Issue Linkages in International Crisis Bargaining

Students of international relations have long been concerned with questions regarding the impact of issue linkages on bargaining outcomes; unfortunately, the body of theory attempting to provide a systematic and rigorous analysis of issue linkages is woefully underdeveloped. In this study I contribute to the development of this theory with a particular emphasis on accounting for cases in which issue linkage fails in international crisis bargaining. The spatial model of crisis bargaining (which is a formal model constituting a synthesis of the spatial theory of voting and traditional, utility-based bargaining theory) is used to develop a theory of issue linkages and to address a number of points regarding linkage strategy that are found in the literature. After demonstrating how linking issues can affect the outcome of an international crisis, I argue that existing explanations for linkage failure are inadequate. The majority of the paper is devoted to determining what characteristics of the issues involved and of the disputants determine the likelihood that a linkage attempt will be successful. I conclude with a brief discussion relating these results to the literature on crisis management.