How International Reputation Matters: Revisiting Alliance Violations in Context

We investigate the role of international reputation in alliance politics by developing a signaling theory linking past alliance violations with the formation of future alliance commitments. In our theory, past violations are useful signals of future alliance reliability conditional on whether they effectively separate reliable from unreliable alliance partners. It follows that states evaluating potential alliance partners will interpret past violations in their context when deciding to enter a new alliance, attaching less weight to violations in “harder-times”, when many states are defaulting on their alliance commitments together, and more weight to violations in “easier-times”, when fewer states are defaulting on their alliances. We test our theory and find that states are empirically more likely to form new alliances with states that violated in harder-times compared to states that violated in easier-times. The results have important implications for how scholars understand and estimate the impact of international reputation.本研究通过构建一项将过往联盟违约行为与未来联盟承诺缔结相联系的信号理论，探讨国际声誉在联盟政治中的作用。在该理论框架下，过往联盟违约行为能否成为衡量未来联盟可靠性的有效信号，取决于其是否能有效区分可靠与不可靠的联盟伙伴。据此，评估潜在联盟伙伴的国家在决定缔结新联盟时，会结合具体语境解读过往联盟违约行为：对于多国同时出现联盟违约的“艰难时期”发生的违约行为，各国会赋予更低的权重；而对于违约国家较少的“宽松时期”发生的违约行为，则会赋予更高的权重。我们对该理论进行了实证检验，结果发现：相较于在“宽松时期”发生过违约的国家，各国更倾向于与在“艰难时期”发生过违约的国家缔结新联盟。本研究结果对于学者理解与评估国际声誉的影响具有重要启示意义。