INTRAALLIANCE BARGAINING AND US BOSNIA POLICY

Alliances are promises of cooperation, but allies typically have to ba rgain over what policy should be adopted when a given contingency aris es. Whether this bargaining leads to collaborative outcomes and what f orm cooperation by allies takes have important implications for the ef fectiveness of an alliance. Neorealism and neoliberal institutionalism , the author argues, do not provide adequate explanations for this pro blem because they mischaracterize, or fail to come to grips with, the bargaining process at work. To redress such shortcomings, the author t urns to game theory, providing a general model of intra-alliance barga ining. The model's insights are then used to interpret the historical record on U.S. Bosnia policy from 1991 until the fall of 1995. The aut hor shows how domestic and international considerations affected the p references and beliefs of the Bush and Clinton administrations. These led, as suggested by the model, to the U.S. tendency to avoid bargaini ng hard with the NATO allies and to pursue compromise strategies with them in the Bosnian crisis.