Political Conflicts in the Shadow of Violence: A Preface to a Theory on the Nature and the Timing of Political Stabilizations in Crisis Situations

I develop a theory of political conflict in the shadow of violence in light of various domestic and international crisis situations ranging from transitional, revolutionary, and anti-colonial conflicts to internationalization of such conflicts. This theory is particularly concerned with the nature and the timing of political stabilization processes with respect to the military capabilities, instantaneous economic opportunity costs, costs associated with the use of violence, and values of winning of any two groups in conflict. In solving for a Perfect Bayesian Nash equilibrium of an incomplete information, continuous type and time, and infinite horizon war-of-attrition model with two outside options of attack and concession, I derive the following preliminary results of interest. First, my conjecture that the timing of concession and the concomitant time of stabilization increase with respect to the military capability of a group while the timing of attack and the concomitant time of stabilization decrease with respect to the military capability is a Perfect Bayesian equilibrium. Second, the decision concerning the use or the non-use of violence depends on the relative cost of using violence. The relative cost of violence is the ratio of the cost associated with the use of violence to the value of obtaining the outcome of interest. For example, the higher the benefit of obtaining political power, the more likely the use of violence, and the higher the cost associated with the use of violence, the less likely the use. This, in turn, suggests that the use of violence should be more common in non-democracies than in democracies because the benefit associated with political power is generally high in non-democracies. In addition, the second result also suggests that the use of violence should be less common in countries with high levels of economic development since there are more assets and infrastructures that can be destroyed by the use of violence. Third, the higher the level of economic development, which, in turn, means higher instantaneous economic opportunity costs for all, the sooner the political stabilization by either violent or non-violent means. More importantly, the decision concerning the timing of a group’s action depends on the instantaneous economic opportunity cost of its opponent but not on its own cost. Fourth, the higher the value of obtaining the outcome of interest, the later the political stabilization by non-violent means and the sooner the termination of the crisis situation by violent means will take place. Fifth, the costlier the use of violence, the later the political stabilization by non-violent means for groups with low military capability, and the sooner the stabilization by non-violent means for groups with mid-level military capability. * Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Political Science, University of MichiganAnn Arbor, 5700 Haven Hall, 505 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1045 (e-mail: [email protected]). I thank James Morrow, Robert Axelrod, Robert Franzese, Scott Page, Catherine Hafer, Gary Cox, David Epstein, Roger Myerson, Barry O’Neill, Kenneth Benoit, John Jackson, Chris Achen, Gretchen Casper, Mona Lyne, Jennifer Widner, Meredith Woo-Cumings, Mary Gallagher, Hyung Bae, Bara Kim, Bong Dae Choi, Jongryn Mo, Hyeran Jo, ShiangTung Jung, Bryce Corrigan and the seminar participants at the University of Michigan for their generous and helpful suggestions and comments. Parts or previous versions of this paper were presented at the annual meetings of American Political Science Association (Chicago: 2004, Washington, D.C.: 2005), the annual meetings of Midwest Political Science Association (Chicago: 2004, Chicago: 2005) and the annual meetings of International Studies Association (Honolulu: 2005).