Many important political interactions involve bargaining in the shadow of costly conflict and outside the context of fixed institutional rules. Prominent examples include bargaining between states in international crises (e.g., Morrow 1989; Bueno de Mesquita and Lalman 1992; Powell 2000), between a government and a rebel group within a state (Fearon 2004), or between parties involved in political transitions (e.g., Acemoglu and Robinson 2001). In such settings, the failure to arrive at an agreement can result in war, rebellion, the imposition of sanctions, or other forms of political conflict. As a result, these interactions generally involve implicit or explicit threats, as actors attempt to manipulate the risks of conflict to their advantage and/or to signal their resolve to fight for their goals (e.g., Schelling 1960; Fearon 1995). In addition, because bargains arrived at in these contexts are generally not enforceable by outside parties, such as courts, the outcomes must be self-enforcing, underpinned by credible commitments on all sides to live by the deal (Fearon 1995, 2004; Powell 2004).
Our aim during this week is to familiarize students with this class of models, their applications in international and comparative politics, and the issues that arise in testing their empirical implications. On the theoretical side, we will focus on models of bargaining and games of incomplete information, with particular attention to issues of signaling (e.g., Fearon 1997; Sartori 2001) and credible commitment (e.g., Powell 2004). On the empirical side, we will discuss different strategies for testing the empirical implications of these models, such as comparative-static analysis (e.g., Fearon 1994; Schultz 1999) and fully structural models (Signorino 1999; Lewis and Schultz 2003).
Monday Morning: EITM Intro ppt
Monday Morning: EITM Bargaining ppt
Monday Afternoon: Inference w/o models ppt
Tuesday Morning: EITM Empirical Issues ppt
Tuesday: Inference w/o models II ppt
Tuesday afternoon: Commitment ppt
Tuesday Afternoon: War and Enforcement ppt
Wednesday: Kris Ramsay's Presentation slides
Thursday Morning: Structural models of strategic interaction slides
Thursday Morning: Identification ppt
Thursday Afternoon: Estimating Preferences ppt
Friday Rebecca Morton's presentation slides