Audience Costs for International Organizations: Experimental Evidence on Consistency and Inaction

Do international organizations face reputational constraints when they fail to fulfill commitments? This study extends audience cost theory from national leaders to IOs, demonstrating that organizations incur domestic political penalties analogous to those experienced by democratic executives. Through preregistered vignette experiments examining the UN Security Council and World Bank in four countries (the United States, Germany, Turkey, and Japan) covering approximately 12,650 respondents, I show that citizens are sensitive to alignment between rhetoric and action and strongly penalize IOs for breaking their promises. The findings reveal two distinct accountability mechanisms. First, IOs incur consistency costs when actions contradict prior commitments, with particularly substantial penalties when organizations intervene after announcing restraint. Second, inaction costs prove activation-dependent: citizens do not penalize organizations for failing to act absent explicit commitments, but do so when public announcements trigger scrutiny. Heterogeneous effects demonstrate that internationalists impose substantially larger penalties for broken promises, exhibiting heightened sensitivity to IO inconsistency.