Flexibility and Firmness in Crisis Bargaining

• Author: Joe Clare,Vesna Danilovic
• Published date: 01 July 2021
• Date: 01 July 2021
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0022002721994174
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Flexibility and Firmness

in Crisis Bargaining

Vesna Danilovic

1

and Joe Clare

2

Abstract

Our study compares the efficacy of mixed bargaining strategies to strict coercion

or accommodation. While mixed strategies can be approached from different

conceptual angles, we focus on flexible and/or firm postures as signaling properties

of bargaining. In our theory and empirical analysis, we show that the combination of

firmness with flexibility on both sides, without necessarily scripted rules as in

tit-for-tat, leads to peaceful resolution without unilateral concessions. Its opposite,

resolute firmness is unlikely to make the opponent yield, as assumed in influential

literature of the traditional canon. If anything, war is most likely when both sides opt

for it. We provide the theoretical rationale for these expectations, which are

validated in our empirical analysis of the ICB crisis dataset for the 1918 to 2015

period. Our study also points to the bargaining process as a potential causal

mechanism between democracy and peace, and therefore has relevant implications

for several research strands.

Keywords

bargaining, interstate conflict, dyadic conflict, firm-but-flexible strategy

In contrast to the predominant focus on strictly coercive strategies in conflict

research, we revisit the intuitive wisdom behind Theodore Roosevelt’s advice to

“speak softly and carry a big stick” as an alternative bargaining approach. After

1

Department of Political Science, University at Buffalo–SUNY, Buffalo, NY, USA

2

Department of Political Science, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Vesna Danilovic, Department of Political Science, University at Buffalo–SUNY, 520 Park Hall, Buffalo,

NY 14260, USA.

Email: vesna@buffalo.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2021, Vol. 65(6) 1039-1066

ªThe Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002721994174

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briefly surveying different, albeit still sporadic, interpretations of mixing coercion

with cooperation, we outline theoretical premises for our approach. Focusing on the

signaling properties of bargaining that combine firmness with flexibility, we identify

many advantages over strict coercion or accommodation. Our study also shows that

it is important to examine the effectiveness of these strategies as a two-sided process,

which has not yet received a full and closer treatment in the empirical and theoretical

research.

We test our arguments using the ICB dataset of international crises from 1918 to

2015. Toward that end, we expand the dataset by identifying the bargaining behavior

pursued by the principal parties in each crisis. The empirical findings strongly

confirm our expectations about the comparative advantages of mixing firmness with

flexibility when pursued by both sides. Firmness alone through threats and coercion,

either by one or both sides, does not give any substantial advantage as expected in

some influential studies. Besides its contribution to the research on crisis bargaining,

our analysis also generates novel results about exogenous factors to the bargaining

process, especially concerning the causal link between domestic regime type and

conflict outcomes. We conclude with suggestions for further research on both crisis

behavior and democratic peace.

Mixed Bargaining Strategies

The uneven treatment of bargaining behavior in conflict studies, tilted toward threats

and coercion, tends to overemphasize the effects of punitive types of influence

strategies, while ignoring the potentials, as well as the limits, of incentives and

rewards (Baldwin 1971; Snyder and Diesing 1977; Nincic 2010). Moreover, since

it is common to analytically frame the bargaining problem as a dilemma between

cooperative inducements and negative sanctions, the research—conceptual, theore-

tical, and empirical—about their optimal bargaining mix is consequently underde-

veloped. We nonetheless identify two general methods of mixing coercion with

accommodation as treated in a few past studies.

As canonically stated by Schelling (1966), one of the principal advantages of

coercion is to prevail in the contest by projecting greater resolve. Its main liability,

however, is that it can run the risk of inadvertent war arising from a number of

factors, but most essentially from the lack of complete information about each side’s

true preferences. This in turn gives an incentive to misrepresent and overstate one’s

willingness to fight (as in rationalist explanations, e.g., Fearon 1995) or exacerbates

misperceptions about either side’s true intentions (as in psychological approaches,

e.g., Jervis 1976). In contrast, the goal of positive inducements is to persuade the

other side that its gains from compliance are greater than any benefits, discounted by

costs, from noncompliance. The advantage and drawback of this strategy are in

direct reversal to coercion: it increases the prospects for crisis stability and likely

averts conflict spirals, but at the risk of projecting weakness that the opponent can

exploit.

1040 Journal of Conflict Resolution 65(6)