N eo-realist theory posits that power is the most important factor in international politics. Traditional conceptions of power have focused on easily quantifiable metrics like military size and spending, population, and economic strength, but all of these measures omit a significant variable: military efficacy. Analysts and political scientists intuitively believe efficacy to be important – a rifle is only as effective as the hands that hold it – but military skill is significantly harder to measure than material capability. Because of the difficulty of measuring military efficacy on the state level, individuals may use a country’s historical performance in war as a heuristic measure of efficacy. This article attempts to test the importance …show more content…
While mechanisms exist for signaling and cooperation, the desire for power is driven by the security-seeking constraints of the international system. Therefore, while one can infer that states will act to improve their relative power and thus their relative security, one can also infer that states have incentives to disguise their actual interests, capabilities, and their willingness to fight. In light of these challenges to measuring the intensity of interests, the experiments proposed in this article attempt to remove interests from the equation and instead focus more sharply on the question of how historical information affects prediction. While the intensity with which states believe an interest to be vital almost certainly plays a role in determining outcomes, perceptions of state interests are outside the scope of this …show more content…
Determining effectiveness, on the other hand, would require us consider to wider interests than just those included in the compellant act of war. For the purposes of this investigation, I limit the scope to the question of military efficacy; that is, all else equal, does an individual believe that A can successfully use military force to compel B to do something that B would otherwise not have