Signaling Resolve: Leaders, Reputations, and the Importance of Early Interactions

Does President Trump face domestic costs for foreign policy inconsistency? Will co-partisans and opposition-partisans equally punish Donald Trump for issuing flippant international threats and backing down? While the president said he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody” without losing voters, the literature consistently shows that individuals, regardless of partisanship, disapprove of leaders who jeopardize the country’s reputation for credibility and resolve. Given the atypical nature of the Trump presidency, and the severe partisan polarization surrounding it, we investigate whether the logic of audience costs still applies in the Trump era. Using a unique experiment fielded during the 2016 presidential transition, we show that Republicans and Democrats impose equal audience costs on President Trump. And by varying the leader’s identity, between Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and “The President,” we demonstrate that the public adheres to a non-partisan logic in punishing leaders who renege on threats. Yet we also find Presidents Trump and Obama can reduce the magnitude of audience costs by justifying backing down as being “in America’s interest.” Even Democrats, despite their doubts of Donald Trump’s credibility, accept such justifications. Our findings encourage further exploration of partisan cues, leader-level attributes, and leader-level reputations.

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“…113.See, for example, Guissinger and Smith 2002; Wolford 2007; McManus 2017; Lupton 2018; Renshon, Dafoe, and Huth 2018.…”

Section: Notesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is There a Trump Effect? An Experiment on Political Polarization and Audience Costs

Evers¹,

Fisher²,

Schaaf³

2019

Perspect. polit.

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“…First, past research has shown these factors to be influential to the onset of international conflict and during crisis bargaining 4 . Second, these treatments are used in experiments in IR to explain a variety of outcomes (e.g., Tomz 2007; Lupton 2018c). The impact of regime type, in particular, has been repeatedly studied with experimental methods in IR (e.g., Tomz 2007; Tomz and Weeks 2013).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…3The full text of the experiment is available in the supplementary files. Additional treatment groups receive information about a leader’s past behavior and one additional factor (that is, past state behavior, regime type, or state interest), allowing the researcher to parse out the distinction between leader traits and state traits if desired (see Lupton 2018a,c). …”

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confidence: 99%

The External Validity of College Student Subject Pools in Experimental Research: A Cross-Sample Comparison of Treatment Effect Heterogeneity

Lupton

2018

Polit. Anal.

Self Cite

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Are student subject experiment pools comparable across institutions? Despite repeated concerns over the “college sophomore problem,” many experiment-based studies still rely on student subject pools due to their convenience and accessibility. In this paper, I investigate whether student subject pools are comparable across universities by examining how respondents across three student subject pools at distinct educational institutions perform on the same survey experiment about crisis bargaining between states. I argue that, due to selection biases inherent in university matriculation and the self-selection of students into experimental protocols, respondents across these subject pools will exhibit key demographic differences. I also examine whether respondents across these subject pools think similarly about international politics and respond comparably to experimental treatments. I find that, while there are significant demographic differences across subject pools, subjects across institutions respond similarly to experimental treatments—with the key exception of information regarding the regime type of a state. Furthermore, there is little evidence that these demographic differences impact conditional average treatment effects across subgroups. These findings carry critical implications for the use of student samples across political science and within international relations more specifically, particularly regarding the current replication crisis in the discipline.

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“…The second mechanism leads to a similar general hypothesis but emphasizes the strategic calculations of states, particularly the demonstration of resolve. The importance of signaling a credible resolve in international affairs has been widely recognized in the conflict literature, most notably in crisis bargaining theory (Fearon, 1994; Leng, 2004; Lupton, 2018a, b; Schelling, 2008). According to Fearon (1994), adversaries possess private information about their capabilities and resolve, contributing to uncertainty and a war of nerves when interests collide.…”

Section: Research On Crisis Escalation and Precrisis Hostilitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… 5. It is also possible that the change of leadership in the United States in 2017 made previous US actions a limited signal of resolve. On credible signaling of resolve by new leaders, see Wolford (2007, 2012) and Lupton (2018a). …”

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confidence: 99%

Precrisis military hostility and escalation in international crises

Levin-Banchik

2020

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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Why do some international crises escalate into violence while others do not? I argue that an understanding of crisis behavior necessitates awareness of the processes preceding a crisis and propose two mechanisms that link precrisis hostility with crisis violence. The population fatigue mechanism suggests that precrisis hostility interrupts the everyday life of a population, strengthening its demand for a harsher response. If leaders behave with restraint during a crisis and after the crisis hostilities resume, leaders risk facing greater dissatisfaction from their now even more fatigued population. The baseline for resolve mechanism suggests that if states are actively hostile before a crisis, they must maintain hostility during a crisis to credibly demonstrate resolve. Findings on international crises between 1918 and 2010 support the interphase relationship: a crisis escalation is significantly more likely after a hostile precrisis period. The behavior of opponents can indicate how crises might unfold even before they begin.

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Signaling Resolve: Leaders, Reputations, and the Importance of Early Interactions

Cited by 21 publications

References 43 publications

Is There a Trump Effect? An Experiment on Political Polarization and Audience Costs

Is There a Trump Effect? An Experiment on Political Polarization and Audience Costs

The External Validity of College Student Subject Pools in Experimental Research: A Cross-Sample Comparison of Treatment Effect Heterogeneity

Precrisis military hostility and escalation in international crises

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