Investigating Risk-taking

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cabinet makes it difficult for him to settle for less without removing the last doubts of incompatibility. At the same time, these conditions allow rivals to simply wait at the wings.

Under the conditions of separation of purpose, a prime minister is likely to be challenged when he does not honor earlier tough policy commitment or when he does but his policy fails. This is so, because in both situations he demonstrates his (perceived) lack of leadership skills either by softness or failure. As for the first, should the prime minister choose to continue to work toward a peaceful solution when most options appear to be exhausted, he will risk losing his job by doing so and not honoring his commitment. If instead he marches down on the path toward war, he still has a chance to preserve his position at home. He might win or lose, but at least there remains a chance that he remains in office. If he wins, his position at home is likely to be solidified and party opposition silenced – at least for a while.

If he loses, he will probably be ejected from office but this outcome is no worse than the perceived consequences of not taking the risks involved in war.²⁵⁶

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In presidential democracies not all of these factors can be expected to play a role. Public opinion is unquestionably part of the equation. Because presidential survival does not depend on the executive the president’s party is not a useful indicator of problems with the assembly.

Neither is the existence of party factions, because even an adverse majority does not necessarily influence the productivity of the government very much.²⁵⁷ A better indicator of an adversarial legislature would be the kind of foreign policy Congress prefers: whether it is close to or far from the policy the president prefers. Adversarial congressional foreign policy is a sign of presidential difficulties with the legislature. Incidentally, Congressional dynamic is also a better indicator of future – election time – challenges than cabinet dynamics, since Congress is a more likely recruitment base for the presidency than the cabinet, including the vice president.²⁵⁸ (Nonetheless, the behavior of the cabinet will be traced in the case studies to ascertain it did not hold the president hostage.)

The second issue to resolve is how to ascertain the presence of a gain or loss framework when the presence of domestically adverse conditions do not necessarily lead decision-makers to invoke the loss frame? This is crucial, because the presence of domestically adversarial conditions does not guarantee that these factors actually had an effect on the given decision.

To be able to claim an effect, first it must be ascertained that the chief executive officers in both systems were aware of their domestic problems. This only takes us one step closer, since being aware of adverse conditions and acting according to them are not the same thing.

Therefore it must be shown that these conditions had an effect on the actual decisions.

257 Jones 1994, chapter 6.

258 Most presidential contenders come from the Senate. Burden, Barry C. 2002. “United States Senators as Presidential Candidates.”Political Science Quarterly 117 (1): 81-102.

Since 1945, only Bush Sr. was elected with the help of the president he had served. The other three post-war vice president who became presidents – Truman, Johnson, and Nixon – came into power under different

circumstances. Truman and Johnson acquired the office upon the death of their predecessors, i.e. never contested the office as vide-presidents. Nixon, who lost to Kennedy when he contested the office as vice president, won only eight years later. The rest of the post-war presidents were most likely to be either former members of Congress (e.g. Kennedy, Ford) or former state governors (Carter, Reagan, Clinton, G. W. Bush).

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Unfortunately, researching the motives of decision-makers is particularly difficult.

Judgment must be made on the basis of what they actually said not what they necessarily had in mind. Worse, even when they did say something relevant, the researcher can only hope that their views were recorded in government documents. On top of all this, since decision-makers do not want to be accused of unstatesman-like behavior, they “can be expected to go to great length to conceal these motives.”²⁵⁹

Cramer believes that the best way of trying to find domestic political motives is to concentrate on the presence or absence of the following factors: the decision-makers involved are kept to a minimum, use of force appears premature, after using force, the opposition criticizes the chief executive’s decision to use force and foreign states criticize the country for using force.²⁶⁰ Unquestionably, these may indicate domestically driven behavior. But they can be the symptoms of many other things – need for secrecy, groupthink, misperception, etc. All in all, these are inadequate guides in deciding whether domestic politics did play a role. Thus some other methods must be found.

Instead, first, explicit references to domestic political factors must be sought during the decision-making process. The questions to be answered are: what factors did decision-makers consider when evaluating the possible alternatives? Did they make any explicit references to the domestic political factors? Did these factors point toward a decision for war? If yes, did decision-makers embrace domestic factors or openly rejected them? That is, did they believe that risking war would enhance their domestic political standing? If domestic factors were mentioned, were they mentioned prior to the decision or only as its rationalization ex post?

Yet, it is possible that no references will be found to domestic politics. However, this may not necessarily indicate the lack of their influence. It is certain that domestic politics did not bias the decision in favor of risk-taking when decision-makers choose war contrary to

259 Cramer 2004, 3.

260 Cramer 2004, 4-6.

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domestic incentives regardless of whether domestic factors were mentioned. There, of course, remains the possibility for situations when domestic factors were not explicitly mentioned but would pull the government toward action internationally. In such situations, the question to be answered is whether international imperatives themselves provide a compelling rationale to fight. If not, whether misperception may be responsible for the incongruence of international imperatives and risk-taking rather than domestic factors. If none, it is sure that domestic politics stood behind the decision.

The third question is how does one go about investigating a hypothesis of domestically defined risk-taking if one only analyzes wars – proxies for risk-taking? In other words, how is it possible to differentiate between wars started as a result of the domestically induced loss frame or risk-taking or, say, as a result of a loss frame born out of the consideration of purely international factors? The answer to the previous question already provides some hints about this. Where risk-taking was not motivated by domestic factors, I expect that decision-makers based their choice purely on international political factors. That is risky behavior was not domestically motivated.

3.3 Case selection