This project addresses how states communicate foreign policy motives, and how signals are perceived by the public. It tests the logic of different signaling mechanisms: defensive military policies, domestic policies towards minority groups, involvement in institutional institutions, and 'soft' foreign policies including foreign assistance. Most of these signaling mechanisms are based on the logic of costly signaling, actions that convey credible information about motives because they are costly for the sender to take. States can signal benign motives, for example, by investing in defensive military technology when offensive technology has the advantage. Because making this investment is costly and risky, and actors with more aggressive motives would be unlikely to take this action, buying defense in this scenario allows the state to communicate its benign intent. The project examines whether the logic of costly signaling is sufficient for credible communications of states' preferences.
The intellectual merit of this research centers on its theoretical and methodological contributions. The project will contribute to knowledge about states' motives and costly signaling in IR: whether and when motives matter in security affairs, and how a state can communicate its motives. The study attempts to expand the understanding of motives and signaling in three ways. First, it addresses debates over the role of motives by empirically testing competing theories. Second, the project tests the logic of costly signaling by examining the effectiveness of various signaling mechanisms in conveying a state's motives. Third, the study tests a new mechanism, foreign aid policies and peace-keeping activities, that has never been considered as a signal that can indicate states' motives. A separate contribution is methodological. The project provides empirical evidence at the micro-level on the logic of costly signaling. Previous case study research on costly signaling has been unable to clearly distinguish between cause and effect. Survey experiments can overcome this obstacle, and will allow researchers to identify a clear causal relationship between states' actions (signals) and the attitude of the foreign public that observes those actions.
This research has the potential to have a broader impact on the security policy community. The study will recommend policy options to decision-makers, and suggest actions to increase national security by conveying their government's preferences to other states. The project will provide basic information on which types of policies are effective in reassuring a potential adversary and to what extent. Additionally, the findings of this research will also be applicable to areas such as social psychology, economics, business, and political science. The project is, fundamentally, about the communication of one's intentions between two or more parties: how actors can make their signals credible. This research will allow scholars to examine attitude formation from such communications. This study will provide lessons to those disciplines on how we can make communication more effective and efficient.
