Executive Constraints and Success in International Crises

Abstract

Crisis outcomes have traditionally been explained by the participating states' relative power and relative ability to demonstrate resolve. Resolve has almost always been defined as the willingness of a state to go to war to obtain a favorable settlement and almost always operationalized in terms of the amount of force that a state uses in a particular crisis or dispute. However, a growing body of literature suggests that domestic political structures are an important source of resolve and therefore should be an important determinant of interstate crisis/dispute outcomes. This hypoth esis is tested using two distinct data sets and the results indicate that the hypothesis is not only correct, but that domestic political structures are a stronger predictor of interstate conflict outcomes than either relative ca pability or the traditional notion of relative resolve.