It seems plausible that if players could truthfully disclose private information and divide stakes, the ability to credibly commit would often not be needed
Even if the players can find a settlement that they both prefer to conflict (e.g., flipping a coin to decide who gets the territory) there’s still the problem of committing to honoring that settlement (you might still just attack me if the coin doesn’t land in your favor). So I think there’s still a problem. But maybe you’re saying that if there’s really no private information, then there is no credibility problem, because players can anticipate defections because they know everything about their counterpart? Something like that?
My reasoning relies more the divisibility of stakes (without having to resort to randomization). If there was a deterministic settlement that is preferable to conflict, then nobody has an incentive to break the settlement.
However, my main point was that I read the paragraph I quoted as “we don’t need the divisibility of stakes if we have credibility and complete information, therefore credibility and complete information is more important than divisibility of stakes”. I do not really find this line of argument convincing, as I am not convinced that you could not make the same argument with the role of credibility and divisible stakes reversed. Did I maybe misread what you are saying there?
Still, your conclusion still seems plausible and I suspect that you have other arguments for focusing on credibility. I would like to hear those.
Ah, I see now that I did not make this clear at all. The main thing in the case of war is that, under certain payoff structures, a state might not be able to credibly commit to the terms of a peaceful settlement if it is expected to increase in power relative to its counterpart. Thus the state who expects to lose relative power will sometimes rather wage preventative war (while it is still relatively strong) than settle. This is still a problem in models with complete information and divisible stakes.
I’ll try to edit the text to make this clearer soon, thanks for bringing it up.
Even if the players can find a settlement that they both prefer to conflict (e.g., flipping a coin to decide who gets the territory) there’s still the problem of committing to honoring that settlement (you might still just attack me if the coin doesn’t land in your favor). So I think there’s still a problem. But maybe you’re saying that if there’s really no private information, then there is no credibility problem, because players can anticipate defections because they know everything about their counterpart? Something like that?
My reasoning relies more the divisibility of stakes (without having to resort to randomization). If there was a deterministic settlement that is preferable to conflict, then nobody has an incentive to break the settlement.
However, my main point was that I read the paragraph I quoted as “we don’t need the divisibility of stakes if we have credibility and complete information, therefore credibility and complete information is more important than divisibility of stakes”. I do not really find this line of argument convincing, as I am not convinced that you could not make the same argument with the role of credibility and divisible stakes reversed. Did I maybe misread what you are saying there?
Still, your conclusion still seems plausible and I suspect that you have other arguments for focusing on credibility. I would like to hear those.
Ah, I see now that I did not make this clear at all. The main thing in the case of war is that, under certain payoff structures, a state might not be able to credibly commit to the terms of a peaceful settlement if it is expected to increase in power relative to its counterpart. Thus the state who expects to lose relative power will sometimes rather wage preventative war (while it is still relatively strong) than settle. This is still a problem in models with complete information and divisible stakes.
I’ll try to edit the text to make this clearer soon, thanks for bringing it up.