Backing up, not backing down: Mitigating audience costs through policy substitution

Abstract

Can a leader reduce the audience costs imposed for backing down completely on a threat by opting instead to ‘back up’ to a less hawkish policy? Current research examines the political repercussions of making a threat and then taking no action at all. Real world leaders, however, often ‘back up’ and implement policies that involve some action – for instance, imposing sanctions after threatening military force, rather than backing down entirely. This article argues that audience costs can be mitigated through policy substitution: backing up to less hawkish policies – that reduce inconsistency between a leader’s words and deeds – may reduce audience costs. A series of original survey experiments finds support for the argument and demonstrates that the population treats inconsistency as a continuum. The findings have implications for domestic politics and crisis bargaining. Domestically, a leader who backs up faces lower audience costs and is seen as more competent than one who backs down. Yet those on the receiving end of threats are less likely to believe the future threats of a foreign leader who has previously backed up or backed down. Backing up therefore degrades the credibility of crisis signals by making it difficult for rivals to distinguish between credible threats and those that will be backed up.

The democratic embargo: regime type and proxy war

“…Potential patrons select from a menu of options that can include rebel aid alongside peaceful alternates like economic sanctions, diplomacy, or action in international institutions. When democratic states weigh up whether to assist rebels fighting against a sister regime, an open debate about the risks of rebel aid will tend to make the peaceful substitutes appear preferable to violating the embargo (Clark and Reed, 2005;Lin-Greenberg, 2019;Most and Starr, 1989).…”

Untying Hands: De-escalation, Reputation, and Dynamic Audience Costs

“…Wu (2020) assumes leaders may manipulate their public threats to signal their domestic audience's preference for peace. Recent experimental work shows that leaders can use ex post actions to reduce their domestic costs of backing down, such as providing a rhetorical justification or imposing economic sanctions in lieu of military force (Davies and Johns 2013; Levendusky and Horowitz 2012; Lin-Greenberg 2019; Quek and Johnston 2018; Weiss and Dafoe 2019). These studies have shed light on the agency of signalers in trying to loosen their tied hands ex post .…”

“…Consider foreign policy crises where one state publicly threatens to intervene, which constitute the standard setting in most experiments on audience costs (Brutger 2021; Croco, Hanmer, and McDonald 2021; Davies and Johns 2013; Huddleston 2019; Kertzer and Brutger 2016; Levendusky and Horowitz 2012; Levy et al 2015; Li and Chen 2021; Lin-Greenberg 2019; Nomikos and Sambanis 2019; Quek 2017; Schwartz and Blair 2020; Tomz 2007; Trager and Vavreck 2011). How do opponents in the real world respond to public threats?…”

Commanding Support: Values and Interests in the Rhetoric of Alliance Politics

“…The audience cost literature highlights another realm in which leader rhetoric can have domestic implications(e.g., Fearon 1994;Tomz 2008; and, more recently, Kertzer and Brutger 2016;Lin-Greenberg 2019).…”