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Political Science 49s

This seminar will focus on the conduct of international crises with a particular emphasis on developing strategies for resolving these disputes peacefully. The first half of the course will review a number of the prominent theories about how crises can be resolved short of war. In addition, we will discuss some of the important critiques of these theories. In the second half of the course we use these theories to analyze several prominent 20th century international crises. In addition, we will apply what we have learned about crisis bargaining in our own class game of Diplomacy! The goals of this course are: 1) to gain an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the literature on crisis bargaining; 2) to develop an agenda for future research on conflict resolution; and 3) to develop the ability to test theoretical arguments about crisis bargaining on historical cases.

Click here to link to our Diplomacy game.

Course Requirements:

Student performance will be evaluated on the following basis:

1) Most of our time in class will be spent discussing and analyzing the weekly readings, so attendance at and participation in the discussions are essential. Class participation will count for 25% of your final grade.

2) During the course of the semester each student must submit two short papers (2-3 double spaced, typed pages). In these papers you are to analyze a particular reading or set of readings for your assigned week. However, you should not consider these papers to be book reports or summaries of the readings. Instead, in each paper the student should analyze a particular theoretical or empirical issue in the readings, identify some weakness of the existing literature in this area, and present a concrete solution to the problem. You may choose any two weeks to submit papers, so distribute the work as best fits your schedule. The papers are due at the beginning of class on the day on which we discuss the readings you analyze. Thus, for example, a paper analyzing John Mearsheimer on conventional deterrence would be due on February 11. These short papers will account for 25% of your grade.

3) A research paper of approximately 10-12 pages will be due on April 29. Students will be expected to apply one or more of the theories reviewed in this course to one or more historical cases. By a "case" I am referring either to a war or to a crisis in which war was averted. Students may select more than one theory and determine which approach provides the most persuasive explanation of a particular case or they may test one theory against two or more cases. Some research will be required for this assignment, but I do not expect your papers to be major historical undertakings. Your task will be made easier by selecting wars or crises which have already received a good deal of attention from historians. The research paper will account for 50% of your grade.

It is important that students cite the material that they have relied upon in writing these papers. If you have questions about when you need to provide citation for a source, please see the Duke Libraries' guide on avoiding plagaiarism. If you have questions about how to provide citation on your sources, please see the Duke Libraries' guide on citation formats. Use any citation format that you prefer, what is important is that you give credit to the sources you used.

Required Books:

The following books have been ordered and should be available for purchase at the Bryan Center bookstore. They are also on reserve, but because we will be referring to them frequently I suggest you buy them if at all possible. In addition, the articles are available on reserve at Perkins Library, on e-reserves, and/or online databases through Duke Libraries. You can click on the title to be linked to that reading.

Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, Basic Books, Inc., New York: NY, (1984).
Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Harvard University Press, Cambridge: MA, (1960).
Steven Miller, ed., Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War, Princeton University Press, Princeton: NJ, (1991).
Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, Thinking in Time, The Free Press, New York: NY, (1988).
Robert Pape, Bombing to Win, Cornell University Press, Ithaca: N.Y., (1996).

Schedule of Readings - All listed readings are required

January 9 - Organization and Introductions

What is Bargaining & Why Bother!
January 14 -
Ned Lebow, The Art of Bargaining, Chapters 1-3.

The Origins of Bargaining Theory
January 16 -
Snyder and Diesing, Conflict Among Nations, Chapter 3: part 1, part 2, part 3.
Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Chapters 1-3.

January 21 - No Class - MLK Day

The Cooperative (r)Evolution
January 23 -
Robert Axelrod, The Evolution of Cooperation, Chapters 1-3, 6 and 7.
Kenneth Oye, Cooperation Under Anarchy, Chapters 1-2.
January 25 -
Russel Leng, Interstate Crisis Behavior, 1816-1980: Realism versus Reciprocity, Cambridge University Press, New York:NY, (1993). Chapter 1 and Chapter 7.

Crisis Bargaining and the Strategy of Punishment
January 28-
Pape, Bombing to Win, Chapters 1-3.

January 30-
Robert Pape, "Why Economic Sanctions Do Not Work," International Security, Fall 1997 v22 n2 p90(47).
David Baldwin, "Evaluating Economic Sanctions," International Security, Fall 1998 v23 no.2 p189(10).

Nuclear Deterrence
February 4 -
Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, Chapters 8 and 10
Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon, Harcourt and Brace, New York:NY, (1946). Chapters 1 and 2: part 1, part 2.
February 6 -
John Meuller, "The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons," International Security, vol.13, no.2, (1988).

Conventional Deterrence
February 11 -
John Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, Cornell University Press, Ithaca: CA, Chapter 2.
February 13 -
Paul Huth, "Extended Deterrence and the Outbreak of War," American Political Science Review, 82, (1988).
Janice Stein, "Deterrence and Reassurance, in Philip Tetlock et al. eds., Behavior Society and Nuclear War, vol. 2., Oxford University Press, New York:NY, (1991), part 1, part 2.

Institutions and Conflict Resolution
February 18 - NO CLASS MEETING!

February 20 -
Arthur Stein, Why Nations Cooperate, Chapter 2.
Christopher Gelpi, "The Power of Legitimacy: International Norms and US-Soviet Relations Over Cuba," part 1, part 2.
Haftendorn, Keohane, and Wallander, eds., Imperfect Unions: Security Institutions over Time and Space, Oxford University Press, New York: NY, (1999). Chapter 1, Chapter 4: part 1, Chapter 4: part 2, and Chapter 9.

Critiques of Bargaining Theory
February 25-
Snyder and Diesing, Conflict Among Nations, Chapter 5: part 1, part 2.
Alexander George, Avoiding War, Chapter 18.
February 27 -
Alexander George, Avoiding War, Chapter 20.
Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War, Chapter 6: part 1 , part 2.

Fixing What's Broken
March 4 -
Neustadt and May, Thinking in Time, Chapters 3-7.
March 6 -
Neustadt and May, Thinking in Time, Chapters 8-13.

March 9-17 - SPRING BREAK!

World War I
March 18-
Jack Snyder, "Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984," in Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War.
Steven Van Evera, "The Cult of the Offensive and the First World War," in Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War.
Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War, Chapter 5.
Scott Sagan, "1914 Revisited: Allies, Offense, and Instability," in Military Strategy and the Origins of the First World War.

March 20 - Diplomacy Game in Class

The Cuban Missile Crisis
March 25 -
Graham Allison, "Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis," American Political Science Review, vol.63, no.3, (1969), part 1, part 2.
March 27 -
Alexander George, "The Cuban Missile Crisis," in Avoiding War, Chapter 11.
Neustadt and May, Thinking In Time, Chapter 1.

The Arab-Israeli Conflict
April 1-
Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, in Avoiding War, Chapter 13.
Janice Stein, "The Arab-Israeli War of 1967: Inadvertent War Through Miscalculated Escalation," in Avoiding War. Chapter 8.
April 3 -
Yaacov Bar-Siman-Tov, in Avoiding War, Chapter 15.
Janice Stein, Psychology and Deterrence, Chapter 3.

Vietnam and the Gulf War
April 8 -
Pape, Bombing to Win, Chapters 6 and 7

April 10 - Diplomacy Game in Class

The Future of American Foreign Policy
April 15 -
Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, "Civilian Hawks and Military Doves: Civil-Military Relations and American Military Conflict, 1816-1992", part 1, part 2.
Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, "The Civil-Military Gap and Casualty Aversion," part 1, part 2, part 3.

April 17 - Diplomacy Game in Class

Summary and Discussion

April 22 - Last Class meeting. We will summarize themes of course and discuss any lessons we learned from the Diplomacy game.

April 24 - NO CLASS - Students are ENCOURAGED (!) to spend the time working on their papers!

April 29- FINAL PAPER DUE -10 AM