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Can increased female representation in foreign policy deliberations impact deliberators’ support for interstate conflict resolution? In a survey experiment with 149 male and 55 female real-world Pakistani legislators, I find that politicians’ decision-making in hypothetical committees is informed by notions of committee competence, as well as inferences about the social desirability of hawkish outcomes. Particularly, gender-mixed committee assignees became less supportive of external conflict resolution.
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Existing work on the democratic accountability of foreign policy has largely been developed with a view to explaining oppositional behaviour in consolidated democracies. I argue that while electorally competitive oppositions in weakly institutionalised regimes can and frequently do criticise elected incumbents for costly foreign policy reversals, they are less likely to do so if they believe this criticism may negatively affect democratic stability and potentially invite irregular leadership turnover, as this would prevent the opposition from coming into office.