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It has become almost common place to assert that American presidents manipulate foreign policy,
even highly security-laden issues, for electoral advantage. When President George H.W. Bush in 1992
expanded the Iraq no-fly zone and President Bill Clinton in 1996 used force against Iraq in the midst of
presidential elections, observers suggested that both acted at least as much to gain a domestic political
advantage as to respond to an international threat (Hoagland, 1992; Harris & Graham 1996). More
recently, both Republicans and Democrats have suggested President George W. Bush formulated policy
on Iraq in 2002-2003 and the war on terrorism since 2001 at least partially with an eye on electoral
calculations (Bumiller and Mitchell, 2002; Eliperin, 2002). It is also commonly assumed that one of the
reasons the Bush administration pressed hard for war in Iraq in 2003 was to avoid the prospect of a war
during the 2004 election campaign (Milbank, 2003; Purdum, 2003; VandeHei, 2003).
Despite these frequent assertions, systematically demonstrating that elections substantively affect
foreign policy choices has remained an elusive task for scholars. While it is often suggested that leaders
will use foreign policy to domestic advantage to create an “October Surprise” (a dramatic foreign policy
achievement shortly before an election), be tempted to divert public attention from domestic turmoil by
using force internationally (as popularized by the movie Wag the Dog), or become extremely responsive
to the public during election campaigns, scholarly findings defy simple characterization. While
researchers have made progress in considering theoretical and empirical issues related to the influence of
upcoming elections on foreign policy decision making, a clear picture of when (if at all), how, and under
what conditions policy makers adjust their foreign policies in anticipation of facing their electorate has
yet to emerge.
At the core of this debate lies the potentially conflicting incentives leaders face between their
positions as policy maker and politician. The American president can be thought of having three inter-
related responsibilities: commander-in-chief of the military (policy maker in the foreign realm); chief
executive of the state (policy maker in the domestic realm); and political party leader (politician
concerned with gaining and maintaining political office) (Ostrom & Job, 1986). The implicit question in
Convention