Hanna Bäck
Professor
Solving the Decider’s Dilemma: Scapegoats, Foreign Affairs, and the Duration of Interstate War
Author
Summary, in English
The prospects of domestic punishment might compel leaders responsible for the initiation of the war to continue fighting until they achieve favorable war outcomes (Croco 2011, 2015). As applied to war duration, this logic implies that ‘culpable’ leaders do not have incentives to end a war that will bring defeat. This paper argues that leaders can escape this dilemma by blaming and replacing their cabinet ministers for poor war results. Under a framework of war as a bargaining process, and using a database of the tenure of thousands of ministers of foreign affairs, this paper shows that the replacement of these cabinet ministers reduces the duration of interstate wars that end in defeat. These findings suggest that leaders do not necessarily need to continue fighting wars in order to avoid domestic punishment.
Department/s
- Department of Political Science
Publishing year
2017-12
Language
English
Pages
1-26
Publication/Series
STANCE Working Papers Series
Volume
2017
Issue
11
Full text
- Available as PDF - 430 kB
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Document type
Working paper
Topic
- Political Science
Keywords
- Ministers of foreign affaires
- interstate war
- Cabinet ministers
- war duration
Status
Published
Project
- State-Making and the Origins of Global Order in the Long Nineteenth Century and Beyond