The paper asks how government oversight of the military affects the occurrence of wartime sexual violence and contributes a theoretical and empirical account linking oversight, state capacity, and military behavior. Building on principal–agent arguments, the authors develop a game-theoretic model where government monitoring serves as an informative signal about the state’s willingness and capacity to punish misconduct; governments may monitor strategically or remain “strategically ignorant.” The paper then tests implications of this model with cross-national data on sexual violence, military oversight, and state capacity.
Bold highlights: game-theoretic principal–agent model, monitoring as an informative signal, empirical test with data on sexual violence, strategic ignorance by governments
Data and methods
The authors present a formal game-theoretic model of civil–military interaction in which the military’s choice to commit wartime sexual violence depends on its expectations about government oversight and punishment capacity. They report empirical analyses that use data on reported sexual violence, measures of military oversight, and indicators of state capacity to evaluate the model’s testable implications. The abstract does not specify the exact data sources, sample period, or statistical estimators used.
Main findings
According to the abstract, the empirical results provide support for the hypotheses generated by the model: higher government oversight functions as an informative signal of the state’s capacity to punish, and where oversight is perceived as high the military is less likely to engage in wartime sexual violence. The abstract also notes the possibility that governments may intentionally avoid oversight (strategic ignorance), which is central to the theoretical equilibrium described.
- Oversight reduces wartime sexual violence when it credibly signals punishment capacity.
- Government decisions to monitor (or remain ignorant) are strategic and affect military behavior.
