{"title":"Stronger Challengers can Cause More (or Less) Conflict and Institutional Reform","authors":"Andrew T. Little, Jack Paine","doi":"10.1177/00104140231169031","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Prominent theories propose that commitment problems drive phenomena such as war and democratization. However, existing work disagrees about a basic question: how does a challenger’s coercive strength affect prospects for conflict and/or institutional reform? We establish that the relationship depends on how challenger strength affects the average and maximum probability of winning a conflict in a given period (“threat”). We analyze a formal model with a general distribution of threats, and conceptualize challenger strength as affecting this distribution. If the maximum threat is fixed and stronger challengers pose a higher average threat, then weak challengers will rebel (absent reform) during the rare periods they pose a high threat. However, if stronger challengers pose a greater maximum threat, then they are harder to buy off. Applying these insights advances theoretical and empirical debates about democratization.","PeriodicalId":10600,"journal":{"name":"Comparative Political Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":4.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Comparative Political Studies","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140231169031","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"POLITICAL SCIENCE","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Prominent theories propose that commitment problems drive phenomena such as war and democratization. However, existing work disagrees about a basic question: how does a challenger’s coercive strength affect prospects for conflict and/or institutional reform? We establish that the relationship depends on how challenger strength affects the average and maximum probability of winning a conflict in a given period (“threat”). We analyze a formal model with a general distribution of threats, and conceptualize challenger strength as affecting this distribution. If the maximum threat is fixed and stronger challengers pose a higher average threat, then weak challengers will rebel (absent reform) during the rare periods they pose a high threat. However, if stronger challengers pose a greater maximum threat, then they are harder to buy off. Applying these insights advances theoretical and empirical debates about democratization.
期刊介绍:
Comparative Political Studies is a journal of social and political science which publishes scholarly work on comparative politics at both the cross-national and intra-national levels. We are particularly interested in articles which have an innovative theoretical argument and are based on sound and original empirical research. We also encourage submissions about comparative methodology, particularly when methodological arguments are closely linked with substantive issues in the field.