Confidence-building measures : a theoretical and empirical assessment
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Confidence-building measures (CBMs) are a unique class of international agreement intended to reduce mistrust between rival states by minimizing the risk of surprise attack, political exploitation of military power, and of inadvertent conflict or escalation. This dissertation offers four related papers that firmly ground the concept of CBMs in international relations theory. The first paper provides a conceptual definition of CBMs premised on the idea that uncertainty over a rival's intentions is a basic cause of mutual fears between states. CBMs attempt to build confidence in intentions by either credibly revealing a state's preferences or demonstrating that specific actions are non-hostile. Three strategic structures enable CBMs to overcome the obstacles of sustaining compliance in the face of incentives to defect. The first two strategic structures are familiar in international relations theory: Harmony and the repeated Prisoner's Dilemma. However, one important type of CBM - notification CBMs - cannot be sustained by either Harmony or the repeated Prisoner's Dilemma. The second paper offers a game theoretic model of notification CBMs that explores their unique strategic structure. They rely on a tradeoff between the utility of exploitation and the cost of accidents to make notification both possible and informative. The third paper explores the empiric landscape of CBM practice. Analysis of a new dataset of CBMs shows wide variation in the prevalence and type of CBM agreements. Statistical analysis of a number of theoretically and empirically derived determinants identifies several factors that are associated with increased probability of CBM agreements. The fourth paper examines the roots and effectiveness of the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Incidents at Sea Agreement, one of the most important early CBMs. The paper is the first quantitative test of whether or not the INCSEA Agreement succeeded in reducing dangerous naval incidents. Collectively, these papers provide a systematic exploration of an important but under-studied class of international agreement.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2012 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Ling, Paul John |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Political Science. |
| Primary advisor | Schultz, Kenneth A |
| Thesis advisor | Schultz, Kenneth A |
| Thesis advisor | Fearon, James D |
| Thesis advisor | Sagan, Scott Douglas |
| Advisor | Fearon, James D |
| Advisor | Sagan, Scott Douglas |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Paul John Ling. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Political Science. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2012. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2012 by Paul John Ling
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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