This research addresses the question of why some crises between states are resolved
through negotiated agreements while others result in continued conflict or escalate to war.
The model deviates from previous approaches to the study of conflict management in four
key ways: 1) management is treated as a conflict strategy rather than an outcome; 2) costs,
rather than calculation of the relative benefits of conflict over management, motivate the
initiation of conflict management; 3) the conceptualization of costs is broadened to
incorporate subjective factors; and 4) issue salience is proposed to determine the threshold
at which an actorâÂÂs preference for conflict over management changes.
The central question this conceptualization raises, therefore, is what factors
influence actorsâ strategy choices during a crisis. The theory proposes that, when it comes to
the initiation of conflict management, it is costs that dominate the decision process. Or as
Jackman (1993) so succinctly puts it; âÂÂfor those confronted with a very restricted range of
available alternatives extending from horrendous to merely awful, minimizing pain is the
same as maximizing utilityâÂÂ.
Both experimental and statistical methodologies are used to test the hypotheses
derived from the theory. Original experimental data were collected from experiments run on undergraduate students at Texas A&M University. For the statistical analysis a data set of
interstate crises and negotiation behavior was compiled using data from the SHERFACS
and International Crisis Behavior data sets and data collected specifically for this research. This
multi-method approach was chosen because of the nature of the questions being examined
and in order to minimize the limitations of the individual methodologies. The experimental
tests demonstrate that the expectations of the model are supported in the controlled
environment of the experiment. The results from the empirical analysis were, within the
restrictions of the data, consistent with both theoretical expectations and the experimental
results.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/4269 |
| Date | 30 October 2006 |
| Creators | Bragg, Belinda Lesley |
| Contributors | Geva, Nehemia, Hermann, Charles |
| Publisher | Texas A&M University |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | 958157 bytes, electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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