The Punisher's Dilemma: Domestic Opposition and Foreign Policy Crises

Abstract

Existing work on the democratic accountability of foreign policy suggests that when an incumbent incurs foreign policy losses, including but not limited to standing down in a crisis, making costly compromises, or accepting defeat abroad, opposition politicians at home weigh criticizing the government with the national interest. But this work has largely been developed with a view to explaining oppositional behavior in consolidated democracies. I argue that while electorally competitive oppositions in weakly institutionalized regimes can and frequently do criticize elected incumbents for costly foreign policy reversals, they are less likely to do so if they believe this criticism may negatively affect democratic stability and potentially invite irregular leadership turnover, as this would prevent the opposition from coming into office. I find support for this hypothesis, which I term oppositional pragmatism, in a survey experiment on 430 political party workers affiliated with Pakistan's biggest political party and directionally consistent effects on a smaller but highly elite sample of 202 Pakistani legislators.