What is the mechanism underlying audience costs? Incompetence, belligerence, and inconsistency
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3918513 |
|---|---|
| Authors | William G Nomikos (0000-0003-2054-8359, Washington University in St. Louis, corresponding author), Nicholas Sambanis (0000-0002-1270-289X, University of Pennsylvania) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 575-588 |
| Publication date | 2019-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Peace Research (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-3433 • E-ISSN: 1460-3578 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022343319839456 |
| OpenAlex | W2951801172 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 24 |
| References cited | 45 |
Audience cost theory posits that concern over the nation's reputation pushes voters to sanction leaders who make empty threats because they tarnish the nation's honor. We question the empirical support for that theory. We show that survey vignettes in the previous experimental literature conflate audience costs generated by inconsistency and belligerence with approval losses arising from the perception that the leader is incompetent. These 'incompetence costs' are due to leaders not achieving audiences' preferred outcomes. Our article contributes to the literature on audience costs by disentangling inconsistency and belligerence costs from incompetence costs, which we find are the larger component of audience costs. We also make a methodological contribution: we show that experimental designs in previous studies cannot test the different mechanisms; that previous estimates of audience costs are biased because treatments affect respondents' beliefs about the likely outcome of policy actions; and we suggest a new experimental framework to estimate audience costs. Our results are consistent with arguments that audiences care more about policy outcomes than about leaders' inconsistency or belligerence during a crisis
Affect (linguistics) · Conflation · Economics · Honor · Internet privacy · Perception · Political science · Public economics · Reputation · Test (biology) · Computer Science · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Media Influence and Politics · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social Psychology
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| Unique citing works | 24 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2026 (7) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 24 |