Article,
Diverting the Legislature: Executive-Legislative Relations, the Economy, and US Uses of Force1
INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, 54 (2): 361-379 (June 2010)
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.
