🔍 Questioning Leader Accountability
This study investigates whether President Donald Trump faces audience costs for foreign policy inconsistency during the 2016 transition period. Using a novel experiment, we tested how co-partisans and opposition partisans would respond to his behaviors.
🧪 Experimental Findings
We demonstrated that regardless of partisan identity (Republican or Democrat), individuals impose equal audience costs on Trump when he issues flippant threats but then backs down. This suggests that even amid high polarization, leaders face non-partisan accountability for their foreign policy actions.
💡 Surprising Consistency
An unexpected discovery is that backing down from international threats still incurs audience costs across partisan lines—even with justification tied to "America's interest." Democrats readily accepted such explanations despite their general distrust of Trump's credibility. This finding questions the extent to which partisanship erodes leader-level accountability.
📊 Broader Implications
Our results indicate that while polarization has reshaped political representation, it hasn't eliminated audience costs entirely. The logic remains robust enough to apply across partisan divides in how leaders are held accountable for their international behavior.
