Crisis and the Performance of International Agreements: The Outbreak of War in Perspective

Parties enter an international agreement with assumptions and expectations as to its impact. These expectations and assumptions in turn form the basis for future policies anticipated by the agreement. Expectations about the future course of relations between the parties will be shaped by their assumptions about the events leading to the agreement. The parties may have made some of their expectations explicit during the negotiating process while others remained implicit.

Some assumptions may be shared and understood at the time of agreement; others may remain submerged until subsequent events reveal them.