Compare methods

	Audience Cost Analysis	Crisis Bargaining Game
Field	International Relations	International Relations
Family	MCDM	MCDM
Year of origin	1994	1994
Originator	James D. Fearon	Formalized by James Fearon and others (building on Schelling)
Type	Formal signaling mechanism in crisis bargaining	Extensive-form game of sequential crisis escalation
Seminal source	Fearon, J. D. (1994). Domestic political audiences and the escalation of international disputes. American Political Science Review, 88(3), 577–592.	Fearon, J. D. (1994). Domestic political audiences and the escalation of international disputes. American Political Science Review, 88(3), 577–592.
Aliases	Audience Costs Theory, Domestic Audience Cost Model, Tying-Hands Signaling, Audience Cost Mechanism	International Crisis Game, Escalation Game, Signaling Game of Crisis Bargaining, Deterrence Crisis Game
Related	3	3
Summary	Audience cost analysis studies how the domestic political punishment a leader expects for publicly backing down from an international threat makes that threat credible. Introduced formally by James Fearon (1994), the mechanism explains why a leader who escalates a crisis in public ties their own hands: retreating would expose them to costs imposed by domestic audiences for looking weak or incompetent. These accumulating audience costs let states signal resolve, and because democracies can generate larger and more reliable audience costs, the concept underpins prominent arguments about regime type, crisis behavior, and the democratic peace.	A crisis bargaining game is a formal, usually extensive-form model in which two states sequentially choose to challenge, escalate, stand firm, or back down during an international dispute, and the analyst solves for the equilibrium pattern of escalation and concession. Building on Schelling's strategy of conflict and given an influential treatment in Fearon's (1994) model of escalation as a war of attrition, these games make explicit how incomplete information about each side's resolve, and the costs each pays for backing down, shape whether a crisis ends in mutual accommodation, capitulation, or war.