Limited Spin: When the Public Punishes Leaders Who Lie about Military Action

Abstract

Presidents have significant incentives to mislead the public about the use of force. Under what conditions are members of the public willing to hold presidents accountable for what they say about military action? This article examines both spin and deceit at the micro-level to clarify when individuals are most likely to punish presidents for misinformation. Three survey experiments demonstrate that presidents incur political costs for misinformation, even when operations succeed. Introducing partisanship into the analysis then reveals that not all individuals are equally likely to punish all presidents—Republican leaders primarily concerned with their base have the most leeway to mislead. The findings highlight the dynamic nature of democratic accountability and domestic constraints on military force. Rather than a static institutional feature, the strength of accountability can vary across presidents and electoral coalitions. Additionally, the results show political costs are not limited to large-scale deception—even spin generates backlash.

Who Punishes Leaders for Lying About the Use of Force? Evaluating The Microfoundations of Domestic Deception Costs

“…We find that consistent with Maxey’s (2021) findings, American voters overall are willing to impose significant deception costs on leaders who lie: across all treatment conditions pertaining to the lie and the president, voters are 15-20% less likely to support his policy, to trust his future statements, and to vote for him in the wake of a lie. Importantly, however, we find that voters are also highly divergent in their individual willingness to punish presidents in the wake of the lie - in line with our theoretical expectation.…”

“…This is because such lies could damage their nation’s credibility, compound the already-high costs of a war, or lead the country into intractable or otherwise inadvisable conflicts. These expectations have been confirmed by recent experimental research finding that dishonesty does indeed generate backlash among voters (Maxey 2021).…”

“…Future studies could build on our findings. First, researchers could replicate our study to examine whether similar dynamics are at play when leaders engage in other forms of deception such as strategic cover-ups, concealment, or spinning – research that would also build on Maxey’s (2021) work. Second, it would be interesting to see whether our results can be replicated in other democratic societies where social norms about lying might deem it a more or less acceptable practice.…”

“…While claiming that leaders are much more inclined to lie to their own people about foreign affairs than they are to lie to the leaders of other countries, Mearsheimer's study stops short of evaluating what consequences leaders might face for these lies, and by whom they would be imposed. Maxey (2021) provides experimental evidence that helps us answer this first question, finding that leaders' deceptions can often lead to backlash and that electoral dynamics can play a pivotal role in this backlash. 3 But Maxey's work still leaves un-answered the second question of what individual factors make one more or less likely to impose costs.…”

Public Reactions to Secret Negotiations in International Politics

“…To address this gap in the literature, this paper complements a handful of recent studies that use survey experiments to evaluate public attitudes about topics related to secrecy, such as covert action, lying, and deception in foreign affairs (Carnegie, Kertzer and Yarhi-Milo, 2023; Maxey, 2021; Myrick, 2020; Yarhi-Milo and Ribar, 2023). Most of these studies focus on public opinion about secrecy in the context of using military force.…”