Extant research has not produced consistent findings on the relationship between domestic political problems and the use of force abroad. We argue that this ambiguity results from incomplete theorizing and flawed empirical tests. We advance the understanding of diversionary uses of force by highlighting the political bias that domestic problems create for a leader and how this political bias interacts with the power relationship between diverters and potential targets. This conceptual discussion clarifies the political incentives each actor has to engage in military conflict and leads to a novel hypothesis. For example, domestic problems increase the probability that a weak state will attack a strong state, but domestic problems will have little effect on changing the probability of conflict between strong and weak. Empirical tests of the hypotheses for the period 1946–2000 are consistent with the argument.

中文翻译：

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国内政治问题与竞争者不平衡悖论

关于国内政治问题与国外使用武力之间的关系，现有研究并没有得出一致的结论。我们认为，这种歧义是由不完整的理论和有缺陷的经验测试造成的。我们通过强调国内问题对领导者造成的政治偏见以及这种政治偏见如何与转移者和潜在目标之间的权力关系相互作用来促进对转移性使用武力的理解。这种概念性讨论阐明了每个参与者必须参与军事冲突的政治动机，并导致了一个新的假设。例如，国内问题增加了弱国攻击强国的概率，但国内问题对改变强弱冲突的概率影响不大。