The Many Faces of Credibility: Hawks, Doves, and Nuclear Disarmament

Abstract The conventional wisdom in international relations holds that an actor’s past record of keeping her word determines her cooperative credibility, and that mutual perceptions of credibility are essential in sustaining cooperation. Yet competing reputation-skeptic and psychological perspectives dispute this conventional wisdom, suggesting that assessments of cooperative credibility result from observers’ judgments about the other’s capabilities and interests or observers’ foreign policy orientations. How do observers assess others’ cooperative credibility? We field a nationally representative survey experiment asking 2,953 Americans to evaluate a hypothetical coercer’s commitment to lift sanctions on a would-be proliferator in exchange for the latter dismantling its nascent nuclear program. We vary the coercer’s previous behavior plus several other contextual factors. We find that respondents’ hawkishness interacts with the coercer’s past actions to shape respondents’ credibility assessments and their support for the proliferator accepting the proposal, with substantial implications for theories of misperception and bargaining.