"Authoritarian Public Opinion and Threat Credibility" by CWP alum Andrew Chubb & Ronan Tse-min Fu
Abstract: Does public opinion make an authoritarian state’s threats more credible? This research note offers the first systematic evidence on how authoritarian public opinion shapes external assessments of threat credibility. In a preregistered survey experiment, 787 experts across nine countries evaluated China’s military and economic threats in a crisis, first when issued in private, then after Beijing went public. Respondents were randomly assigned to see either an official statement from the Chinese government, online nationalist outrage, or anti-foreign street protests. Going public increased observers’ estimations of China’s likelihood of using force and economic punishment by an average of 5-10 points on a 100-point scale. Expressions of nationalist outrage from the Chinese public boosted this effect by 30-40%, relative to an official statement alone. Online nationalist mobilization generated similar effects to anti-foreign street protests, suggesting a significantly broader role for authoritarian public opinion than previous scholarship has identified.
Keywords: audience costs, crisis bargaining, threat credibility, resolve, perceptions, internet discourse, nationalism
Andrew Chubb is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Global Affairs. A graduate of the University of Western Australia, his work examines the linkages between Chinese domestic politics and international relations. More broadly, Andrew's interests include maritime and territorial disputes, strategic communication, political propaganda, and Chinese Communist Party history. Andrew is the author of Chinese Nationalism and the Gray Zone: Case Analyses of Public Opinion and PRC Foreign Policy (Naval War College Press, 2021) andthe PRC Overseas Political Activities: Risk, Reaction and the Case of Australia (Routledge and Royal United Services Institute, 2021).
Dr. Ronan Tse-min Fu is an Assistant Research Fellow in the Institute of Political Science at Academia Sinica (IPSAS). Prior to joining IPSAS, he was a Columbia-Harvard China and the World Program Postdoctoral Fellow at the School of International and Public Affairs, with additional postdoctoral affiliations at the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and the Department of Political Science, Columbia University. Dr. Fu received a PhD from University of Southern California in Political Science and International Relations (2019). His research interests lie in the intersection of international relations theory and comparative politics, with a specific focus on grand strategy, East Asian security, Chinese politics and foreign policy, and historical roots of contemporary relations in East Asia. Dr. Fu′s work has appeared in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and Political Geography. My research has been funded by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of China, Fulbright Taiwan, China Times Cultural Foundation, and the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange, among others.
Photo Credit: https://pure.lancaster-university.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/446120025/Chubb_Ko_Fu_2026_-_Authoritarian_public_opinion_and_threat_credibility_-_accepted.pdf
