Contenuto in:
  • Eirene e Atena
  • A cura di Fulvio Attinà, Luciano Bozzo, Marco Cesa, Sonia Lucarelli
Capitolo

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,
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Costantino Pischedda

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

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  • Anno di pubblicazione: 2022
  • Pagine: 123-140

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Informazioni sul capitolo

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

CC BY 4.0

Licenza dei metadati

CC0 1.0

Informazioni bibliografiche

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

CC BY 4.0

Licenza dei metadati

CC0 1.0

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

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2704-5919

375

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