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Abstract:
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"Audience costs" models of international relations suggest a purely informational role for domestic politics in conflict settings . Here , domestic politics serve as a rich signal of belligerents' true intentions , allowing them to more quickly resolve disagreements , decreasing the likelihood and duration of war . But if belligerents can have different beliefs about publicly available information , then domestic politics might confuse rather than clarify conflict situations , increasing the likelihood and duration of war . I present empirical evidence of conventional "audience costs" models' shortcomings in explaining the dynamics of the US counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and the response of Iraqi insurgents to those efforts . I then develop a formal model to show how differences in beliefs between insurgents and counterinsurgents about domestic political audiences in Iraq may have contributed to the prolonged nature of the conflict . I argue that the underlying cause of the conflict's duration is disagreement between belligerents about whether and how Iraqi civilians contribute to a successful counterinsurgency , leading belligerents to disagree not only before fighting about who is likely to win , but during fighting about who is actually winning . |