ACTION-REACTION OR RATIONAL-EXPECTATIONS - RECIPROCITY AND THE DOMESTIC INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT NEXUS DURING THE RHODESIA PROBLEM

In this article, the author makes a case for expanding our focus from national-attribute studies of intranational conflict toward strategic behavior studies of intranational conflict. One payoff of such a move is that it enables us to specify a linkage between the strategic behav ior of both domestic and international actors and thus address the oft en theorized, but rarely established, intranational-international conf lict nexus. Further, the author takes a synthetic approach to the rece nt debate between action-reaction and rational expectations models of international conflict behavior and derives hypotheses concerning the behavior of both domestic and international parties to an armed intran ational conflict. The hypotheses are then tested in a time-series case study design using the Rhodesian/Zimbabwean case for the period from 1957 to 1979. The results demonstrate that there existed an intranatio nal-international conflict nexus in this case and highlight the utilit y of adopting a strategic behavior approach to studying armed intranat ional conflict.