Anti-Climacus

LINK: Daniel Nexon at The Duck (is this an acceptable abbreviated form of the name? I think it's kind of catchy) has a nice application of James Fearon's "Rationalist Explanations for War" in the context of the question of why states go to war when it's almost always objectively worse for them. Now, speaking as the only person really willing to defend the rationalist approach in my IR core this last term (and being one of the few defenders of any use for formal theory, game theory, etc), I find this sort of explanation to be perfectly satisfying, insofar as it goes, but somewhat incomplete. It seems pretty obvious that

"the presence of an indivisible issue, incorrect information about a rival's objectives, or the inability of one (or both) sides to make a credible commitment to upholding the settlement all may lead rational states to opt for war."

but it still seems to leave open the question of why these things lead to war (rather than, say, to more negotiations or further attempts to gather information about the opponent's preferences, though I suspect that this all becomes clearer when one looks to conflict in IPE, where there are more cases and the causal structure should be easier to identify). Now, of course, my favored explanation comes from first-image realism (that is, people have these preferences because the will-to-power is built into humanity, which leads to both perverse preference structures and the willingness to forego rationality when convenient), but I realize I'm pretty alone in having that preference. In any event, you should read Fearon's article if you haven't already, because it's really good.

(waits to get verbally pelted by any of my IR friends who happen upon this blog)

ALSO: ironically enough, Blogger's spell-checker does not recognize the word 'blog.' As Bart Simpson once said, "the ironing is delicious."