Explaining National Behavior in Multilateral Interventions
Explaining National Behavior in Multilateral Interventions
This chapter draws on a variety of literatures to model the national determinants of military behavior during multilateral interventions. Theories of principal-agent relations point to the importance of knowing who are the ultimate decision units having the power to determine how military forces behave when deployed. One cannot know who those ultimate decision makers are without first understanding the domestic political institutions of the relevant nations. Domestic political institutions can either empower a single individual, as is the case with presidential or single-party parliamentary governments, or they can empower a collective body to make decisions, as is the case in parliamentary coalition governments. However, to understand the preferences of various principals requires understanding either their political ideology (in the case of collective principals) or how their previous experiences shape their current and future behaviors (in the case of single principals).
Keywords: military behavior, military interventions, principal-agent relations, decision units, domestic political institutions, decision makers, political ideology
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