Dodging the Accusation: Defeat Types and Public Support on Post-war Leaders

• In Event: Resolve, Threats, Blame, and Audience Costs

Abstract

The link between war outcomes and incumbent tenure has been well-studied in academic research during the past decades. Many have suggested that regime type affects leader survival after a defeat in a war, particularly focusing on the contrast between democratic and nondemocratic countries. However, numerous claims are built on a flawed assumption that there is only a singular type of war defeat. Despite the limited attention of existing literature, how variations within and across the defeats relate to fates of leaders is an essential question in post-conflict research. We address these gaps by investigating how the types of defeat affect the public perception of post-war incumbents. Drawing on conjoint experiments to nationally represented respondents in the United States (N = 1,500), we show that unexpected defeat, defeat by international rivalries, and limited perception of leader culpability serve as important conditions for leaders to mitigate public accusation after a war. Respondents are asked to evaluate leader’s decisions in hypothetical war scenarios, and the result indicates that the defeat-punishment link itself is not deterministic. Instead, they are contingent on multiple contextual factors. This paper contributes to the existing literature on post-conflict audience cost.

Authors

• Alexis Jang

• Masanori Kikuchi, Washington University in St. Louis