Diverting the Legislature: Executive-Legislative Relations, the Economy, and US Uses of Force1

Abstract

Given distinct partisan macroeconomic preferences, the partisanship of the president or majority in Congress should influence presidential decisions to use force in the face of poor economic conditions—the diversionary use of force. But previous research posits contradictory accounts of the influence of partisanship. We seek to resolve this debate by developing a game theory model, which predicts that leaders divert when government is divided and economic conditions hurt the opposition party’s constituency. Leaders seek to divert the legislature from the economy in order to prevent the legislature from passing a remedial economic bill. Analyzing US conflict behavior since World War II, we examine the conditional influence of presidential partisanship and the president’s cohesive partisan support in Congress on the effects of inflation and unemployment. Consistent with the model’s predictions, we find that as their cohesive partisan support in Congress declines, Democratic presidents tend to use force in response to inflation and Republican presidents tend to use force in response to unemployment.

The “Most Important Problem” Dataset (MIPD): a new dataset on American issue importance

“…By analyzing the relative importance of foreign policy, users can make new inferences in fundamental questions of international conflict. For example, research on the domestic determinants of conflict has argued that leaders divert from a flagging domestic economy by provoking some sort of international crisis (Brule and Hwang, 2010; DeRouen, 1995; Jung, 2014; Mitchell and Thyne, 2010; Morgan and Anderson, 1999; Pickering and Kisangani, 2005). Yet there is little systematic evidence about whether the public’s attention can be diverted during bad economic times outside of Singer (2013: 406), who highlights the competition between the economy and foreign affairs in his analysis of issue importance during the recent economic slowdown (2000–2011).…”

Diversionary Theory of War and the Case Study Design

“…Many scholars argue that the nexus linking domestic and foreign policy occasionally is so influential that leaders from time to time use force to divert the public from domestic political problems. While some scholars claim it to be a questionable view, others emphasize that decisions to employ force are linked to, for example, electoral gain, presidential approval, the economy, and congressional support (Brulé & Hwang, 2010; Brulé & Williams, 2009; DeRouen, 2000; Fordham, 1998; James & Oneal, 1991; Morgan & Bickers, 1992; Ostrom & Job, 1986; Stoll, 1987). The commander in chief is, hence, assumed to employ force to distract the public from what is called “deteriorating political conditions at home” (Meernik & Waterman, 1996).…”

Do Diversionary Incentives Affect Korea-Japan Historical Disputes?

“…First, since external threats or crises stimulate national pride and increase internal solidarity around political leadership, leaders can divert public attention from domestic issues and reduce pubic criticism of their political leadership (Brulé and Hwang, 2010;Fordham, 1998). When political leaders are vulnerable to criticism due to domestic troubles, they can take advantage of nationalistic sentiment by prioritizing the defense of disputed territory or promising to fix historical injustice with the hope that further disapproval is avoided (Downs and Saunders, 1996;Wiegand, 2011).…”

“…According to the literature on the diversionary use of foreign policy, domestic along with international environments drive political leaders to divert public and elite attention from internal problems towards external crises by engaging in international conflict (e.g., Brulé and Hwang, 2010;Fordham, 1998;Morgan and Bickers, 1992). Since external crises, especially territorial disputes over lands, waters, and islands, can easily stimulate nationalist sentiments among citizens and/or promote internal solidarity around political leadership among the public and elites, political leaders have incentives to engage in diversionary foreign policy behavior especially when domestic political situations are deteriorating for the leadership.…”