Brandon K Yoder
Biographic Data
| ID | 2009495 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brandon K Yoder |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brandon K |
| FAMILY NAME | Yoder |
| SIGNATURE | YODER B K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Australian National University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8815-8854 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 86 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Reassurance versus coercive bargaining: Barriers to cooperative signaling in international relations
This paper analyzes two ideal-type signaling interactions that are fundamental to international relations: reassurance and coercive bargaining. In reassurance, states attempt to signal that their goals are compatible in order to avoid conflict, whereas in coercive bargaining, they attempt to inflate the incompatibility of their goals in order to increase their negotiating leverage over a disputed asset. This article conceptualizes these two types…
Will there be war over Taiwan? Structural stability and policy pitfalls in cross-Strait deterrence
Despite a large literature on the prospects for a US-China war over Taiwan, there have been few attempts to apply international relations theory to this issue. This article addresses that gap, identifying theoretical sources of conflict while arguing that war remains very avoidable. Recent trends have exacerbated each of the foundational mechanisms for war: mutual uncertainty, commitment problems, and issue indivisibility. However, cross-Strait d…
Fighting to Be Friends: Third-Party Bargaining, Alliance Formation, and War
Alliance formation typically entails some risk of abandonment, wherein an ally may not honor its obligations in the future. When potential security partners’ preferences are misaligned, this risk looms large, discouraging mutually beneficial investment in an alliance. How can a prospective ally credibly reassure an uncertain patron that their preferences align, to mitigate abandonment risks and elicit a security commitment? We show formally that …
Endogenous preferences, credible signaling, and the security dilemma: Bridging the rationalist–constructivist divide
How does the potential for socialization affect states' abilities to reassure each other and mitigate the security dilemma? Rationalist scholarship has identified numerous mechanisms by which states can credibly signal benign intentions. Yet it omits the possibility that states' interactions might endogenously shape their identities and domestic structures, and thus alter their basic preferences for or against cooperative outcomes. We present a f…
Provocation, Bargaining, and War
The rationalist bargaining literature explains how public statements and military mobilizations can signal resolve. But recent political psychology scholarship shows how such actions can “provoke” targets, increasing their resolve by arousing emotions among their leaders and public. While rationalist models have largely omitted provocation, psychological approaches have neglected its strategic consequences. We model provocation in bargaining, ass…
Trust, cooperation, and the tradeoffs of reciprocity
This article demonstrates that foreign policies of reciprocity entail previously unrecognized tradeoffs. The conventional wisdom in international relations holds that reciprocating another state's cooperative and non-cooperative actions can simultaneously promote cooperation and allow states with compatible preferences to build trust. We present a model that synthesizes recent work on signaling and cooperation to identify a tension between the go…
Introduction: Explaining Cooperation and Rivalry in China-India Relations
Recent China-India relations have been marked by a puzzling mix of cooperation and rivalry across military, economic, institutional and normative dimensions. Yet despite a large empirical literature on this crucial relationship, existing scholarship has struggled to explain its countervailing trends. This is due in large part to a lack of rigorous theory, which is essential for explanation. This article illustrates the theoretical shortcomings of…
Can Cyberattacks Reassure? Half Measures as a De-Escalation Strategy
Costly Concealment: Secret Foreign Policymaking, Transparency, and Credible Reassurance
This article presents a formal model that shows how states can credibly reassure each other simply by maintaining a cooperative outward narrative. The reassurance literature to date has focused largely on costly signaling, whereby benign states must distinguish themselves by taking specific actions that hostile types would not. The mere lack of overtly expressed hostilitywithoutcostly signals has been considered “cheap talk,” on the assumption th…
Signaling under the Security Dilemma: An Experimental Analysis
One of the most intractable debates in IR revolves around the severity and frequency of the security dilemma. Offensive realists argue that states are compelled to make worst-case assumptions about each other’s intentions, which yields inexorable competition and conflict even between mutually-benign actors. Yet others have argued that rational benign states should always be able to find cooperative signals that are costly enough to be credible, b…
How Credible are China’s Foreign Policy Signals? IR Theory and the Debate about China’s Intentions
Scholars and policymakers currently lack systematic criteria for determining the credibility of China's foreign policy signals, which has produced widely divergent conclusions about its likely intentions. ‘China optimists’ view China’s cooperative signals as credible, while dismissing its noncooperative behaviors as unrepresentative of its broader preferences. Conversely, ‘China pessimists’ see China’s cooperative signals as non-credible misrepre…
Theoretical rigor and the study of contemporary cases: Explaining post-cold war China–Russia relations
Mutual uncertainty and credible reassurance: Experimental evidence
Recent theoretical work has suggested that mutual uncertainty of a particular kind can promote credible reassurance and cooperation among states with compatible preferences. Specifically, on issues where cooperation is subjective, such that states are uncertain what types of actions the other will view as cooperative, credible reassurance under mutual uncertainty is straightforward. This finding, if correct, has profound implications for the scop…
Offsetting Uncertainty: Reassurance with Two‐Sided Incomplete Information
Conventional models of bargaining and reassurance under incomplete information assume that actors' behavioral signals are objectively cooperative or noncooperative. Even if actors are uncertain of each other's preferences, they know what types of actions the other will view as cooperative. Yet on many real‐world issues, cooperation is subjective, and what constitutes a cooperative action is conditional on the receiver's preferences. We present a …
Power shifts, third-party threats, and credible signals: Explaining China’s successful reassurance of Russia
Hedging for Better Bets: Power Shifts, Credible Signals, and Preventive Conflict
How can declining states reliably infer the intentions of rising states? One prominent line of argument maintains that because declining states face intractable uncertainty about rising states’ future intentions, preventive war is often unavoidable even between states with truly compatible goals. This article presents a dynamic model of reassurance in which actors are uncertain whether or not their interests conflict. The model shows that by adop…
Retrenchment as a Screening Mechanism: Power Shifts, Strategic Withdrawal, and Credible Signals
Both advocates and opponents of retrenchment have treated it as an undesirable, last‐ditch strategy for states that have already experienced severe decline. This article presents a formal model that identifies an unrecognized benefit of retrenchment: It can provide declining states with valuable information about rising states' future intentions. By removing constraints over the behavior of rising states in a particular region, a declining state …
Uncertainty, Shifting Power and Credible Signals in US-China Relations: Why the “Thucydides Trap” Is Real, but Limited
Political Groups, Coordination Costs, and Credible Communication in the Shadow of Power
IN HIS SEMINAL WORK Domination and the Arts of Resistance, James Scott shows how groups in subordinate power relationships, such as slaves, are often unable to express their dissatisfaction with the actions of a dominant group overtly.1 This constitutes proscribed discourse, or statements that would incur punishment if observed by the dominant group. Instead, Scott argues, dissatisfied subordinates maintain “hidden transcripts”—covert communicati…
Indigenous People and Oil Production In Ecuador's Oriente
This article examines the environmental and human rights consequences of oil production in Ecuador’s Oriente region, with a focus on the operations of Texaco and other multinational corporations. It analyzes how decades of unregulated extraction have led to widespread environmental degradation, toxic pollution, and severe health risks for Indigenous communities. The article also explores the legal battles waged by affected tribes, highlighting th…
Hedging for Better Bets: Power Shifts, Credible Signals, and Preventive Conflict
How can declining states reliably infer the intentions of rising states? One prominent line of argument maintains that because declining states face intractable uncertainty about rising states’ future intentions, preventive war is often unavoidable even between states with truly compatible goals. This article presents a dynamic model of reassurance in which actors are uncertain whether or not their interests conflict. The model shows that by adop…
Retrenchment as a Screening Mechanism: Power Shifts, Strategic Withdrawal, and Credible Signals
Both advocates and opponents of retrenchment have treated it as an undesirable, last‐ditch strategy for states that have already experienced severe decline. This article presents a formal model that identifies an unrecognized benefit of retrenchment: It can provide declining states with valuable information about rising states' future intentions. By removing constraints over the behavior of rising states in a particular region, a declining state …
Offsetting Uncertainty: Reassurance with Two‐Sided Incomplete Information
Conventional models of bargaining and reassurance under incomplete information assume that actors' behavioral signals are objectively cooperative or noncooperative. Even if actors are uncertain of each other's preferences, they know what types of actions the other will view as cooperative. Yet on many real‐world issues, cooperation is subjective, and what constitutes a cooperative action is conditional on the receiver's preferences. We present a …
Costly Concealment: Secret Foreign Policymaking, Transparency, and Credible Reassurance
This article presents a formal model that shows how states can credibly reassure each other simply by maintaining a cooperative outward narrative. The reassurance literature to date has focused largely on costly signaling, whereby benign states must distinguish themselves by taking specific actions that hostile types would not. The mere lack of overtly expressed hostilitywithoutcostly signals has been considered “cheap talk,” on the assumption th…
Signaling under the Security Dilemma: An Experimental Analysis
One of the most intractable debates in IR revolves around the severity and frequency of the security dilemma. Offensive realists argue that states are compelled to make worst-case assumptions about each other’s intentions, which yields inexorable competition and conflict even between mutually-benign actors. Yet others have argued that rational benign states should always be able to find cooperative signals that are costly enough to be credible, b…
Provocation, Bargaining, and War
The rationalist bargaining literature explains how public statements and military mobilizations can signal resolve. But recent political psychology scholarship shows how such actions can “provoke” targets, increasing their resolve by arousing emotions among their leaders and public. While rationalist models have largely omitted provocation, psychological approaches have neglected its strategic consequences. We model provocation in bargaining, ass…
Endogenous preferences, credible signaling, and the security dilemma: Bridging the rationalist–constructivist divide
How does the potential for socialization affect states' abilities to reassure each other and mitigate the security dilemma? Rationalist scholarship has identified numerous mechanisms by which states can credibly signal benign intentions. Yet it omits the possibility that states' interactions might endogenously shape their identities and domestic structures, and thus alter their basic preferences for or against cooperative outcomes. We present a f…
Trust, cooperation, and the tradeoffs of reciprocity
This article demonstrates that foreign policies of reciprocity entail previously unrecognized tradeoffs. The conventional wisdom in international relations holds that reciprocating another state's cooperative and non-cooperative actions can simultaneously promote cooperation and allow states with compatible preferences to build trust. We present a model that synthesizes recent work on signaling and cooperation to identify a tension between the go…
Introduction: Explaining Cooperation and Rivalry in China-India Relations
Recent China-India relations have been marked by a puzzling mix of cooperation and rivalry across military, economic, institutional and normative dimensions. Yet despite a large empirical literature on this crucial relationship, existing scholarship has struggled to explain its countervailing trends. This is due in large part to a lack of rigorous theory, which is essential for explanation. This article illustrates the theoretical shortcomings of…
How Credible are China’s Foreign Policy Signals? IR Theory and the Debate about China’s Intentions
Scholars and policymakers currently lack systematic criteria for determining the credibility of China's foreign policy signals, which has produced widely divergent conclusions about its likely intentions. ‘China optimists’ view China’s cooperative signals as credible, while dismissing its noncooperative behaviors as unrepresentative of its broader preferences. Conversely, ‘China pessimists’ see China’s cooperative signals as non-credible misrepre…
Theoretical rigor and the study of contemporary cases: Explaining post-cold war China–Russia relations
Mutual uncertainty and credible reassurance: Experimental evidence
Recent theoretical work has suggested that mutual uncertainty of a particular kind can promote credible reassurance and cooperation among states with compatible preferences. Specifically, on issues where cooperation is subjective, such that states are uncertain what types of actions the other will view as cooperative, credible reassurance under mutual uncertainty is straightforward. This finding, if correct, has profound implications for the scop…
Uncertainty, Shifting Power and Credible Signals in US-China Relations: Why the “Thucydides Trap” Is Real, but Limited
Political Groups, Coordination Costs, and Credible Communication in the Shadow of Power
IN HIS SEMINAL WORK Domination and the Arts of Resistance, James Scott shows how groups in subordinate power relationships, such as slaves, are often unable to express their dissatisfaction with the actions of a dominant group overtly.1 This constitutes proscribed discourse, or statements that would incur punishment if observed by the dominant group. Instead, Scott argues, dissatisfied subordinates maintain “hidden transcripts”—covert communicati…
Indigenous People and Oil Production In Ecuador's Oriente
This article examines the environmental and human rights consequences of oil production in Ecuador’s Oriente region, with a focus on the operations of Texaco and other multinational corporations. It analyzes how decades of unregulated extraction have led to widespread environmental degradation, toxic pollution, and severe health risks for Indigenous communities. The article also explores the legal battles waged by affected tribes, highlighting th…
Power shifts, third-party threats, and credible signals: Explaining China’s successful reassurance of Russia
Hedging for Better Bets: Power Shifts, Credible Signals, and Preventive Conflict
How can declining states reliably infer the intentions of rising states? One prominent line of argument maintains that because declining states face intractable uncertainty about rising states’ future intentions, preventive war is often unavoidable even between states with truly compatible goals. This article presents a dynamic model of reassurance in which actors are uncertain whether or not their interests conflict. The model shows that by adop…
Retrenchment as a Screening Mechanism: Power Shifts, Strategic Withdrawal, and Credible Signals
Both advocates and opponents of retrenchment have treated it as an undesirable, last‐ditch strategy for states that have already experienced severe decline. This article presents a formal model that identifies an unrecognized benefit of retrenchment: It can provide declining states with valuable information about rising states' future intentions. By removing constraints over the behavior of rising states in a particular region, a declining state …
Uncertainty, Shifting Power and Credible Signals in US-China Relations: Why the “Thucydides Trap” Is Real, but Limited
Political Groups, Coordination Costs, and Credible Communication in the Shadow of Power
IN HIS SEMINAL WORK Domination and the Arts of Resistance, James Scott shows how groups in subordinate power relationships, such as slaves, are often unable to express their dissatisfaction with the actions of a dominant group overtly.1 This constitutes proscribed discourse, or statements that would incur punishment if observed by the dominant group. Instead, Scott argues, dissatisfied subordinates maintain “hidden transcripts”—covert communicati…
How Credible are China’s Foreign Policy Signals? IR Theory and the Debate about China’s Intentions
Scholars and policymakers currently lack systematic criteria for determining the credibility of China's foreign policy signals, which has produced widely divergent conclusions about its likely intentions. ‘China optimists’ view China’s cooperative signals as credible, while dismissing its noncooperative behaviors as unrepresentative of its broader preferences. Conversely, ‘China pessimists’ see China’s cooperative signals as non-credible misrepre…
Theoretical rigor and the study of contemporary cases: Explaining post-cold war China–Russia relations
Mutual uncertainty and credible reassurance: Experimental evidence
Recent theoretical work has suggested that mutual uncertainty of a particular kind can promote credible reassurance and cooperation among states with compatible preferences. Specifically, on issues where cooperation is subjective, such that states are uncertain what types of actions the other will view as cooperative, credible reassurance under mutual uncertainty is straightforward. This finding, if correct, has profound implications for the scop…
Offsetting Uncertainty: Reassurance with Two‐Sided Incomplete Information
Conventional models of bargaining and reassurance under incomplete information assume that actors' behavioral signals are objectively cooperative or noncooperative. Even if actors are uncertain of each other's preferences, they know what types of actions the other will view as cooperative. Yet on many real‐world issues, cooperation is subjective, and what constitutes a cooperative action is conditional on the receiver's preferences. We present a …
Signaling under the Security Dilemma: An Experimental Analysis
One of the most intractable debates in IR revolves around the severity and frequency of the security dilemma. Offensive realists argue that states are compelled to make worst-case assumptions about each other’s intentions, which yields inexorable competition and conflict even between mutually-benign actors. Yet others have argued that rational benign states should always be able to find cooperative signals that are costly enough to be credible, b…
Introduction: Explaining Cooperation and Rivalry in China-India Relations
Recent China-India relations have been marked by a puzzling mix of cooperation and rivalry across military, economic, institutional and normative dimensions. Yet despite a large empirical literature on this crucial relationship, existing scholarship has struggled to explain its countervailing trends. This is due in large part to a lack of rigorous theory, which is essential for explanation. This article illustrates the theoretical shortcomings of…
Can Cyberattacks Reassure? Half Measures as a De-Escalation Strategy
Costly Concealment: Secret Foreign Policymaking, Transparency, and Credible Reassurance
This article presents a formal model that shows how states can credibly reassure each other simply by maintaining a cooperative outward narrative. The reassurance literature to date has focused largely on costly signaling, whereby benign states must distinguish themselves by taking specific actions that hostile types would not. The mere lack of overtly expressed hostilitywithoutcostly signals has been considered “cheap talk,” on the assumption th…
Trust, cooperation, and the tradeoffs of reciprocity
This article demonstrates that foreign policies of reciprocity entail previously unrecognized tradeoffs. The conventional wisdom in international relations holds that reciprocating another state's cooperative and non-cooperative actions can simultaneously promote cooperation and allow states with compatible preferences to build trust. We present a model that synthesizes recent work on signaling and cooperation to identify a tension between the go…
Provocation, Bargaining, and War
The rationalist bargaining literature explains how public statements and military mobilizations can signal resolve. But recent political psychology scholarship shows how such actions can “provoke” targets, increasing their resolve by arousing emotions among their leaders and public. While rationalist models have largely omitted provocation, psychological approaches have neglected its strategic consequences. We model provocation in bargaining, ass…
Will there be war over Taiwan? Structural stability and policy pitfalls in cross-Strait deterrence
Despite a large literature on the prospects for a US-China war over Taiwan, there have been few attempts to apply international relations theory to this issue. This article addresses that gap, identifying theoretical sources of conflict while arguing that war remains very avoidable. Recent trends have exacerbated each of the foundational mechanisms for war: mutual uncertainty, commitment problems, and issue indivisibility. However, cross-Strait d…
Fighting to Be Friends: Third-Party Bargaining, Alliance Formation, and War
Alliance formation typically entails some risk of abandonment, wherein an ally may not honor its obligations in the future. When potential security partners’ preferences are misaligned, this risk looms large, discouraging mutually beneficial investment in an alliance. How can a prospective ally credibly reassure an uncertain patron that their preferences align, to mitigate abandonment risks and elicit a security commitment? We show formally that …
Endogenous preferences, credible signaling, and the security dilemma: Bridging the rationalist–constructivist divide
How does the potential for socialization affect states' abilities to reassure each other and mitigate the security dilemma? Rationalist scholarship has identified numerous mechanisms by which states can credibly signal benign intentions. Yet it omits the possibility that states' interactions might endogenously shape their identities and domestic structures, and thus alter their basic preferences for or against cooperative outcomes. We present a f…
Reassurance versus coercive bargaining: Barriers to cooperative signaling in international relations
This paper analyzes two ideal-type signaling interactions that are fundamental to international relations: reassurance and coercive bargaining. In reassurance, states attempt to signal that their goals are compatible in order to avoid conflict, whereas in coercive bargaining, they attempt to inflate the incompatibility of their goals in order to increase their negotiating leverage over a disputed asset. This article conceptualizes these two types…
Economics (14 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (14 works) · Political science (14 works) · Law (10 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Incentive (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · China (7 works) · Computer Science (7 works)