Wartime Negotiation Behavior and Third-Party Public Support

• In Event: Public Opinion on War and Peace in Ukraine and Taiwan

Abstract

Existing work on wartime bargaining has typically analyzed interactions between belligerents, exploring how their bargaining behavior signals strength or weakness to their opponents. Few studies have taken into account the fact that most wartime bargaining occurs before international audiences, who can influence the outcome of the war in important ways. How does a belligerent’s peace offer affect third-party attitudes and perceptions towards the belligerent? How should we understand warring leaders’ different signaling incentives? We develop hypotheses about wartime bargaining in the shadow of international audiences and test them using a survey experiment, fielded on a national sample of the U.S. public, involving the Ukraine War. We randomly vary Russia’s and Ukraine’s bargaining stances to investigate what inferences foreign audiences draw when belligerents offer peace versus standing firm, and how war performance and individual-level variables moderate these effects. Our findings shed light on belligerents’ sometimes-conflicting incentives to stand firm versus make conciliatory gestures during wartime bargaining.

Authors

• Hohyun Yoon, University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Michaela Mattes, UC-Berkeley

• Jessica L. P. Weeks, University of Wisconsin-Madison