Mobilization Follies in International Relations: A Multimethod Exploration of Why Some Decision Makers Fail to Avoid War When Public Mobilization as a Bargaining Tool Fails

Year 2019, , 359 - 385, 01.07.2019

Konstantinos Travlos

https://doi.org/10.20991/allazimuth.477341

Cited By: 2

Abstract

This
paper is intended to serve as a show and tell model for graduate students.
Sections in parentheses and italics provide a running commentary by the author
on the decisions taken throughout the paper. The goal is to permit students to
follow the thinking of the researcher and see how it guided the theoretical,
methodological and other decisions on content that finally made it into the
paper. The paper in question explores how “public” military mobilization can be
an attempt by weak actors to trigger intervention by third parties in a dispute
with a stronger actor, in the hopes that the third parties will force the
stronger actor to accommodate the weaker actor. This attempt is called
“compellence via proxy”. In this research I explore why in reaction to failure,
some weak actors are able to avoid escalation to war, while others are not. I
posit that the flexibility of the decision makers of the weak actors is
influenced by their ability to overhaul their winning coalition. A large-n
evaluation of 68 cases of “public” mobilization, and an evaluation of six
Balkan state mobilizations in the 1878-1909 era, do not support the idea that
the size of the winning coalition, a part of the factors determining overhaul,
has an association with war onset or its avoidance. 

Keywords

Military mobilization, war, winning coalition, rationalist theory of war, crisis

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