Audience, agenda setting, and issue salience in international negotiations

Abstract

A theoretical gap in the audience cost theory is the missing analysis of its central feature: the audience. This article defines the audience as a group composed of individuals and societal actors that can punish a government and pay attention to the issue being negotiated. Thus, the audience can vary depending on the issue salience. When the issue salience is low, the audience comprises just interest groups and the attentive public. Yet, the higher the issue salience, the more voters of the general public also become part of the audience. The audience’s composition in turn determines the level of the audience costs. Because the general public tends to evaluate national honor more highly, be less informed and have less well-defined preferences than interest groups and the attentive public, the audience costs should be higher when the issue salience is high. Furthermore, the audience can take actions that prevent the effect of audience costs or generate exogenous audience costs.