How does the experience of being elected alter subsequent leader behavior at the international level? We argue for the existence of an election effect, through which a democratic election intensifies in-group identification and generates a sense of obligation to voters, while simultaneously increasing out-group hostility. These combined effects cause leaders to overexert costly efforts in competitive situations against other groups. Using an online laboratory experiment, we show that democratic leader selection increases effort in inter-group contest games, which share key features with interstate conflicts. We use a carefully specified decomposition strategy to distinguish the election effect from better-known selection effects, wherein eventual leaders are nonrandomly chosen. Our results show that a democratic election has negative implications in inter-group games, despite the near-universally positive effects of democracy found in intra-group ones.

中文翻译：

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选举效应：群体间冲突中的民主党领导人

当选的经历如何改变随后的国际领导人行为？我们主张选举效应的存在，通过这种效应，民主选举强化了群体内的认同并产生了对选民的义务感，同时增加了群体外的敌意。这些综合效应导致领导者在与其他群体竞争的情况下过度付出代价高昂的努力。通过在线实验室实验，我们表明民主领导人选择会增加群体间竞争游戏的努力，这与国家间冲突具有共同的关键特征。我们使用仔细指定的分解策略来区分选举效应和更广为人知的选择效应，其中最终的领导者是非随机选择的。我们的结果表明，尽管民主选举在群体内博弈中几乎普遍产生积极影响，但民主选举对群体间博弈具有负面影响。