An Opportunity for Backing Down: Looking for an Electoral Connection to Audience Costs
An Opportunity for Backing Down: Looking for an Electoral Connection to Audience Costs
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一个让步的机会：寻找选举与观众成本的联系
DOI：
10.1017/s1468109916000025
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发表时间：
2016
影响因子：
1
通讯作者：
and Ryo Nakai
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Yasui;Kiyotaka;and Ryo Nakai
本文探讨了国际争端中诉讼费用的时间不一致性问题。民主的本质使领导人很难在国际争端中放弃早先的外交立场，因为担心国内政治代价。很少有研究涉及这种费用的时间方面。本研究认为，选举时间的影响在何种程度上观众成本机制的作品，因此，对国家冲突行为。虽然竞争性选举是民主政体所固有的政治问责的核心，但由于选举时间固定，选民通常缺乏足够的机会及时惩罚不满意的领导人，并且可能忽视遥远过去发生的外交政策失误。因此，民主党领导人在选择一种冲突行为时，有动机在考虑选举日程的情况下进行战略性选择。当即将到来的选举在遥远的未来时，领导人可以放弃他们的要求，而不必支付高昂的观众成本。为了验证这一论点，作者进行了一个自然实验，其中包括俄罗斯与两个波罗的海共和国-爱沙尼亚和拉脱维亚之间的领土争端。尽管波罗的海两国在争端、政治制度和社会经济背景上有共同之处，但两国政府在外交决策上却表现出鲜明的对比。本文认为，只有在选举时间的时间差距可以解释这种变化，传递的讽刺意味，频繁的民主选举可以阻碍和平解决冲突，过度的民主化可能会阻碍和平的目标。
This paper explores the time-inconsistency problem of audience costs in international disputes. The nature of democracy makes it difficult for leaders to back down from earlier diplomatic positions in an international dispute, out of fear of domestic political costs. Few studies have addressed the temporal aspect of such costs. This study argues that election timing impinges on the extent to which the audience cost mechanism works, and consequently, on state conflict behavior. While competitive elections are central to the political accountability inherent in a democracy, voters typically lack enough opportunities to punish unsatisfactory leaders in a timely way, because of fixed election timing, and also may disregard foreign policy missteps that occurred in the distant past. Democratic leaders therefore have an incentive to choose strategically, with the electoral calendar in mind, when selecting a form of conflict behavior. Leaders can retreat from their demands without paying high audience costs when the upcoming election is in the distant future. To test this argument, the authors conduct a natural experiment featuring territorial disputes between Russia and two Baltic republics – Estonia and Latvia. Despite the commonalities in the disputes, as well as in their political systems and socioeconomic backgrounds, the governments of the two Baltic countries showed a sharp contrast in their diplomatic decisions. This paper argues that only the temporal gap in electoral timing can explain this variation, imparting the ironical implication that frequent democratic elections can obstruct peaceful conflict resolutions, and that excessive democratization may well hinder the very goal of peace.