Assessing the Efficacy of the Laws of War

该项目测试了战争法的正式模型——旨在限制战时暴力的正式条约。这些国际法特别令人感兴趣，因为它们在某种程度上塑造了各方的行为，使其能够相互执行或尊重自己的限制。它们构成了政治制度自我强制性质的极端案例。该项目是对两国之间战略竞争的战争的正式处理。他们在消耗战模式中争夺一个奖项，在这种模式下，每一轮的成本取决于双方目前的军事平衡。在每个回合中，他们都要进行一场“战斗”，其中固定的战略形式，零和代表了每场战斗的竞争。“战斗”游戏的结果取决于他们选择的策略，这决定了这一轮军事平衡的转变。在平衡状态下，如果军事平衡超出了“断点”（游戏邦注：这是游戏的内生因素），一方就会退出。这款游戏的变体在特定回合中的成本取决于战斗游戏中的策略以及当前的军事平衡。在这个模型中，战争法则表现为双方在战前达成的协议，即不采用一套战斗游戏策略。问题是，这种协议何时保持平衡。考虑背离这种协议的一方权衡使用被禁止策略的短期利益，当：A)另一方无法报复；B)双方可以自由使用协议所涵盖的任何策略的长期后果；c)作为第一个违反协议的公司而遭受的任何受众损失。叛变的动机是通过双方的“断点”如何随着叛变而变化来评估的。该项目通过收集20世纪违反战争法的数据集来检验这些结论。这些数据包括有效的主要条约，解决战俘和化学武器等问题，以及未在条约中合法化的协议候选协议，如空中轰炸。制定了违反范围和程度的编码规则，并通过与历史资料（主要是二手资料）协商，评估了20世纪一系列辛格-小战争中交战国家对这些协议的遵守情况。这种数据收集导致了对模型的两种经验检验：首先，比较模型判断的可执行协议是否比被判断为不可执行的限制更经常得到遵守；其次，对违反时间的测试，它们是否倾向于在战争中早期失效，以及当它们发生时，当一方似乎即将失败时，获胜一方是否更有可能是违规者。

This project tests a formal model of the laws of war-formal treaties that seek to limit violence during wartime. These international laws are of particular interest because they shape behavior to the extent that the parties can enforce them on one another or respect their limits on their own. They form the extreme case of the self-enforcing nature of political institutions. The project is a formal treatment of war where there is a strategic competition between two states. They contend for a prize in a war of attrition model where the costs they pay each round depend on the current military balance between the two. In each round, they fight a "battle" where a fixed strategic-form, zero-sum represents the contest of each battle. The outcome of the "battle" game depends on their chosen strategies This determines the shift in the military balance in this round. In equilibrium, a side quits if the military balance moves against them beyond its "break point", which is endogenous to the game. A variant of this game has the costs in a given round depend on the strategies played in the battle game as well as the current military balance.In this model the laws of war are represented as a prewar agreement by both players not to play a set of strategies of the battle game. The question is when such agreements hold in equilibrium. A side considering defecting from such an agreement weighs the short-run benefits of using a banned strategy when: a) the other side cannot retaliate; b) the long-run consequences of both sides being free to use any strategy covered by the agreement; and c) any audience costs it suffers for being the first violator of the agreement. The incentive to defect is assessed by how the "break points" of the two sides shift as a consequence of a defection. The project tests these conclusions by collecting a data set on violations of the laws of war in the 20th century. These data include the major treaties in effect, addressing issues like prisoners of war and chemical weapons, and candidates for agreements that were not legalized in a treaty, such as aerial bombardment. Coding rules for extent and degree of violations are created and compliance with these agreements by warring states in the set of Singer-Small wars during the 20`h century are assessed through consultation with historical sources, primarily secondary sources. This data collection leads to two empirical tests of the models: first, a comparison of whether enforceable agreements as judged by the model are actually observed more often than limits judged unenforceable, and second, a test of the timing of violations, whether they tend to fall early during a war and whether the winning side is more likely to be the violator when they occur when it appears that one side is about to lose.