To condone, condemn, or ‘no comment’? Explaining a patron’s reaction to a client’s unilateral provocations

Abstract

What explains a patron’s decision to publicly condone, condemn, or forgo commenting on its client’s unilateral provocations? We present a new theoretical framework that identifies a patron’s two strategic considerations – maximizing its sphere of influence and avoiding entanglement – and factors that affect them. We claim that whenever a patron faces a great power rivalry or a vulnerable client, it is more likely to condone its client’s provocations in order to safeguard its sphere of influence. On the other hand, when the risk of escalation looms large, the patron is more likely to condemn its client’s provocations in order to avoid entanglement. Focusing on the Sino-North Korean patron–client relationship, we test our theory on an original dataset that tracks China’s official reactions to provocations initiated by North Korea. We find that China tends to condone North Korea’s provocations when the USA criticizes them, and refrains from condemning when North Korea is domestically fragile. We also find that China is more likely to condemn its client’s provocations in the period after North Korea became a nuclear state. In addition, we draw on examples from the USA–Pakistan and the USA–Israel patron–client relationships to illustrate our causal logic. This article offers new insights on how a patron manages its client’s unruly behavior, and provides the first large-N evidence on China’s responses to North Korean provocations from 1981 to 2016.

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

“…Survey #2 further shows that positive interest-and value-oriented rhetoric has an effect in an active crisis as well, though that effect is slightly alliances focuses on how alliances themselves shape mass opinion (e.g., Fjelstul et al 2015;Tomz and Weeks 2015), rather than the effects of rhetoric. 12 There is an abundance of work on state-and institutional-level factors affecting alliances (e.g., Cranmer, Desmarais, and Kirkland 2012;Kim and Ko 2020;Kim and Sciubba 2015;Leeds and Anac 2005;Leeds et al 2002;LeVeck and Narang 2017;Mattes 2012;McCalla 1996;Walt 1990). Studies assessing domestic-level variables focus on macrolevel regime-type factors (e.g., Chiba, Johnson, and Leeds 2015;Digiuseppe and Poast 2018;Fjeltul and Reiter 2019;Reed 1997), while the question of managing popular support is relatively unexplored.…”