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.
University of Miami, United States - ORCID: 0000-0002-8784-8623
Titolo del capitolo
The Appeasement Puzzle and Competition Neglect
Autori
Costantino Pischedda
Lingua
English
DOI
10.36253/978-88-5518-595-0.11
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Anno di pubblicazione
2022
Copyright
© 2022 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Titolo del libro
Eirene e Atena
Sottotitolo del libro
Studi di politica internazionale in onore di Umberto Gori
Curatori
Fulvio Attinà, Luciano Bozzo, Marco Cesa, Sonia Lucarelli
Opera sottoposta a peer review
Numero di pagine
208
Anno di pubblicazione
2022
Copyright
© 2022 Author(s)
Licenza d'uso
Licenza dei metadati
Editore
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
Collana
Studi e saggi
ISSN della collana
2704-6478
e-ISSN della collana
2704-5919