Credible Surrogates: Outsourcing US Foreign Policy Appeals

Abstract

US presidents often deploy surrogates to promote foreign intervention. What makes surrogate appeals credible? Prior research suggests that the way proponents frame arguments, and characteristics of the advocates themselves, affect public support for policy proposals. This paper shows that think-tank affiliates and human rights advocates make effective surrogates, and that their chosen descriptive frames along with their own credentials affect their credibility over questions of foreign intervention. In a pair of randomized survey experiments, subjects responded more favorably to fictional surrogates than to factual politicians. Invented affiliates from made-up organizations elicited more positive assessments of arguments and greater support for intervention than real-life presidential candidates did. Security frames improved assessments and increased support for intervention, but source credentials and organizational affiliations had little influence on their own. Congruence between sources and frames had a narrow but notable effect, improving evaluations of source credibility.