US allies' foreign policy alignment in an era of great power competition: An analysis of domestic politics

초록

This article examines how audience costs affect secondary powers' foreign policy alignment with their patron state amid great power competition. Through a novel survey experiment centered on South Korea's dilemma regarding Quad membership, we derive three findings. First, secondary power leadership faces substantial audience costs when retracting alignment commitments, leading to their strategic hedging in initial decision-making while making alignment commitments more credible once declared. Second, the magnitude of these costs is shaped not only by constituents' aversion to foreign policy inconsistency, but also by their valuation of alignment with the patron. Third, these audience costs are significantly moderated by public preferences: pro-patron constituents strongly penalize leadership's alignment retractions while pro-rival constituents acquiesce to or even reward it. These findings suggest that while prevailing pro-US sentiment among its allies enhances the credibility of their alignment commitments, shifting domestic preferences could potentially ease or even incentivize them to reverse alignment commitments.

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