For well over a decade now, many scholars in international relations have been intensely interested in moving beyond neorealism's treatment of the state as a unitary actor and understanding the impact of domestic political factors on international relations. One major trend in this regard has been work on "two-level games that looks at how exogenous domestic constraints on the executive, such as the requirement in many countries that major international agreements require legislative ratification, affect international negotiations. Another major movement in this regard has been work exploring how leaders can make public statements in front of their domestic audiences ("audience costs") to more credibly convey resolve in crisis bargaining. In this project, the investigators take these two literatures as their point of departure and conduct a broad theoretical examination of how leaders can use public statements in front of their domestic audiences to affect their bargaining position in peacetime negotiations as well as crisis bargaining. The investigators have already analyzed a game-theoretic model to explore how leaders can use public commitments to generate bargaining leverage in international negotiations. In this study the investigators construct and analyze a series of additional game-theoretic models to explore: o How incomplete information about the other side's audience costs affect international negotiations. o How audience costs can interact with exogenous domestic constraints such as legislative ratification of international agreements to affect international negotiations. o How audience costs can provide bargaining leverage in crisis bargaining over a divisible good, and how the mutual use of audience costs in this setting can lead to suboptimal outcomes, perhaps even war. o How audience costs can be used for both bargaining leverage as well as to credibly convey resolve in incomplete information crisis bargaining over a divisible good. Intellectual Merit: This project will make significant scientific advances in the research agenda that looks at the impact of domestic political factors on international interactions. It will enhance our understanding of the role that public commitments play on peacetime international negotiations, crisis bargaining, as well as lead to a deeper understanding of the rationalist foundations for war and the causal mechanisms behind the democratic peace. These are all significant developments in international relations theory, and help bridge the gap between the subfields of international relations and comparative politics. Broader Impact: Because the issue that the project examines, the use of private versus public statements in international interactions, is directly under the control of leaders, the project has potentially important policy implications. This research will be presented to the broader research community through a series of journal articles, and will also be presented in classrooms, seminars, and academic conferences. Finally, because war and the democratic peace are fundamentally important social issues, understanding their causes is of great social importance.
