states are capable of finding ways to counteract the complications created by misperceptions and distrust, and to reduce uncertainty to levels where it no longer inhibits cooperation. In this paper, we construct a formal model to show how in s…

  • Credibility and Commitment in Crisis Bargaining

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Adam Meirowitz et al.•ARTICLE•Political Science Research and…•2013•Citada por: 4•Referencias: 14

    Although scholars of international security share a skepticism for the extent to which agreements can be externally enforced, much existing game-theoretic work involves strong forms of commitment. Building on the canonical model of crisis bargaining, this article analyzes the role of two forms of commitment in bargaining: the ability to commit to a settlement and the ability to commit to end negotiations and initiate war fighting. The findings sh…

  • Cheap Talk Diplomacy, Voluntary Negotiations, and Variable Bargaining Power1

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•International Studies Quarterly•2011•Citada por: 37•Referencias: 26

    It is well known that during a crisis, unitary rational states have an incentive to misrepresent their true resolve and willingness to go to war. This theoretical result has been taken to imply that diplomacy, interpreted as pre-bargaining communication, can have no effect on the way crises play out. This paper shows an intuitive way that diplomatic cheap talk can matter in a single crisis between countries, especially when the bargaining game ha…

  • Revisiting the Resource Curse

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•International Organization•2011•Citada por: 60•Referencias: 28

    Fluctuations in the price of oil and the contemporaneous political changes in oil-producing countries have raised an important question about the link between oil rents, political institutions, and civil liberties. This article presents a simple model of the relationship between resource income and political freedom and, using an instrumental variables approach, estimates the causal effect of shocks to oil revenues on levels of democracy. Using a…

  • Uncertainty and Incentives in Crisis Bargaining

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•American Journal of Political…•2011•Citada por: 68•Referencias: 43

    We study two different varieties of uncertainty that countries can face in international crises and establish general results about the relationship between these sources of uncertainty and the possibility of peaceful resolution of conflict. Among our results, we show that under some weak conditions, there is no equilibrium of any crisis bargaining game that has voluntary agreements and zero probability of costly war. We also show that while unce…

  • When Is Shuttle Diplomacy Worth the Commute? Information Sharing through Mediation

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•World Politics•2010•Citada por: 30•Referencias: 25

    The authors study the conflict mediation problem, sometimes called “shuttle diplomacy,” when the mediator acts as a go-between and must gather information from the disputants. In the context of a general model of information mediation, they show that the incentive that disputants have to lie to the mediator undoes any advantage that might be gained by adding communication with a third party. In fact, the main result shows that any equilibrium out…

  • Outside Options and Burden Sharing in Nonbinding Alliances

    Open Access•Songying Fang, Songying Fang Songying Fang et al.•ARTICLE•Political Research Quarterly•2010•Citada por: 10•Referencias: 19

    The authors develop a model of alliances with outside options to study burden sharing in nonbinding alliance agreements. The analysis provides an explanation for the variation in ally contributions to NATO over time and why the post—Cold War period has seen an increase in the use of coalitions of the willing. Additionally, the analysis reveals something of an initiator’s disadvantage in burden sharing—the initiator of an alliance action pays a di…

  • Settling It on the Field

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2008•Citada por: 30•Referencias: 40

    Using a sample of battlefield data from twentieth-century wars, the author of this article tests a number of previously untested hypotheses linking battle events and the decision to end violent conflict. The author explores how factors like the distribution of power, battlefield casualties, and information that flows from the battlefield influence war termination. The analysis speaks to the validity of competing rational choice theories of war te…

  • Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

    Open Access•Scott Ashworth, Joshua D Clinton et al.•ARTICLE•American Political Science Review•2008•Citada por: 31•Referencias: 9

    In "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," Robert Pape (2003) presents an analysis of his suicide terrorism data. He uses the data to draw inferences about how territorial occupation and religious extremism affect the decision of terrorist groups to use suicide tactics. We show that the data are incapable of supporting Pape's conclusions because he "samples on the dependent variable."-The data only contain cases in which suicide terror is use…

  • Mutual Optimism and War

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•American Journal of Political…•2007•Citada por: 37•Referencias: 41

    Working with the definition of mutual optimism as war due to inconsistent beliefs, we formalize the mutual optimism argument to test the theory's logical validity. We find that in the class of strategic situations where mutual optimism is a necessary condition for war—i.e., where war is known to be inefficient, war only occurs if both sides prefer it to a negotiated settlement, and on the eve of conflict war is self‐evident—then there is no Bayes…

  • The Common Priors Assumption

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2006•Citada por: 10•Referencias: 8

    In a recent article in this journal, Smith and Stam (2004) call into question the usefulness and applicability of what is know as the common priors assumption in the modeling of countries' strategic behavior in international relations. While the authors of this comment acknowledge that it is possible to incorporate noncommon priors in models of politics in a mathematically consistent fashion, they do not agree with the article's claims regarding …

  • Politics at the Water’s Edge

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2004•Citada por: 55•Referencias: 23

    The role of domestic politics is investigated, using a model to show how domestic opposition during a crisis can reveal to a rival state private information about the incumbent. In particular, the public nature of democratic competition results in the institutionally induced credibility of the message

  • Uncertainty and Incentives in Crisis Bargaining

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•American Journal of Political…•2011•Citada por: 68•Referencias: 43

    We study two different varieties of uncertainty that countries can face in international crises and establish general results about the relationship between these sources of uncertainty and the possibility of peaceful resolution of conflict. Among our results, we show that under some weak conditions, there is no equilibrium of any crisis bargaining game that has voluntary agreements and zero probability of costly war. We also show that while unce…

  • Revisiting the Resource Curse

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•International Organization•2011•Citada por: 60•Referencias: 28

    Fluctuations in the price of oil and the contemporaneous political changes in oil-producing countries have raised an important question about the link between oil rents, political institutions, and civil liberties. This article presents a simple model of the relationship between resource income and political freedom and, using an instrumental variables approach, estimates the causal effect of shocks to oil revenues on levels of democracy. Using a…

  • Politics at the Water’s Edge

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2004•Citada por: 55•Referencias: 23

    The role of domestic politics is investigated, using a model to show how domestic opposition during a crisis can reveal to a rival state private information about the incumbent. In particular, the public nature of democratic competition results in the institutionally induced credibility of the message

  • Cheap Talk Diplomacy, Voluntary Negotiations, and Variable Bargaining Power1

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•International Studies Quarterly•2011•Citada por: 37•Referencias: 26

    It is well known that during a crisis, unitary rational states have an incentive to misrepresent their true resolve and willingness to go to war. This theoretical result has been taken to imply that diplomacy, interpreted as pre-bargaining communication, can have no effect on the way crises play out. This paper shows an intuitive way that diplomatic cheap talk can matter in a single crisis between countries, especially when the bargaining game ha…

  • Mutual Optimism and War

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•American Journal of Political…•2007•Citada por: 37•Referencias: 41

    Working with the definition of mutual optimism as war due to inconsistent beliefs, we formalize the mutual optimism argument to test the theory's logical validity. We find that in the class of strategic situations where mutual optimism is a necessary condition for war—i.e., where war is known to be inefficient, war only occurs if both sides prefer it to a negotiated settlement, and on the eve of conflict war is self‐evident—then there is no Bayes…

  • Inducing Deterrence through Moral Hazard in Alliance Contracts

    Open Access•Brett V Benson, Adam Meirowitz et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2014•Citada por: 36•Referencias: 30

    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 conflic…

  • Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

    Open Access•Scott Ashworth, Joshua D Clinton et al.•ARTICLE•American Political Science Review•2008•Citada por: 31•Referencias: 9

    In "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," Robert Pape (2003) presents an analysis of his suicide terrorism data. He uses the data to draw inferences about how territorial occupation and religious extremism affect the decision of terrorist groups to use suicide tactics. We show that the data are incapable of supporting Pape's conclusions because he "samples on the dependent variable."-The data only contain cases in which suicide terror is use…

  • When Is Shuttle Diplomacy Worth the Commute? Information Sharing through Mediation

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•World Politics•2010•Citada por: 30•Referencias: 25

    The authors study the conflict mediation problem, sometimes called “shuttle diplomacy,” when the mediator acts as a go-between and must gather information from the disputants. In the context of a general model of information mediation, they show that the incentive that disputants have to lie to the mediator undoes any advantage that might be gained by adding communication with a third party. In fact, the main result shows that any equilibrium out…

  • Settling It on the Field

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2008•Citada por: 30•Referencias: 40

    Using a sample of battlefield data from twentieth-century wars, the author of this article tests a number of previously untested hypotheses linking battle events and the decision to end violent conflict. The author explores how factors like the distribution of power, battlefield casualties, and information that flows from the battlefield influence war termination. The analysis speaks to the validity of competing rational choice theories of war te…

  • Information, Uncertainty, and War

    Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Annual Review of Political Science•2017•Citada por: 28•Referencias: 71

    Uncertainty about capabilities, intent, or resolve has long been linked to war. More recently, the bargaining model of war has established uncertainty, also referred to as asymmetric information, as one of the two major causes of costly conflict, the other being the dynamics of commitment in anarchy. A growing theoretical literature has made significant strides in fleshing out causal mechanisms and expanding our understanding of the role of infor…

  • Outside Options and Burden Sharing in Nonbinding Alliances

    Open Access•Songying Fang, Songying Fang Songying Fang et al.•ARTICLE•Political Research Quarterly•2010•Citada por: 10•Referencias: 19

    The authors develop a model of alliances with outside options to study burden sharing in nonbinding alliance agreements. The analysis provides an explanation for the variation in ally contributions to NATO over time and why the post—Cold War period has seen an increase in the use of coalitions of the willing. Additionally, the analysis reveals something of an initiator’s disadvantage in burden sharing—the initiator of an alliance action pays a di…

  • The Common Priors Assumption

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2006•Citada por: 10•Referencias: 8

    In a recent article in this journal, Smith and Stam (2004) call into question the usefulness and applicability of what is know as the common priors assumption in the modeling of countries' strategic behavior in international relations. While the authors of this comment acknowledge that it is possible to incorporate noncommon priors in models of politics in a mathematically consistent fashion, they do not agree with the article's claims regarding …

  • Dispute Resolution Institutions and Strategic Militarization

    Adam Meirowitz, Massimo Morelli et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Political Economy•2018•Citada por: 8•Referencias: 25

    Engagement in a costly and destructive war can be understood as the punishment for entering into a dispute. Institutions that reduce the chance that disputes lead to war make this punishment less severe. This may incentivize hawkish political choices like militarization, and potentially offset the benefits of peace-brokering institutions. We analyze a simple model in which unmediated peace talks are effective at improving the chances of peace for…

  • The Calculus of the Security Dilemma

    Avidit Acharya, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•Quarterly Journal of Political…•2013•Citada por: 8•Referencias: 8

    Some scholars known as offensive realists claim that in the uncertainty of world politics, trust and cooperation between states is extremely unlikely. Others, such as defensive realists, claim that rational states are capable of finding ways to counteract the complications created by misperceptions and distrust, and to reduce uncertainty to levels where it no longer inhibits cooperation. In this paper, we construct a formal model to show how in s…

  • Changing capabilities, uncertainty, and the risk of war in crisis bargaining

    Open Access•Brett V Benson, Adam Meirowitz et al.•ARTICLE•Research & Politics•2016•Citada por: 5•Referencias: 19

    Understanding how changes to war-fighting technology influence the probability of war is central to security studies. Yet the effects of changes in the distribution of power are not obvious. All else equal, increasing a country’s power makes it more aggressive when making demands or more resistant to accepting offers, but all else is not equal. Changes in power influence the behavior of both countries and can generate countervailing incentives. I…

  • Credibility and Commitment in Crisis Bargaining

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Adam Meirowitz et al.•ARTICLE•Political Science Research and…•2013•Citada por: 4•Referencias: 14

    Although scholars of international security share a skepticism for the extent to which agreements can be externally enforced, much existing game-theoretic work involves strong forms of commitment. Building on the canonical model of crisis bargaining, this article analyzes the role of two forms of commitment in bargaining: the ability to commit to a settlement and the ability to commit to end negotiations and initiate war fighting. The findings sh…

  • Preventive war and sovereign debt

    Open Access•Colin Krainin, Kristopher Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•Conflict Management and Peace…•2021•Citada por: 3•Referencias: 27

    The preventive motive for war arises because states cannot commit to limit the use of their growing power. This commitment problem can lead to war when there are not enough resources available to compensate the declining state for their expected losses. In this article, we show how capital markets affect preventive war incentives by introducing a profit-maximizing bond market to the canonical bargaining model of war. We find that the nature of th…

  • Gulliver Untied

    Open Access•Joanne Gowa, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•International Organization•2017•Citada por: 3•Referencias: 33

    That the anarchic system generates incentives for states to balance each other's power is conventional wisdom in international relations. As such, the contemporary unipolar system is an anomaly. Observers explain its existence in several ways, including the benevolence of US hegemony and the constraints international institutions impose on the exercise of US power. None of them, however, explain what is perhaps the most puzzling outcome of the So…

  • Dyadic Conflict

    Colin Krainin, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Politics•2022•Citada por: 2•Referencias: 34

    From the democratic peace to the authoritarian peace to the conflict-prone behavior of democratizing states, empirical evidence shows that regime types influence the decision to go to war. The only way distinct regimes can behave differently in similar circumstances is if they have different tastes for settlements. Moreover, dyadic negotiation is dependent on the regime types of both participants. Here we offer a dyadic theory of conflict where s…

  • The Effective Power of Military Coalitions

    Brenton Kenkel, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Politics•2024•Citada por: 1•Referencias: 48

  • The accountability of politicians in international crises and the nature of audience cost

    Open Access•Scott Ashworth, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Political Science Research and…•2024•Citada por: 1•Referencias: 48

    We study the problem of how citizens should punish or reward a leader's choices during international crises. Audiences should impose costs rooted in citizens’ preferences over policy outcomes, but that need not mean that these costs directly reflect the citizens’ preferences over actions. Instead, rewards and punishments are valued for their equilibrium consequences. To understand how citizens’ policy preferences shape electoral accountability, w…

  • Third Party Intervention and Strategic Militarization

    Adam Meirowitz, Massimo Morelli et al.•ARTICLE•Quarterly Journal of Political…•2019•Citada por: 1

    Codified at the 2005 United Nations World Summit, the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect articulates an ideal of international interventions motivated by compassion for victims and a desire to bring stability to hot-spots around the world. Despite this consensus, practitioners and scholars have debated the importance of unintended consequences stemming from the expectation of third-party intervention. We analyze how third-party intervention sh…

  • Politics at the Water’s Edge

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2004•Citada por: 55•Referencias: 23

    The role of domestic politics is investigated, using a model to show how domestic opposition during a crisis can reveal to a rival state private information about the incumbent. In particular, the public nature of democratic competition results in the institutionally induced credibility of the message

  • The Common Priors Assumption

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2006•Citada por: 10•Referencias: 8

    In a recent article in this journal, Smith and Stam (2004) call into question the usefulness and applicability of what is know as the common priors assumption in the modeling of countries' strategic behavior in international relations. While the authors of this comment acknowledge that it is possible to incorporate noncommon priors in models of politics in a mathematically consistent fashion, they do not agree with the article's claims regarding …

  • Mutual Optimism and War

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•American Journal of Political…•2007•Citada por: 37•Referencias: 41

    Working with the definition of mutual optimism as war due to inconsistent beliefs, we formalize the mutual optimism argument to test the theory's logical validity. We find that in the class of strategic situations where mutual optimism is a necessary condition for war—i.e., where war is known to be inefficient, war only occurs if both sides prefer it to a negotiated settlement, and on the eve of conflict war is self‐evident—then there is no Bayes…

  • Settling It on the Field

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2008•Citada por: 30•Referencias: 40

    Using a sample of battlefield data from twentieth-century wars, the author of this article tests a number of previously untested hypotheses linking battle events and the decision to end violent conflict. The author explores how factors like the distribution of power, battlefield casualties, and information that flows from the battlefield influence war termination. The analysis speaks to the validity of competing rational choice theories of war te…

  • Design, Inference, and the Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism

    Open Access•Scott Ashworth, Joshua D Clinton et al.•ARTICLE•American Political Science Review•2008•Citada por: 31•Referencias: 9

    In "The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," Robert Pape (2003) presents an analysis of his suicide terrorism data. He uses the data to draw inferences about how territorial occupation and religious extremism affect the decision of terrorist groups to use suicide tactics. We show that the data are incapable of supporting Pape's conclusions because he "samples on the dependent variable."-The data only contain cases in which suicide terror is use…

  • When Is Shuttle Diplomacy Worth the Commute? Information Sharing through Mediation

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•World Politics•2010•Citada por: 30•Referencias: 25

    The authors study the conflict mediation problem, sometimes called “shuttle diplomacy,” when the mediator acts as a go-between and must gather information from the disputants. In the context of a general model of information mediation, they show that the incentive that disputants have to lie to the mediator undoes any advantage that might be gained by adding communication with a third party. In fact, the main result shows that any equilibrium out…

  • Outside Options and Burden Sharing in Nonbinding Alliances

    Open Access•Songying Fang, Songying Fang Songying Fang et al.•ARTICLE•Political Research Quarterly•2010•Citada por: 10•Referencias: 19

    The authors develop a model of alliances with outside options to study burden sharing in nonbinding alliance agreements. The analysis provides an explanation for the variation in ally contributions to NATO over time and why the post—Cold War period has seen an increase in the use of coalitions of the willing. Additionally, the analysis reveals something of an initiator’s disadvantage in burden sharing—the initiator of an alliance action pays a di…

  • Cheap Talk Diplomacy, Voluntary Negotiations, and Variable Bargaining Power1

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•International Studies Quarterly•2011•Citada por: 37•Referencias: 26

    It is well known that during a crisis, unitary rational states have an incentive to misrepresent their true resolve and willingness to go to war. This theoretical result has been taken to imply that diplomacy, interpreted as pre-bargaining communication, can have no effect on the way crises play out. This paper shows an intuitive way that diplomatic cheap talk can matter in a single crisis between countries, especially when the bargaining game ha…

  • Revisiting the Resource Curse

    Open Access•Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•International Organization•2011•Citada por: 60•Referencias: 28

    Fluctuations in the price of oil and the contemporaneous political changes in oil-producing countries have raised an important question about the link between oil rents, political institutions, and civil liberties. This article presents a simple model of the relationship between resource income and political freedom and, using an instrumental variables approach, estimates the causal effect of shocks to oil revenues on levels of democracy. Using a…

  • Uncertainty and Incentives in Crisis Bargaining

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•American Journal of Political…•2011•Citada por: 68•Referencias: 43

    We study two different varieties of uncertainty that countries can face in international crises and establish general results about the relationship between these sources of uncertainty and the possibility of peaceful resolution of conflict. Among our results, we show that under some weak conditions, there is no equilibrium of any crisis bargaining game that has voluntary agreements and zero probability of costly war. We also show that while unce…

  • The Calculus of the Security Dilemma

    Avidit Acharya, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•Quarterly Journal of Political…•2013•Citada por: 8•Referencias: 8

    Some scholars known as offensive realists claim that in the uncertainty of world politics, trust and cooperation between states is extremely unlikely. Others, such as defensive realists, claim that rational states are capable of finding ways to counteract the complications created by misperceptions and distrust, and to reduce uncertainty to levels where it no longer inhibits cooperation. In this paper, we construct a formal model to show how in s…

  • Credibility and Commitment in Crisis Bargaining

    Open Access•Mark Fey, Adam Meirowitz et al.•ARTICLE•Political Science Research and…•2013•Citada por: 4•Referencias: 14

    Although scholars of international security share a skepticism for the extent to which agreements can be externally enforced, much existing game-theoretic work involves strong forms of commitment. Building on the canonical model of crisis bargaining, this article analyzes the role of two forms of commitment in bargaining: the ability to commit to a settlement and the ability to commit to end negotiations and initiate war fighting. The findings sh…

  • Inducing Deterrence through Moral Hazard in Alliance Contracts

    Open Access•Brett V Benson, Adam Meirowitz et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Conflict Resolution•2014•Citada por: 36•Referencias: 30

    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 conflic…

  • Changing capabilities, uncertainty, and the risk of war in crisis bargaining

    Open Access•Brett V Benson, Adam Meirowitz et al.•ARTICLE•Research & Politics•2016•Citada por: 5•Referencias: 19

    Understanding how changes to war-fighting technology influence the probability of war is central to security studies. Yet the effects of changes in the distribution of power are not obvious. All else equal, increasing a country’s power makes it more aggressive when making demands or more resistant to accepting offers, but all else is not equal. Changes in power influence the behavior of both countries and can generate countervailing incentives. I…

  • Gulliver Untied

    Open Access•Joanne Gowa, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•International Organization•2017•Citada por: 3•Referencias: 33

    That the anarchic system generates incentives for states to balance each other's power is conventional wisdom in international relations. As such, the contemporary unipolar system is an anomaly. Observers explain its existence in several ways, including the benevolence of US hegemony and the constraints international institutions impose on the exercise of US power. None of them, however, explain what is perhaps the most puzzling outcome of the So…

  • Information, Uncertainty, and War

    Kristopher W Ramsay, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Annual Review of Political Science•2017•Citada por: 28•Referencias: 71

    Uncertainty about capabilities, intent, or resolve has long been linked to war. More recently, the bargaining model of war has established uncertainty, also referred to as asymmetric information, as one of the two major causes of costly conflict, the other being the dynamics of commitment in anarchy. A growing theoretical literature has made significant strides in fleshing out causal mechanisms and expanding our understanding of the role of infor…

  • Dispute Resolution Institutions and Strategic Militarization

    Adam Meirowitz, Massimo Morelli et al.•ARTICLE•Journal of Political Economy•2018•Citada por: 8•Referencias: 25

    Engagement in a costly and destructive war can be understood as the punishment for entering into a dispute. Institutions that reduce the chance that disputes lead to war make this punishment less severe. This may incentivize hawkish political choices like militarization, and potentially offset the benefits of peace-brokering institutions. We analyze a simple model in which unmediated peace talks are effective at improving the chances of peace for…

  • Third Party Intervention and Strategic Militarization

    Adam Meirowitz, Massimo Morelli et al.•ARTICLE•Quarterly Journal of Political…•2019•Citada por: 1

    Codified at the 2005 United Nations World Summit, the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect articulates an ideal of international interventions motivated by compassion for victims and a desire to bring stability to hot-spots around the world. Despite this consensus, practitioners and scholars have debated the importance of unintended consequences stemming from the expectation of third-party intervention. We analyze how third-party intervention sh…

  • Preventive war and sovereign debt

    Open Access•Colin Krainin, Kristopher Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•Conflict Management and Peace…•2021•Citada por: 3•Referencias: 27

    The preventive motive for war arises because states cannot commit to limit the use of their growing power. This commitment problem can lead to war when there are not enough resources available to compensate the declining state for their expected losses. In this article, we show how capital markets affect preventive war incentives by introducing a profit-maximizing bond market to the canonical bargaining model of war. We find that the nature of th…

  • Dyadic Conflict

    Colin Krainin, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Politics•2022•Citada por: 2•Referencias: 34

    From the democratic peace to the authoritarian peace to the conflict-prone behavior of democratizing states, empirical evidence shows that regime types influence the decision to go to war. The only way distinct regimes can behave differently in similar circumstances is if they have different tastes for settlements. Moreover, dyadic negotiation is dependent on the regime types of both participants. Here we offer a dyadic theory of conflict where s…

  • Quantifying theory in politics

    Open Access•Nathan Canen, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Journal of Theoretical Politics•2024•Referencias: 69

    The best empirical research in political science clearly defines substantive parameters of interest, presents a set of assumptions that guarantees their identification, and uses an appropriate estimator. We argue for the importance of explicitly integrating rigorous theory into this process and focus on the advantages of doing so. By integrating a theoretical structure into one’s empirical strategy, researchers can quantify the effects of competi…

  • The Effective Power of Military Coalitions

    Brenton Kenkel, Kristopher W Ramsay et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Politics•2024•Citada por: 1•Referencias: 48

  • Fanatical Peace

    Peter Bils, Richard Jordan et al.•ARTICLE•The Journal of Politics•2024•Referencias: 32

  • The accountability of politicians in international crises and the nature of audience cost

    Open Access•Scott Ashworth, Kristopher Ramsay•ARTICLE•Political Science Research and…•2024•Citada por: 1•Referencias: 48

    We study the problem of how citizens should punish or reward a leader's choices during international crises. Audiences should impose costs rooted in citizens’ preferences over policy outcomes, but that need not mean that these costs directly reflect the citizens’ preferences over actions. Instead, rewards and punishments are valued for their equilibrium consequences. To understand how citizens’ policy preferences shape electoral accountability, w…

  • Political Polarization and Compromise in Secession Politics1

    Open Access•Kristopher Ramsay, Iztok Prezelj•ARTICLE•International Studies Quarterly•2026

    Why do some secession movements lead to violent conflict, others are resolved through policy concessions, while still others end in peaceful separation? Existing theories focused on information asymmetries or commitment problems cannot fully explain this variation in outcomes. We propose a bargaining theory of secession incorporating three critical factors: policy polarization, credible exit, and resource rents. We demonstrate that secessions dif…

Political science (23 obras) · Economics (20 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Law (20 obras) · Political Conflict and Governance (13 obras) · Politics (12 obras) · Law and economics (10 obras) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (9 obras) · Microeconomics (9 obras) · Political economy (9 obras)

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