Dispensa- 2- Traditional debates: Liberal and Democratic Peace Theory revisited

Question 1

Liberal Peace

Answer 1

Liberal peace emerges as a function of a change in human nature that can be obtained through the virtuous influences within and between democracies, also thanks to peaceful federations of nations.

Question 2

Perpetual/Democratic Peace (Kant):

Answer 2

The phenomenon that no modern democracy has ever gone to war with another democracy.
Reasons:
Spread of democratic norms also through federations and alliances of democracies.
Audience costs

Question 3

Transnational and domestic factors

Answer 3

• Role of domestic institutions in picking foreign policy (ignored by realists, as states are assumed to be unitary actors)
• Role of democratic institutions in refraining from conflict as they representative leaders would not be reelected if they back down (audience costs: voters dislike indecisive leaders)
• Financial interests, pro and against wars: leaders often have different cost benefit analysis from citizens, hence the level of control of leaders by citizens or interest groups matters.

Question 4

Institutional liberalism

Answer 4

international institutions (i.e. UN) and rules promote cooperation and help avoid trust problems.

Question 5

Negative correlation between war and democracies (Bueno de Mesquita):

Answer 5

• Democratic leaders invest more resources in case of conflict, by fear to lose war, and then elections. Thus, other countries are reluctant to face them.
• Democratic leaders are more risk averse than Autocrats for reelection-reasons.

Question 6

Bias of leaders

Answer 6

the difference in benefit/cost ratio for a leader w.r.t. the median voter. Hence, conflicts against autocracies are more likely to take place during the last mandate.

Question 7

Incentive for citizens in leader selection

Answer 7

select an hawkish leader as best response to dovish leaders abroad.

Question 8

Explanation of Democratic peace

Answer 8

• Electoral Accountability (Conconi et al.): Leaders up for re-election are significantly less likely to go to war than leaders with no reelection prospect (autocrats or last term in democratic office).
• Normative Argument: People in democracies are experienced with compromises, thus, adopt resolution rather than war when confronting one another.

Question 9

Mathematical explanation for war: matrix explanation

Answer 9

• If both players choose D, they coexist peacefully, payoffs= zero.
• If player i ∈ {A,B} chooses H, he incurs a cost ci ≥ 0.
• If player j chooses D; player i chooses H, player i gets μ > 0, i.e., first-mover advantage.
• If player j chooses D; player i chooses H, player j incurs a cost d > 0 i.e. defence cost.
• d and μ represent fear and greed, respectively. Assume μ < d.

Question 10

Three types of player i

Answer 10

• coordination type if μ < ci < d
• a dominant strategy hawk if ci < μ
• a dominant strategy dove if ci > d.
If both players are coordination types, the game is Stag Hunt.
If both players are dominant strategy hawk, the game is Prisonners Dilemma.

Question 11

Payoff Uncertainty

Answer 11

• Suppose cA and cB are independently drawn from a distribution F, uniform on [0, cbarre].
• Each player is not sure to be a dominant strategy hawk, thus cbarre> μ.
• The probability that a player is a dominant strategy hawk is F(μ) = μ/cbarre

Question 12

Equilibrium (think increase)

Answer 12

• if cbarre < d, then the only equilibrium is hawkish behaviour – the Hobbesian trap.
• If cbarre > d, then the symmetric equilibrium has an interior threshold c^=d, with all those between 0 and c^ playing H.

Question 13

Citizens

Answer 13

• The citizen supports the leader if its action was a best-response according to the citizen’s own preferences.
• To stay in power, leader i ∈ {A, B} needs a critical level of support sigma* among his citizens.
  sigma* is
  over 1/2 in democracies
  very small in a dictatorship (< 1-F(d) )
• The value of staying in power is R > 0.

Question 14

Reselection

Answer 14

• Distribution of cost types in each population is F
• Leaders A and B are supported by fractions F(μ) and 1−F(d) of their population, respectively.
• If F(μ) ≥ sigmaA* , then leader A stays in power, his payoff is μ − cA + R (where cA is his private cost type).
• Similarly, leader B remains in power if and only if
  1 − F (d ) ≥ sigmaB*
• Assume that the median voter is a coordination type and 1 − F (d ) < F (μ) < 0.5.
  so, dominant strategy doves are the smallest group within the population

Question 15

Countries and Regimes (Leader’s payoff matrix)
Dictatorships
Full democracies

Answer 15

Dictatorships: they have very low σ∗, hence same matrix (1) with R added in every cell.
Full democracies: they have σ∗ high enough to require median type support for re-election, so leaders play SH

Question 16

Dangerous limited democracies

Answer 16

1 − F(d) < σ∗ < F(μ).
Leader i loses power if he chooses D while the opponent chooses H.

A limited democracy has a hawkish bias, since the leader won’t be reelected if and only if they act dovish in front of a hawk.

Question 17

Hawks and Doves game theory
components and assumptions
also draw the matrix

Answer 17

assume that d>μ : defence is more important than first strike advantage
c: cost of attacking (play Hawk)
d: cost of defending (play Dove when the other plays Hawk)
μ: first strike advantage