Leaders under domestic pressure may have an incentive to initiate or escalate external conflict to consolidate support.
Diversionary-war theory proposes the incentive; empirical evidence that leaders systematically act on it is mixed. The better-supported half is the rally effect that follows a crisis regardless of its origin.
In practice
- The incentive is well documented and the behaviour is not: evidence that leaders start wars to distract is mixed.
- The better-supported half is the rally effect — approval rises after a crisis regardless of who started it, which is what creates the incentive.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation is the rally effect: external conflict raises support for a leader in the short run, so a leader in domestic trouble faces an incentive to create or escalate one.
- In its favour
- The rally effect itself is well documented, which makes the incentive real, and some cases fit the pattern closely.
- Against it
- Evidence that leaders systematically act on the incentive is mixed, the cases are selected after the fact, and leaders in trouble also avoid wars they might lose, which the theory does not weigh.
- Standing
- Evidence for the effect is mixed; the incentive is clearer than the behaviour.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works