Contained in:
  • Eirene e Atena
  • Edited by Fulvio Attinà, Luciano Bozzo, Marco Cesa, Sonia Lucarelli
Book Chapter

The Appeasement Puzzle and Competition Neglect

  • Costantino Pischedda

Recent studies indicate that British appeasement towards Hitler followed a buying-time logic, i.e., it tried to postpone confrontation until Great Britain improved its military position through rearmament. However, this chapter shows that Germany actually extended its military edge over the appeasement years. Drawing on the literature on judgment and decision-making, the chapter theorizes that competition neglect – the tendency to focus myopically on one’s own capabilities and pay insufficient attention to those of the competition – may explain the puzzling gap between British policymakers’ plans and actual trends in the balance of power. The competition neglect thesis and an alternative explanation, positing the occurrence of miscalculation, are tested with a case study of British foreign policy towards Germany in 1937-38.

  • Keywords:
  • preventive war,
  • competition neglect,
  • appeasement,
  • balance of power,
  • biases,
+ Show More

Costantino Pischedda

University of Miami, United States - ORCID: 0000-0002-8784-8623

  1. Adamthwaite, Anthony. 1977. France and the Coming of the Second World War. London: Frank Cass.
  2. CAB, Cabinet Papers, National Archives. <https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/cabinet-gov/meetings-papers.htm> (2021-12-15).
  3. Camerer, Colin, and Dan Lovallo. 1999. “Overconfidence and Excess Entry: An Experimental Approach.” American Economic Review 1: 306–18.
  4. Churchill, Winston S. 1948. The Gathering Storm. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
  5. Copeland, Dale. 2000. Origins of Major War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  6. Gibbs, Norman H. 1976. Grand Strategy, Volume I: Rearmament Policy. London: HMSO.
  7. Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  8. Kier, Elizabeth. 1997. Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  9. Kupchan, Charles A. 1994. Vulnerability of Empire. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  10. Layne, Christopher. 2008. “Security Studies and the Use of History: Neville Chamberlain’s Grand Strategy Revisited.” Security Studies 3: 397–437.
  11. Mason, Henry L. 1963. “War Comes to the Netherlands: September 1939-May 1940.” Political Science Quarterly 4: 548–80.
  12. Mearsheimer, John J. 2001. The Tragedy of Great Power Politics. New York: W.W. Norton.
  13. Moore, Don A., and Daylian M. Cain. 2007. “Overconfidence and Underconfidence: When and Why People Underestimate (and Overestimate) the Competition.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 2: 197–213.
  14. Moore, Don A., and Deborah A. Small. 2007. “Error and Bias in Comparative Judgment: On Being Both Better and Worse Than We Think We Are.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 6: 972–89.
  15. Moore, Don A., John M. Oesch, and Charlene Zietsma. 2007. “What Competition? Myopic self-focus in Market-Entry Decisions.” Organization Science 3: 440–54.
  16. Murray, Williamson. 1984. The Change in the European Balance of Power, 1938–39: The Path to Ruin. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  17. Philpott, William, and Alexander, Martin S. 2007. “The French and the British Field Force: Moral Support or Material Contribution?” Journal of Military History 3: 743–72.
  18. Posen, Barry R. 1984. The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  19. Radzevick, Joseph R., and Moore, Don A. 2008. “Myopic Biases in Competitions.” Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 2: 206–18.
  20. Ripsman, Norrin M. and Jack S. Levy. 2007. “The Preventive War that Never Happened: Britain, France, and the Rise of Germany in the 1930s.” Security Studies 1: 32–67.
  21. Ripsman, Norrin M. and Jack S. Levy. 2008. “Wishful Thinking or Buying Time? The Logic of British Appeasement in the 1930s.” International Security 2: 148–81.
  22. Ripsman, Norrin M. and Jack S. Levy. 2012. “British Grand Strategy and the Rise of Germany, 1933–1936.” In The Challenge of Grand Strategy: the Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World Wars, edited by Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Norrin M. Ripsman,
  23. Rosecrance, Richard, and Zara Steiner. 1993. “British Grand Strategy and the Origins of World War II.” In The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy, edited by Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A. Stein, 124–53. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  24. Schweller, Randall L. 2006. Unanswered Threats: Political Constraints on the Balance of Power. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  25. Schweller, Randall L. 1997. Deadly Imbalances: Tripolarity and Hitler’s Strategy of World Conquest. New York: Columbia University Press.
  26. Simonsohn, Uri. 2010. “eBay’s Crowded Evenings: Competition Neglect in Market Entry Decisions.” Management Science 7: 1060–73.
  27. Slovic, Paul, et al. 2006. “The Affect Heuristic.” European Journal of Operational Research: 1333–52.
  28. Taylor, Telford. 1979. Munich: The Price of Peace. Garden City: Doubleday.
  29. Wark, Wesley K. 1985. The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and Nazi Germany, 1933–1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
  30. Watt, Donald C. 1976. “The Historiography of Appeasement.” In Crisis and Controversy: Essays in Honour of A.J.P. Taylor, edited by Alan Sked and Chris Cook, 110–29. London: Macmillan, 1976.
PDF
  • Publication Year: 2022
  • Pages: 123-140
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2022 Author(s)

XML
  • Publication Year: 2022
  • Content License: CC BY 4.0
  • © 2022 Author(s)

Chapter Information

Chapter Title

The Appeasement Puzzle and Competition Neglect

Authors

Costantino Pischedda

Language

English

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-595-0.11

Peer Reviewed

Publication Year

2022

Copyright Information

© 2022 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Bibliographic Information

Book Title

Eirene e Atena

Book Subtitle

Studi di politica internazionale in onore di Umberto Gori

Editors

Fulvio Attinà, Luciano Bozzo, Marco Cesa, Sonia Lucarelli

Peer Reviewed

Number of Pages

208

Publication Year

2022

Copyright Information

© 2022 Author(s)

Content License

CC BY 4.0

Metadata License

CC0 1.0

Publisher Name

Firenze University Press

DOI

10.36253/978-88-5518-595-0

ISBN Print

978-88-5518-594-3

eISBN (pdf)

978-88-5518-595-0

Series Title

Studi e saggi

Series ISSN

2704-6478

Series E-ISSN

2704-5919

197

Fulltext
downloads

73

Views

Export Citation

1,305

Open Access Books

in the Catalogue

1,921

Book Chapters

3,161,365

Fulltext
downloads

4,104

Authors

from 845 Research Institutions

of 63 Nations

63

scientific boards

from 339 Research Institutions

of 43 Nations

1,150

Referees

from 345 Research Institutions

of 37 Nations