“Safe Punching Bags?” The Impact of Autocratic Status Challenges on Political Attitudes in Democratic Middle Powers

How do voters in middle-power democracies perceive international status challenges from powerful autocracies? And do these perceptions translate into domestic political costs? Exogenous shocks — including international status threats — are shown to impact American executive approval and condition electoral outcomes. However, less evidence exists regarding how status concerns affect middle powers, which today increasingly face public challenges from high-capacity autocracies seeking to demonstrate growing influence. Merging IR audience cost theories with Comparative perspectives on shocks and public opinion, we theorise that events portraying middle-power democracies as ‘safe targets’ for authoritarian rising powers undercut voters' identities as respected globalist citizens and activate status sensitivities. This leads them to sanction policymakers they consider responsible. Inspired by Saudi Arabia's 2010s actions against Germany and Canada, the study employs a conjoint experiment in analogous states which have not experienced real-world confrontations. We test how variation in challenger type, challenge domain, and government response affect individuals’ attitudes including incumbent perception and trust in democracy. The resulting project contributes to understandings of the diverse factors shaping contemporary political behaviour, and to the burgeoning scholarship on democratic-autocratic politics.