A Preferences-based Theory of Audience Costs

Audience costs are central to our understanding of international politics. In recent years, however, audience costs have come under attack repeatedly. I offer a new theory of audience costs grounded in the substantive preferences of individuals that 1) subsumes traditional audience costs theory, 2) can account for more variation than existing theories, 3) produces counterintuitive implications, and 4) remains parsimonious. I introduce this theory using a deliberately simple formal model. Then, I show that members of the public and leaders behave as this theory predicts using original survey experiments and a case study of the 1895 Anglo-American Venezuela Crisis. Finally, I test a direct implication in the context of the democratic credibility literature. This preferences-based theory of audience costs consolidates and refines multiple theoretical arguments about the role of public opinion in international crisis bargaining and emphasizes the importance of the distribution of public preferences for leaders’ decision-making process.