An audience cost, in international relations theory, is the domestic political cost that leaders incur from their constituency if they escalate a foreign policy crisis and are then seen as backing down.[1][2][3] It is considered to be one of the potential mechanisms for democratic peace theory. It is associated with rational choice scholarship in international relations.
The implication of audience costs is that threats issued by leaders, who incur audience costs, against other states are more likely to be seen as credible and thus lead those states to meet the demands of the leader who makes threats.[4][5]
- ^ "Audience Costs and the Credibility of Commitments", International Relations, Oxford University Press, 2021, doi:10.1093/obo/9780199743292-0305, ISBN 978-0-19-974329-2
- ^ James Fearon (7 September 2013). "'Credibility' is not everything but it's not nothing either". The Monkey Cage. Retrieved 8 January 2014.
I'm drawing here on arguments about what the IR literature usually calls 'audience costs', which are domestic political costs a leader may pay for escalating an international dispute, or for making implicit or explicit threats, and then backing down or not following through.
- ^ Trager, Robert F. (2016). "The Diplomacy of War and Peace". Annual Review of Political Science. 19 (1): 205–228. doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-051214-100534. ISSN 1094-2939.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
:0was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Schlesinger, Jayme R.; Levy, Jack S. (2021). "Politics, audience costs, and signalling: Britain and the 1863–4 Schleswig-Holstein crisis". European Journal of International Security. 6 (3): 338–357. doi:10.1017/eis.2021.7. ISSN 2057-5637.
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