Replication Data for: Credibility, Organizational Politics, and Crisis Decision Making

When and why do foreign policy officials believe that it is important to fight for credibility? Conventional wisdom suggests that policymakers tend to care uniformly about how others perceive them. Yet this logic overlooks substantial variation in how officials prioritize credibility when weighing policy options. I argue that organizational identity affects the dimensions of credibility that policymakers value and their preferences on the use of force. Diplomats see the world from a reputational perspective, whereas military officials do so through the lens of military capabilities. During crises, diplomats match their advice to reputational considerations, while military officials attend to available capabilities. I examine these propositions via an original, vignette-based elite experiment involving over 250 U.S. national security officials and analysis of his- torical elite survey data. The findings demonstrate that where you sit shapes when you want to fight for credibility.

外交政策官员何时且为何会认为捍卫自身信誉至关重要？传统观点认为，决策者往往会同等在意他人对自身的评价。然而这一逻辑忽视了官员们在权衡政策选项时，对信誉优先级考量的显著差异。本文提出，组织身份会影响决策者所重视的信誉维度，以及他们在武力使用方面的偏好。外交官从声誉视角审视国际局势，而军方官员则以军事能力为透镜观察世界。在危机情境中，外交官的政策建议会贴合声誉考量，而军方官员则会优先考量可用军事能力。本文通过一项原创的、基于情境 vignette的精英实验（涉及超过250名美国国家安全官员），并结合历史精英调查数据的分析，对上述命题进行了检验。研究结果表明，所处的组织位置决定了官员们何时会选择捍卫自身信誉。