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have claimed to look at foreign policy events generally, but in practice have heavily weighted
their events towards conflict ((Mueller 1973;Kernell 1978;MacKuen 1983;Ostrom and Simon
1985)).
There is also a vast literature on the diversionary use of force (Levy 1989;Fordham
2001;Fordham 1998b;Prins 2001;Goemans 2000;DeRouen 2000;Gowa 1998;Meernik
2001;Davies 2002;Enterline and Gleditsch 2000;Dassel and Reinhardt 1999;Gelpi 1997).
Relatively little attention has been given, however, to political timing of other dramatic foreign
policy actions, with some exceptions (Brace and Hinckley 1993;Marra and others 1990)).
The narrow focus on force as a source of short-term political gain may not be
theoretically justified. The conflict-cohesion model privileges force, but there is mounting
evidence that public reactions are not adequately explained by that theory. For example,
“rallies” do not automatically follow uses of force ((Lian and Oneal 1993;Hugick and Gallup
1991;Edwards 1990)), and the strength of public support depends on variables such as media
coverage and reaction of opinion leaders ((Brody 1991;Brody 1984;Baker and Oneal 2001)), on
the goals of the president’s action ((Oneal and others 1996)). These variations are not consistent
with the predictions of the conflict-cohesion model, but are consistent with a “media priming”
model of presidential support – and presidential rallies.
The Media-Priming Model of Rallies
The “media priming” model explains rallies as the result of sudden changes in media
attention shifting the basis of presidential evaluation to issues more favorable to the president.
The basic framework was suggested by Iyengar and Kinder (1987), who argue that presidential
approval can explained as a weighted average of a president’s rating on individual issue areas,
with the weights determined by recent media coverage. In this view, individuals do have stable
Convention