Signaling Versus the Balance of Power and Interests

Abstract

Conventional wisdom holds that in international disputes, a state's military threast are more likely to work the more the state is favored by the balance of power or the balance of interests. Analysis of a game-theoretic model of crisis signaling substantially refines and revises this claim. Due to selection effects arising from strategic behavior, measures of the relative strength of a defender's interests that are available before a crisis begins (ex ante) should be related to the failure of the defender's threats during the crisis. Ex ante measures of the defender's relative military strength should correlate with the success of the defender's crisis threats, but due to strategic dynamics that are not grasped by the standard arguments. A reanalysis of Huth and Russett's data on immediate deterrent threats lends support for these and other hypotheses drawn from the game-theoretic treatment.