Eric Reinhardt's Research Page

Posturing Parliaments: Ratification, Uncertainty, and International Bargaining, PhD dissertation (New York: Columbia University, December 11, 1996).

Nice Strategies in a World of Relative Gains: The Problem of Cooperation Under Anarchy, Journal of Conflict Resolution 37:3 (September 1993), 427-445 (with Marc Busch).

The Selection Effect of International Dispute Settlement Institutions, paper presented at the Southern Political Science Association's 1996 Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, November 6-10 (Postscript format) (HP Laserjet format, zipped).

This paper examines the impact of dispute settlement institutions on the outcome of international conflicts. Realists contend that such institutions are epiphenomenal to underlying power relationships. Neoliberals argue in contrast that institutions make cooperation more likely by clarifying obligations and reducing transaction costs. The paper introduces some puzzling evidence about the role of the dispute process under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The evidence highlights a selection effect, in which cooperation is more likely at earlier stages of institutional escalation than after the adjudication is complete. Yet why would defendants plea bargain if they know they can spurn contrary rulings? To address this question, the paper introduces an incomplete information model of international bargaining and escalation within the context of a dispute settlement institution. The model generates a number of surprising and powerful results. First, even defendants who do not fear unfavorable rulings will be more likely to plea bargain in equilibrium because of the dispute settlement institution. Second, those disputes that reach the highest levels of escalation---in which rulings are issued---are much less likely to end cooperatively than those that end before the ruling stage. The model thus explains the puzzling GATT selection effect. It also suggests that dispute settlement institutions can have a positive effect on cooperation (contra realist theory), but not through the mechanisms posited by neoliberals. In order to see the influence of such institutions, we must examine not those cases in which they issue injunctions, but rather those in which their involvement is peripheral or merely threatened.

Dispute Settlement Institutions and the Escalation of Security Conflicts (Postscript format).

This is an application of the argument developed in the above paper to international security conflicts rather than trade disputes.

This paper examines the impact of dispute settlement institutions on the outcome of interstate security conflicts. It starts from the underappreciated idea that institutions are central in the escalation as well as the termination of conflicts. The paper presents a rationalist story of the escalation of disputes when uncertainty prevails. The argument is that as long as there is at least a small chance that states are inclined to comply with rulings by the institution, even states that do not care about rulings will be more likely to cooperate. The result is that cooperation should be more likely before a ruling is issued than afterwards. Counter to intuition, plea bargaining can occur even when the institution has no enforcement power. The paper presents some testable hypotheses that follow from this argument. A number of illustrative cases offer tentative support for the hypotheses as well. The argument in this paper strongly challenges both realist and neoliberal ideas concerning whether and how dispute settlement institutions increase the prospects for cooperation. In order to see the impact of such institutions, we must examine not those cases in which they issue injunctions, but rather those in which their involvement is peripheral or merely threatened.

Domestic Strife and the Initiation of Violence at Home and Abroad (with Kurt Dassel) PRELIMINARY DRAFT

The idea of diversionary war, i.e., that leaders may seek to alleviate strife at home by initiating conflict abroad, is an intuitively appealing explanation in many cases. But the extensive empirical literature on the topic has generated mostly negative or mixed support for the diversionary war argument. We argue that the results have been unsupportive primarily because the literature has neglected to distinguish among different forms of domestic strife. Not all conflict at home generates conflict abroad. Further, we argue, conflict at home can motivate domestic repression as well as foreign aggression: diversionary war must be seen as a special case of a larger theory of violence. We accordingly specify the particular form of domestic strife, the contestation of political institutions, most likely to spur leaders to violence. We then statistically examine the effects of contested institutions on the use of violence at home and abroad, using panel data spanning 110 countries and 157 years. Our tests, which are cast at the level of individual states, are based on a fixed-effects duration dependent logit model. Our analysis controls for regime type and regime change, among other factors. The evidence strongly supports our argument. On the basis of this evidence, we conclude that much of the effects of regime type and regime change on the use of force is actually due to contested institutions.