TITLE:
Testing Structural Explanations for U.S. Military Intervention: Do Support for the President and Conservatives in Congress Embolden the President?
AUTHORS:
Afrimadona, Scot Schraufnagel
KEYWORDS:
Foreign Policy Crisis, Checks and Balances, US Foreign Policy, War Powers
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Political Science,
Vol.9 No.2,
February
15,
2019
ABSTRACT: In this research, we use insights drawn from Institutional Theory to
explore and test the ability of Congress to check presidential foreign policy
decision-making. Specifically, we test structural explanations, which tap
aggregate presidential support in Congress and legislator ideology. Our concern
is whether these institutional dynamics associate with a president’s decision
to conduct military operations. We analyze relationships in each chamber of
Congress, independently, to test whether support or ideology is more or less
significant in one chamber versus the other. We find, in the time period 1954
to 2013, a statistically and substantively important relationship between both
presidential support in Congress and aggregate legislator ideology and the use
of force decision. Moreover, this is the case in both chambers. In the testing, we
control for the partisanship of the president, the political party which holds
a majority of seats in each chamber, and a host of other considerations
scholars argue will influence the likelihood of a show of force.