Rationalism (international relations)
Democratic peace theory

One prominent mechanism for the democratic theory is audience costs. An audience cost is a term in international relations theory that describes the electoral penalty a leader incurs from his or her constituency if they escalate a foreign policy crisis and are then seen as backing down. The term was popularized in a 1994 academic article by James Fearon where he argued that democracies carry greater audience costs than authoritarian states, which makes them better at signaling their intentions in interstate disputes. Branislav Slantchev has argued that the presence of a free media is a key component of audience costs.
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