Poking the Bear or Signaling Resolve? Provocative Signals and Individual Traits

• In Event: Identity and Foreign Policy Behavior

Abstract

The existing scholarship on crisis bargaining finds that costly signals help states communicate resolve and arrive at negotiated settlements short of war. However, costly signals may also provoke the opponent to counter-escalate by raising the political costs of backing down. When costly signals are more provocative, therefore, they may be less effective at coercive diplomacy. On the other hand, taking the risk of provoking the opponent may help signal resolve and coerce the opponent to capitulate. Do provocative costly signals make unwanted escalation more likely or do they help signal resolve and aid coercive diplomacy? Leveraging a survey experiment, we find that the answer to this question depends on the receiver’s dispositional traits. For individuals who are more impulsive and prone to anger, such signals are seen as highly provocative and do worse at coercing them to back down. For individuals who are more strategic and deliberative, however, the provocativeness of costly signals may help evaluate the sender’s resolve. This demonstrates that provocative costly signals are useful for coercing certain types of adversaries but not others. This finding challenges our existing understanding of coercion, provocation, and signaling.

Authors

• Hyun-Binn Cho, College of New Jersey

• Alex Yu-Ting Lin, University of Notre Dame