Better Feared than Loved: Reputations and the Motives for Conflict

Throughout history, victory in conflict has created fearsome reputations. With it, the victor ensures greater allegiance of the wider population, increasing their rents at the expense of their enemy. Such reputational concerns generate two motives for conflict. When only victory or defeat is informative, the less scary party may attack to show that they are tougher than expected. If the occurrence of conflict also conveys information, the scarier party is more likely to attack. By failing to do so, the population would perceive them as weak and switch loyalties anyway. In this case, conflict arises to save face.