The Dynamics of Diversion: The Domestic Implications of Presidential Use of Force

Several studies report evidence of diversionary behavior by presidents, while others dispute findings that suggest domestic politics are part of the use of force decision calculus. We argue that previous studies of U.S. force short of war have failed to articulate what diversion actually means. We approach this important debate from a perspective that brings to bear presidential agenda-setting theory. Rather than treating the use of force solely as a dependent variable, we assess whether the use of force diverts attention by modeling the percent of the American public identifying the economy as the nation's most important problem. We also include presidential approval in the model. We treat the public opinion measures as endogenous variables that may or may not affect the decision to use force. We employ Vector Autoregression (VAR) methods to evaluate the causal direction of force and public opinion while controlling for the state of the economy and war. VAR is a multiple-lagged time-series approach that allows us to test a variety of hypotheses derived from diversionary and agenda-setting theory. Our results indicate that uses of force by the president have a notable agenda-setting effect, shifting public attention away from the economy. The shift in attention also causes a long-term effect on the president's public-approval rating.     

Ballotbox Diplomacy: The War Powers Resolutiona and the Use of Force

The strategic problem for the United States during the lead-up to a potential military clash is maintaining the executive's ability to respond internationally while not abrogating legislative oversight of the use of force. In light of this dilemma, congressional leaders have an incentive to engage in "stage management": establishing short-term contracts with the executive that shift political risk during conflict onto the president while maintaining a final check on presidential policy.
The War Powers Resolution is a useful test of the stage management model and an alternative model that derides congressional involvement in the use of force as nothing more than symbolic politics. We find that the War Powers Resolution changed the process by which Congress opposes the presidential use of force, easing congressional collective-action problems and minimizing the electoral repercussions associated with said confrontation. Moreover, presidents have used force differently since the resolution's passage. By changing both process and outcomes, the War Powers Resolution fulfills all the requirements of a stage management contract.     

The Politics of Threat Perception and the Use of Force: A Political Economy Model of U.S. Uses of Force, 1949–1994

A growing body of empirical research addresses the influence of domestic political and economic circumstances on the use of force. Most models explain the use of force as a function of various domestic and international demands for military force. This article uses data on U.S. uses of force between 1949 and 1994 to test a model that also considers the influence of these conditions on the supply of this policy instrument. Conditions that have complementary demand and supply effects—making military force both more useful and less costly to employ—are associated with frequent U.S. uses of force in the postwar era. These conditions include high unemployment, strong investor confidence, wartime presidential election years, and the absence of ongoing wars. Some of these same conditions contribute to a motivated bias in international threat perception, leading U.S. decision makers to perceive more opportunities for the use of force when it is most convenient for them to employ it.     

Strategic Leaders: Determining Successful Presidential Opinion Leadership Tactics Through Public Appeals

Most scholars find presidents generally fail at moving the public's views on policy; however, although presidents may fail at opinion leadership at the aggregate level, examining specific communication tactics may yield a more nuanced view of when presidents succeed or fail at leadership. In this article, using a comprehensive data set spanning 1953 to 2001, several strategic communication tactics through which the president might influence temporary opinion movement are examined. Findings show that presidential use of nationally televised addresses is the most consistently effective strategy to enhance presidential leadership, but the effect is lessened for later serving presidents. Strategies involving domestic travel never positively affect leadership, while televised interactions with the media always negatively affect leadership success. The cumulative results imply that presidents can momentarily lead public opinion with particular tactics and that the conditions enhancing leadership are partially in their control, suggesting presidential capability to strategically lead public opinion.     

‘Big Men’ Rule: Presidential Power,Regime Type and Democracy in 30 African Countries

This article provides a systematic overview of the institutional basis of presidential power in 30 sub-Saharan African countries, using a broad comparative scheme to assess presidential power developed by Siaroff (2003). The dual purpose is, first, to compare the power of African presidents to patterns found by Siaroff for countries worldwide, looking particularly at the relation between regime type and presidential power; and second, to make a preliminary analysis of the political consequences of high levels of presidential power in the light of earlier theoretical claims associating it with regime problems such as democratic breakdown.

The article's comparative framework illustrates the high levels of institutional power of presidents in 30 African countries. As argued by Siaroff, regime type tells us little about presidential power; in these African cases, semi-presidential systems score even higher than presidential systems. One ‘parliamentary’ system also shows a high degree of presidential power. Moreover, there is very little difference in presidential power between democracies and non-democracies, and ‘minimal’ electoral democracies score higher on average than non-democracies and liberal democracies.

Examination of the consequences of high levels of presidential power also shows that more than a quarter (28.6 per cent) of such regimes experienced a democratic breakdown, although this is not a statistically significant level. A weak correlation is found between presidential power and freedom and democracy ratings, again not at a statistically significant level, while correlations with governance ratings are strong and statistically significant. A repeated measures test, however, does show a statistically significant relation with freedom and democracy. Although more research is needed, including a larger N and more variation in the independent variable, the evidence supports intuitive knowledge: a high degree of presidential power bodes ill for democracy and good governance in Africa.     

Fragmentation of presidential elections and governability crises in Latin America: a curvilinear relationship?

Part of the literature views high numbers of presidential candidates as a threat to political stability in presidential democracies. A contradictory model proposes that an overconcentration of the presidential party system is problematic. Both models are hard to reconcile. We approach this puzzle by arguing that the relationship between the level of presidential election fragmentation and governability crises is curvilinear: both very low and very high effective numbers of presidential candidates increase the risk of governability crisis. We test this theoretical claim with ordered logit models drawing on a sample of 108 presidencies in Latin America between 1978 and 2013 and using an ordinal index of the intensity of crisis as the dependent variable. We explore the operation of the theorized causal mechanisms through case studies and argue that they are different at both extremes, high and low levels of fragmentation. Finally, we formulate implications for the design of presidential electoral rules drawing on the debate contrasting runoff and plurality rules.     

High-tech Interest Groups in the United States and Its Political Influence

Representing the appeals of its industry,the high-tech interest group has recently become an emerging political force in the United States.With abundant financial resources and proficiency in political communication,the group rapidly grows to be a significant force in the American political sphere.It has started to affect the internal and foreign affairs of the U.S.and played a proactive role in the latest presidential election.Since the high-tech interest group has already become and will continue to be a big player in Sino-U.S.relations,China should carefully deal with its appeals and conflict of interests,and try to develop this group into a stabilizer between the two countries.     

Impeachment and presidential politics in new democracies

Research on presidentialism has long assumed that presidential impeachment is a rare event, made difficult by design in order to enhance government stability. However, the experience of Third Wave democracies suggests that more presidents have been targets of impeachment attempts than the literature might lead us to expect. In this article I seek to identify the factors that make directly elected presidents more or less vulnerable to impeachment attempts in Third Wave presidential democracies from 1974 to 2003. I find several factors that mobilize deputies against the president: presidential involvement in political scandal, strong presidential powers, and a hostile civil society. Presidents are more likely to fend off such efforts when their party commands a higher share of seats. I also find that popular protest against a president helps to prompt a congressional impeachment drive. Frequent efforts to resolve presidential crises via such legal procedures may explain in part why extra-constitutional means of conflict resolution have become a less attractive option in new democracies.     

The Transformation of Going Public: President Clinton,the First Lady,and Health Care Reform

This article examines the going public thesis in the context of U.S. President Clintons health care reform campaign in 1993 and 1994. This case study highlights the changing nature of presidential public relations. The novel use of the first lady as a public spokesperson for a presidential initiative also raises new questions about presidential public relations and its impact on congressional behavior. Data for the study include appearances and speeches by the president and first lady concerning health care reform over an 11-month period. Results suggest that certain presidential public activities assist presidents in gaining public support for their policies. However, most presidential public efforts may be thwarted by issue advertising from opponents in a more combative public environment. A going public strategy may not provide a forum to explain sophisticated policies and to build alliances in support of these policies over a substantial period of time.     

The Changing Nature of Political Debate Consumption: Social Media,Multitasking, and Knowledge Acquisition

This study examines the influence of debate viewing-social media multitasking on campaign knowledge during the 2012 presidential election. Results from three waves of a national cross-sectional survey of U.S. adults conducted during and after the 2012 presidential election suggest that social networking site (SNS) use overall correlates with increased knowledge of campaign issues and facts above and beyond the use of other sources of news media. In addition, watching a debate with or without simultaneous social media engagement is better for knowledge generation than not viewing a debate at all, but the effect of debate viewing is dulled when simultaneously engaging in social media multitasking. The debate viewing-social media multitasking effect is moderated by candidate preference, with differential learning occurring largely for knowledge that is favorable to one’s preferred candidate.     

Learning to Build a Better Mousetrap

Scholars do not usually test for the duration of the effects of mass communication, but when they do, they typically find rapid decay. Persuasive impact may end almost as soon as communication ends. Why so much decay? Does mass communication produce any long-term effects? How should this decay color our understanding of the effects of mass communication? We examine these questions with data from the effects of advertising in the 2000 presidential election and 2006 subnational elections, but argue that our model and results are broadly applicable within the field of political communication. We find that the bulk of the persuasive impact of advertising decays quickly, but that some effect in the presidential campaign endures for at least 6 weeks. These results, which are similar in rolling cross-section survey data and county-level data on actual presidential vote, appear to reflect a mix of memory-based processing (whose effects last only as long as short-term memory lasts) and online processing (whose effects are more durable). Finally, we find that immediate effects of advertising are larger in subnational than presidential elections, but decay more quickly and more completely. [Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource(s): discussion of methodological issues; results for a alternative specifications of key models; full reports of model results.]     

Three waves of semi-presidential studies

This article reviews the scholarship on semi-presidentialism since the early 1990s. We identify three waves of semi-presidential studies. The first wave focused on the concept of semi-presidentialism, how it should be defined, and what countries should be classified as semi-presidential. The second wave examined the effect of semi-presidential institutions on newly democratized countries. Does semi-presidentialism help or hinder the process of democratic consolidation? The third wave examines the effect of semi-presidential institutions on both recent and consolidated democracies. Third-wave studies have been characterized by three questions: to what extent does the direct election of the president make a difference to outcomes; to what extent does variation in presidential power make a difference; and what other factors interact with presidential power to help to bring about differential outcomes? The article argues that the concept of semi-presidentialism remains taxonomically valid, but that the empirical scholarship on countries with semi-presidential institutions needs to respond to broader developments within the discipline if it is to remain relevant.     

Perils of parliamentarism? Political systems and the stability of democracy revisited

Parliamentary systems are generally regarded as superior to presidential ones in democratic sustenance. This article contributes to the debate on the relationship between systems of government and the survival of democracy by bringing in a new perspective and analysing the experiences of 131 democracies during 1960–2006. We argue that systems of government do matter, but their effects are indirect; they exert their influence through societies' prior democratic records. Confirming the conventional argument, our data analysis shows that uninterrupted parliamentary democracies face significantly lower risks of a first breakdown than their presidential counterparts. Contrary to the common understanding, however, we find that the risk of a democratic breakdown can be higher for parliamentary regimes than for presidential regimes among the countries whose democracy has collapsed in the past. Furthermore, the risk of a previously failed democracy falling again grows as (the risk of) government crises increase(s). Hence our study questions the common belief that parliamentary systems are categorically more conducive to democratic stability than presidential ones.     

Presidential power and democratization by elections in Africa

Do elections in and of themselves provide mechanisms for democratization? The “democratization by elections” thesis has been challenged, yet scholars still differ over its substantive effect. Some of the disagreement is over the specific outcome of interest, with proponents advocating for a narrower definition of “democratization”. Others want to know more about the factors that condition how elections impact on democracy. This article addresses both points by demonstrating that in Africa the extent of formal presidential power significantly shapes the ability of repeated elections to socialize more broadly democratic behaviour in the form of greater civil and private liberties, more civil society participation, and wider egalitarianism. Using recently available data on African presidents and the democratic qualities of regimes, the article demonstrates the ongoing influence of presidential power in Africa and provides some previously unstudied constraints on the democratization by elections thesis.     

Presidential Agenda-Setting of Traditional and Nontraditional News Media

The president’s ability to influence the news agenda is central to the study of American politics. Although there is a large literature that examines presidential agenda-setting vis-à-vis traditional news sources, such as newspapers or broadcast television networks, there is little research that explores the effects of presidential agenda leadership of nontraditional media whether online or cable television. This study remedies this state of affairs by examining the relationship between the president’s daily agenda and traditional and nontraditional daily news agendas. I argue that although the president should find similar space on all news for topics he raises in his speeches, nontraditional sources are more likely to cover other stories that reference the president. Analysis of 748 stories on the presidency for 63 days in early 2012 from 7 traditional, cable, and online news sources provides support for my argument, with cable news providing the most presidential news coverage. I conclude with some implications about what my findings mean for presidential leadership of nontraditional media.     

Power Politics or Public Pandering? An Empirical Investigation of Economic Sanctions and Presidential Approval

How do economic sanctions affect presidential approval? Competing claims have been made about the domestic political consequences of economic sanctions. One claim is that sanctions are unpopular because they have negative economic consequences; another claim is that sanctions are popular because they project an image of strength; and another claim is that sanctions are neither popular nor unpopular because the public is uninformed about international affairs. These arguments imply competing identification restrictions. I test these competing models using a Bayesian Structural Vector Autoregression (B-SVAR) model. The results show that sanctions have a moderate negative effect on presidential approval. I use these findings as a basis for a broader set of auxiliary analyses. Despite received wisdom, sanctions imposed for different reasons against different target states do not produce disparate effects on public opinion. These analyses resolve an important empirical dilemma that weighs on a range of theoretical perspectives in the sanctions literature and highlights fruitful avenues for future research.     

The Ground Game in the 2012 Presidential Election

Relatively little research has examined the effects of campaign-led field activity in a competitive election. In this article, we leverage a unique data set containing the location of every Barack Obama and Mitt Romney field office and county-level data on the presidential vote to understand how communication with voters in the field may have affected the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. We find that the presence of Obama field offices was associated with greater Obama vote share at the county level, although we cannot detect a similar relationship for Romney field offices. We conduct additional robustness tests to address the potential limitations of these observational data. Ultimately, we conclude that even if Obama’s field organization out-performed Romney’s, the aggregate impact of Obama’s field organization was not large enough to determine the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.     

Using Big Data and Algorithms to Determine the Effect of Geographically Targeted Advertising on Vote Intention: Evidence From the 2012 U.S. Presidential Election

We develop a new conceptualization of political advertising effects by looking at the effect of the marginal advertising dollar during the heat of presidential campaigns. We argue that in contrast to other studies investigating effects of political ads, our approach is more apt to capture the natural environment in which political ads are encountered during a presidential campaign. We focus on the intense inundation of political ads voters are confronted with in swing states in the weeks leading up to the presidential election, and argue that it is unclear a priori whether we should expect advertising to affect vote intention in that critical circumstance. We empirically validate this hypothesis using a trove of data from the 2012 campaign: daily polling in media markets around the country, detailed data on all registered voters in the country, all TV advertisements by market and exact airtime, and the entire Twitter corpus. We find that neither overall increases in advertising spending nor partisan imbalances in spending expanded the candidates’ electorate. In fact, total Designated Market Area (DMA)-level spending significantly moderates a negative relationship between spending advantages and advantages in vote intention, suggesting a boomerang effect of additional spending late in the campaign. In closing, we discuss the ramifications of our findings for future research, and stress the importance of research tracking advertising effects.     

Ripping Yarn: Experiments on Storytelling by Partisan Elites

This article explores the role of personalized storytelling by partisan elites using a content analysis and two experiments. By personalized storytelling, I mean a political message in the form of a narrative that includes a specific reference to an individual affected by an issue. Using a content analysis of party convention speeches, this article shows that presidential candidates tell an increasing amount of stories, particularly from 1980 onward. Through randomized Internet experiments and a general population sample, I demonstrate that personalized stories have a unique influence on the public by parsing out the independent causal effect of the storyteller’s partisanship, the personalization of the story, and the content of the story. Not only can stories change attitudes about issues, but personalized stories can also change how individuals evaluate the candidate telling the story. However, an impersonal story that only references a generic group, rather than a singular individual, does not improve the partisan storyteller’s favorability. Results suggest that modern presidential candidates might be motivated to tell more stories because personalizing an issue may improve their standing with the public.     

Profiling candidate images in televised political spot advertisements for 1984: Roles and realities of presidential jousters at the height of the Reagan Era

Continued growth in the use of televised political spot advertisements in presidential campaigns justifies the increasing attention given to analyzing the role and content of such messages in the larger political system. The 1984 campaign offered a unique opportunity for theorists to investigate the potential for such messages either to reflect accurate images of candidates, or to evoke more dissonant themes between the images of candidates fabricated for the electorate, and the substantive candidates those images are intended to represent. This study analyzed the character attributes presented for ten presidential hopefuls in 201 televised spots, produced for 1984's primary and general election campaigns, and finds that while political spots can offer accurate portrayals of presidential candidates, the role of such messages can be nullified by perceived dissonance in the images they convey about their subjects.