Mutual Optimism as a Rationalist Explanation of War

Mutual Optimism and War

Bibliographic Data

ID6230091
AuthorsBranislav L Slantchev (0000-0003-3404-5242, University of California System), Ahmer Tarar (0000-0001-7639-7516, Mitchell Institute)
Year2011
Volume55
Issue1
Pages135-148
Publication date2011-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1540-5907.2010.00475.x
OpenAlexW1706595761
LanguageEN
Citations received40
References cited16

Blainey (1988) argued that crises are more likely to end in war when two nations disagree about their relative power. Fey and Ramsay (2007) claim that this widely used "mutual optimism" explanation is theoretically incoherent. Their criticism neglects the need to specify a behavioral causal mechanism that links beliefs to the outbreak of war. We show how the rationalist game-theoretic work on the causes of war provides such mechanisms—the risk-return trade-off and costly signaling—and demonstrate that these models are immune to Fey and Ramsay's critiques. We also show that the class of models Fey and Ramsay propose make the substantively unwarranted assumption that an actor can unilaterally impose peace on an opponent who strictly prefers war. Their finding that war does not occur in equilibrium has nothing to do with mutual optimism. We conclude that the mutual optimism explanation can be grounded on firm rationalist foundations

Adversary · Computer security · Criticism · Economics · Epistemology · Mechanism (biology · Nothing · Optimism · Political science · Positive economics · Power (physics · Computer Science · Culture, Economy, and Development Studies · Experimental Behavioral Economics Studies · Game Theory and Applications · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

Tools

Open DOISci-Hub