Neither Hawks Nor Doves: Audience Costs in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes
with Brandon Kinne, University of Texas, Dallas
Under review.
Abstract:
The logic of audience costs suggests that electoral accountability should increase the credibility of threats in international crisis bargaining. In empirical research, scholars equate electoral accountability with democracy. This overlooks the possibility that elections may pose a threat to incumbents even in non-democratic states, as they presumably do in electoral authoritarian states. We hypothesize that audience costs vary in accord with the competitiveness of elections, such that leaders in electoral authoritarian regimes are more constrained than autocratic leaders but less constrained than democratic leaders. We test our hypothesis using data on target reciprocation rates in militarized interstate disputes. Our analysis shows that militarized challenges from electoral authoritarian leaders are reciprocated much less frequently than chal-lenges from autocratic leaders. Thus, even where democracy is flawed, competitive elections help countries credibly signal their intentions and avoid crisis escalation.
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