Investigating Deterrence

While deterrence has reemerged to the forefront of scholarly interest due to the renewal of great power conflict (Haffa 2018; Rudolf 2020; Steff 2020), there is a dearth of experimental validation of existing theories, namely Classical Deterrence Theory (CDT; Dixit, 2006; Schelling, 1963) and Perfect Deterrence Theory (PDT; Morgan, 2004; Quackenbush, 2010). One notable controversy in the deterrence literature is whether a credible threat can exist in a Mutual Deterrence Game (MDG; Zagare, 1987) when the threat of conflict is the worst-case option for both participants; a challenger and defender. Whereas CDT predicts that potential challengers exhibit greater self-deterrence as the cost of conflict increases, PDT stipulates that this effect is contingent on the credibility of a rational threat. Our first aim is to quantify the relationships between status quo, acquiescing, and conflict in both magnitude and proportion that are associated with challenging as a challenger, and choosing to acquiesce or conflict as a defender. Doing so would test the predictions made by PDT and CDT by a) investigating whether challengers exhibit self-deterrence and defenders escalate despite the “irrational” structure of the MDG, b) whether deterrence scales when the magnitude of loss for the challenger increases, and c) if the relationship of SQ, Acquiescence, and Conflict moderates escalation. First, we expect that consistent with UG, challengers will exhibit self-deterrence by preferring the SQ option and that defenders will reject more unfair offers by choosing conflict. Second, in contrast to PDT, we expect that deterrence will scale with increased costs to conflict, with challengers challenging less frequently, and defenders choosing to acquiesce more frequently. Third, consistent with PDT, we expect that the relationship between the status quo and acquiescence moderates deterrence. Specifically, we expect that people are more intolerant of situations with unequal splits when the challenger earns slightly more than the status quo but the defender could earn considerably less compared to situations where the challenger earns considerably more than the status quo, but the defender earns slightly less. In other words, we hypothesize that deterrence is more difficult to achieve when the challenger expects to earn more at minimal expense to the defender. Our second aim is to determine the psychosocial factors (e.g, inequity aversion (Fehr & Schmidt, 1999); risk aversion, strategic behavior (Spitzer et al., 2007; Sazhin et al., 2024), and k-level thinking (Keynes, 1936) that moderate the willingness to challenge or to go to conflict. We expect that people with greater risk aversion will escalate less frequently, and people who are more strategic or exhibit greater k-level thinking will escalate more frequently when they stand to gain more at minimal expense to the defender compared to minimal gains at substantial losses to the defender. To implement this study, we will use the Ultimatum and Dictator Games and compare response to the Mutual Deterrence Game. Overall, this investigation would inform contextual factors which moderate responses to fairness. Additionally, this investigation would reveal the valuation behaviors underlying deterrence decisions, thereby suggesting which situations are more likely to reveal a credible threat on the part of the defender.