International Crises and Domestic Politics

Smith, Alastair

doi:10.2307/2585485

Cited by 381 publications

(295 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…Since two democrats in a dispute both try hard, both can anticipate that, if they go to war, each will spend lots of resources in a risky situation where they are not disproportionately advantaged by their great e®ort. This is shown to incline democrats generally to negotiate with one another rather than¯ght (Lake 1992;Stam 1996 p.176-178 (Fearon 1994;Smith 1998). To make this decision, they evaluate their payo®s under each contingency and decide whether they are better o® remaining in the incumbent's winning coalition or defecting to a prospective new leader.…”

Section: Political Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace

et al. 1999

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We examine formally the link between domestic political institutions and policy choices in the context of eight empirical regularities that constitute the democratic peace. We demonstrate that democratic leaders, when faced with war, are more inclined to shift extra resources into the war effort than are autocrats. This follows because the survival of political leaders with larger winning coalitions hinges on successful policy. The extra effort made by democrats provides a military advantage over autocrats. This makes democrats unattractive targets, since their institutional constraints cause them to mobilize resources for the war effort. In addition to trying harder, democrats are more selective in their choice of targets. Because defeat is more likely to lead to domestic replacement for democrats than for autocrats, democrats only initiate wars they expect to win. These two factors lead to the interaction between polities that is often referred to as the democratic peace.

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Section: Political Institutionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace

et al. 1999

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“…(1987,29) Second, leaders might gain time in office as a result of war because they engaged in a "gamble for resurrection" (Downs and Rocke 1994). Third, war can allow leaders to reveal their competence (Smith 1998).…”

Section: The Costliness Of Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still "Ex Post" Inefficient?

Chiozza¹,

Goemans²

2004

American Journal of Political Science

149

242

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Recent work in comparative politics and international relations has shown a marked shift toward leaders as the theoretical unit of analysis. In most of the new theoretical models a core assumption is that leadersW hen testing theories, researchers would like the theoretical and empirical units of analysis to match. In international relations, however, this is often not the case. On the one hand, neo-realists and others who focus on the system as their unit of analysis as well as scholars who base their theories on the unitary rational actor assumption usually rely on the statements and memoirs of leaders in their empirical research (Copeland 2000). Whereas their theoretical unit of analysis is the system or the state as a unitary rational actor, their empirical unit of analysis is the leader. On the other hand, scholars of diversionary war and, recently, the democratic peace employ leaders as their theoretical unit of analysis. In their statistical research, however, these scholars tend to rely on the country or country-year as the empirical unit of analysis (Gelpi 1997;Leeds and Davis 1997;Reiter and Stam 2002). Such mismatches between the theoretical and empirical unit of analysis can significantly weaken empirical tests and produce faulty inferences. A fundamental hurdle for scholars who focus on leaders as their theoretical unit of analysis has been the lack of appropriate data on leaders. Earlier drafts of this article were presented at the PIPES seminar at the University of Chicago, the University of Virginia, and the Annual Convention of the American Political Science Association, Washington D.C. We thank the commentators at those presentations; in particular we thank Thomas Blackwell, Chris Gelpi, Jessica Hardesty, Bob Keohane, Craig Koerner, Jeff Legro, Thomas Lumley, Kevin Morrison, Davide Raggi, Dan Reiter, Sebastian Rosato, Angelo Secchi, Randolph Siverson, Alastair Smith, David Soskice, Allan Stam, and Terry Therneau. Mistakes, omissions, and other assorted infelicities are our own responsibility. Authors' names are in alphabetical order. theories on the appropriate empirical unit of analysis and to promote further theoretical work on the role of leaders in international and comparative politics, we introduce a new data set of all leaders between 1919 and 1999.Recent work in international relations and comparative politics attempts to build powerful new theories on a solid methodologically individualist basis by focusing on the incentives and constraints of leaders (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2003;Cheibub and Przeworksi 1999). A central assumption in much of this new research is that leaders act to stay in power (Downs 1957). Very little is empirically known, however, about the factors that affect the tenure of leaders (Bienen and van de Walle 1991;Bueno de Mesquita et al. 2001). To provide some baseline, this article analyzes the new data to assess how a broad range of domestic and international factors affect the tenure of leaders.To promote further theoretical and empirical research on the role of ...

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“…In an elaboration of audience cost theory, Smith (1998) demonstrates that voters that view foreign-policy issues as a public good with limited distributive consequences would always punish the leaders who back down after an escalation. In that model, backing down after an escalation is a sign of incompetence.…”

Section: Control Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In this article, I show that audience cost theory provides a micro-foundation for an electoral-military cycle in the crisis behavior of democratic countries Smith, 1998;Schultz, 2001). In a nutshell, several models of electoral choice show that rational voters sift through the evidence available on their leaders and assess it in an efficient way.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Presidents on the cycle: Elections, audience costs, and coercive diplomacy

Chiozza

2016

Conflict Management and Peace Science

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This study investigates an observable implication of audience cost theory. Building upon rational expectations theories of voters' choice and foreign policy substitutability theory, it posits that audience costs vary over the electoral calendar. It then assesses whether US presidents' major responses in international crises reflect the variability in audience costs in an analysis of 66 international crises between 1937 and 2006. Using out-of-sample tests, this study finds that tying-hand commitment strategies were more frequent closer to presidential elections, as expected from audience cost theory. It also finds that the fluctuation of audience costs over the electoral calendar is non-linear.

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International Crises and Domestic Politics

Cited by 381 publications

References 34 publications

An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace

An Institutional Explanation of the Democratic Peace

International Conflict and the Tenure of Leaders: Is War Still "Ex Post" Inefficient?

Presidents on the cycle: Elections, audience costs, and coercive diplomacy

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