Audience costs, which are defined as political costs for a leader generated when the leader fails to follow through on international commitments, are an important concept in international relations to understand the causes of war and peace. However, despite its prominence, evidence for audience costs is mixed at best. In this dissertation, by conducting a series of survey experiments in the United States, I examine a variety of causal mechanisms and observable implications of audience cost models. In Chapter 2 I explore the role of the media. The result of a survey experiment shows that the media's negative framing of a leader's backing down from a threat increases audience costs, but only after subjects are informed of the leader's justification. Chapter 3 tests the idea that the magnitude of audience costs depends on an individual's personality traits. A pilot experiment using a sample of undergraduate students does not support this expectation. Lastly, I compare the credibility of public versus private threats in Chapter 4. A conjoint survey experiment demonstrates that as many proponents of audience cost theory suggest, public threats are perceived as more credible, and the sources of their credibility are domestic audience costs.

Tabletop role-playing games (TRPGs) present a unique opportunity to study political behavior. In educational settings, role-playing games (RPGs) of all kinds have proven to be valuable educational tools, and even when played for fun, participating in role playing games has been shown to increase one's level of confidence. Knowing this, I designed an experiment to attempt to increase internal political efficacy through the use of a politically-themed TRPG. I took inspiration from the original TRPGs of the 1970s and 1980s which were used purely for entertainment purposes to create my own game in a traditional TRPG setting with current issues woven into the story of the game (also called a campaign), and utilized quantitative and qualitative methods to analyze participants' reactions to the campaign and levels of efficacy. In doing so, I seek to determine whether players will recognize real-world issues when presented in a science fiction or fantasy-themed campaign. Furthermore, given that TRPGs have the potential to shape players' understanding of how the world works and their place in it, will players be more motivated to act on said issues presented in-game, even if they do not consciously make the connection between the real-life issues presented in the science …

It is generally accepted among scholars that increases in descriptive representation result in increases in substantive representation. Although women's descriptive representation has increased in recent years, women are still underrepresented in politics. One reason for women's underrepresentation is that female candidates must overcome additional barriers in order to get elected, including on the low number of women in the pipeline to elected office, party gatekeeping, women's lower levels of political ambition, and voters' negative gender stereotypes about female candidates. Changes in women's descriptive representation and recent salience of women-friendly policies, such as abortion and paid maternity leave, has caused me to investigate whether implementation of these women-friendly policies result in an increase in women's descriptive representation. I assert that women-friendly policies reduce the barriers women must overcome to get elected to office. Specifically, the presence of more women-friendly abortion and paid maternity leave policies will result in an increase in women's descriptive representation at the state level. I find partial support for a relationship between these women-friendly policies and higher levels of women's descriptive representation. State-level abortion protections are associated with higher levels of women's descriptive representation in the state legislature.

Quantitative research investigating the causes and subsequent impact of transitional justice practices has further developed thanks to the production of cross-national data on justice practices, namely by the Justice Data Project and the Transitional Justice Research Collaborative. Current work, however, does not consider the role of justice from a feminist perspective. For example, with respect to causes, we know little about whether and how justice processes are gender inclusive, and what the factors lead to gendered inclusion within justice practices. There is also a need for further inquiry to explain how gendered conflict violence, e.g., sexual violence directed at women, influences justice adoption, and if so, whether these justice processes are more likely to be inclusive of women and gendered issues. Regarding justice impact (its post-hoc effects), there is much to know about the implications gendered justice pose for post-violence societies. Moving away from essentialist notions that position men as protectors and women as inherently peaceful and mere victims of abuse, feminist scholars advocate for research to showcase women's agency as security providers in peacebuilding and peacemaking. I introduce a framework to explain how women and gendered issues become integrated into justice practices and evaluate implications that result from these …