Presidentialism and Foreign Policy

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given regime will be insensitive to temporary changes. That is, it will behave the same way when there is a separation of purpose within the elite or the society and when these are united in purpose. However, when the indirect features of accountability are present, the separation of purpose has a differentiating role in risk-taking. How this plays out with regard to risk attitude and within the framework of prospect theory is depicted in detail below.

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Therefore, presidents are expected to base their foreign policy decision on realpolitik, attempting to select the alternative that is most likely to further the power and security of their country in the international arena.

3.2.3.1 Elections

Because of the fixed term of office, presidents are free of popular constraints during their term. Because they are held accountable only at elections, they do not have to maintain high popularity throughout their term in office as DeRouen suggests.²⁴⁷ This leads to the conclusion that within the election cycle presidents are likely to divert at the end of their term if they are unpopular then. This is the only time when diversion makes sense. Since the popularity of every president slumps during their terms,²⁴⁸ they all face the diversionary incentive by the time they come up for reelection. However, because of the shortness of the rallying phenomenon (even the more optimistic estimates put it to six months), diversionary use of force should occur close to the election. Even though it would be a fallacy to assume too much from the public, the fixed term makes diversionary intentions too obvious and, hence, ineffective. Moreover, as Auerswald argues, the pre-election period is the time when the elite and the society are most divided, hence diversion is unlikely to produce the rallying effect.²⁴⁹

(H1A) Public opinion (approval) is not likely to influence presidential foreign-policy choices.

247 DeRouen 1995, 674.

248 Jones 1997, 123; Kernell 1978, 506; Mueller 1970.

249 Auerswald 1999, 472.

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3.2.3.2 The Legislature

The legislature has limited means to control the president. It has no short-term weapon to curb presidential decisions in foreign policy making. Their law-making, possibly impeachment, and budgetary powers need some time to wield. In other words, as long as countries need to respond swiftly to international events, presidential preeminence is ‘guaranteed’. Declarations of war by the legislative branch may upset this relationship, but after Word War II declarations of war lost their power by going out of fashion or becoming mere formalities.

Even in the post-Vietnam war era when Congress tried to curb presidential power, American presidents preserved enough freedom of action.²⁵⁰

Consequently, there is only one situation when presidential preeminence wanes: when presidents utilize their treaty-making prerogatives. Treaties must be ratified by Congress and it inevitably makes presidents sensitive to the preferences of the Senate. Treaty-making, however, figures proportionally low among foreign policy problems and conflict termination.²⁵¹ Even then, if they can, presidents opt for executive agreements/executive orders rather than formal treaties, which effectively prevents Congressional interference.²⁵²

Such a conceptualization of presidential power only represents one of the two alternative approaches to presidential power. For example, Reiter and Tillman argue that an additional and contradictory conceptualization of presidential power is possible. This second approach posits that separation of powers and multiple and competing popular legitimacies results in that both the legislative and the executive have power to constrain certain agents

250 Stoll 1984, 233. For example, despite passing the War Power Act in 1973, which limited presidential troop commitments to sixty days without Congressional authorization but allowed for an additional thirty-day extension upon a written report from the president, Congress never invoked it.

251 Wallensteen, Peter and Margareta Sollenberg. 2000. “Armed Conflict, 1989-99.”Journal of Peace Research 37 (5): 635-649.

252 Mayer, Kenneth R. 2001.With the Stroke of A Pen. Executive Orders and Presidential Power.Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, chapters 1 and 2.

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(such as the military). Consequently, presidents are weak as they are under strong constraints.²⁵³

The problem with such an approach is that the domestic limitations on presidential power are automatically projected to foreign policy making, which leads to false expectations about the action or the likely risk-taking behavior of American presidents. That is to say, when discussing presidential preeminence, it must be done in consideration of the policy area in question. As Aaron Wildavsky argued with regard to the United States, there appears to be two presidencies – a domestic and a foreign one. Of these, the foreign policy presidency is characterized by strong presidential power, whereas the domestic presidency limits presidential power substantially.²⁵⁴

Therefore, with regard to international risk-taking I expect that

(H1B) Executive relationship with the legislature/legislative foreign policy preferences is/are not likely to influence presidential foreign-policy choices.

3.2.3.3 The Cabinet

The cabinet does not have a constraining role either. Ideal type presidential regimes are characterized by single-headed executives. That is, cabinet members depend on the president for their job entirely. They are there to advise, but the decision and the responsibility are of the president’s. The power of cabinet members or subordinates in general depends on the quality of advice they give. It does not matter whether they may be individually popular, they cannot mean a threat to the president since they cannot remove him from office. Ironically, this inability also limits the amount of independent following they can generate.

Any challenges in the executive branch are hardly credible. The most credible challengers would be the vice presidents, who are the only executive officials likely to contest

253 Reiter and Tillman 2002, 815. Such conceptualization of the power of the American president is quite common. See for example, Auerswald 1999.

254 Wildavsky, Aaron. 1966. “The Two Presidencies.”Trans-Action4 (December): 7-14.

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the presidency, but disloyalty rarely pays dividends for them. First, because disloyalty rarely goes down too well with the public, and when it would have a public rationale, the president is an influential party member and can successfully divert funds and support from a disloyal vice president’s presidential bid. In fact, in the United States, no vice president could benefit from disloyalty to the president under the current system in which the president and the vice president run together. Even unpopular presidents preserve enough power and prestige to block the presidential ambitions of possibly disloyal vice presidents.

The presence of any contending rivals in the cabinet is quite unlikely although not unheard of. For example, Truman’s second Secretary of Defense, Louis B. Johnson, made no secret of his coveting of Truman’s job and often worked at cross-purposes. However, even Truman’s patience ran out after a year and a half when Johnson was replaced with George Marshall.²⁵⁵ All in all, instead of catering for Johnson’s opinion so as to pacify him, the president used his superiority over the cabinet and simply fired him.

(H1C) The preferences of the cabinet are not likely to play any role in presidential foreign-policy choices.