Power Shifts, Multiple Audiences and Credible Reassurance

Abstract

It has been widely noted that rising states face great di¢culty in credibly communicating benign intentions, due to strong incentives for hostile risers to misrepresent themselves while they are still gaining power. However, virtually all literature on power shifts and reassurance relates to bilateral interactions between a rising and declining state. This article presents a formal model showing that when more than one audience is involved, rising states have an additional means of communicating their intentions through simple, costless statements. In particular, if the preferences of the receivers are su¢ciently divergent, the rising sender cannot simultaneously send cooperative public signals to both parties to avoid a balancing response. This reduces the riser's incentive to misrepresent its preferences, and lends credibility to its public statements of its intentions. The credibility of these signals is enhanced to the extent that they align with the preferences of the less-powerful receiver. The theory is illustrated by a case study of the Open Door Notes as a signal of US intentions at the turn of the 20th century, and applied to contemporary China's reassurance of Russia in the presence of the United States.