The rhetoric the aff creates causes leaders in International Relations to go to war.

We consider an instance when leader preferences might not take the commonly assumed form. Social psychologists, economists, and behavioral biologists have long explored how fairness motivates behavior, but scholars of IR generally neglect this mechanism. We examine how the prospects of unfair negotiated settlements can produce risk-loving behavior in leaders and how fairness concerns provide leaders with incentive not to pursue ever larger shares of a disputed good. We also expand on the literature on “voice,” in particular, to show that leaders have less incentive to accept settlements that appear imposed upon them. Thus, while aggressive public rhetoric can be used to signal credibility (Fearon 1994; Tomz 2007; Trager and Vavreck 2011) and mobilize support (for example, Baum 2002), such public rhetoric also makes it more difficult for the state’s adversaries to compromise and avoid war.3 We investigate the influence of fairness heuristics on approval and thus on leader incentives. Scholars cannot easily study these dynamics with observational data, however, owing to strategic selection effects (Lewis and Schultz 2003; Signorino 1999). Therefore, we use a randomized survey experiment administered on a large, nation-wide sample of the US adult population. The experiment involves a real-world—and still developing—dispute in which the United States and Russia have competing claims over a resource-rich territory in the Arctic. We independently and randomly vary three factors that influence public evaluations of presidential performance in international crises: (i) the aggressiveness of the foreign leader’s rhetoric, (ii) whether a negotiated settlement was reached or war occurred, and (iii) how much of the resource-rich territory each country ultimately obtained. After respondents read about the dispute and outcome, they were asked whether they approved or disapproved of how the president handled the situation. The results provide three central contributions to the understanding of international crisis dynamics. First, nonsatiated (monotonically increasing) utility functions do not always represent the preferences of leaders who seek to maximize voter approval. Contrary to commonly made assumptions, we find that negotiating for shares of the disputed good above 50 percent actually decreases presidential approval. In international contexts like the one analyzed below, democratic leaders lack a direct political incentive to strive for a highly favorable division of the good in question.