Peer-reviewed article · Forthcoming
The Posturing Premium: How Empty Threats Can Benefit Leaders in Weak Countries
Renard Sexton and Nico Ravanilla · American Journal of Political Science
In brief
Why do leaders of militarily weak countries make threats they cannot back up? Survey experiments in Southeast Asia show that empty threats over sovereignty, as in the South China Sea disputes, can boost a leader's approval at home.
Abstract
This study examines ‘theatrical’ foreign policy crises, an understudied part of international relations that is especially important among weaker nations. We argue that for less powerful countries often the symbolic statement or threat is the action itself, with parties to a conflict implicitly acknowledging that there is little real bargaining and no real shadow of war. Instead of the traditional audience cost, we hypothesize the opposite: a bump in political approval that accrues to leaders of weak nations when they make empty threats in crises of sovereignty, something we call a “posturing premium.” Examining the case of Southeast Asian nations abutting the South China Sea, we employ five survey experiments across four countries over the course of three original annual survey waves to test this proposition. We find that for foreign policy crises that are linked to sovereignty or national pride, leaders can generate a posturing premium by making threats that they later back down from, in contrast with existing empirical findings related to audience costs. This premium is significantly higher when empty threats are made against a strong adversary, rather than a weak one. However, when foreign policy crises are not plausibly related to sovereignty or territory, the usual audience costs dynamics return; this holds for both real and hypothetical crises. We validate the “weak country” scope condition by conducting an extension in a militarily stronger country, Japan, that does not find a posturing premium for comparable crises.
Research annotationQuestion, variables, design, findings, and mechanism at a glance▾
- Research question
- Do leaders of militarily weak states gain domestic approval by making threats they never carry out?
- Independent variable (X)
- Exposure to a leader issuing an empty threat in a foreign policy crisis, varied by whether the crisis implicates sovereignty or national pride and by whether the adversary is strong or weak.
- Dependent variable (Y)
- Domestic approval of the leader.
- Identification strategy
- Five survey experiments across four militarily weak Southeast Asian countries abutting the South China Sea, fielded over three original annual survey waves, plus a scope-condition extension in militarily stronger Japan.
- Main findings
- In sovereignty-linked crises, leaders who threaten and then back down gain approval rather than paying audience costs, with effects ranging from 8 to 22 percent of the control mean. The premium is larger against a strong adversary. When a crisis is not plausibly about sovereignty or territory, conventional audience costs return, and no premium appears in Japan.
- Mechanism
- Where there is no real shadow of war, the symbolic statement is itself the policy: audiences reward the public assertion of national standing rather than the follow-through, because both sides understand little real bargaining is at stake.
- Why it matters
- Inverts the audience-costs prediction that dominates crisis bargaining theory, and does so for the militarily weak states usually left out of quantitative international relations research.
- Speaks to
- audience costs and crisis bargainingpublic opinion and foreign policySouth China Sea and maritime disputesSoutheast Asian international relations
Cite
@article{sexton2026posturing,
title = {The Posturing Premium: How Empty Threats Can Benefit Leaders in Weak Countries},
author = {Renard Sexton and Nico Ravanilla},
journal = {American Journal of Political Science},
}