(Page 1 of 22) - Bayesian Decision-Makers Confront the Power Cycle: A Formal Model authored by Doran, Charles F.. and Doran, Kirk.

DRAFT: NOT FOR QUOTATION

BAYESIAN DECISION-MAKERS CONFRONT THE POWER CYCLE

Charles F. Doran, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of International Relations

Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies, Washington, DC

Kirk B. Doran, Ph.D. Student

Department of Economics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey

At its essence, power cycle theory focuses upon how the changing structure of the international system
affects government decisions about foreign policy conduct, and in particular about the kind of decision
that involves governments in major war. The theory explains how the actor and system go from the
normal periods of statecraft to those rare intervals where everything changes in structural terms,

where

governments try to mitigate the increase in uncertainty and perceived threat by forming alliances

or by

employing more frequent attempts at deterrence,

and where ultimately and precipitously the probability

of major war becomes far greater.

Contained in this paper is a formalization of this process that leads state and system to major war.

generally, this is the process by which changing relative power helps shape governmental decisions about
foreign policy conduct. The formalization takes the actor from the diplomatic situation in which the rules
of statecraft have long been understood to the situation in which these rules no longer seem to apply, from
a situation where strategic confidence is high to that where uncertainty is pervasive, from a systemic
context of equilibrium among principal actors to that of systems transformation and sharp disequilibrium.
The paper thus formalizes the theoretical arguments of power cycle theory regarding how decision-
makers confront the dynamics of the power cycle, and, in particular, how they respond to an “inflection
point” on the power cycle in a process that drives the decision to go to war.

The inflection point is one of two types of “critical” points on the state power cycle, each critical point
corresponding in the state’s experience to a time when the “tides of history” have shifted in the
international system. At a critical point, there is an abrupt, unexpected, and irreversible shift in the prior
trend of relative power – and hence of the state’s future security and foreign policy role expectations.
Without warning, the government learns that the conditions that have long guided foreign policy strategy
are no longer valid. This paper lends formal credibility, within the conventional assumptions of the
Bayesian approach to analysis, to the decision logic that occurs at a critical point as postulated by power
cycle theory, namely to the discontinuity in future foreign policy expectations that occurs there and drives
the decision to go to war.

Structure of the Paper

Part I begins with a summary of some key aspects of power cycle theory to serve as a starting point for
analysis. See the special issue of the International Political Science Review (Vol. 24, No. 1, January
2003) devoted to power cycle theory for a detailed, more encompassing account of the essential elements
of the theory. A very brief statement of “what power cycle theory is not” follows so as to preclude some
common mistaken interpretations. Then a focused assessment of state perception and behavior as it
traverses the power cycle prior to and after the first inflection point establishes the foundation for Part II,
which provides a formal model of this process. We conclude in Part III with further observations relating
the model to political outcomes.

PART I. FROM THEORY TO MODEL