Agreeing to Disagree: Domestic Institutional Congruence and U.S. Dispute Behavior

Abstract

Domestic and international politics are linked so that domestic structure and domestic political preferences affect international conflict behavior. In particular, states' policy preferences can be characterized by the congruence of policy preferences between political institutions. As a state's policy preferences become more congruent, as policy preferences between political institutions are more similar, the state's conflict behavior changes. I hypothesize that as the domestic political institutions in a state share similar policy preferences or policy goals, disputes become more likely and tend to last longer. I employ event count and continuous-time hazard models to analyze U.S. conflict propensity and conflict duration during the period 1945-1992. Using the Militarized Interstate Dispute data set (version 2.1), I model U.S. militarized dispute behavior as a function of congruence between the policy preferences of the U.S. President and the Congress. The models reveal a strong relationship between preference congruence and both the amount of conflict and the duration of the disputes in which the U.S. engages. The congruence hypotheses are robust across a variety of measures. The results add substantial strength and substance to claims that domestic political characteristics affect international conflict. The theory and empirical analyses also refine the domestic-international linkage by allowing scholars to consider the effect of normal political change in a single state on that state's foreign policy decisions.

The International and Domestic Sources of Bipartisanship in U.S. Foreign Policy

“…Given that polarization changes over long periods of time, it is unlikely that this trend will be reversed anytime soon. More broadly, this analysis builds upon previous work by American politics scholars on how Congress affects the appointments process (e.g., Krutz, Fleisher, and Bond 1998;McCarty and Razaghian 1999), as well as work by international relations scholars showing how Congress affects the executive in the foreign policymaking (e.g., Clark 2000;Howell and Pevehouse 2007;Kriner 2010).…”

Opportunities and Presidential Uses of Force

“…In such an event, the adversary is likely to doubt the leader's willingness to respond assertively to threats, increasing the likelihood that an adversary presses its claims. But this expectation is inconsistent with the empirical record (Howell and Pevehouse, 2005;Clark, 2000;Wang, 1996), casting doubt on the signaling perspective. Consistent with Schultz's (1998) argument, Foster (2006 finds that the US is more likely to be targeted when Congress generally opposes the president's foreign policy agenda.…”

“…Neustadt, 1960;Bond and Fleisher, 1990;Richards et al, 1993). Conversely, presidential autonomy with respect to foreign policy may be constrained by congressional opposition, resulting in a reduced likelihood to intervene militarily abroad (Wang, 1996;Clark, 2000;Howell and Pevehouse, 2005). Political vulnerability arises when the state of the economy indicates poor policy choices on the part of the president, or Congress works to thwart presidential efforts to establish a record of success.…”

“…Some forms of vulnerability are expected to be associated with more assertive foreign policies, while others are expected to reduce the conflict propensity of US presidents. According to the party cover perspective, a lack of partisan support in Congress is expected to constrain the president's foreign policy autonomy and, hence, assertiveness in international crises (Wang, 1996;Clark, 2000;Howell and Pevehouse, 2005). Two prominent sources of domestic vulnerability for the president include economic misfortune and congressional opposition.…”

Explaining Wars Fought by Established Democracies: Do Institutional Constraints Matter?

“…The argument of institutional constraint would lead one to expect that the chief executive is less likely to enter into a foreign conflict or stay in one when an opposition party controls the congress. Indeed, Clark (2000) presented historical evidence that the U.S. has been more likely to become involved in a militarized dispute and such disputes have tended to last longer when the same political party is in charge of both the executive and legislative branches. This evidence and the logic of divided government lead us to the next hypothesis.…”