Audience costs in the eyes of an adversary

Audience cost theory suggests that as a country increases its audience costs, it can send a credible threat to an opponent and prevail in an international crisis. Many experimental studies show that domestic citizens of a challenger state disapprove of a leader who backs down in a crisis, which constitutes evidence for audience costs. However, what about the audience’s perception in the target country? Even if audience costs emerge in a threatening country, audiences in its adversary may not recognize this. If that is the case, audience costs do not function as costly signals. Additionally, the challenger’s regime type may play an important role in how people perceive the emergence of audience costs. Our pre-registered survey experiment in the United States (N = 1404) finds that audiences in a target state correctly perceive the emergence of audience costs in a challenger state. However, we also find that the magnitude of perceived audience costs or threat credibility does not differ between a democratic and a dictatorial challenger. These findings suggest that leaders of both democratic and autocratic regimes can effectively tie their hands by increasing domestic audience costs.