Threat Construction and Coercive Credibility

Abstract

How do actors issue credible threats during international crises? While scholarship has traditionally focused on how the context of threats influences credibility, this paper considers how the construction of the threat itself affects credibility. More specifically, this paper introduces the concept of threat justification and theorize how the choice of explanation a leader uses in communicating her threats can influence her coercive credibility. This study employs a conjoint design survey experiment to identify the influence of threat specificity and severity, public versus private threats, and threat justification on perceptions of credibility. This paper finds that more precise threats are perceived as more credible, while threats employing reputational justifications are less credible. There is a minimal amount of evidence that the public versus private delivery of a threat influences credibility. This paper also finds that perceptions of credibility are influenced by whether the audience is domestic versus international and by the severity of the instigating crisis trigger. This study furthers our understanding of the factors shaping coercive credibility and how policymakers can most effectively convey their commitments during international crises.