How States Provoke Adversaries to Solicit Information

In the context of conflict maneuvering, can state actors employ strategies of provoca- tion designed to extract private information regarding the resolve of their adversaries? Extant literature has examined various ways state actors seek to increase their pay- offs. Significant work, including scholarship on costly signaling, has studied how actors seek to affect the perception of their opponents. However, current literature lags in explaining actor strategies aimed at informational extraction as apposed to its commu- nication and/or manipulation. This work seeks to fill the gap by considering the tactic of provocative probes. We argue that states can gain an informational advantage by provoking their opponents in order to solicit information and we build a new bargaining model to demonstrate the theoretical soundness of this strategy.