Brenton Kenkel
Biographic Data
| ID | 4371931 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brenton Kenkel |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brenton |
| FAMILY NAME | Kenkel |
| SIGNATURE | KENKEL B |
| AFFILIATIONS | Vanderbilt University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-5815-6292 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 13 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 67 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 13 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Uncertainty in crisis bargaining with multiple policy options
Formal models commonly characterize interstate bargaining as dichotomous, ending in either war or peace. But there are many forms of coercion—including supporting rebel groups, sanctions, and cyberattacks. How does the availability of intermediate policy options affect the incidence of war and peace? We present an analysis of crisis bargaining models with intermediate policy options that challenges conventional results about the relationship betw…
Designing Political Order
Social scientists and political philosophers believe that the existence of a sovereign agent endowed with a monopoly of coercive force is the foundation of political order. In this article, the authors develop a formal model of anarchic competition and show that whenever it is possible to construct a peaceful political order based on a monopoly of force, it is also possible to construct one in which multiple agents maintain coercive abilities. Wh…
The Effective Power of Military Coalitions: A Unified Theoretical and Empirical Model
Synthetic Replacements for Human Survey Data? The Perils of Large Language Models
Large language models (LLMs) offer new research possibilities for social scientists, but their potential as “synthetic data” is still largely unknown. In this paper, we investigate how accurately the popular LLM ChatGPT can recover public opinion, prompting the LLM to adopt different “personas” and then provide feeling thermometer scores for 11 sociopolitical groups. The average scores generated by ChatGPT correspond closely to the averages in ou…
Social Conflict and the Predatory State
Empirical scholarship identifies social cleavag es as a predictor of slower economic growth, greater civil conflict, and other socioeconomic ills. Meanwhile, accounts of divide-and-rule politics claim that predatory rulers may benefit politically from exploiting internal schisms. Altogether, then, does internal fractionalization work to the benefit or detriment of a rent-seeking ruler? To answer this question, I model the political economy of pre…
A Theory of External Wars and European Parliaments
The development of parliamentary constraints on the executive was critical in Western European political history. Previous scholarship identifies external wars as a key factor, but with varying effects. Sometimes, willing monarchs granted parliamentary rights in return for revenues to fight wars. Yet at other times, war threats empowered rulers over other elites or caused states to fragment. We analyze a formal model to understand how external wa…
Competition and Civilian Victimization
Violence against civilians in civil war is widely thought of as a strategic choice by combatant groups. We argue that a common strategic logic of competition underlies diverse theories of civilian victimization. We develop a theory of strategic complements in victimization, hypothesizing that an armed group’s propensity to victimize civilians will increase with its expectation that its competitors will act likewise. We test this argument by struc…
Is an Ultimatum the Last Word on Crisis Bargaining
We investigate how the structure of the international bargaining process affects the resolution of crises. Despite the vast diversity in bargaining protocols, we find that there is a remarkably simple structure to how crises may end. Specifically, for any equilibrium outcome of a complex negotiation process, there is a take-it-or-leave-it offer that has precisely the same risk of war and distribution of benefits. In this sense, every equilibrium …
Signaling Policy Intentions in Fundraising Contests
I develop a theory of fundraising competition between candidates whose ability to raise money depends on the policy they will enact if elected. Unlike in existing models of money in politics, there is no exchange of policy favors for donations; donors merely have better information than the electorate about candidates’ policy intentions. Even in the absence of quid pro quo exchanges between candidates and donors, I find that fundraising competiti…
The efficacy of cheap talk in collective action problems
Incomplete information exacerbates the problems inherent in collective action. Participants cannot efficiently coordinate their actions if they do not know each other’s preferences. I investigate when ordinary communication, or cheap talk, may resolve mutual uncertainty in collective action problems. I find that the efficacy of communication depends critically on the relationship between contributions and the value of the joint project. The incen…
Prediction, Proxies, and Power
Many enduring questions in international relations theory focus on power relations, so it is important that scholars have a good measure of relative power. The standard measure of relative military power, the capability ratio, is barely better than random guessing at predicting militarized dispute outcomes. We use machine learning to build a superior proxy, the Dispute Outcome Expectations (DOE) score, from the same underlying data. Our measure i…
Omitted Variables, Countervailing Effects, and the Possibility of Overadjustment
The effect of conditioning on an additional covariate on confounding bias depends, in part, on covariates that are unobserved. We characterize the conditions under which the interaction between a covariate that is available for conditioning and one that is not can affect bias. When the confounding effects of two covariates, one of which is observed, are countervailing (in opposite directions), conditioning on the observed covariate can increase b…
Information and International Institutions Revisited
In a recent article in this journal, Chapman presents a formal model of the informational role played by international institutions. Unfortunately, the equilibria given in the article are incorrect. In this article, we identify the errors in the analysis of Chapman and solve for correct equilibria to the model. Our results show little support for the empirical implications derived in the original article. Contrary to these original findings, we f…
Prediction, Proxies, and Power
Many enduring questions in international relations theory focus on power relations, so it is important that scholars have a good measure of relative power. The standard measure of relative military power, the capability ratio, is barely better than random guessing at predicting militarized dispute outcomes. We use machine learning to build a superior proxy, the Dispute Outcome Expectations (DOE) score, from the same underlying data. Our measure i…
Synthetic Replacements for Human Survey Data? The Perils of Large Language Models
Large language models (LLMs) offer new research possibilities for social scientists, but their potential as “synthetic data” is still largely unknown. In this paper, we investigate how accurately the popular LLM ChatGPT can recover public opinion, prompting the LLM to adopt different “personas” and then provide feeling thermometer scores for 11 sociopolitical groups. The average scores generated by ChatGPT correspond closely to the averages in ou…
Is an Ultimatum the Last Word on Crisis Bargaining
We investigate how the structure of the international bargaining process affects the resolution of crises. Despite the vast diversity in bargaining protocols, we find that there is a remarkably simple structure to how crises may end. Specifically, for any equilibrium outcome of a complex negotiation process, there is a take-it-or-leave-it offer that has precisely the same risk of war and distribution of benefits. In this sense, every equilibrium …
Omitted Variables, Countervailing Effects, and the Possibility of Overadjustment
The effect of conditioning on an additional covariate on confounding bias depends, in part, on covariates that are unobserved. We characterize the conditions under which the interaction between a covariate that is available for conditioning and one that is not can affect bias. When the confounding effects of two covariates, one of which is observed, are countervailing (in opposite directions), conditioning on the observed covariate can increase b…
A Theory of External Wars and European Parliaments
The development of parliamentary constraints on the executive was critical in Western European political history. Previous scholarship identifies external wars as a key factor, but with varying effects. Sometimes, willing monarchs granted parliamentary rights in return for revenues to fight wars. Yet at other times, war threats empowered rulers over other elites or caused states to fragment. We analyze a formal model to understand how external wa…
Competition and Civilian Victimization
Violence against civilians in civil war is widely thought of as a strategic choice by combatant groups. We argue that a common strategic logic of competition underlies diverse theories of civilian victimization. We develop a theory of strategic complements in victimization, hypothesizing that an armed group’s propensity to victimize civilians will increase with its expectation that its competitors will act likewise. We test this argument by struc…
Signaling Policy Intentions in Fundraising Contests
I develop a theory of fundraising competition between candidates whose ability to raise money depends on the policy they will enact if elected. Unlike in existing models of money in politics, there is no exchange of policy favors for donations; donors merely have better information than the electorate about candidates’ policy intentions. Even in the absence of quid pro quo exchanges between candidates and donors, I find that fundraising competiti…
The Effective Power of Military Coalitions: A Unified Theoretical and Empirical Model
The efficacy of cheap talk in collective action problems
Incomplete information exacerbates the problems inherent in collective action. Participants cannot efficiently coordinate their actions if they do not know each other’s preferences. I investigate when ordinary communication, or cheap talk, may resolve mutual uncertainty in collective action problems. I find that the efficacy of communication depends critically on the relationship between contributions and the value of the joint project. The incen…
Information and International Institutions Revisited
In a recent article in this journal, Chapman presents a formal model of the informational role played by international institutions. Unfortunately, the equilibria given in the article are incorrect. In this article, we identify the errors in the analysis of Chapman and solve for correct equilibria to the model. Our results show little support for the empirical implications derived in the original article. Contrary to these original findings, we f…
Omitted Variables, Countervailing Effects, and the Possibility of Overadjustment
The effect of conditioning on an additional covariate on confounding bias depends, in part, on covariates that are unobserved. We characterize the conditions under which the interaction between a covariate that is available for conditioning and one that is not can affect bias. When the confounding effects of two covariates, one of which is observed, are countervailing (in opposite directions), conditioning on the observed covariate can increase b…
Signaling Policy Intentions in Fundraising Contests
I develop a theory of fundraising competition between candidates whose ability to raise money depends on the policy they will enact if elected. Unlike in existing models of money in politics, there is no exchange of policy favors for donations; donors merely have better information than the electorate about candidates’ policy intentions. Even in the absence of quid pro quo exchanges between candidates and donors, I find that fundraising competiti…
The efficacy of cheap talk in collective action problems
Incomplete information exacerbates the problems inherent in collective action. Participants cannot efficiently coordinate their actions if they do not know each other’s preferences. I investigate when ordinary communication, or cheap talk, may resolve mutual uncertainty in collective action problems. I find that the efficacy of communication depends critically on the relationship between contributions and the value of the joint project. The incen…
Prediction, Proxies, and Power
Many enduring questions in international relations theory focus on power relations, so it is important that scholars have a good measure of relative power. The standard measure of relative military power, the capability ratio, is barely better than random guessing at predicting militarized dispute outcomes. We use machine learning to build a superior proxy, the Dispute Outcome Expectations (DOE) score, from the same underlying data. Our measure i…
Is an Ultimatum the Last Word on Crisis Bargaining
We investigate how the structure of the international bargaining process affects the resolution of crises. Despite the vast diversity in bargaining protocols, we find that there is a remarkably simple structure to how crises may end. Specifically, for any equilibrium outcome of a complex negotiation process, there is a take-it-or-leave-it offer that has precisely the same risk of war and distribution of benefits. In this sense, every equilibrium …
Competition and Civilian Victimization
Violence against civilians in civil war is widely thought of as a strategic choice by combatant groups. We argue that a common strategic logic of competition underlies diverse theories of civilian victimization. We develop a theory of strategic complements in victimization, hypothesizing that an armed group’s propensity to victimize civilians will increase with its expectation that its competitors will act likewise. We test this argument by struc…
Social Conflict and the Predatory State
Empirical scholarship identifies social cleavag es as a predictor of slower economic growth, greater civil conflict, and other socioeconomic ills. Meanwhile, accounts of divide-and-rule politics claim that predatory rulers may benefit politically from exploiting internal schisms. Altogether, then, does internal fractionalization work to the benefit or detriment of a rent-seeking ruler? To answer this question, I model the political economy of pre…
A Theory of External Wars and European Parliaments
The development of parliamentary constraints on the executive was critical in Western European political history. Previous scholarship identifies external wars as a key factor, but with varying effects. Sometimes, willing monarchs granted parliamentary rights in return for revenues to fight wars. Yet at other times, war threats empowered rulers over other elites or caused states to fragment. We analyze a formal model to understand how external wa…
The Effective Power of Military Coalitions: A Unified Theoretical and Empirical Model
Synthetic Replacements for Human Survey Data? The Perils of Large Language Models
Large language models (LLMs) offer new research possibilities for social scientists, but their potential as “synthetic data” is still largely unknown. In this paper, we investigate how accurately the popular LLM ChatGPT can recover public opinion, prompting the LLM to adopt different “personas” and then provide feeling thermometer scores for 11 sociopolitical groups. The average scores generated by ChatGPT correspond closely to the averages in ou…
Uncertainty in crisis bargaining with multiple policy options
Formal models commonly characterize interstate bargaining as dichotomous, ending in either war or peace. But there are many forms of coercion—including supporting rebel groups, sanctions, and cyberattacks. How does the availability of intermediate policy options affect the incidence of war and peace? We present an analysis of crisis bargaining models with intermediate policy options that challenges conventional results about the relationship betw…
Designing Political Order
Social scientists and political philosophers believe that the existence of a sovereign agent endowed with a monopoly of coercive force is the foundation of political order. In this article, the authors develop a formal model of anarchic competition and show that whenever it is possible to construct a peaceful political order based on a monopoly of force, it is also possible to construct one in which multiple agents maintain coercive abilities. Wh…
Political science (10 works) · Economics (9 works) · Law (6 works) · Law (6 works) · Political Conflict and Governance (6 works) · Computer Science (5 works) · Psychology (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Politics (4 works)