President John F. Kennedy famously worried that foreign policy failures early in his tenure—the Bay of Pigs fiasco and his poor performance at the summit in Vienna—displayed his lack of resolve and acumen, which Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would seek to exploit. These concerns seemed to materialize when Kennedy learned that Khrushchev had placed nuclear weapons on Cuba.[1] More recently, the Republican leadership blamed Russia’s war on Ukraine in part on the Biden administration. With its rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, they argued, Washington had created a “perception of weakness,” suggesting that it would abandon its allies, thus inviting future aggression.[2] In short, leaders worry about their reputation for resolve and any possible effects on future conflicts.
H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum
Roundtable Review 14-12
Danielle L. Lupton. Reputation for Resolve: How Leaders Signal Determination in International Politics. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781501747717
10 February 2023 |PDF: https://issforum.org/to/jrt14-12 | Website: rjissf.org
Editor: Diane Labrosse | Commissioning Editor: Andrew Szarejko | Production Editor: Christopher Ball
Contents
Introduction by Alexandre Debs, Yale University. 2
Review by Brian Blankenship, University of Miami 6
Review by Kathleen E. Powers, Dartmouth College. 10
Review by Jennifer Spindel, University of New Hampshire. 13
Response by Danielle L. Lupton, Colgate University. 17
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Introduction by Alexandre Debs, Yale University
President John F. Kennedy famously worried that foreign policy failures early in his tenure—the Bay of Pigs fiasco and his poor performance at the summit in Vienna—displayed his lack of resolve and acumen, which Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev would seek to exploit. These concerns seemed to materialize when Kennedy learned that Khrushchev had placed nuclear weapons on Cuba.[1] More recently, the Republican leadership blamed Russia’s war on Ukraine in part on the Biden administration. With its rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, they argued, Washington had created a “perception of weakness,” suggesting that it would abandon its allies, thus inviting future aggression.[2] In short, leaders worry about their reputation for resolve and any possible effects on future conflicts.
Yet whether and how reputations for resolve do matter has been a subject of intense academic debate.[3] The basic problem is that it is difficult to know how a country’s “resolve,” i.e., its willingness to bear costs for its foreign policy objectives, varies across issues, time, and space. At one extreme, a country’s resolve is dispositional and fixed. Past actions reveal a country’s resolve and predicts its future behavior.[4] At another, a country’s resolve is purely dependent on situational or contextual factors which are specific to the issue in dispute.[5] Little if anything is learned from past actions. This debate between reputation supporters and reputation skeptics is itself unresolved. Danielle Lupton’s Reputation for Resolve makes an important contribution.
Lupton argues that she can “break the stalemate” in the scholarly debate by “shifting the focus to the individual” (6). Reputations for resolve do matter in international politics, and there is a timeline for a leader to build her reputation. Both dispositional and situational factors influence a leader’s decision. Past statements and actions reveal some information about a leader’s disposition, and influence expectations about her future behavior. Early on in her tenure, when less is known about her, a leader’s reputation is more malleable. Early statements and behavior will then have a large effect on her reputation (17). Similarly, situational variables such as power, interest, regime type, and a state’s preexisting reputation also have the largest effect on a leader’s reputation early in her tenure (32).
In evaluating her argument, Lupton presents a mix of survey experiments and case study evidence. Survey experiments evaluate how a leader’s reputation changes over time, after repeated interactions (Chapter 2), and how it is affected by leadership transitions (Chapter 3). Case studies evaluate how Khrushchev perceived the resolve of presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower (Chapter 4) and Kennedy (Chapter 5), over time and across interactions.
Brian Blankenship, Kathleen Powers, and Jennifer Spindel provide excellent reviews of the book. They are overall very positive, especially praising the book’s empirical contribution. Blankenship lauds the book for proceeding with “clarity, a wealth of empirical evidence, top-notch writing, and masterful organization.” Powers applauds the book for harnessing “an impressive array of evidence” to “test her argument.” Spindel states that the book offers “several significant contributions,” the first being that it “demonstrates through survey experiments and case studies that reputation does matter for international security, and that leaders and states have independent reputations.”
They also raise some questions and offer suggestions for future research. Some common themes emerge, probing the book’s theoretical argument. One concerns the interplay between the two sets of causal factors in Lupton’s theory: past statements and behavior on the one hand and current contextual variables on the other. They are presented as separate causal factors in Lupton’s theory. Yet the meaning assigned to statements and behavior depends on the prevailing context. According to Blankenship, it is then difficult to draw out the effect of past statements and behavior on reputations, without placing them in the context in which these political decisions were made. According to Powers, psychological biases complicate the inference problem. Depending on their beliefs about the strategic context, enemies may look for evidence confirming their biases.
A second theme concerns the delineation between the reputation of leaders and the reputation of states. A state’s reputation is one of the theory’s contextual variables, and the book provides evidence that it affects a leader’s reputation. Yet it is not clear how past statements by a leader may contribute to a state’s reputation. Blankenship and Spindel both ask for more work on how reputations may be built by states rather than by leaders.
Some of the theoretical questions also suggest specific empirical work. For example, Spindel wonders whether the process of building a reputation may not begin before a leader comes into office.[6] If information flows more freely now, would we see the same reputation timeline that Lupton documents in the early Cold War? Spindel’s questions are useful in thinking about the differences between presidents Kennedy and Biden, which were mentioned at the beginning of this introduction. President Biden came to office after a long career in Congress. Would his first statements in office have a smaller effect on his reputation, given the longer record preceding his presidency?
In her response, Lupton engages deeply with the reviewers’ questions and suggestions. She further expands on the theory of the book, and she proposes avenues for future research. In particular, she posits that the extent to which leader’s reputations may contribute to their state’s reputation depends on regime type. In personalistic dictatorships, where power is more concentrated in the hands of the leader, a leader’s reputation may be solidified more quickly into a state’s reputation. This is a promising hypothesis which deserves further attention.[7]
Overall, this is a very productive conversation on a very good book. It remains to be seen whether the book resolves the debate between reputation supporters and reputation skeptics. The focus on the reputation of individual leaders is very reasonable.[8] Any information revealed about a country’s resolve should be more useful if the leader remains the same,[9] and uncovering the timeline of a leader’s reputation is an important contribution. However, focusing on reputations may not be the most fruitful approach for understanding the patterns of interstate conflict. Reputation skeptics could still respond that situational variables are paramount. Even so, they now have to contend with an important argument and set of findings. As such, Lupton’s book makes an important contribution to this debate, and it should be read and discussed widely.
Participants:
Danielle L. Lupton is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Colgate University. During the 2022-2023 academic year, she is a research fellow with the United States Military Academy at West Point’s Modern War Institute. Her book Reputation for Resolve: How Leaders Signal Determination in International Politics (Cornell University Press, 2020) won the 2021 J. David Singer Book Award and received an honorable mention for the 2021 Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Foreign Policy Section. Dr. Lupton’s academic work is also published in International Studies Quarterly, Political Analysis, International Interactions, Political Research Quarterly, the Journal of Global Security Studies, Ethics & International Affairs, and American Politics Research, and her policy relevant work has appeared in venues such as Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Just Security, The Washington Post’s Monkey Cage, and The Ambassador’s Brief. Her research interests center on reputation, coercion, and bargaining in international security; the role of elites in international politics; and the conduct of US civil-military relations.
Alexandre Debs is Associate Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His research focuses on the causes of war, nuclear proliferation, and democratization. His work has appeared in the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, International Organization, and International Security, among other outlets. He is the author of the book Nuclear Politics: The Strategic Causes of Proliferation (with Nuno P. Monteiro; Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Brian Blankenship is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami. His research focuses on alliance politics, US foreign policy, international security, and international cooperation. He has published on alliance reassurance and burden-sharing and the politics of foreign military basing.
Kathleen E. Powers is an Assistant Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. Her research engages questions at the intersection of political psychology, foreign policy, public opinion, and international security. She is the author of Nationalisms in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2022), and articles in the Journal of Politics, Political Psychology, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Foreign Policy Analysis.
Jennifer Spindel is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of New Hampshire. She is working on a book manuscript about signaling in international politics and the conventional weapons trade. Her research has appeared in Security Studies, Armed Forces & Society, and the Journal of Global Security Studies.
Review by Brian Blankenship, University of Miami
Danielle Lupton’s Reputation for Resolve makes a very welcome contribution to what has become an exciting new wave of research on reputation in international politics.[10] The book tackles a classic question: do the past actions of states, and especially individual leaders, matter for how other countries and leaders evaluate their willingness to stand firm in the future?[11] More importantly, it does so with clarity, a wealth of empirical evidence, top-notch writing, and masterful organization.
Many leaders and analysts certainly seem to think that reputation matters and that all leaders constantly evaluate each other’s words and deeds. The August 2021 American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the country’s rapid takeover by the Taliban, for example, produced no shortage of speculation about how American adversaries and allies would evaluate President Joe Biden’s resolve or the trustworthiness of US promises. Nevertheless, for decades the scholarly literature has been split on the question of whether leaders are right to worry about their reputations, with some seminal works arguing that, in fact, pursuing reputation is akin to chasing shadows.[12] This book joins a recent wave of literature that has sought to, as the author aptly puts it, “break the stalemate between reputation supporters and skeptics” (6).
The book offers the theory of leader-specific reputation, wherein reputation accrues to individual decision-makers, rather than to their country as a whole. This is not a trivial amendment, as it in fact takes aim at one of the core arguments of reputation skeptics: that reputation is largely if not entirely context-specific.[13] It is ultimately people who make decisions and evaluations, not states; to the extent that a state can be said to have a meaningful, durable reputation for behavior, it is likely to be the result of a combination of external pressures like the distribution of military power, internal pressures like the preferences and influence of key domestic actors, and the strategic value of what is being bargained over. By shifting the examination to leaders, Lupton is able to focus on reputations in their purest form and better separate their impact from country-level factors that make reputation for resolve and intrinsic resolve difficult to separate.[14] Moreover, a focus on leaders produces different empirical and theoretical implications. First, it suggests that reputations may not be long-lasting, as leaders cycle in and out of power in a way that states do not. Second, it suggests that new leaders have particular incentives to show resolve early in their tenure, a point that Lupton explores extensively in the book.[15]
The book explores three core propositions. First, that leaders’ statements are an important determinant of how observers evaluate their resolve, especially when they have not yet had the chance to demonstrate their resolve through behavior.[16] Second, the effects of leaders’ statements of resolve can be sabotaged by irresolute behavior. Third, once reputations form, they are durable and difficult to change. Moreover, Lupton makes the essential point that context matters in shaping how reputations form. In particular, the book explores the role of several state-level variables in shaping perceptions of resolve: (1) the balance of military power; (2) the strategic importance of the issue being negotiated over; (3) the state’s past reputation; and (4) the government’s regime type. In doing so, the book is able to draw precise and simultaneous comparisons between the explanatory power of multiple competing explanations.
The book explores its propositions using a combination of two sets of survey experiments and two qualitative historical case studies. The first survey experiment aims to demonstrate that reputations do accrue to leaders, that statements and behavior both shape perceptions of resolve, and that reputations suffer when resolute statements are followed by irresolute behavior, while the second experiment further demonstrates the importance of leader-specific reputation by showing that leadership transitions dramatically shape perceptions of resolve, as the new leader’s conduct matters a great deal in how observers judge them regardless of their predecessor’s reputation. The case studies, in turn, examine Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s assessments of the resolve of Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy. In doing so, the book is able to provide further evidence that Khrushchev evaluated Eisenhower and Kennedy differently, and that he responded to both their statements and their behavior.
Perhaps the book’s greatest strength lies in its efforts to not only test multiple competing explanations for perceptions of resolve simultaneously, but also to explore every logical and empirical implication of the causal logic of the book’s own theory using a diverse array of empirical evidence. Chapter 2 explores the interaction between statements of resolve and behavior in shaping perceptions of resolve, while Chapter 3 highlight the distinctiveness of leader-specific reputation by showing that leadership transitions produce changes in perceived resolve. All four chapters, meanwhile, expertly compare the explanatory power of a leader-specific reputation with alternative explanations.
Of course, no scholarly work is without limitations. One source of ambiguity relates to the relationship between statements of resolve and behavior. The book suggests that leaders who fail to behave in a way that is consistent with their statements of resolve are penalized, and thus that leaders may be better off not making statements of resolve that cannot be backed up with action. However, it is not clear that refusing to back up statements with action should necessarily exacerbate perceptions of irresolution, as opposed to creating a perception of dishonesty. Both mechanisms might shape future perceptions of resolve, but do so in distinct ways. The latter, for example, would imply that observers would only discount the leader’s words, while the former would imply a wholesale discounting of a leader’s resolve.
The evidence in the book is mixed on this point. On the one hand, the experimental evidence seems to point toward the first mechanism. While leaders are penalized for backing down in crises, they are not necessarily punished more for having done so after making a resolute statement compared to having made an irresolute statement. Rather, the evidence (e.g., 63-66) suggests that, conditional on backing down, issuing statements of resolve still produces more favorable evaluations of resolve than does issuing statements of irresolution. On the other hand, the evidence from Khrushchev’s evaluation of Kennedy’s resolve suggests that Kennedy’s failure to back up his initial statements of resolve with resolute action during the Bay of Pigs invasion penalized his reputation in Khrushchev’s eyes—though there is no way of knowing how Khrushchev’s evaluation would have differed if Kennedy had not issued earlier statements of resolve. One is thus left to question whether issuing statements of resolve is ever not the dominant strategy—that is, whether there is a special penalty for bluffing that is separate from the penalty for acting irresolutely. One possibility is that saying nothing is the best course for irresolute leaders, since doing so would avoid both having their bluffs called and outright confirming an unwillingness to stand firm through overt statements of irresolution.
The book’s findings also raise a number of additional questions which go further beyond the book’s scope that could be addressed by future scholars. For one, the book treats contextual variables, like the balance of military power, as factors that can condition the effects of past actions. Its thorough effort to compare the effects of these contextual variables is, indeed, one of the book’s greatest strengths and one of its major contributions, given that existing debates over the value of reputation center on whether past actions matter more than current circumstances. However, one consequence is that because it focuses on the values of these contextual variables in the present, the book is able to determine the value of contextual factors as competing explanations, but is less able to assess their value as moderating or intervening variables that shape whether past actions produced a leader-specific reputation in a previous crisis. That is, while the effects of an imbalance of power or low strategic stakes in a present crisis might swamp the effects of previous demonstrations of resolve, they should be orthogonal to whether a particular leader developed a reputation for resolve in those past crises. Instead, one might expect the values of contextual variables in those past crises to condition how much information leaders’ behavior in those crises signaled, and thus whether leader-specific reputations formed in the first place. For example, standing firm on issues that are of little strategic importance, or against more powerful opponents, may be an especially informative signal about a leader’s intrinsic resolve that observers in later crises can draw upon. This seems a natural avenue for future research.
A second line of questions relates to the potential for strategic reputation-seeking and signaling. A vast international relations literature on “costly signals” of resolve stresses that the most effective means of communicating a willingness to fight is by taking actions that are sufficiently costly such that only a truly resolved state would be willing to incur those costs.[17] But if reputations matter and leaders know it, then to what extent do leaders have incentive to selectively stand firm and fight, even (and perhaps especially) over issues of limited strategic importance, in the hopes of being able to “free-ride” on the reputational clout they gain by deterring would-be challengers? This in turn raises another question: if leaders can strategically seek reputations, then even a “costly signal” of resolve—like escalating a crisis or even fighting a conflict—may be less informative than is conventionally thought to be the case, as observers would need to be wary that they are not being deceived by a leader who is cynically standing firm in the hopes of avoiding challenges in the future.[18] There are thus a number of fascinating questions that further arise about the signaling value of costly signals of resolve.[19]
Finally, future research could explore the relationship between leader reputations and state reputations. While the book’s focus is on the former, the findings also suggest that state-level reputation matters. This raises questions about the mechanisms by which reputation accrues to countries rather than strictly leaders, since after all it is leaders who make decisions. For one, many of the factors that reputation skeptics have posited as being competing explanations for reputation—like the degree of strategic interest in the issue at hand—may in fact be information that past actions themselves reveal.[20] Alternatively, given Reputation for Resolve’s findings, one possible mechanism that could drive country-level reputation is leader selection. If a government routinely produces irresolute leaders, then observers may infer that domestic audiences are unwilling to stand firm on issues of dispute, or at least are sufficiently apathetic as to avoid removing leaders that back down.
It is the mark of the book’s quality that it invites readers to consider so many further questions even as it marshals an impressive array of evidence to address its own research questions. Reputation of Resolve is sure to become essential reading for scholars of reputation, signaling, and credibility.
Review by Kathleen E. Powers, Dartmouth College
Policymakers and their critics often speak and act as if personal reputations matter in international politics. US President Barack Obama drew a “red line” against chemical weapons use by the Syrian Assad regime in 2012. But when President Bashar al-Assad then used sarin gas to kill hundreds of civilians and Obama failed to deliver military punishment, some concluded that he “whiffed at the chance to show resolve.”[21] Critics pin Assad’s later abuses on Obama’s irresolute action, but praise President Donald Trump for sending “a powerful early message of US resolve” with air strikes in 2017.[22] Supporters praised the strikes for sending a signal to adversaries. Per United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, “When our President draws a red line, our President enforces a red line.”[23] Contrary to the confident assessments from the policy realm, however, international relations scholars have been remarkably divided on basic questions about whether leaders establish reputations for resolve, how those reputations change, and whether leaders’ reputations have any effect on international politics.[24]
Danielle Lupton provides answers to these questions in Reputation for Resolve: How Leaders Signal Determination in International Politics. Lupton argues that leaders are right to obsess over their own images. First, she advances a theory of leader-specific reputations. In a twist on the adage, Lupton argues that reputations rest on what leaders say and what they do. Leaders who back up their tough talk with action earn stronger reputations for resolve than those whose irresolute behavior undermines their statements. Second, reputations are sticky. Observers rely on initial judgments about the resolve of their counterparts for later assessments, making reputations difficult to change. She argues that transitions create important opportunities; early assessments of a new leader depend on the state’s past actions, but the individual ultimately matters. Leaders cannot depend on historical inertia to communicate their resolve.
Lupton tests her argument with an impressive array of evidence. Reputation for Resolve combines rigorous experiments with qualitative case studies, a multi-method approach that addresses both internal and external validity. In chapters 2 and 3, Lupton’s original process-tracing experiments show that participants privilege information about a leader’s words and actions in assessing resolve—even when they can access details about regime type, state behavior, and stakes. Chapters 4 and 5 contain detailed case studies that chronicle Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s perceptions of US Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy during key crises. Whereas Eisenhower quickly established a reputation for resolve, Kennedy’s equivocation during the April 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion failed to match his bombastic campaign rhetoric. His reputation for irresolute action haunted him up to the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, illustrating that changing a reputation is difficult but possible.
Reputation for Resolve is essential reading for international relations scholars who are interested in reputation, leaders, and crisis diplomacy. Lupton crafts an elegant and intuitive theory while ably addressing both the reputation supporters[25] and skeptics[26] upon whose work she builds. She also brings nuance to bear on her argument, deftly integrating additional factors like situational assessments and power/capabilities.
Like most good books, Reputation for Resolve persuaded me of its central argument—leaders establish individual reputations—while nevertheless raising questions. In the spirit of constructive engagement, I now turn to three questions that emerged from my reading.
First, what role do an observer’s beliefs, motivations, and perceptions play in how they assess their adversary’s reputation? Lupton writes that reputations “are perceptional rather than objective” (2), suggesting ample space to engage with a large body of international relations research on perception and judgment. [27] For example, belief perseverance explains Lupton’s observation that reputations resist change. This core principle from psychology tells us that once people make a judgment, form an image of their adversary, or analogize a crisis to the past, they cling to that idea. Political psychology therefore offers an alternative way to explain why “first impressions matter” in the experiments (47)—a tough leader at stage 1 retains much of her reputation at stage 3 even when participants receive “mixed signals” (66)—or why it took repeated assertive responses from Kennedy before Khrushchev updated his views. The mechanisms that drive the theory warrant further discussion and consideration so that future research can build on firm foundations.
Moreover, preexisting beliefs shape subsequent perceptions. Beliefs persevere in part because people mentally filter out contradictory evidence and attend to details that confirm their view of the other actor.[28] This consideration raises an important second question about selection dynamics: Why do perceivers attend to specific leaders, statements, and behavior in the first place? The answer to this question has important theoretical and empirical implications.
Theoretically, the book’s argument hinges on the idea that a leader’s statements and behavior operate separately from strategic context, regime type, and even state-level reputations. But if preexisting beliefs about the strategic context determine which of Eisenhower’s behaviors Khrushchev attended to, for example, his subsequent judgments about Eisenhower’s behavior partly depended on how he already assessed the strategic environment.
Chapter 4 describes how Eisenhower held back during the 1958 Geneva Summit, for example. Lacking clear signals from the US president—whom Khrushchev viewed as playing second fiddle to John Foster Dulles (101)—Khrushchev emphasized the secretary of state’s resolve. We might expect this pattern if Khrushchev had simply been looking for evidence that confirmed his impression, as insights from psychology would suggest. Unable to find it in Eisenhower, he turned to Dulles. The same perceptual processes could explain why Khrushchev stressed Eisenhower’s resolute behavior in some other areas (Taiwan) but seemingly ignored his irresolute behavior in other parts of the world (Iraq).
This important issue—how preexisting beliefs filter which information observers select to assess their adversaries—also appears in the experimental chapters where the studies include a selection stage that goes largely unanalyzed (54). The process-tracing experiments allowed participants to choose whether to access information, such that they only received the treatment if they sought it out. Although nearly 87% of participants accessed information about a leader’s statements in stage 1, only 60% accessed information about that leader’s behavior in stage 2 and 45% in stage 3 (Table A2.19). Even fewer sought any contextual information as the study wore on.
This process complicates how readers should interpret many of the key conclusions, such as the finding that following resolute statements with irresolute action undermines the perception of resolve. Instead, the results tell us about the degree to which a leader’s later behavior affected impressions of resolve among people who valued information about their adversary’s behavior enough to click on it. A non-trivial proportion of participants relied only on early statements—suggesting a filtering process that may mimic the real world. It could be the case that Eisenhower needed resolute actions to back up his statements, or that Khrushchev stopped looking for evidence to the contrary, just as he may have simply filtered out Kennedy’s growing signals of resolve.
To be sure, these considerations do not reflect quibbles with the core argument of the book. Instead, theorizing and analyzing the selection stage could complement the findings of Reputation for Resolve by connecting elements of the causal chain—drawing a line from how leaders acquire and integrate information to how they use it—a fruitful path for future research.
A third question concerns the book’s implications for crisis diplomacy and international negotiations: What is the value of a reputation for resolve? Lupton concludes with advice for leaders on how to signal resolve and “make their states less attractive targets of aggression in the future” (157). And in various places, the book draws subtle connections between resolve and policy outcomes—Khrushchev backed down from his 1958 ultimatum over Berlin and made concessions in the Cuban Missile Crisis when he determined that his adversary was not going to blink first, and experimental participants thought that resolved adversaries would escalate the dispute.
But this advice might be too hasty, for two reasons. First, the case studies cannot adjudicate whether facing a resolute adversary ultimately caused Khrushchev to step back from the brink. Leaders can use their adversary’s displays of resolve as post hoc rationalizations for a policy choice, and policy-makers might draw the wrong conclusions about how to deter aggression if they over-invest in reputation to the neglect of capabilities or domestic support, for example. Second, Lupton joins other IR scholars in treating reputation as a way to deter future predation.[29] But with two leaders in each dyad, the other side merits consideration: When might a resolved leader meet her equally resolute partner by choosing to escalate, raise the costs of her threat, or achieve her goal by fait accompli[30]? Exploring the effects of reputations for resolve—and whether they can backfire—would add more nuance to the book’s policy implications and again presents a valuable option for future research.
To summarize, Reputation for Resolve convincingly advances a leader-specific theory of reputation in international politics, and Lupton marshals rigorous quantitative and qualitative evidence to make her case. The fact that it sparks considerations for future research is a merit, as scholars can engage this book far into the future.
Review by Jennifer Spindel, University of New Hampshire
Danielle Lupton’s Reputation for Resolve sets out the expansive agenda of investigating whose resolve matters, how reputations for resolve form, and what effects reputations for resolve have on international security. In answering these questions, Lupton brings clarity to the ongoing debate about reputations and their effects in international security.[31] Most importantly, her innovative focus on leader-specific reputations shows that both leaders and states can have reputations for resolve (or for irresolute action), and that these reputations interact in interesting ways. Her book shows that reputation is not the whole and the only story (as reputation supporters argue),[32] nor are international crises primarily the outcome of contextual or state-specific factors (as reputation skeptics are inclined to suggest).[33] While states can have general reputations for resolute or irresolute action, Lupton shows that individual leaders have a reputation timeline, and that their statements and actions early in their tenure will influence perceptions of their resolve and can set future behavioral expectations.
Lupton makes several significant contributions to the reputation debate. First, she demonstrates through survey experiments and case studies that reputation does matter for international security, and that leaders and states have independent reputations. An irresolute leader can come from a resolute state and vice versa. Both reputations affect perceived toughness and therefore outcomes in crises. For example, Lupton’s first survey experiment shows that leaders who stand firm during a crisis are expected to act tougher and more determined in the future (64). As her case studies demonstrate, these behavioral expectations can affect crisis bargaining and negotiation.
In showing that reputation matters, Lupton also contributes to discussions about the interdependence of commitments. Does past action—from the leader or the state—affect the decisions other leaders make during interactions? Some have argued that this type of reputation history does matter,[34] while others have argued that commitments are independent and actions in one area should not bear on actions in another.[35] Lupton shows that there is a degree of interdependence due to leader-specific reputations. Her survey experiments show that early statements and actions influence perceptions of reputation in later stages of interactions (56, 63-64). Additionally, early in a new leader’s tenure, observers rely on behavior and statements to figure out how that leader will act, meaning that these early actions set future behavioral expectations. However, new leaders do not automatically have the same reputation for resolve as their predecessors (76). Leadership transitions can also be moments for reputations to reset or change. The existence of leader-specific reputation suggests that there is some degree of interdependence of commitments and actions.
A second major contribution concerns the degree of control that leaders have over their reputation.[36] Lupton notes that reputation is “perceptual rather than objective,” (20) though her empirics suggest that leaders might have limited control over their reputations. One of the main findings is that, early in a leader’s tenure, statements and actions really matter (25, 32). Lupton cautions leaders against bombastic rhetoric, lest one acquire a reputation for irresoluteness (157). Simply being aware of this fact could give leaders limited control, at least over their early reputations. A leader who knows the importance of statements and actions might calibrate her moves to try to frame her actions and influence the perceptions of others. While reputation is a relational concept, Lupton’s book reminds us not to forget the degree of agency that individuals have.
Lupton also weighs in on the debate about situational versus dispositional attribution of reputation.[37] For example, do leaders act resolutely because they are resolute, or does the situation force them toward resoluteness? Lupton helpfully updates Jonathan Mercer’s work by suggesting that both matter.[38] Leaders do have their own reputation for resolve (dispositional), which they carry with them across interactions. But contextual factors matter, too, especially relative military strength and the state’s interest in the issue at hand (60-63). Though including situational and dispositional factors makes analyzing reputation more complex, Lupton’s case studies persuasively demonstrate the importance of embracing this complexity. Without understanding leader- and state-specific reputations, as well as contextual factors, our explanations of international politics are incomplete.
Overall, Lupton’s book productively advances research on reputation, and a major strength is the clear research agenda it sets for scholars who study reputation. Bringing her concepts forward to the contemporary time period will help sharpen the theoretical analysis and can further tease out the interactions between leader and state reputations.
It makes sense that Lupton’s cases focus on the Cold War. Her use of translated Soviet documents is a new contribution to understanding how Soviet leaders perceived US leaders. One question that remains unanswered concerns reputation for resolve in the post-Cold War period. Her case studies include key moments of crisis: the 1958 Berlin Crisis, the 1961 Berlin Crisis, and the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In less than five years, there were at least three crises that gave US and Soviet leaders opportunities to assess one another’s resolve. What happens, however, if there is more time between crisis moments? Would state-specific reputation matter less if, for example, there had been ten years between the second Berlin crisis and the Cuban Missile Crisis? Would leader-specific reputation have mattered more? In both the survey experiments and the case studies the time between crises was not particularly long. Future work could explore the reputation decay over time for states as well as the relative influence of leader- and state-specific reputation.
This question of temporality is particularly interesting given Lupton’s brief mentions of President Donald Trump at the beginning and conclusion of the book. She suggests that Trump’s inability to “communicate and convey a consistent and coherent policy or strategy” meant that he was seen as not credible (158). Does this mean that Trump will not have a lasting effect on US-specific reputation, and that a relatively “normal” tenure of President Joe Biden will re-set US-specific reputation? What does seem clear is that Biden’s leader-specific reputation does not depend on Trump’s leader-specific reputation. More generally, how long does the shadow of the past darken the future? Does an irresolute leader from a generation ago still taint a state’s reputation? Can a more recent resolute leader improve a state’s reputation?
Relatedly, it is unclear at what point leaders’ reputations become solidified into a state reputation. Does a state need to have a series of three or four resolute leaders in order to be seen as resolute? Will one irresolute leader change the state’s reputation? How influential are moments of mismatch (irresolute leader from a resolute state or resolute leader from an irresolute state)? It is unfair to ask Lupton to answer these questions in her book, as she has already done significant work by showing that leaders do have independent reputations. But future work should explore this and take seriously Lupton’s insights about state and leader reputation and the idea of a reputation timeline.
Lupton alludes to the idea of a reputation timeline in the book’s conclusion. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s initial perceptions of President Dwight Eisenhower were based, in part, on the latter’s actions as a military leader during World War II (93, 111). This suggests that a leader’s reputation timeline may begin before a leader becomes head of state. Would, for example, Biden’s statements and actions as vice president mean he started his presidency with more of a settled reputation for resolve than a leader who had not held such a role? In other words, which roles matter for a reputation timeline, and just how early can that timeline begin? One major difference between the contemporary period and the Cold War is the amount of information available about individuals: will future leaders find it harder to start with a “clean” reputation slate?
Finally, will current and future leaders have more limited opportunities to establish their reputations for resolve? Lupton notes throughout the book that a leader’s early statements and actions in non-crisis situations are crucial for influencing their reputation and setting expectations for the future. Thereafter, a leader’s behavior in a dispute or crisis forms the basis of her reputation for resolve (25-27). If there are fewer international crises, particularly those involving military threats or action, are there are fewer opportunities for leaders to gain or solidify their reputation for resolve? This question is crucial, and raises larger questions about what counts for reputation. Though Lupton repeatedly mentions that statements and actions matter early on, it’s not clear what types of statements or actions other than military moves/threats will affect reputation for resolve. This is not a critique of Lupton’s book as much as it is a note about the state of the field. The reputation and signaling literature is still debating what counts as a credible signal; most agree that military moves are credible.[39] But if military moves are becoming less common, and crises are more spaced out, more work needs to be done to determine what types of statements can affect reputation for resolve.[40]
Lupton also makes a significant methodological contribution by combining survey experiments using the general public with case studies of elite actors (in this case, presidents Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy and Khrushchev). Her survey experiments are an excellent example of how to study complex decision-making and perceptions, and her process-tracing survey experiment in particular is likely to become a model for future studies of perceptions in IR. A perhaps unexpected benefit of her mixed-methods approach is that Lupton shows, quite persuasively, that the general public and leaders make assessments about resolve in the same way. This suggests that—at least in the reputation domain—leaders do not have a different decision-making process, and that their perceptions can be well-captured by surveying the general public. Lupton also interestingly finds that survey participants’ interest in or attention to international politics and events do not affect assessments of resolve (Figure 2.5, p. 68). This should be a boon both for scholars looking to use Amazon’s MTurk platform for survey research in international relations, and to scholars who are interested in studying how perceptions form and change over time.
Response by Danielle L. Lupton, Colgate University
Let me begin by thanking Brian Blankenship, Kathleen Powers, and Jennifer Spindel for their careful engagement with Reputation for Resolve and their thought-provoking comments. I would also like to thank Alexandre Debs for writing the introduction and Andrew Szarejko for organizing this roundtable. It is truly a privilege to have my work reviewed by such an incredible set of scholars.
I was pleased to see that all three reviewers believe that my book makes a significant contribution to the long-standing debate regarding the role of reputations in international politics as well as the literature on how political elites shape foreign policy and international security. As the reviewers point out, Reputation for Resolve pushes the debate regarding reputations forward by shifting the focus from state reputations to leader-specific reputations. In doing so, my book clarifies not only the impact of reputations for resolve on crisis bargaining, but also illuminates how these reputations form to begin with. Furthermore, it provides insight into how leaders can shape their reputations through their rhetoric and policy actions. I was delighted to read that the reviewers found both my survey experiments and my case studies compelling. My aim in writing the book was to marshal evidence that directly tested the causal mechanisms of my argument, while also providing a stringent test of my theory through the use of experimental methods and in-depth historical analysis. As the reviewers point out, this approach presents a novel empirical contribution to the study of reputations and resolve.
I was similarly delighted that each of the reviewers notes that Reputation for Resolve also raises important questions about the development of leader-specific reputations and their impact on international conflict. In what follows, I address three key issues raised by the reviewers, which I see as most pressing for the broader debate over reputations and the role of leaders in international security. While I could not fully answer all these questions in the book, I appreciate the opportunity to extend my argument to new areas of inquiry. I hope that this conversation will stimulate future important research on these issues.
In the book, I argue and show that leaders who make strong statements but then fail to follow up their rhetoric with complementary and coherent policy action acquire reputations for lacking resolve. My evidence indicates these reputations for lacking resolve negatively influence the ability of leaders to achieve their foreign policy goals in the future while also undermining their international credibility. The reviewers posit that perhaps it is not one’s reputation for resolve that is injured by failing to adequately follow through on such rhetoric, but rather one’s reputation for honesty.
I agree that distinguishing between different types of reputation is critically important if we want to understand how past actions influence crisis bargaining and future conflict behavior. This is part of the reason why I spend so much time in the book’s introduction defining the concepts of both reputation and resolve, as well as specifying the nuanced distinction between resolve and credibility. While resolve concerns an actor’s toughness firmness and determination, credibility is based on an actor’s believability. According to deterrence theorists, an actor’s perceived resolve contributes to her perceived credibility. If I do not think you are resolute, your statements will not be credible. We can further then think about the relationship between credibility and the concept of honesty. Honesty is akin to truthfulness and may be closely related to credibility. These two concepts, however, are not synonymous. Most notably, one can be honest but their statements may not be perceived as credible.
In thinking about these nuanced distinctions, it is important to remember that, as I note in the book, actors can acquire multiple reputations based on their statements and behavior. Take, for example, my case study evidence regarding the reputation development of US President John F. Kenney vis-a-vis Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Using process tracing methods and primary source documents, I find that Kennedy had a habit of making strong statements on his willingness to protect Berlin. However, he repeatedly failed to follow up such rhetoric with decisive policy action. This contributed to Kennedy quickly developing a reputation for lacking resolve as well as lacking credibility. While these two reputations were related and were shaped by the same behaviors, they remained distinct in Khrushchev’s view (127).
Accordingly, I believe that it is not so much a question of whether leaders obtain reputations for dishonesty rather than irresolution, but whether they can also acquire reputations for being dishonest when they fail to follow through on their rhetoric. Indeed, past work demonstrates the importance of reputations for honesty to the conduct of crisis bargaining.[41] Yet, this further raises the issue of how these different reputations may influence each other. In the book, for example, I note that there may be differing incentives in establishing reputations for resolve versus credibility. The need to be perceived as resolute may increase a leader’s susceptibility to overcommitment, leaving her vulnerable in other areas and potentially undermining her future credibility (206). Similarly, it is possible that a leader’s reputation for resolve and her reputation for honesty may be linked, especially if one considers the damage that bluffing can do to a leader’s reputation for resolve (see 160). Indeed, I posit that reputations for resolve, credibility, and honesty (though they are distinct) may complement each other and that the same behaviors that shape reputations for resolve may also shape reputations for honesty and credibility (29-30). Still, future work is needed to fully tease out these distinctions.
The reviewers also raise the issue of the relationship between leader-specific reputations for resolve and broader state reputations for resolve. In the book, I argue that both leaders and states may acquire such reputations. Indeed, I hypothesize that a pre-existing state reputation for resolve can create expectations of how a new leader will act during her tenure. Leaders who come from states with reputations for resolute action, for example, will also be expected to act resolutely. If these leaders fail to meet these expectations and instead signal irresolution, their reputation for lacking resolve may be amplified. The results of my survey experiments provide further support for this argument, as past state action significantly influences how participants assess the resolve of leaders across two distinct survey experiments. However, it is important to note that the survey experiments also reveal that such pre-existing state reputations do not supersede the importance of a leader’s own statements and behavior. While state reputation may help to shape perceptions of leader resolve, they are not the primary driving factor, indicating that this is indeed a story about leaders, rather than one solely about states.
As the reviewers point out, these findings beg the question of how much state reputations matter as well as how leader-specific reputations influence state reputation. Reputation for Resolve shows that state reputations can, to a limited extent, condition perceptions of leader resolve through the creation of expectations of future leader behavior. But what about the other way around? How does a leader’s reputation become integrated into and shape state reputation? This question is fertile territory for future research, but my work does suggest some hints as to how we may begin to address these issues (149).
One could posit that the answer to these questions may be partially determined by variations across regime types. In personalistic dictatorships, for example, the leader may be synonymous with the state, resulting in leader-specific reputations driving state reputation.[42] One of the limitations of my book is that I did not have the space to tease out fully such differentiations in regime type, especially across authoritarian and semi-authoritarian states. My experiments, however, do distinguish between democratic and non-democratic regimes. While this is an admittedly blunt approach, I find no evidence that such distinctions in regime type influence participants’ perceptions of leader resolve, despite participants understanding the general difference between democratic and non-democratic political systems. One might also hypothesize that in democracies this may be a story about political parties and domestic institutions shaping reputations and perceptions of resolve rather than about individual leaders. Yet, my case studies do not find support for this argument. Khrushchev, for example, did not make assumptions about Kennedy’s resolve based on the fact that Kennedy was a Democrat while his predecessor Dwight D. Eisenhower was a Republican (137-138).
I also address the issue of leader versus state reputations in work beyond my book. Most notably, in “Reexamining Reputation for Resolve: Leaders, States, and the Onset of International Crises,” I use survival analysis to compare the influence of leader and state crisis behavior on the timing of future acts of aggression.[43] According to the logic of reputation for resolve, actors who respond firmly to crises should be less attractive targets in the future. Indeed, at the individual leader level of analysis, I find that leaders that who respond resolutely to crises are less likely to be the targets of future acts of international aggression. At the state level of analysis, I also find that a resolute response to an international crisis reduces the likelihood of a state being a future target, but these effects are neither as substantively strong nor as long-lasting as at the leader level of analysis. Thus, my work suggests that both leaders and states may acquire reputations for resolve based on their crisis behavior, but that the effects are stronger when reputation is conceptualized in terms of adhering to individuals, rather than states. These results therefore further support the broader findings of my experiments and the case studies in my book.
Finally, the reviewers rightly note that reputations and perceptions of resolve are a two-player game and are not simply one sided. Opponents also carry reputations, and leaders hold perceptions of each other that interact to shape the outcomes of international events. Indeed, crises can quickly escalate when two resolute leaders are pitted against each other. This issue of how such reputations and perceptions interact across leaders is ripe for future research, as scholars (including myself) primarily theorize the effects of reputation in terms of how targets respond to challenges. In my view, this more one-sided approach is mainly due to theoretical necessity—we often need to simplify these interactions in order to adequately test our causal mechanisms. That being said, we certainly need to more fully theorize and investigate how leader reputations may interact with each other to shape crisis bargaining interactions.
There is another aspect to this issue that I believe is equally important: how leaders anticipate they will be perceived by their opponents can shape their rhetoric and behavior. Kennedy, for example, rightly believed that the Bay of Pigs debacle undermined his emerging reputation for resolve vis-à-vis Khrushchev. However, Kennedy wrongly believed that his approach at the subsequent Vienna Summit would be effective at conveying his resolve over Berlin to Khrushchev. As I show in the book, Kennedy was wrong. Khrushchev interpreted Kennedy’s verbal signals of resolve and subsequent actions as an indication that Kennedy was not actually resolute. Thus, leaders often craft their signals of resolve based not only on their true preferences of resolve but also how they believe these signals will be interpreted by the adversary. To complicate matters further, one could imagine that how these signals are interpreted is subsequently influenced by whether one’s adversary is resolute or irresolute. Hypothetically, confident and resolute leaders may have a higher bar for what constitutes an appropriately resolute response from an adversary. We need to further theorize these interactions and continue to explore how reputations and beliefs about these reputations shape the conduct of foreign policy and crisis bargaining.
Overall, my book shows that reputations matter for international politics and that leader-specific reputations are shaped not only by the leaders’ actions but by their rhetoric. I am delighted that the reviewers agree that my book substantially contributes to our understanding of how reputations for resolve, and the leaders who carry these reputations, shape the landscape of international security. And I am excited to see where future research on these issues takes us.
[1] See, e.g., Michael Dobbs, One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2008), 6-7.
[2] “McConnell calls for arming Ukrainians, maximizing sanctions against Russia.” February 24, 2022. Available here: https://www.lpm.org/news/2022-02-24/mcconnell-calls-for-arming-ukrainians-maximizing-sanctions-against-russia; House Republican Interim Report: A “Strategic Failure:” Assessing the Administration’s Afghanistan Withdrawal; Congressman Michael McCaul, Ranking Member. US House of Representatives, One Hundred and Seventeenth Congress. August 17, 2022. Available here: https://gop-foreignaffairs.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/HFAC-Republican-Interim-Report-A-22Strategic-Failure22-Assessing-the-Administrations-Afghanistan-Withdrawal.pdf.
[3] See, for example, Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966); Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996); Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2005); Scott Wolford, “The Turnover Trap: New Leaders, Reputation, and International Conflict,” American Journal of Political Science 51:4 (2007): 772-788; Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo, “Revisiting Reputation: How Past Actions Matter in International Politics,” International Organization 69:2 (2015): 473-495, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000393; Joshua D. Kertzer, Resolve in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2016); Roseanne W. McManus, Statements of Resolve: Achieving Coercive Credibility in International Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017); Keren Yarhi-Milo, Who Fights for Reputation: The Psychology of Leaders in International Conflict (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2018).
[4] Schelling, Arms and Influence, 55-59.
[5] Press, Calculating Credibility.
[6] For Lupton’s own reflections on this question, see Lupton, Reputation for Resolve, 160-161. For recent work on this question, see Michael A. Goldfien, Michael F. Joseph, and Roseanne W. McManus, “The Domestic Sources of International Reputation,” American Political Science Review (forthcoming), DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055422000855.
[7] On regime type and conflict, see, for example, Jessica Weeks, “Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve,” International Organization 62:1 (2008): 35-64, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818308080028; Alexandre Debs and H. E. Goemans, “Regime Type, the Fate of Leaders, and War,” American Political Science Review 104:3 (2010): 430-445, https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055410000195; Jessica Weeks, Dictators at War and Peace (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014).
[8] Game-theoretic models with private information about resolve are a good starting point to understand how reputations for resolve may be built. Seminal models define resolve at the level of countries. See, for example, James D. Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Political Science Review 88:3 (1994): 577-592, especially 582, https://doi.org/10.2307/2944796; Kenneth A. Schultz, “Domestic Opposition and Signaling in International Crises,” American Political Science Review 92:4 (1998): 829-844, especially 832, https://doi.org/10.2307/2586306. Yet the models are flexible and could be interpreted as assigning resolve to leaders. For models defining resolve at the level of individual leaders, sometimes labeled as a leader’s competence, see, for example, Alastair Smith, “International Crises and Domestic Politics,” American Political Science Review 92:3 (1998): 623-638, https://doi.org/10.2307/2585485; Kristopher W. Ramsay, “Politics at the Water’s Edge: Crisis Bargaining and Electoral Competition,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 48:4 (2004): 459-486, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002704266156; Wolford, “The Turnover Trap”; Alexandre Debs and Jessica C. Weiss, “Circumstances, Domestic Audiences, and Reputational Incentives in International Crisis Bargaining,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 60:3 (2016): 403-433, https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002714542874.
[9] At the same time, leaders may assign different meanings to different issues. Game-theoretic models are usually interpreted as suggesting that there is an “immutable” type. Yet nothing prevents a particular type to view separate issues differently. See, for example, Alexandre Debs, “Mutual Optimism and War, and the Strategic Logic of the July Crisis,” American Journal of Political Science 66:2 (2022): 271-284.
[10] Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo, “Revisiting Reputation: How Past Actions Matter in International Politics,” International Organization 69:2 (2015): 473–95, DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000393; Van Jackson, Rival Reputations: Coercion and Credibility in US-North Korea Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016); Frank P. Harvey and John Mitton, Fighting for Credibility: US Reputation and International Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016); Yarhi-Milo, Who Fights for Reputation (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018); Mark Crescenzi, Of Friends and Foes: Reputation and Learning in International Politics (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018); Iain D. Henry, “What Allies Want: Reconsidering Loyalty, Reliability, and Alliance Interdependence,” International Security 44:4 (2020): 45–83; Jervis, Yarhi-Milo, and Don Casler, “Redefining the Debate Over Reputation and Credibility in International Security: Promises and Limits of New Scholarship,” World Politics 73:1 (2021): 167–203.
[11] Seminal works include Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966); Robert L. Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970).
[12] Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996); Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2005); Shiping Tang, “Reputation, Cult of Reputation, and International Conflict,” Security Studies 14:1 (2005): 34–62.
[13] Press, Calculating Credibility; James D. Morrow, “Alliances, Credibility, and Peacetime Costs,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution 38:2 (1994): 270–97.
[14] On the concept of resolve, see Joshua D. Kertzer, Resolve in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016).
[15] Joe Clare and Vesna Danilovic, “Multiple Audiences and Reputation Building in International Conflicts,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 54:6 (2010): 860–882.
[16] On statements of resolve, see Roseanne W. McManus, Statements of Resolve: Achieving Coercive Credibility in International Conflict (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
[17] James D. Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Political Science Review 88:3 (1994): 577–592; Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 41:1 (1997): 68–90.
[18] Jervis, The Logic of Images in International Relations; Robert L. Jervis, “Signaling and Perception: Drawing Inferences and Projecting Images,” in Kristen R. Monroe, Political Psychology (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002), 293–312.
[19] See also Kai Quek, “Are Costly Signals More Credible? Evidence of Sender-Receiver Gaps,” The Journal of Politics 78:3 (2016): 925–40.
[20] Weisiger and Yarhi-Milo, “Revisiting Reputation.”
[21] Derek Chollett, “Obama’s Red Line, Revisited,” Politico Magazine, 19 July 2016. URL: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/07/obama-syria-foreign-policy-red-line-revisited-214059/.
[22] The Editorial Board, “Testing Trump’s Chemical Red Line”, Wall Street Journal, 8 February 2018. URL: https://www.wsj.com/articles/testing-trumps-chemical-red-line-1518135422.
[23] Nicole Gaouette, Richard Roth, and Elizabeth Joseph, “Haley Says US ‘Locked and Loaded,’ Prepared to Maintain Pressure on Syria,” CNN, 14 April 2018. URL: https://www.cnn.com/2018/04/14/politics/un-meeting-syria-strikes/index.html.
[24] See, for example, Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2010); Daryl Grayson Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005); Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo, “Revisiting Reputation: How Past Actions Matter in International Politics,” International Organization 69:2 (2015): 473-495; Robert Jervis, Yarhi-Milo, and Don Casler, “Redefining the Debate Over Reputation and Credibility in International Security: Promises and Limits of New Scholarship,” World Politics (2021): 1-37.
[25] See, for example, Weisiger and Yarhi-Milo (2015).
[26] See, for example, Press (2005); Mercer (2010).
[27] See, for example, Deborah Welch Larson, “The Role of Belief Systems and Schemas in Foreign Policy Decision-making,” Political Psychology (1994): 17-33; Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017); Richard K. Herrmann and Michael P. Fischerkeller, “Beyond the Enemy Image and Spiral Model: Cognitive–Strategic Research after the Cold War,” International Organization 49:3 (1995): 415-450; Yuen Foong Khong, Analogies at War: Korea, Munich, Dien Bien Phu, and the Vietnam Decisions of 1965 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Charles A. Duelfer and Stephen Benedict Dyson, “Chronic Misperception and International Conflict: The US-Iraq Experience,” International Security 36:1 (2011): 73-100.
[28] For a review see Herrmann, “Perceptions and Image Theory in International Relations,” in Leonie Huddy, David O. Sears, and Jack S. Levy, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
[29] Weisiger and Yarhi-Milo (2015); Sechser, Todd S. “Reputations and signaling in coercive bargaining.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 62, no. 2 (2018): 318-345.
[30] Dan Altman, “By Fait Accompli, not Coercion: How States Wrest Territory from their Adversaries,” International Studies Quarterly 61:4 (2017): 881-891.
[31] Joshua Kertzer, Resolve in International Politics (Princeton University Press, 2016); Keren Yarhi-Milo, Who Fights for Reputation (Princeton University Press, 2018); Alex Weisiger and Keren Yarhi-Milo, “Revisiting Reputation: How Past Actions Matter in International Politics,” International Organization 69:2 (2015): 473–95; Iain D Henry, “What Allies Want: Reconsidering Loyalty, Reliability, and Alliance Interdependence,” International Security 44:4 (2020): 45–83.
[32] Gregory D. Miller, The Shadow of the Past: Reputation and Military Alliances before the First World War (Cornell University Press, 2012); Mark JC Crescenzi, Jacob D. Kathman, and Stephen B. Long, “Reputation, History, and War,” Journal of Peace Research 44 (2007): 651–67.
[33] Daryl G. Press, Calculating Credibility: How Leaders Assess Military Threats (Cornell University Press, 2007); Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Cornell University Press, 1996).
[34] Crescenzi, Kathman, and Long, “Reputation, History, and War”; Ronald R. Krebs and Jennifer Spindel, “Divided Priorities: Why and When Allies Differ Over Military Intervention,” Security Studies 27:4 (2018): 575–606; Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).
[35] Jonathan Mercer, Reputation and International Politics (Cornell University Press, 1996): 9; Allan Dafoe, Jonathan Renshon, and Paul Huth, “Reputation and Status as Motives for War,” Annual Review of Political Science 17:1 (2014): 384. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-071112-213421; Press, Calculating Credibility.
[36] Dafoe, Renshon, and Huth, “Reputation and Status as Motives for War,” 376.
[37] Mercer, Reputation and International Politics; Ryan Brutger and Joshua Kertzer, “A dispositional theory of reputation costs,” International Organization 72:3 (2018): 693-724.
[38] Mercer, Reputation and International Politics, 15.
[39] Press, Calculating Credibility, 2005; Branislav L. Slantchev, Military Threats: The Costs of Coercion and the Price of Peace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Krebs and Spindel, “Divided Priorities: Why and When Allies Differ Over Military Intervention.”
[40] See, for example, Robert F. Trager, “Diplomatic Signaling among Multiple States,” The Journal of Politics 77:3 (2015): 635–647. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1086/681259; Roseanne W. McManus, “Fighting Words The Effectiveness of Statements of Resolve in International Conflict,” Journal of Peace Research 51 (2014): 726–740. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343314539826; Dustin H. Tingley and Barbara F. Walter, “Can Cheap Talk Deter? An Experimental Analysis,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 55:6 (2011): 996–1,020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002711414372; Kristopher W. Ramsay, “Cheap Talk Diplomacy, Voluntary Negotiations, and Variable Bargaining Power,” International Studies Quarterly 55:4 (2011): 1,003–1,023.
[41] For a direct examination of reputations for honesty, see Alexandra Guisinger and Alastair Smith, “Honest Threats: The Interaction of Reputation and Political Institutes in International Crises,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 46:2 (2002): 175-200, as well as Anne Sartori, Deterrence by Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). For more discussion of reputations for honesty and how they differ from reputations for resolve or reputations for credibility, see Douglas M. Gibler, “The Costs of Reneging: Reputation and Alliance Formation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 52:3 (2008): 426-454, and Scott Wolford, “The Turnover Trap: New Leaders, Reputation, and International Conflict,” American Journal of Political Science 51:4 (2007): 772-778.
[42] For a discussion of how regime type may shape the ability of autocratic leaders to employ audience costs or signal their resolve, see: Jessica Weeks, “Autocratic Audience Costs: Regime Type and Signaling Resolve,” International Organization 62:1 (2008): 35-64; Ahmer Tarar and Bahar Leventoglu, “Public Commitment in Crisis Bargaining,” International Studies Quarterly 53 (2009): 817-839; Jessica Weeks, Dictators at War and Peace (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014).
[43] Danielle L. Lupton, “Reexamining Reputation for Resolve: Leaders, States, and the Onset of International Crises,” Journal of Global Security Studies 3:2 (2018): 198-216. DOI: http://doi.org/10.1093/jogss/ogy004.