In this final empirical chapter we analyze the decisions of leaders in challenger and target states to risk war by escalating military confrontations in territorial disputes. The military confrontations we examine in this chapter are those initiated by the challenger either through threats of force, military movements and deployments, or the limited use of force in disputed territory (see Chapter 7). Once again, we test the hypotheses derived from our four models to determine which international politico-military and domestic political conditions influence policy choices in this Escalation Stage.

Estimation of the Escalation Stage

We estimate the Military Escalation Stage in a manner that parallels our estimation of the Negotiations Stage in Chapter 8. However, instead of explaining whether state leaders make concessions once they have entered into a round of talks, our focus now shifts to an examination of whether the challenger or target escalates the use of military force now that the two states are engaged in a military confrontation. We once again employ a bivariate probit model to examine the escalation decisions of both the challenger and the target. As we discussed in the previous chapter, bivariate probit models take into account many of the strategic dynamics inherent to the Military Escalation Stage, yet still allow us to test separate sets of hypotheses for each of the two states embroiled in a militarized dispute. Furthermore, we find particularly strong evidence to justify the use of a bivariate model to test the Escalation Stage hypotheses.