Research Signaling and Perception in International Crises:
Two Approaches [Supplementary Material] [Poster (pdf)] This study
contrasts the rationalist and psychologist approaches to information failure as
the cause of crisis escalation and war. Building on the psychological
insights on misperception, I study a simple game-theoretic model of crisis
bargaining, where signals are subject to perceptual errors and thereby
multiple interpretations. The model allows us to analyze the interplay
between the strategic problem of misrepresentation in sending signals and the
problem of misperception in forming beliefs. The analysis offers a
rationalist logic of signaling and perception, which links Bayesian learning,
incentive problems, misperception, and war. The analysis also shows that
misperception generates more than pathologies in crises---misperception,
under the right condition, makes signals fully informative, reduces the risk
of war, and attenuates the adverse impact of incomplete information on the
risk of crisis escalation and war. A Signaling Game of Collective Self-Defense in the U.S.-Japan
Alliance [Slides (pdf)] What are the
implications of collective self-defense for Japan's security
environment? This chapter considers
invoking the right of collective self-defense as intervention into an armed
conflict on behalf of an ally. Since
the Japanese government's reinterpretation of the constitutional constraint
on collective self-defense is perceived by neighboring countries as a revelation
of underlying militarism and expansionism, I analyze Japan's decision on its
constitutional constraints as a costly signal that Japan sends to deter the
challenges against the U.S.-Japan alliance.
The equilibrium analysis suggests that the manipulation of collective
self-defense does not help Prime Minister Abe and his government achieve the
security policy objectives that they claim invoking collective self-defense
would deliver. Japan’s Changing Defense Posture and Its Implications
for Security Relations in East Asia (with Andrew Capistrano) Korean Journal of International
Studies, 14 (1), April, 2016, pp. 77-104. DOI:
10.14731/kjis.2016.4.14.1.77 Japan’s
Diet passed new defense legislation in 2015. It reinterprets the
constitutional clause renouncing the threat or use of force (except to repel
an attack on Japan) to allow collective self-defense and permit expanded
roles for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. The government presents these changes
as consistent with Japan’s traditional postwar defense posture, vital to
support allied deterrence of threats against Japan, and necessary to enhance
Japan’s security in a region of shifting power. This article disputes these
claims. Rather, the new laws (1) signal a strategic shift away from the
Yoshida Doctrine by reinterpreting the constitution, (2) fail to generate new
U.S. commitments or strengthen preexisting ones that enhance Japan’s
security, and (3) risk exacerbating the Sino-Japanese security dilemma. This
is because the changes are occurring alongside the Senkaku
Islands dispute, which raises strategic mistrust, and they revise the
alliance to give Japan a greater role in regional security, which China has
historically seen as a future threat. When taken together, these under appreciated effects of the new laws may help the
alliance endure and let Japan support the regional status quo in the long
term, but will likely decrease Japanese security in the short term by
prompting a defensive Chinese response. We show how the recent history of
East Asia’s security dilemma and IR theory both cast doubt on the ability of
the new laws to generate security for Japan. Detecting Audience Costs in International Disputes
(with Taehee Whang) [Supplementary material] [Slides (pdf)] [Replication material] DOI: 10.1017/S0020818315000211 We present observational
evidence of audience costs. Selection effects in crisis bargaining make it
difficult to directly observe audience costs because when state leaders
anticipate larger audience costs they attempt to avoid incurring them. We use
a structural statistical model to estimate the size of audience costs, both
incurred and not incurred, in international crises. We show that while
audience costs exist for state leaders of various regime types, democratic
leaders face larger audience costs than nondemocratic leaders do. Audience
costs can be so large that war might be preferable to concessions especially
for leaders of highly democratic states. Audience costs also increase a
state's bargaining leverage in crises because the target state is more likely
to acquiesce if the challenge carries larger audience costs. We also find
evidence that audience costs generate selection effects. These results
establish an empirical foundation for audience costs propositions. Efficient Secrecy: Public versus
Private Threats in Crisis Diplomacy [Supplementary
Material (pdf)] [Erratum (pdf)] [Poster (pdf)] DOI:
10.1017/S0003055407070396 This paper explores when and why private
communication works in crisis diplomacy. Conventional audience-cost models
suggest that state leaders must go public to reveal information in interstate
crises because leaders cannot enhance their credibility by tying their hands
if domestic audiences cannot observe their private signals. I present a
crisis bargaining game where both the sender and the receiver of signals have
a domestic audience. The equilibrium analysis demonstrates that a private
threat, albeit of limited credibility, can be equally compelling as a fully
credible public threat. Secrecy works in crisis diplomacy despite its
informational inefficacy because secrecy insulates leaders from domestic
political consequences when they capitulate to a challenge to avoid risking
unwarranted war. The logic of efficient secrecy may shed light on the
unaccounted history of private diplomacy in international crises. The Alaska
Boundary Dispute illustrates this logic. Dyadic Effects of
Democratization on International Disputes: Theory and Evidence [Replication data] I explore the
dyadic, as opposed to monadic, effect of democratization on war. Using a
simple repeated game of interstate interaction, I show that, as a state
shifts toward democracy, the public obtains more opportunities and becomea more willing to remove the leaders who are
expected to reduce their future welfare. Anticipating this consequence,
rational leaders’ incentives to avoid breaking the cooperative relationship with
democracies grow stronger as a state becomes democratic. The hypothesis drawn
from the model anticipates that democratization has a pacifying effect in the
dyadic relationship with democracies. Empirical testing is designed to
isolate the dyadic effect from the monadic one and to distinguish among
competing hypotheses. The expectations are tested using widely employed data
on political institutions and militarized interstate disputes. The result
shows that democratization reduces the likelihood of waging war when the
opposing state is democratic, while the risk of war remains unchanged when
facing a non-democratic opponent. Working Papers Diplomacy, Pre-crisis Communication, and War [Supplementary Material] [Slides (pdf)]
[Replication data] [Replication codes]* Diplomacy is
a primary form of politics among nations and offers a set of institutions and
norms to facilitate credible communication and conflict resolution. Previous
research, however, suggests that diplomacy is not effective at communicating
messages and does not mitigate the risk of war. Generalizing previous models
of repeated crises with cheap-talk, I challenge these results by describing
how two processes of diplomacy---communication and representation---bind
together to form diplomatic institutions as equilibria. In these equilibria,
diplomacy can convey information more effectively than previously suggested.
And yet, diplomacy, if informative, can simultaneously increase and reduce
the net risk of war, depending on the strategic environment. The statistical
analysis of original data on diplomatic channels supplements the theoretical
ambiguity, showing that diplomacy reduces the risk of armed conflict by
twenty percent. These results refine the logic of diplomatic communication
and redefine its significance as an instrument of statecraft. Democracy, Information, and Audience Costs (with Taehee
Whang) [Supplementary Material][Slides
(pdf)][Replication data] [Replication codes]* The audience
cost models posit that audience costs help democratic leaders better signal their
resolve to the adversary and thus more likely to prevail in crises. A large
volume of empirical work turn to this ``informational'' conjecture about
audience costs to explain the association between domestic political
institutions and crisis behavior. Although many indirect tests exist, none
has yet delivered definitive evidence. We present direct evidence that
quantifies the amount of learning through structural estimation of a standard
crisis game with audience costs. Our estimation demonstrates that the higher
is the estimated level of audience costs faced by a threatener,
the more convinced is the adversary that the threatener
is resolve to use force in a crisis. We also find that our estimated
informational effect of audience costs is statistically significant. Our
results, thus, provide an empirical foundation for the ``informational''
account of the audience costs mechanism in international crises. Inferring Secret Diplomacy (with Taehee
Whang) [Supplementary Material][Slides
(pdf)][Replication data] [Replication codes]* Inferring
secret diplomacy is challenging because it is not systematically observable.
We offer two types of evidence for a theory that explains when and why a
private challenge works in international crises. First, secret diplomacy
works because it insulates the acquiescing leaders from political costs for
making concessions. Secrecy would play no role in international crises if
state leaders are insensitive to political or diplomatic defeat in public. To
test this necessary condition as a falsifiable hypothesis, we use the
structural approach to estimate the underlying payoffs for states in
international crises. Second, when secret diplomacy works, the acquiescing
state must believe that the challenger is *less* resolved to fight when
receiving secretive challenges. Because successful secret diplomacy is
observationally equivalent to the status quo in the eyes of analysts, we
expect the negative shift in the target's belief on the challenger's resolve
when the status quo is observed. Our analysis finds support for both
hypotheses. Threats and
Assurances in Coercive Diplomacy (with
Atsushi Ishida) [Supplementary Material] [Slides] A threat to
punish for noncompliance must imply a promise not to punish for compliance. I
formalize this problem of assurances in a simple model of coercive diplomacy
in which a threat of force also implies the assurance of security after
concessions. Facing dual goals of communicating resolve and reducing the fear
of attack after concessions, the challenger must weigh the credibility of
threats against the credibility of assurances. The target's dilemma is to
balance dual risks: the risk of a costly conflict after resisting the threat;
and the risk of attack after concessions shift the military balance. The
analysis establishes the sufficient conditions for an
equilibrium in which assurances are always guaranteed and an
equilibrium in which assurances are never feasible, and shows that the lack
of assurance undermines coercive diplomacy. I also explore if credible
assurances can undermine the credibility of threats and vice versa. Works in Progress When
Diplomacy Works, (book manuscript
in progress) Bringing
Diplomacy Back In This essay
offers theoretical motivation and foundations for the scientific study of
diplomacy in international disputes. First, it demonstrates that the academic
interest in diplomacy has declined in parallel to the evolution of strategic
thoughts and nuclear strategies during the Cold War. Second, using a simple
bargaining model of crisis bargaining, I show that understanding diplomacy is
crucial for the better understanding of the rationalist puzzle of inefficient
wars because the existing rationalist explanations bring us back to the
original puzzle. Third, I argue that a successful theoretical foundation must
bring together three previously divergent literatures: the rationalist
approach, the English School, and the diplomatic studies. I propose three
general mechanisms of diplomacy and suggest that each of these mechanisms
provides a basis for an empirically identifiable mechanism of diplomacy in
international disputes. Diplomacy can be a new addition to the ``Correlates
of War'' and its role can be understood in the same way as war and military
coercion. Diplomatic
Negotiation and Military Coercion in International Disputes I study a
model of diplomatic negotiation, where bargainers take turns deciding whether
to continue diplomacy or resort to coercion. Departing from previous models,
military outside options are subgames where bargainers play a costly
signaling game, rather than the game-ending war lottery. Hence, bargainers
can engage in both bargaining through diplomacy and signaling through
military coercion. I show that countries with “weaker” bargaining power have an incentive to opt out
from diplomacy to send costly signals through military coercion to gamble for
a greater bargain. This is because military coercion carries more information
than diplomatic bargaining, suggesting that the rationality of diplomacy does
not rely on its informational efficacy. Hence, powerful countries with
“stronger” bargaining power
are less likely to run the risk of military coercion. The analysis shows that
the conventional rationalist account of war cannot adequately explain why
some international disputes are settled by diplomatic negotiations. The logic
of success or failure of diplomatic negotiation is at the core of our
understanding of the origins of war and peace. Diplomatic
Relations in International Politics (with Kelly Matush) This paper
presents a first cut at testing theories and common conjectures about
diplomatic statecraft and its machinery. To do so, we identify the determinants
of diplomatic interactions and their breakdown through a series of Markov probit regressions on bilateral diplomatic relations,
using the newly collected annual data sets on diplomatic representations for
the past two centuries. We delineate how various political, economic, and
military factors characterize the so-called European system of diplomacy in
the 19th century and the American system in the 20th century, and explore the
extent to which the two systems differ from each other. These estimated systems
of diplomacy offer empirical diplomatic theory. Our theory illuminates the
patterns of diplomatic statecraft and its relationship to other key
dimensions of international relations. It also refutes some of common beliefs
about diplomacy. For example, while military conflict almost always impedes
diplomatic relations of in the American system, it tends to facilitate
diplomatic exchanges in the European system. Political ideology or regime
type has no impact on diplomatic relations in the European system, while the
relationship between political ideology and American diplomatic statecraft
changes drastically, depending on the political and strategic characteristics
of the other countries. Strategic Affinity with the U.S. and Transnational Terrorism (with Mina Watanabe and Ryuya Koishi) The Diplomacy of Apology (Hiroyuki
Fukushima) The Case for Democratic Credibility (with Piotr Urbanski) |