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“Whereas the Imperial Government of Japan has committed unprovoked acts of war against the
Government and the people of the United States of America: Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and
House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war
between the United States and the Imperial Government of Japan which has thus been thrust upon the
United States is hereby formally declared; and the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ
the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on
war against the Imperial Government of Japan; and, to bring the conflict to a successful termination, to
employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to
carry on war against the Imperial Government of Japan; and, to bring the conflict to a successful
termination, all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.”
- Resolution Approved, December 8, 1941, 4:10 p.m. E.S.T.
“There are things in the Constitution that have been overtaken by events, by time. Declaration of
war is one of them. There are things no longer relevant to a modern society. Why declare war if you don't
have to? We are saying to the President, use your judgment. So, to demand that we declare war is to
strengthen something to death. You have got a hammerlock on this situation, and it is not called for.
Inappropriate, anachronistic, it isn't done anymore.”
- Chairman Henry Hyde, October 3, 2002, in session of House of
Representatives, during hearing on Res. 114, AUTHORIZATION
FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE AGAINST IRAQ.
The question of why states go to war is discussed often enough by international relations
scholars. But the related question of why states declare war has received little attention and no
systematic analysis. Part of the problem is that wars are already an infrequent occurrence and
declarations of war are even rarer. But a bigger problem is that most scholars just don’t view
these events as particularly meaningful. I argue that this is a mistake and in this paper highlight
several interesting correlations that point to the need to study declarations of war further. Thus,
in the briefest sense, this paper has two purposes: first, to convince you that declarations of war
should be studied as important aspects of public diplomacy and, second, to present you with
several plausible explanations on why states declare war and how one might go about testing
these explanations.
The paper proceeds as follows. I begin the exploration of whether declarations of war
matter at all by trying to correlate them to some important variable. Next, I discuss coding rules
and define what exactly I mean by a declaration of war. After coding the 78 international wars
Convention