9
bargained agreement for the group occurs at the point on the continuum just shy of
(1-p)+cost
S
. This agreement gives the group the greatest expected utility, but is still preferred
to fighting by the state. When information about the capabilities of both parties are not
revealed to each other, they both have an incentive to overstate their own capability in order
to move the outcome to their favored edge of the bargaining range. Even when parties
understand the risk of strategically over-representing their capabilities, they may continue to
do so because revealing private information about their capabilities may lessen their strategic
advantages if conflict does result.
A third possible cause for conflict in this bargaining framework is the possibility of
issues indivisibility. This is a scenario in which the issue under disagreement cannot be
divided up between the parties in dispute. Fearon (1995) does not give much credence to
this explanation because of the ability of parties in a bargaining situation to make side
payments. Even if a particular issue was not infinitely divisible, two sides can often use
concessions on other issues to make a deal.
In addition to the body of literature on general bargaining failure, there are three
schools of theory that directly address the incentives for states and self-determination groups
(or rebel groups more generally) to begin or continue fighting: economic theories,
opportunity/greed theories, and reputation theories. Economic theories predict that states
and groups will support greater regional autonomy when they think they will do better
economically. Scholars have hypothesized different factors will affect these calculations
(Gourevitch, 1979; Hechter, 1979; Bolton and Roland, 1997, and Alesina and Spolaore,
1997). Opportunity and greed based theories posit that groups will be unlikely to settle their
claims with the state when there are clear monetary benefits to continued contestation, such
as easy access to finance (Collier and Hoeffler, 2001) or lootable resources in the regional
Convention