Rational Models and the Ending of Wars

Abstract

The article considers the problem of using the expected utility approach to war termination. In the context of the ending of the Boer War, the authors attempt to explain why an expected utility approach has difficulty in accommodating the fact that there was a long delay between the initiation of certain proposals for termination and the eventual acceptance of essentially the same terms. They conclude that the problem in this case was that neither of the decision maker was unitary, and that the process of formulating a preference ordering takes time. It is of course reasonable in a static theory to ignore this. However, to apply the process of decision-making as distinct for just the end result, we need a theory of the process of preference formulation in groups.