DEMOCRACY BEHAVING BADLY: THE PRESSURES OF CONSTITUENCY

INTERESTS IN PROMOTING THE USE OF FORCE IN THE UNITED STATES.

Sam Bell (corresponding author)

Kansas State University
Department of Political Science
Kansas State University
228a Waters Hall
Manhattan, Kansas 66506

Brandon C. Zicha
University of Antwerp & Binghamton University (SUNY)
Dept. Politieke Wettenschappen
Universiteit Antwerpen
M 271
BE-2000 Antwerpen
Belgium

Abstract

This paper provides a link between U.S. presidential coalitional pressures, domestic
macroeconomic policy, and the use of force. We develop a coalitional argument to
explain what structures the incentives for U.S. presidents to use force in response to
declining economic conditions. In contrast to arguments focusing on political parties, we
argue that the specific coalition of a president determines the degree to which a president
can counteract inflation or unemployment and when the incentives to use force for
diversionary purposes are present. Using ANES survey data to capture the level of
support from specific constituencies, we test the role of presidential coalitions argued for
here. This analysis also allows us to determine whether presidents are responding to a
party label or their own unique constituencies. We test our hypotheses on a sample of
U.S. uses of force between 1949 and 1994 using a poisson regression model.

1
 There is a large literature examining the theoretical and empirical issues

surrounding diversionary conflict; that is, conflict that diverts public attention away from

something unpleasant or divisive and towards something more unifying, like an external

threat. This idea originated with sociologists who suggested that generating external

threats can create a strengthened internal group (Simmel 1955; Coser 1956). When

applied to the decisions executives make with regards to preserving their support

domestically, it suggests that beginning conflicts with external groups may be a logical

solution for leaders who face domestic political troubles that erode the coalition that put

them into office in the first place. This can be in response to domestic conditions ranging

from low approval numbers (Morgan and Bickers 1992), failing economic conditions

(Ostrom and Job 1986), to actual domestic upheaval (Davies 2002). Thus, in order to

keep one’s coalition together, executives, like the U.S. president, might engage in wars

abroad to divert attention from problems at home.

To critics these claims seem unlikely, offensive, or even perverse. Surely, war is

such a politically and concretely costly policy tool that it makes a poor substitute to

actually dealing with the problems eroding public support in the first place. We along

with others, agree with this counterargument, but do not believe that this argument

suggests that international conflict below the level of war will not be used in a

diversionary fashion. Rather, it suggests that low costs conflicts – well short of war –

requiring the use of little political capital or gaining the consent of possibly competing

elites in the legislature would be used when domestic policy instruments will be

politically more costly. It is this empirical claim that we aim to test in this paper: when

the costs of maintaining coalition cohesiveness is particularly difficult because domestic

2
policy tools are more costly, then executives will be more likely to seek low-cost

conflicts abroad.

This empirical claim is an important one to examine in light of the evidence as

doing so potentially yields both interesting and important lesson about the nature of

democracy as a progenitor of peace. Our argument suggests that democratic pressures

have the potential to generate military conflicts – rather than promote peace, as is often

asserted in both the academic and popular press. As such, understanding not only if, but

how and when democratically elected leaders use force in a diversionary fashion inform

not only our understanding of whether democracies are only peaceful towards one

another or if they are more peaceful in general – but whether the act of being sensitive to

the interests of ones constituents would create incentives to do violence to others.

Indeed, as an early reader of this manuscript suggested it seems perverse that the decision

to engage in non-necessary uses of force, with real human casualties as a result, could be

a consequence of democratically elected officials representing the interests of their

constituency. It is the possibility of this very perversion that we aim to ascertain. We

argue that democratic processes may prevent war, but it does not necessarily promote

peace either.

We examine our claim on a sample of uses of force by the United States from

1949 to 1994 (Blechman and Kaplan 1978; Fordham and Sarver 2001). We examine the

U.S. for a number of reasons. First, the U.S. is examined because of its ability in the

international system to unilaterally use force. Second, the U.S. has a president whose

sensitivity to popular opinion is well known. Without popular support a U.S. president

has tremendous difficulty promoting his policy agenda. After demonstrating the

3
empirical power of our logic, we suggest that future research in comparative foreign

policy can allow these parameters to vary – allowing for varying sensitivities to public

opinion and relative costs of different policy options across contexts.

Why “Uses of Force”?

We operationalize uses of force in our search for diversionary tactics by the U.S.

president for a number of reasons. First, “in most of the political uses of force chronicled

by Blechman and Kaplan (1978), presidents faced a similarly low risk that the military

action they undertook would escalate to a full scale war” (Fordham 1998, 419). This

makes U.S. uses of force an appealing sample. War escalation is costly, so the

attractiveness of a use of force for diversion will decrease with the likelihood of full-scale

conflict. Smaller scale uses of force are more likely to be implemented by presidents to

divert than full-scale war. Full-scale wars require greater degrees of mobilization, and

social dislocation that makes their potential for diversion inappropriate. Our logic only

makes claims about foreign policy engagements pursued by executives that do not entail

such risk.

Secondly, the uses of force data are also convenient as they refer exclusively to

explicit uses of force advocated by the national executive. This stands in contrast to the

other possible data source for collecting a sample of low intensity conflicts, the

militarized interstate dispute data, which collects data on all violent relations between

nations without regard to whether the government of a nation sanctioned the action at all.

For our purposes, the fact that the national executive unilaterally and at his initiation

engaged in the action is of critical importance.

Prior Research on the Diversionary Use of Military Force

4
 There are many threads of the argument that international conflict would be used

by government elites as a form of diversion. Much of the literature examining diversion

argues from the assumption that the first and only option leaders will choose when facing

intractable domestic trouble is a use of force or even war. Clearly, there will be a number

of possibly substitutable domestic and foreign policy options available to a leader before

they use force to divert attention (Most and Starr 1989). Leaders will choose the policy

option that is least costly in terms of maintaining or enhancing popularity, attainment of

policy goals, or electoral success. Given the other policy options available, it becomes

difficult to make the argument that using force will always serve this function.

Consequently, it is also difficult to argue that using force in the form of war will ever be

less costly than alternative policy options. However, we cannot conclude that using any

force will never serve this function, only that an explanation is needed as to why other

policy options are not utilized.

For every paper that finds support for the diversionary argument (Ostrom and Job

1986), another can be identified that finds evidence against the diversionary argument

(Meernik 1994; Meernik and Waterman 1996), with much of the evidence in favor

contained in qualitative examples (Levy 1989). To some extent, these conflicts in the

literature are largely due to the different theoretical assumptions and different empirical

specifications. Despite these disagreements, a number of general claims are made by this

research. First, leaders will use force to overcome and distract from domestic trouble at

home. Second, this conclusion relies on the idea that using force will adequately divert

from domestic failures and increase the popularity of a sitting president.

5
 Fordham (1998) provides some evidence that challenges the assumption that

conflict is the first recourse of a troubled executive. He finds that the use of diversionary

force by the U.S. is conditional on both the party holding the Presidency and the kind of

economic failure occurring (whether it is inflation or unemployment). Certain presidents

will find a necessary tool in their policy toolbox particularly costly to the political party

in question when seeking responses to economic failures. When so challenged in their

ability to respond to economic failure with the appropriate macroeconomic policy,

presidents will be more likely to use force. If the domestic problem demands a politically

costly domestic policy, then diversion through the use of force will become a more

attractive solution.

Our argument diverges from, but builds off, Fordham’s (1998) argument that

American political parties are the causal mechanism through which presidents have

different domestic economic goals and in turn different incentives for the use of

diversionary force. The argument made by Fordham is extended from the findings of

Hibbs (1977) that right leaning governments are more concerned with keeping inflation

levels low, while left leaning governments are more concerned with keeping levels of

unemployment low. This line of argument is applied to the U.S. political system. This

difference in party preference is reflected by the fact that the Democrats’ core

constituency is traditionally organized labor, who is concerned with keeping

unemployment low. The Republicans’ core constituency is made up of higher income

voters, who are more concerned with keeping inflation low. This argument is reliant on

an additional assumption that there is at the very least a perceived trade-off in the minds

of social groups, between unemployment promotion and inflation restraining policies

6
implied by the much-touted ‘Phillips Curve’ (Phillips 1958). The ‘Phillips Curve’

suggests that if government enacts policies that lower unemployment this will create

demand-pull on the level of inflation consequently raising levels of inflation whereas

inflation fighting through regulation of the money supply will choke off job creation and

thus increase unemployment.

Drawing on this line of thought, Fordham argues that the incentives for

diversionary uses of force will be present for Democrats when there is high inflation and

Republicans when there is high unemployment. Presidents from the Democratic Party

will be constrained in their policy choice when faced with high inflation. Attempts to

counteract high inflation will lead to increases in unemployment, hurting their core

constituency1. When faced with this dilemma the incentives for diversionary uses of force

will be enhanced. Republicans will be constrained in their macroeconomic policy choice

when faced with high unemployment. Policies aimed at reducing unemployment create

inflationary pressures, leaving the Republican core constituency of higher-class interests

dissatisfied. The relationship suggested by Fordham for the relationship between

partisanship, economic conditions, and the use of force is summarized by the following

figure

[Figure 1 about here]

In his paper Fordham finds support for the relationship between party,

unemployment, and uses of force. Democrats facing high unemployment are less likely to

use force than Republicans facing high unemployment. However, the relationship

between party, inflation, and uses of force is tenuous at best. An important question

answered here, is whether this lack of a finding is the result of theoretical weakness or

7
empirical misspecification? We find that a more refined understanding of the origins of

the incentives faced by an executive that takes into account constituency pressures, rather

than partisanship, strengthens the congruence between theory and empirical results.

A Coalition Centered Approach to the Use of Diversion by Executives

We find the agenda-setting approach to understanding diversionary conflict as a

strong framework to work within for explaining the role that constituency interests play

in diversionary behavior (DeRouen 1995; Peake 2001; Peake and DeRouen 2002). This

line of argument suggests that the goal of a leader is to shift attention from the domestic

policy agenda to the foreign policy agenda. Rather than having to rely on popular rallies

or the necessity to demonstrate policy competence (Smith 1996) to explain diversionary

behavior, it rests in a body of research that points to the power that leaders have from

being able shape and set the policy agenda (Gilberg et al. 1980; Wanta et al 1989;

Johnson et al. 1995; Dearing and Rogers 1996, 75-76; Kernell 1997; McCombs 2004).

This allows for diversionary behavior to be a more general political reaction by leaders to

maintain political support.

In this paper we examine how the constituency of the U.S. president, rather than

the party of the president, combined with the economic conditions at the time, influence

the likelihood of the president using force. The constituency of the president is defined

as the individuals that support the sitting president during their most recent election – as

it is this group that is most likely to support him throughout his term and as such it is the

maintenance of popularity among this group that forms the foundation of the president’s

ability to not only be reelected, but to see that his policy goals are respected by other

branches of government. It is well established that the ability of the U.S. president in

8
particular, but executives more generally, to set the policy agenda is largely contingent on

maintaining popular support. (see for example Rivers and Rose 1985; Lawrence 2004;

Horvit, Schiffer, and Wright 2008; Peake and Eshbaugh-Soha 2008; Canes-Wrone and de

Marchi 2002) Popular support is certainly useful when attempting to win reelection and

is certainly valuable when trying to increase (or stem the mid-term loss) in the share of

Congressional seats occupied by friendly representatives – still the ‘gold standard’ for

presidential influence of the policy agenda. Thus, it is not merely obvious electoral

punishments that we argue provide the incentives for diversion but rather their role as

agenda setter which is so important to an executive’s ability to meet his goals.

We see executives as having three interconnected goals. First, executives want to

enact their agenda and influence the legislation and administration of government policy.

Second, executives want to secure a positive place in history. Lastly, executives seek

reelection and, if term limited as in the case of the U.S. president, to help secure election

of an executive that shares their policy priorities in their final term. In order to reach the

second and third goals, we assume that accomplishing the first goal is of primary

importance. Failure to achieve anything of consequence will likely assure a poor

historical reflection and may create difficulty during the next electoral cycle.

In order to pursue any of these three goals the executive (to a greater or lesser

extent) is required to maintain a reasonable level of public approval. Clearly, executives

that have more institutional advantages in controlling legislative agenda setting, such as

the prime minister in the United Kingdom, will be less dependent on public support than

the U.S. president. However, even in the former case, low approval ratings inspire

defections within the Cabinet and throughout the bureaucracy which hamper even this

9
relatively unconstrained leader’s capacity to enact his chosen policies. This phenomenon

was most recently illustrated by cabinet crises and reshuffles during the summer of 2009

where British Prime Minister Gordon Brown dealt with defections and revolt in the wake

of dropping approval ratings (Sullivan 2009).

When executives face voters, they roll out their policy plans and priorities to the

public and attempt to accumulate a coalition of support that will support his efforts.

These coalitions are composed of different groups who are sensitive to both different

problems and the side effects of different solutions. These groups also have different

levels of organization and response to these sensitivities. The sensitivities and

responsiveness of groups determine, to a large extent, the costs in terms of approval or

support of different policy solutions to different policy problems.

Essentially our model suggests that the coalition that places an executive in

power, within a democratic system, will present that executive with an environment

where particular problems present challenges for which the proper policy response will

be costly. In such cases, presidents will avoid those costs by diverting the attention of

their coalition away from the problem that demands those costly solutions to an issue for

which the policy solution is less costly in terms of gaining support. To the extent that

these alternatives could bolster public support such action is even more desirable.

External threats, activities overseas, or non-activist challenges all have the quality of

solidifying coalitions, while shifting attention from issues which might erode support.

Full-scale war, or conflicts that may erupt into agenda filling activities – such as

military adventurism in the Middle East for instance –are both potentially too costly in

10
terms of support and limit the ability to pursue goals other than international conflict. As

such, our model does not predict nor speak to when executives would decide to go to war.

This model suggests a number of hypotheses, many of which must be explored in

future research. Currently, we wish to focus on how well this model fares in comparison

to prior attempts at explaining the tendency of U.S presidents to engage in uses of force

as a response to economic problems. Specifically we assert that assuming that a

president from a specific party is constrained by a core constituency fixed and associated

to that party label does not capture the independent incentives executives face vis-à-vis

their political parties. Rather, executives like the U.S. president have a constituency to

whom they must play that may differ from that of their party, and which certainly

fluctuates in membership over time faster than the constituency of the congressperson in

the U.S. House. There is certainly evidence to suggest that the positions of U.S. parties

are not static over time and that those shifts can be the result of evolving coalitions

(Trubowitz 1998; Fordham 2007)

As such, we examine the case of the U.S. president and the composition of his

electoral coalition and estimate how influential key components of this coalition is in

predicting the tendency of the U.S. president to engage in uses of force in the face of

different economic challenges. The argument made by Hibbs (1977) suggests that two

characteristics of a president’s supporters will be relevant for economic decision-making.

The support received by a president from union members and the income of a presidents’

supporters should determine how constrained a president will be when faced with high

unemployment or inflation. More specifically, a president whose support primarily

11
consists of union members will find responding to high levels of inflation particularly

costly, and thus make the use of force an attractive policy option.

Hypothesis 1: A president with high a percentage of his support coming from

union members, facing high levels of inflation, will be more likely to use force
than a president with low levels of support from union members.

Counteracting high inflation is costly in proportion to the level of union support because,

so long as the Phillips curve is operative, doing so will require driving up unemployment

or suppressing wage growth leaving this important constituency dissatisfied.

A president with high levels of support from high income individuals will find

responding to high levels of unemployment particularly costly, also making the use of

force an attractive policy option, leading to the following hypothesis.

Hypothesis 2: A president with a high percentage of support from high

income individuals, facing high levels of unemployment, will be more
likely to use force than a president with low levels of support from high
income individuals.

This high cost to confronting unemployment is a result for the president, because doing

so will require injecting more money into the system, while simultaneously increasing

demand as the workforce with income grows. The result is a tradeoff where employment

stimulus will increase inflationary pressures which threaten the interest of a core

constituency to the extent that those most sensitive to inflation: high income individuals.

The following figure presents the expected relationships between presidential

constituency, economic conditions, and the use of force. It is important to note that

predicted consequences of the Philips curve are not necessary for us to observe the

behavior that we expect here. Our model simply requires that these two primary

12
constituencies, labor and high-income individuals, believe that macroeconomic policies

create pressures counter to their interest.

[Figure 2 about here]

Previous work, most notably by Fordham, assumes that the president’s party

determines the costs presidents’ face, and that the costs to that party are identical over

time. This leads to far less dynamic predictions that raise real questions when one

observes that the proportion of voters who are organized into labor organizations are

decreasing over time, that some presidents may have coalitions that are split more evenly

between these key groups. Some presidents such as Eisenhower sought support from

broad coalitions and sought accommodation between labor and capital. Others, such as

Clinton deliberately pursued a policy to drive their parties in a different direction by

appealing to non-traditional groups, in part out of necessity to the secular decline of

organized labor – a force which has certainly impacted the ideological color of the

Democratic Party (Miller and Schofield 2008).

[Figure 3 about here]

Figure 3 shows that unions have been of declining importance in presidential

coalitions. Our model suggests that presidents should be less sensitive to increased

inflation as the costs of anti-inflationary policies; in terms of coalition support has

declined for presidents of both parties over time. What this means is that two presidents

from the same party can have different levels of support from traditional party

constituencies. The theoretical expectation is that Democratic presidents rely on a core

constituency of labor unions and Republican presidents rely on the support of higher

income voters. While this may be true, the degree of support may vary over time. For

13
example, one Democratic president can be more pro-union than another Democratic

president. Party positions and in turn their constituencies can fluctuate over time. While

the party positions have been relatively static since the end of World War II, there have

presumably been shifts depending on the president in office. This is an empirical question

that can be answered by using variables constructed from the American National Election

Survey (ANES). (Shapiro et al. 1998) Details about how these data are generated are

discussed in the next section.

The most notable set of observations in figure 3 are those in1949 and 1993. In

1949, Truman’s first year full year after the 1948 election, 39.15% of Truman’s

supporters had a head of household that was a member of a union. In 1993, Clinton’s

first year after being elected in 1992, he depended on 20.9% of his support from union

households. Clinton’s percentage of support from union members is almost equivalent to

Eisenhower’s in 1953 of 20.22%. This brief discussion of the amount that different

presidents relied on union support demonstrates how a party indicator can under-measure

or over-measure the underlying latent independent variable, support from union

members. Presidents Clinton and Eisenhower are members of different parties, but their

levels of support from union household individuals are statistically equivalent. The plot

of support from high-income voters similarly demonstrates variation.

It may be true that party may be used as a proxy for the constituency of a sitting

president, as in the case of Fordham (1998), but doing so leaves open the question of

whether or not a president is responding to partisan pressures from fellow partisans or

whether the president is being responsive to his own support base, and his own capacity

to pursue his policy goals. Thus, we are unsure if the cause is something central to

14
democracy itself – the link between executives and the governed – or something specific

to the relations among elites. We argue, noting the shifting membership of each

president’s national electoral coalition that party and economic conditions are not the

cause of diversionary uses of force, but instead the president’s core constituency and

economic conditions are. This difference has important implications for the way that we

think about foreign policy.

If executives appear to be responding to their shifting coalitions, we have further

evidence that leaders are trying to provide public goods to people that are in their

winning coalitions (Bueno de Mesquita et al. 1999). In this case, they are sheltering their

constituents from potentially damaging policy solutions to problems. Indeed, this is

precisely what many views of democratic representation suggest democracy is supposed

to ensure: that elites take account of the well-being of those who elect them. This does

not mean that it is normatively a good thing that democratic leaders will engage in

diversionary conflict, but that they are ruling out certain domestic policy options because

of democratic forces. ‘Bad behavior’ in the form of violent fits, may be an inevitable

consequent of democratic systems which wrest control over any military action in a small

number of democratically accountable hands.

A more direct measure of constituency support for a president should lead to

results more strongly consistent with the theory than those relying on political party

indicators as a proxy of these constituencies. By using a direct measure of the makeup of

a president’s core constituency, the empirical model should be a better reflection of the

process underlying the theory. In addition, by applying concepts and measures that more

15
accurately capture the mechanism suggested in the paper, it is possible to achieve greater

confidence in the results and the underlying argument.

Measuring Relevant Presidential Constituencies

In order to test whether constituency interests raise the costs of particular

domestic policy options and as a result make the use of force a more attractive option, we

must operationalize presidential constituency interest vis-à-vis problems that require

inflation or unemployment pushing solutions. To capture the relevant aspects of

presidential constituencies we select the percentage of a president’s constituency that

were union members and the percentage that had incomes above the 95th percentile. We

select these groups because we believe they meet four criteria useful for estimating the

degree to which presidents would indeed divert with military action when faced with

problems that are difficult to solve given a president’s constituency. Firstly, and most

obviously unions are particularly sensitive to pressures that would reduce employment or

wages, while high-income individuals are sensitive to inflationary pressures that erode

their wealth. Second, both groups interests are represented by substantial campaign

contributions and lobbying organizations. These first two reasons speak to the heart of

our argument in that the degree to which these groups have similar interests and can be

expected to react similarly negatively when faced with disadvantageous policy solutions

to economic problems, we can expect the importance of maintaining the support of these

groups to be proportionate to their size.

Third, while both groups have been tied to particular parties, this is not

universally true, and as we show above the extent to which these groups are prominent

has varied over time. Lastly, the interests of workers and the definition of high income

16
has frequently been captured in studies of political economy as best represented by union

membership and those earning above the 95th percentile (Bartels 2008; McCarty, Poole,

Rosenthal 2006)

Conveniently, both of these variables can be constructed from the ANES data.

The level of support from union members is constructed as follows. Starting with the

1948 presidential election the ANES has asked whether the head of a household, in which

they were surveying, was a member of a labor union (Question # VCF0127)2. In

addition, the survey asks which presidential candidate an individual voted for in the

election. We create a variable that measures the percentage of individuals that voted for

the winning candidate that were in a household with a head of house that is a union

member. The higher the percentage of union members voting in favor of a president, the

more constrained a president will be when faced with high inflation. As a result the use of

force will become more likely when they are facing high inflation.

The variable was constructed in the following way. First, the number of

individuals voting for the presidential winner is counted. Second, the number of

individuals that have a head of household union member and voted for the presidential

winner was counted. Third, divide the number of union member supporters by the total

number of supporters.

number of union family members voting for president

(1) = % of union support
number of individuals voting for president

This variable is constructed every four years. It is important to note that a

percentage calculated from a survey year does not come into effect until the following

year. For example, Truman received 39.15% of his support from union members in the

1948 election. For the union support variable, this value does not come into effect until

17
1949, when his new term starts. For the 1992 election of Bill Clinton it would not make

sense to have his level of union support coded in 1992. George H.W. Bush was still in

office. Clinton did not come into office until 1993. The data construction takes this lag

into effect.

The ANES also collects data on the household income for the individuals being

surveyed (VCF0114). Generating this variable required a number of judgment calls. The

raw data on income is not reported by the ANES surveys. In the survey data the

percentile range of an individual’s income is coded. The top two income categories are

the 65th-94th percentile and the 95th + percentile. The 95th and above percentile category is

used to generate the high income support variable. This variable is operationalized in the

same way as the union support measure.

First, the number of individuals that voted for the presidential election winner is

counted. Second, the number of individuals that voted for the winner and were above the

94th percentile of income is counted. Finally, the number of high-income supporters is

divided by the number of total supporters for the president.

(2)

Number of voters above 95% income percentile for president

= % High Income Supporters
Number of Individuals voting for president

As more high income individuals support the president, the president will be more

constrained in counteracting high unemployment, making the use of force more

attractive.

One of the nice characteristics of both these variables is that they can vary cross-

sectionally and cross-temporally as seen in Figure 3 above. Within one president’s cross-

18
section this variable can fluctuate from the first to the second term. This is obviously not

true of the party dummy variable. Also, both variables can vary across observations for

different presidents of the same party, which is also not true of the presidential dummy

variable. In addition, and most importantly, they should provide a more accurate measure

of the underlying theoretical mechanism suggested to be at force, allowing us to be more

confident in the theoretical story if the results are supportive.

Research Design

For the sake of comparability we employ a research design similar to that used by

Fordham (1998). The unit of analysis is the quarter of a year, and the dependent variable

is the number of uses of force in a quarter. Because the measures of constituency interest

for a president are substitutes for party, the party dummy is not included. There are two

ways to evaluate whether using the survey data is a better and more accurate measure.

First, a close comparison of the predictions made by our model versus the Fordham

model. Second, we claim that a direct measure of a president’s core constituency should

lead to more robust results on the effect of inflation. In Fordham’s analysis the

interaction between party and inflation is not statistically significant. If the interaction

between constituency interest and inflation are statistically significant, constituency

interests may be a better operationalization of the forces specified in the theory.

In order to test whether the presidential constituency variables provide a stronger

explanation we first replicate the analysis from Fordham (1998). From this we compare

how each of the statistical models performs in explaining U.S. uses of force. We refer

the reader to Fordham’s paper for further discussion of the data, but provide a brief

19
explanation of the variables included in both Fordham’s models and the models in this

paper.

Independent variables:

To capture the economic conditions, measures of inflation and unemployment are

included. In Fordham’s models these two indicators are interacted with the party dummy

variable. In our models, the economic variables are interacted with both constituency

variables. In Fordham’s analysis there are two interaction terms. It is expected that both

the interaction between party and inflation and the interaction between party and

unemployment will be statistically significant. In this new analysis two out of the four

interactions should be statistically significant. The interaction between union

membership support and inflation should be positive and statistically significant and the

interaction between high-income support and unemployment should be positive and

statistically significant. This is the result of a conditional relationship between the

constituency interests and the economic climate. presidents facing high unemployment

are only expected to respond with force when they are reliant on high-income individuals

within their constituency. That conditional relationship also applies to inflation.

Presidents facing high inflation are only expected to use force when they are reliant on

union members for political support. There are no expectations on the other two

interactions terms. They are included to check for theoretical consistency. If they are

statistically significant and positive, some key aspect of the relationship between

constituency and use of force is not adequately explained by the theory.

A number of control variables are included in the analysis. They are included

because they potentially have a relationship with both the dependent variable and at least

20
one other independent variable. These variables include an indicator of ongoing wars. By

Fordham’s coding the use of force data does not include the Vietnam and Korean Wars.

These two wars clearly occupied the U.S. military for long periods of time. These wars

will have an influence on both the likelihood of using force, and levels of unemployment.

Two other controls are included, one for wartime reelection cycles and another for

peacetime reelection cycles. During wartime reelection cycles, it is expected that uses of

force will increase, while during peacetime reelection cycles it is expected that uses of

force will decrease (Stoll 1984). These are the same control variables used in Fordham’s

(1998) analysis, allowing for greater comparability of models3.

Dependent Variable:

The dependent variable is measured as uses of force by the U.S. each quarter.

This measure is a count of U.S. uses of force per quarter. A fuller discussion of the data

can be found in Blechman and Kaplan (1978), Fordham (1998), or Fordham and Sarver

(2001), but a couple of characteristics are important to mention here. Each use of force is

coded on a five-point scale, in this paper and most studies implementing this data, the

first two levels of force are not included. The first two levels are “often difficult to

distinguish from routine troop movements, and the political significance of these

activities is sometimes unclear (Fordham 1998; 426). In addition the major wars are not

included, because the original construction of the data was supposed to represent uses of

force short of war. Overall these data provide a better measure than the militarized

interstate dispute data, which are sometimes implemented to test arguments about foreign

policy (Fordham and Sarver 2001). These data capture events that are actually the

consequences of foreign policy decision makers, while the MID data can capture events

21
that occur from accidents or are not explicit decisions from a government. It is important

to note here that we (and the authors that implemented this dataset before us) are not

claiming that the use of force data directly measures diversionary conflicts. That said, it

does provide a measure of the types of conflicts that are likely to be used for diversionary

purposes and allows for testing the diversionary claim by including variables that

represent political trouble for the president.

Model Selection:

A poisson regression model is used to estimate the models in this paper due to the

nature of the dependent variable. Counts can only take on values of whole numbers and

they are by definition non-negative. Further, the poisson regression model provides a

distributional assumption about the data generation process that approximates the data

being used. Specifically, the poisson accounts for the fact that U.S. uses of force are

relatively rare events. We do not observe more than 5 in any one quarter and the average

uses of force per quarter is .7334.

Two sets of models are estimated. First, the base models from Fordham (1998)

are replicated for the purpose of comparison. The replicated models are from table 2 of

Fordham (1998). The second set of models replaces the party variable with the two

indicators of presidential constituency and adds the four interactive terms described

above.

Empirical Results

Table 1 displays the replication results of table 2 in Fordham (1998). The results

from model 3 suggest a substantive and statistically significant increase in the number of

uses of force when Republicans are faced with high levels of unemployment. This is

22
consistent with the argument made by Fordham. The interaction between Democrat and

inflation suggests that there is an increased probability of force when Democrats are

faced with high levels of inflation. The standard errors around this coefficient are wider,

so this result has to be treated with greater caution.

[Table 1 about here]

In examining the statistical results from the new analysis in Table 2 there are four

factors that we want to examine. First, do the results provide evidence for the relationship

between presidential constituency, economic conditions, and use of force? Second, if

they do, can we say anything about the effect of high levels of inflation, about which

Fordham was unable to draw conclusions. Third, does the new model including the

presidential constituency variables provide a better explanation of U.S. uses of force?

Finally, are these effects substantively important?

The model that fully allows us to assess our hypotheses is model 6, but we begin

by examining the roles of high-income support and union support in separate models.

Model 4 estimates a model with the union support presidential constituency measure, its

interactions with inflation and unemployment, and the control variables. As expected the

interaction between inflation and union support is positive and statistically significant at

the .1 level. It is important to point out here that the variables that account for high-

income support are not included here, something that we believe is an important variable

Also, the interaction between unemployment and union support does not attain statistical

significance as expected. In model 5 the variable for high income support, its interactions,

and the control variables are included. The interaction between unemployment and high

23
income is statistically significant at the .05 level, while the interaction between inflation

and high income is not. This is as expected given the hypotheses above.

Finally, model 6 includes both presidential constituency variables, their

interactions, and the control variables. This model allows us to fully assess our

hypotheses and to draw some conclusions about our reoriented focus on presidential

coalitions rather than parties. The interaction between inflation and union support is

positive and statistically significant at the .01 level (hypothesis 1). This suggests that

when a president with high levels of support from union members, faces increasing levels

of inflation, the uses of force per quarter increase. The interaction between

unemployment and high income supporters is statistically significant at the .05 level

(hypothesis 2). This suggests that presidents with high levels of support from wealthy

individuals, facing higher levels of unemployment are more likely to use force. The

interaction between union support and unemployment is not statistically significant.

While we do not want to draw any strong conclusions from the null results, this is

consistent with expectations. Presidents with high support from union members should

not be systematically constrained in counteracting high unemployment levels. As a result

there should not be any increase in the likelihood of force. Similarly the interaction

between high income supporters and inflation does not attain conventional levels of

statistical significance. Again, this is consistent with expectations. Presidents with high

support from wealthy individuals can respond to high inflation with macroeconomic

policy, eliminating the incentives for using diversionary force.

[Table 2 about here]

Discussion

24
 The models in table 2 provide evidence for both hypotheses. How do these

models compare to Fordham’s models and how substantively important are these

estimated effects? First, the interaction between inflation and union support is

statistically significant and allows us to draw a conclusion that Fordham could not make

in his paper. The estimation using the presidential constituency variables suggests,

consistent with the logic of Hibbs’ argument, that presidents with support from union

members, facing high inflation are constrained in their ability to respond. This in turn

makes the use of force more likely. Using the presidential constituency variable allows

us to draw conclusions about the way presidents respond to high levels of inflation, while

the analysis relying on party dummy variables does not.

Examining some predictions from the model helps in understanding what the

results substantively say about diversionary behavior and coalitional politics. These

predictions are drawn from the model 6 estimated in table 2. Figures 4 through 7 provide

greater insight into the substantive effects of constituency makeup and economic

conditions on the use of force. Figure 4 presents the predicted effect of unemployment on

the use of force with all variables at their mean levels, including the amount of high-

income support. The solid line is the predicted relationship between unemployment and

the use of force. The dashed lines above and below the prediction are the 95% confidence

intervals. This figure demonstrates that as unemployment increases, the amount of force

used by a president per quarter increases (with all other variables at means and modes).

It is important to note here that in figure 4 the level of high-income support is set

to its mean level. In order to really gauge the interactive (or conditional) effect of high-

income support and unemployment on the use of force, it is necessary to compare the

25
predictions while also varying the high-income support for a president. Figure 5 plots the

relationship between unemployment and the use of force at two different levels of high-

income support. The solid line provides the predicted uses of force at increasing levels of

unemployment with high-income support set to its mean level. The dashed line provides

the prediction with high-income support set to one standard deviation above the mean.

The comparison of these two predictions provides some interesting insights into the

interactive effect. First, the slope of the line at higher levels of high-income support (the

dashed line) is steeper across the entire range of unemployment levels, suggesting that

increases in unemployment for presidents that rely on a coalition that includes high-

income voters has a greater substantive effect. This is consistent with hypothesis 2. The

predictions demonstrate that at low levels of unemployment these high-income supported

presidents are less likely to use force then the average president. The two lines intersect

above the mean level of unemployment and the predicted uses of force increase above the

mean and modal case. This demonstrates that at low levels of unemployment there are

fewer domestic political incentives in place for these high-income supported presidents,

but that those incentives can shift rapidly with increases in unemployment.

[Figures 4 and 5 about here]

The results in figures 6 and 7 also tell an interesting story about the role that

coalitional politics play in providing the incentive for presidents to engage in force

abroad for agenda setting purposes. The prediction in figure 6 presents the predicted

levels of force as inflation is increased with 95% confidence intervals. Interestingly this

suggests that in general, for the average case, increases in inflation lead to a decrease in

the uses of force per quarter. This does not tell the entire story though. Figure 7 presents

26
the interactive effect of union support and inflation and the use of force. This figure

demonstrates that when union support is increased by one standard deviation, the sign on

the relationship between inflation and the use of force flips. Presidents with greater

support from union members are more likely to use force as inflation increases, while

presidents with less support from union members are less likely to use force with

increasing levels of inflation. This result demonstrates the power of looking towards

these coalitional and constituency interests as a cause of diversionary agenda-setting

behavior. The predictions in figure 7 clearly demonstrate that there is a conditional effect

of presidential coalitions and economic conditions on the use of force.

[Figures 6 and 7 about here]

Comparing the predictions between the Fordham model for specific presidential

terms provides a comparison of the two models. Remember that we replicated the

Fordham analysis and estimated our models with the same control variables that he

implements in his primary analysis from the 1998 paper. Table 6 presents a comparison

of the predictions from our model and those of the Fordham model. We generated

predictions by the quarter and by the term. While the models are close in their predictions

by quarter, our model comes closer in predicting the number of uses of force in 10 out of

13 of the presidential terms in the analysis. Further, one of those cases, that of the

unelected presidency of Gerald Ford by the logic of our argument should not be overly

responsive to his coalition, given that he was never elected with one. It would stand to

reason that Ford would be more reliant on fellow partisans, and thus more responsive to

abstract partisan interest. We take this illustration as providing a strong case for the

27
claim that the theoretical approach taken here serves as an improvement on prior

understandings of what drives the decision of U.S. presidents to use force.

[Table 6 about here]

Conclusion

The results reported in this paper suggest a number of important conclusions.

Starting with the theoretical picture, these results strengthen support for the basic logic of

the ‘diversionary war’ hypothesis, albeit with important caveats. We cannot refute the

hypothesis with our analysis that U.S. presidents engage in low-level uses of force when

faced with problems that are likely to threaten their popularity and by extension their

ability to pursue their policy goals or achieve reelection. However, the use of this

particular diversionary tactic is conditional on the characteristics of the president’s

coalition and the incentives this engenders. The cost of conflict vis-à-vis the origin of the

policy problem threatening coalition coherence is the driving mechanism by which

democratic pressures, within at least the U.S. political system, drive the choice by

executives to divert attention with internationally conflictual policies that may result in

fatal consequences for those nearby targets.

While much prior research has ignored specific characteristics of the leaders in

office, this paper suggests that the characteristics of the constituency of an executive are

important in determining when they will implement uses of force. This goes beyond

straight-forward partisan differences. While many constituency differences are going to

be correlated with party, the relationship is not even remotely one-to-one. The coalitional

underpinnings of presidential public support differ across time for presidents of the same

party. We have shown that taking this variation in presidential support into account

28
provides a stronger explanation of U.S. uses of force and the incentives for a leader to

divert.

Furthermore, our evidence supports the basic logic of Hibbs’ (1977) original

argument and its application by Fordham (1998). Partisanship per se is not the only or

even most important causal force at work, the notion that different coalitions over time

place different leaders in diverse positions when attempting to formulate policy responses

while balancing the sensitivities of that coalition. Partisanship may be a useful proxy, but

it is only a proxy for the mechanism at work.

Most generally, we believe that these results say something important about

representative democracy in general and its relationship to actions of international

aggression. Leaders are not simply responding to their party and the political challenges

of pursuing policy solutions that his party does not approve. Rather, presidents are

responding to the challenges posed by an electorate that denies these executives with the

support they need in order to pursue not only their own goals of reelection, but also the

policies that he promised to promote if elected. The president appears to be sensitive to

his own constituency. Using the more direct measures implemented in this paper allows

a greater level of confidence that presidents are making policy choices for the purpose of

satisfying their important constituency groups. This is not to endorse these diversionary

behaviors, but to suggest that for better or worse, presidents are responding to democratic

constituency pressures when they engage in uses of force and not only the demands of

national security in the international arena. Conflict is a direct result of the challenges

that arise in a democracy when leaders must balance future goals which can only be

29
achieved with a supportive coalition and current challenges where both failure to do

anything, and doing the right thing will erode that coalition.

Future work will need to explore this possibility by applying our model to

different national contexts where not only coalitional factors differ, but the importance of

public support for legislative influence, the opportunities available for unilaterally using

force, and the costs of doing so. Indeed, one reasonably expects that diversionary

pressures will be abated in systems without a unified executive. For example, the United

Kingdom will be more likely to divert than France over time, as the position of the

French executive in policy making varies depending on whether the executive is divided

between parties. Belgium, on the other hand has a very limited capacity to engage in

internationally conflictual behavior. However, executives in a coalitional system as

complex as Belgium face high costs when attempting to pursue the proper response to a

given problem. Perhaps this is one explanation for why the situation in the former

Belgian colony of the Congo is often raised to prominence on the national agenda – with

Belgian activities in Africa distracting the public from issues at home? Costs of

inolvement in the Congo – relative to other international theaters – are low.

We believe that our theory can both be tested by future comparative examination,

and that this exploration, whether it confirms or refutes our core argument, will greatly

enhance out understanding of the role of democratic institutions and processes in

fomenting international violence. It is our hope that such research might also suggest

practical solutions to the question of how such impulses could be managed.

30
31
Tables

Table 1: Event Count Models-Fordham Replication

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3
Unemployment 0.154** (0.061) 0.141** (0.061) 0.150** (0.060)
Inflation -0.047** (0.027) -0.048** (0.028) -0.087** (0.040)
Ongoing War -0.442 (0.277) -0.439 (0.275) -0.542* (0.281)
Wartime Reelection Cycle 0.815** (0.29) 0.83** (0.291) 0.965** (0.307)
Peacetime Reelection Cycle 0.113 (0.234) 0.063 (0.237) 0.023 (0.237)
Democratic President -0.217 (0.196)
Unemployment(Democrat only) -0.10** (0.051)
Inflation(Democrat only) 0.081 (0.057)
Constant -1.06** (0.42) -0.895** (0.437) -0.785* (0.427)
Log Likelihood -204.87 -204.25 -202.89
N 184 184 184
z statistics are in parentheses p*<.10 **p<.05. one-
tailed tests on inflation, unemployment, and
interactions. All controls two tailed tests.

Table 2: Poisson Regression Results

Std.
Variables Model 4 Err Model 5 Std. Err Model 6 Std. Err
Unemployment 0.365* (0.230) -0.314 (0.281) -0.289 (0.352)
Inflation -0.226** (0.113) -0.135 (0.147) -0.421*** (0.155)
Union Support 0.018 (0.056) - -0.028* (0.064)
High Income Support - - -0.366** (0.210) -0.398** (0.218)
War election cycle 0.969*** (0.277) 0.684*** (0.277) 0.841*** (0.293)
Peace election cycle 0.024 (0.222) 0.173 (0.209) 0.124 (0.212)
Ongoing War -0.571** (0.295) -0.503** (0.249) -0.604** (0.288)
Inflation*Union Support 0.007* (0.004) - - 0.01*** (0.004)
Unemployment*Union Support -0.010 (0.01) - - -0.002 (0.011)
Inflation*High Income - - 0.0568 (0.035) 0.0192 (0.015)
Unemployment*High Income - - 0.015** (0.018) 0.060** (0.036)
Constant -1.24 1.409 1.854 (1.639) 2.872 (2.15)
N 184 184 184
Log pseudo-likelihood -202.515 -201.998 -199.403
*p<.1 **p<.05 ***p<.001

32
Table 3: Summary
Statistics
Variable Observations Mean Std. Dev Min Max
Percentage Union 188 25.05681 7.369267 15.98 39.15
Percentage High
Income 188 7.130213 2.743903 2.69 12.19
Force 184 0.733696 0.946524 0 5
Unemployment 184 5.791848 1.608308 2.6 10.7
Inflation 184 4.132065 3.423066 -2.1 15.5

Table 4: Summary Statistics for Democrats Only

Table 5: Summary StatisticsObservations
Variable for Republicans Only
Mean Std. Dev Min Max
Variable
Percentage Union Observations
72 Mean
32.4 Std. Dev
5.052605 Min
20.9 Max
39.15
High
Percentage Union 112 19.83286 2.343016 15.98 22.62
Income
Percentage High 72
112 5.374444
8.16 2.749378
2.121988 2.69
5.22 9.9
12.19
Income

33
Table 6: Comparison with Fordham (1998): Comparing Predictions by Quarter and Term
Term % of quarters
Avg annualy predicted predicted
Fordham’s
Presidential term observed uses Our predictions better with better with
predictions
of force coalition coalition
interests interests
Truman 2 0.188 0.424 0.391 YES 88
Eisenhower 1 0.750 0.769 0.881 no 31
Eisenhower 2 1.000 0.910 0.750 no 38
Kennedy 1.000 0.611 0.701 YES 33
Johnson 1 1.750 1.222 1.461 YES 75
Johnson 2 0.563 0.451 0.487 YES 25
Nixon 1 0.313 0.569 0.481 YES 75
Nixon 2 0.667 1.017 1.017 -- 0
Ford 0.615 0.748 0.835 no 46
Carter 0.313 0.605 0.408 YES 81
Reagan 1 1.500 1.132 1.228 YES 63
Reagan 2 1.000 0.914 1.001 YES 50
Bush 0.625 0.791 0.665 YES 56
Clinton 1 0.750 0.621 0.769 YES 50

34
Figures

Figure 1

Figure 2

35
 Figure 3

Time Trends of Presidential Support from Union Members and High Income Individuals

50

40

30

20

Percentage of Supporters
10

0
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000

Year
Year vs Support from Wealthy
Year vs Union Support

36
37
38
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41
Footnotes

42
1
The key is that is that it will lead to the perception or expectations that their core constituency will be
harmed. We have seen times in U.S. economic history where stagflation occurs.
2
There is no question that directly asks whether an individual is a member of a labor union. While this
question asks whether the head of household is a member, it should still capture if the individual being
surveyed is a supporter of unions. It is likely that when the head of household is a union member, the
economic concerns will be the same for all members of the household.
3
We conducted robustness checks introducing a second term dummy variable. That variable did not
attain conventional levels of statistical significance and did not change any of the results in the model.
We also implemented presidential dummy variables. These did not change the substantive
interpretation of the results.
4
Another potential model choice is the negative binomial model, which allows for over dispersion in
the dependent variable. Estimating the models with a negative binomial model suggest that its use is
unnecessary. The ancillary parameter that tests for overdispersion is not statistically significant. A
similar analysis was also conducted using a zero-inflated poisson model to account for strategic
avoidance (Clark 2003). The results presented here do not implement a ZIP model for comparability
with the original Fordham (1998) paper.