How Leader-Specific Reputations Form and Change across Repeated Interactions

This chapter examines how perceptions of a leader's resolve form and change across multiple hypothetical interactions. By using a survey experiment, it reveals that statements create expectations of future action, which then interact with a leader's subsequent behavior to influence participants' perceptions of that leader's resolve. The results further show that early perceptions of a leader's resolve are significantly correlated with participants' later assessments of that leader's resolve, indicating that early interactions and the perceptions that stem from those interactions are highly influential to leader-specific reputational assessments within the experiment. In other words, first impressions matter, as they influence later assessments. Moreover, only certain contextual factors—namely, a preexisting state reputation and state strategic interest in the issue under dispute—create expectations of leader resolve within the experiment. These expectations then interact with a leader's statements and behavior to influence participants' assessments of resolve.

Conclusion

This concluding chapter summarizes the findings of the experiments and case studies in the previous chapters, discussing their implications for the study of reputation for resolve and the debate between reputation supporters and skeptics. The evidence from across the experiments and case studies shows that leaders can indeed acquire individual reputations for resolve. While these reputations are rooted in a leader's statements and behavior, they can be influenced by certain contextual factors—primarily a preexisting state reputation for resolve and the state's strategic interest in an issue under dispute. Yet, these two contextual factors influence leader reputations by interacting with a leader's own statements and behavior. Moreover, these leader-specific reputational assessments can affect the negotiating and crisis bargaining strategies individual leaders pursue. Leaders, therefore, are not wrong to care about their personal reputations for resolve or to believe that their reputations for resolve influence international politics. The chapter then explains how policymakers can best communicate their resolve to make themselves and their states less vulnerable to international threats.

Introduction

This introductory chapter provides an overview of reputation for resolve and why leaders care about their reputations. Leaders worry about their reputations for resolve because they believe certain reputations, such as a reputation for irresolute action, will make them and their states more vulnerable to international threats; but other reputations, such as a reputation for resolute action, will make them and their states more secure. While reputations are perceptions actors hold about each other, resolve is about an actor's determination, “firmness, or steadfastness of purpose.” Reputation for resolve, therefore, is the belief others hold about an actor's willingness to stand firm and face costs, based on that actor's past behavior. Reputations for resolve can help explain when international crises and disputes start, which actors are most likely to face international threats, and who will win international conflicts. The chapter then looks at the debate on how much reputations matter in international politics.