Secrets, Mercenaries, and War: Three Models of International Conflict

This dissertation addresses several important and timely debates in world politics. It consists of three essays which use formal models to analyze the major components of the research agenda. The first essay examines a set of questions about the choice to use covert operations and the resulting consequences for governmental accountability and international interaction, with specific focus on the extent to which the threat or use of nontransparent action can allow two governments to collude against the preferences of a population. The results demonstrate that under certain conditions, the possibility of foreign covert action can lead to a worse outcome for all of the involved parties than if nontransparent action had not been an option. The second essay analyzes the conditions under which policymakers choose to contract with foreign military manpower instead of relying solely on their domestic military or formal alliances with other governments. In particular, I focus on how changes in the income distribution across society affect the optimal ratio of domestic volunteers to foreign mercenaries. I find that as society becomes more wealthy, the optimal number of volunteers decreases, while the optimal number of mercenaries increases. Finally, essay three studies the rationale driving delayed entry into ongoing international conflicts. It demonstrates the importance of battlefield observation and information transmission in war entry decisions.