Public support for economic and military coercion and audience costs

Abstract

This article expands the concept of ‘audience costs’ from the military realm to the realm of economic coercion. ‘Audience costs’ occur when an executive publicly commits to a coercive foreign policy action and subsequently reneges as public approval will decline. An experiment specifies when the public will support economic or military coercion, and how this preference affects the evaluation of executives who renege on threats. The findings suggest that audience costs do occur when the executive threatens economic sanctions and subsequently reneges, similar to military coercion. However, I find that inconsistency is not punished when a leader reneges after threatening military intervention in a crisis that does not threaten national security. I specify the role public support for economic and military coercion and reactions to executive inconsistencies play in generating and/or weakening approval for executives. In times of international crises, these factors may compete against each other when it comes to determining public approval. To examine this claim, I conducted a survey experiment on a representative sample of adults to determine when audiences will support economic or military coercion, and how this willingness to support specific coercive action affects their evaluation of the executive’s handling of international crises. I find that public policy preferences can have a stronger effect than a preference for having a leader behave consistently. Specifically, I find that (1) executive inconsistency is not punished when a leader backs down from a military commitment in a non-threatening crisis, (2) executive inconsistencies are not only punished in military disputes but also in cases of economic coercion (punishment is in fact more prominent in sanctions cases), and (3) executive inconsistency can be punished both in major and lesser conflicts.