War effort and war termination: How states prosecute their wars

This dissertation provides a theory of how military capabilities shape conflict behavior during crisis and war, arguing that military capabilities have both informative and materially coercive attributes. Capabilities are informative during crises, as military threats reveal private information, and are informative during war because fighting allows belligerents to overcome the problem of uncertainty about the outcome of the conflict. Military capabilities are materially beneficial during crises, as mobilization procures material advantages that shape states' probability of victory if hostilities escalate to war. Moreover, the material characteristic of capabilities is present during war, and allows states to impose costs on the battlefield by reducing their opponents' capacity to continue fighting. I empirically evaluate the differential effects of capabilities at two points in time: First, I focus on prewar mobilization behavior, where states adjust their capabilities to enhance the material or informative nature of their military strength depending on whether they mobilize in public or private. Second, the project focuses on the actual prosecution of war on the battlefield, where I assess how materially coercive and informative military engagements shape the decision to continue fighting or terminate the conflict.