State development theories posit that political fragmentation enhances subjects’ ability to exit to other authorities, spurring jurisdictional conflict that drives institutional development. I provide an empirical microfoundation for this mechanism by presenting a theory of exit through alternative authority and testing it in early-modern Japan, where hundreds of autonomous domains governed villages that often resisted through mass exit backed by outside authorities. I exploit conversions to direct shogunal rule, which brought central authority closer to neighboring villages, as a natural experiment. A difference-in-differences analysis shows that after conversions, villages in nearby territories became 4.3 percentage points more likely to exit. Moreover, areas with greater geographic exposure to outside authority observed more exit cases, and domains with easier access to neighboring lords set lower tax rates, especially where neighbors could absorb migrants. The study highlights how geographic access to outside authority shapes the mode of popular checks on extraction.
Foreign threats are widely understood to foster state building through fiscal and institutional development. I propose a complementary mechanism: threats can reshuffle ruling coalitions in favor of more capable leaders. Facing foreign danger, elites prioritize survival over political agreement and use defense performance to assess potential leaders. I develop a formal model to illustrate the logic. I then test its implications in Tokugawa Japan, in a difference-in-differences design exploiting variation in coastal-defense assignments before Perry’s arrival in 1853 and the imperial court’s challenge to shogunal foreign policy in 1858. Domains with prior defense duties became 4.1 percentage points more likely annually to experience factional conflict after 1858, concentrated in western Japan, chiefly challenges to incumbents; no comparable rise followed Perry’s arrival in 1853. These challenges also coincided with national confrontation. Historical evidence links these struggles to the Meiji Restoration’s reshuffle of national leadership and modernization under the new government.
Generative AI lets influence operations fabricate apparent widespread support cheaply. I develop a theoretical framework for online forums involving politically restricted information to isolate a tradeoff between authenticity and accuracy that generative AI exacerbates. Citizens collectively choose verification, then decide among anonymous posting, verified posting, and silence. When attackers can flood anonymous forums, citizens adopt the least verification that deters them. Because greater access raises knowledge and exposure, verification exposes better-informed sources to greater punishment risk and, unlike in canonical screening models, excludes the best-informed, hence most strongly motivated to contribute, first. Citizens value collective accuracy, but individual contributions remain externalities; private exposure risk therefore makes the forum more authentic but less informative, allowing the influence operation to deplete collective knowledge without deployment or deception. Detection and per-post costs reduce reliance on identity verification. Evaluations of epistemic security should track both the fakes excluded and the composition of who remains.
Modern military technologies, including automated weapons and AI-assisted systems, are thought to strengthen deterrence and preserve peace by enhancing limited military operations without provoking wider war. I challenge this optimism by examining their implications for coercive bargaining rather than their direct military effects. I develop a coercive bargaining model with a subwar capability: access to limited operations short of general war. Such operations can replace war after resistance or settlement after compliance, potentially weakening coercive threats and assurances. The target may concede less, further weakening assurances and the government’s ability to secure concessions. Across broad parameter regions, I show that subwar capability can lower coercive ability and increase war, even when no operation is used. Subwar capability can weaken the effect of military power on coercive ability and reduce the two states’ combined expected welfare. More efficient military technology can thus disrupt political bargaining and make interstate conflict more costly.
Political actors can fail to secure concessions despite credible threats when targets fear that yielding could invite further harm. We show that this assurance problem can complicate signaling through coercive demands, making it harder for targets to distinguish restraint from plans to attack. Our bargaining model allows concessions to improve the demanding state’s military position before it decides whether to attack. This gives states planning an attack a reason to imitate the modest demands of states seeking peace. Greater military strength can make reassuring demand patterns harder to sustain and permit additional ways to conceal an intended attack. These changes can reduce the concessions the demanding state obtains peacefully and increase the risk of war, imposing collective costs when disputes that could have been settled peacefully instead lead to fighting. Lack of assurance can exacerbate information problems in interstate politics, undermining coercive bargaining and making peace harder to secure.