Shifting power, interstate war, and domestic politics

Abstract We analyze a model in which shifting power undermines foreign states’ commitments to the status quo, yet domestic leaders cannot credibly communicate the true scale of averted power shifts after preventive war. Publics prefer war only for large prospective power shifts, but preventive war renders the true size of averted shifts unobservable, incentivizing leaders to lie ex post to avoid political punishment. When publics are ex ante skeptical over shift size and war outcomes are middling, the probabilities of war and political punishment, as well as public skepticism over averted shifts and the chances of erroneous punishment, all increase in war outcomes. Public strategies of punishing military failures are particularly unsuccessful at discouraging undesirable preventive wars, yet the same conditions that encourage preventive war undermine its political benefits. We use our model to explain why Japan's leaders failed to convince the public of preventive success against Russia in 1905.