Why do political leaders travel abroad? In this article, we propose an informational mechanism linking in‐person diplomacy to leader survival. A foreign power visits an incumbent in order to reap a future policy concession; the visit is only worth the effort if the incumbent remains in power long enough to deliver on the deal. A diplomatic visit thus provides a visible and credible signal of the visitor's high confidence in the incumbent's stability in office. Domestic opponents, facing incomplete information as to the incumbent's strength, observe the signal and are deterred from mounting a challenge. Using data on U.S. diplomatic visits from 1960 to 2013, we find strong empirical support for our predictions: A visit with the U.S. president substantially reduces the risk of a leader's removal from office.
Diplomacy always occurs in the shadow of domestic political competition. We develop a model of top-level diplomatic exchange between an incumbent and a foreign leader, embedded within a global game of regime change, and examine four mechanisms that induce a relationship between diplomatic visits and regime survival. First, the foreign leader chooses to visit incumbents who are ex ante more secure in office (a selection effect). Second, because the foreign leader’s decision is based partly on private information, the citizens update on the revelation of that information (a learning effect) and are discouraged from mounting a challenge. Third, the foreign leader can bolster the incumbent’s strength in office with a transfer of material support (a strengthening effect). The latter two effects are then amplified by the complementarities in the citizens’ strategies (a multiplier effect). Contrary to standard global games results, we show that increased precision in the public information transmitted strategically by the foreign power induces a unique equilibrium, as citizens coordinate on the foreign leader’s action. Our findings explain why leaders are so eager to receive state visits from major world powers.
Does diplomacy affect the prospects of international conflict and cooperation? Systematic empirical assessment has been hindered by the inferential challenges of separating diplomacy from the distribution of power and interests that underlies its conduct. This paper addresses the question of diplomacy's efficacy by examining the intragovernmental politics of US foreign policy, and the varying influence of diplomatic personnel in the policy process. I claim that diplomats hold the strongest preferences for cooperative relations with their host countries, relative to other participants in the foreign policy process. They also exert substantial influence over the formation and implementation of US policies toward their host countries but their influence is intermittently weakened by the short-term shock of an ambassadorial turnover. As a result, when ambassadors are removed from post, diplomacy is more likely to be eschewed for more conflictual means of settling international disagreements, and opportunities for economic exchange are less likely to be realized. I test this theory using newly collected data on US diplomatic representation, for the global sample of countries from 1960 through 2014. To address concerns of diplomatic staffing being endogenous to political interests, I leverage a natural experiment arising from the State Department's three-year ambassadorial rotation system. The turnover of a US ambassador causes a decrease in US exports to the country experiencing the turnover, and heightens the risk of onset of a militarized dispute between that country and the US. These findings point to bureaucratic delegation as an important but overlooked determinant of macro-level international outcomes.
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