Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences

When states come to believe that other states are hostile to their interests, they often reorient their foreign policies by realigning alliance commitments, building arms, striking first, mobilizing troops, or adopting policies to drain the resources of states that menace them. This article presents a crisis bargaining model that allows threatened states a wider array of responses than the choice to back down or not. Two implications are: (1) ``cheap talk" diplomatic statements by adversaries affect perceptions of intentions, and (2) war can occur because resolved states decline to communicate their intentions, even though they could, and even though doing so would avoid the need for war. Results from the model relate the content and quality of these signals to the context of prior beliefs about intentions and strategic options, and demonstrate the effect of communication mechanisms on the likelihood of conflict.