A wave of recent research challenges the role of regime type in international relations. One striking takeaway is that democratic and autocratic leaders can often achieve similar levels of domestic constraint, which in many issue areas results in similar international outcomes—leading many to question traditional views of democracies as distinctive in their international relations. In this review essay, we use recent contributions in the field to build what we call a “malleable constraints” framework, in which all governments have an institutionally defined default level of domestic audience constraint that is generally higher in democracies, but leaders maintain some agency within these institutions and can strategically increase their exposure to or insulation from this constraint. Using this framework, we argue that regime type is still a crucial differentiator in international affairs even if, as recent studies suggest, democratic and autocratic leaders can sometimes be similarly constrained by domestic audiences and thus achieve similar international outcomes. This framework helps reconcile many competing claims in recent scholarship, including the puzzle of why autocracies do not strategically increase domestic audience constraint more often. Just because autocracies can engage audience constraints and democracies can escape them does not mean that they can do so with equal ease, frequency, or risk.

中文翻译：

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重新夺回国际关系中的政权类型：领导者、机构和代理空间

最近的一波研究挑战了政权类型在国际关系中的作用。一个引人注目的结论是，民主和专制领导人通常可以实现相似程度的国内约束，这在许多问题领域会导致相似的国际结果——这导致许多人质疑民主国家在其国际关系中的独特性的传统观点。在这篇评论文章中，我们利用该领域的最新贡献来构建我们所谓的“可塑性约束”框架，在该框架中，所有政府都有一个制度上定义的国内受众约束的默认水平，该水平在民主国家通常较高，但领导人保持一些代理权在这些机构内，并且可以从战略上增加他们对这种约束的暴露或隔离。使用这个框架，我们认为，政权类型仍然是国际事务中的一个关键区别，即使正如最近的研究表明的那样，民主和专制领导人有时会受到国内受众的类似限制，从而取得类似的国际成果。这个框架有助于调和最近学术研究中的许多相互竞争的主张，包括为什么独裁国家没有更频繁地战略性地增加国内受众约束的谜题。仅仅因为专制政体可以吸引受众约束，而民主政体可以摆脱它们，并不意味着它们可以同样轻松、频繁或冒险地这样做。这个框架有助于调和最近学术研究中的许多相互竞争的主张，包括为什么独裁国家没有更频繁地战略性地增加国内受众约束的谜题。仅仅因为专制政体可以吸引受众约束，而民主政体可以摆脱它们，并不意味着它们可以同样轻松、频繁或冒险地这样做。这个框架有助于调和最近学术研究中的许多相互竞争的主张，包括为什么独裁国家没有更频繁地战略性地增加国内受众约束的谜题。仅仅因为专制政体可以吸引受众约束，而民主政体可以摆脱它们，并不意味着它们可以同样轻松、频繁或冒险地这样做。