Douglas L. Kriner

The Casualty Gap: The Causes and Consequences of American Wartime Inequalities

PREFACE 1. The Casualty Gap 2. Inequality and U.S. Casualties from WWII to Iraq 3. Selection, Occupational Assignment and the Emergence of the Casualty Gap 4. Do Casualty Gaps Matter? 5. The Broader Consequences of Casualty Inequalities 6. Political Ramifications of the Vietnam Casualty Gap 7. Political Ramifications of the Iraq Casualty Gap 8. The Casualty Gap and Civic Engagement 9. The Future of the Casualty Gap REFERENCES LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES

The Influence of Federal Spending on Presidential Elections

Do voters reward presidents for increased federal spending in their local constituencies? Previous research on the electoral consequences of federal spending has focused almost exclusively on Congress, mostly with null results. However, in a county- and individual-level study of presidential elections from 1988 to 2008, we present evidence that voters reward incumbent presidents (or their partys nominee) for increased federal spending in their communities. This relationship is stronger in battleground states. Furthermore, we show that federal grants are an electoral currency whose value depends on both the clarity of partisan responsibility for its provision and the characteristics of the recipients. Presidents enjoy increased support from spending in counties represented by co-partisan members of Congress. At the individual level, we also find that ideology conditions the response of constituents to spending; liberal and moderate voters reward presidents for federal spending at higher levels than conservatives. Our results suggest that, although voters may claim to favor deficit reduction, presidents who deliver such benefits are rewarded at the ballot box.

Iraq Casualties and the 2006 Senate Elections

Prior scholarship on the effects of war casualties on U.S. elections has focused on large-scale conflicts. For this article, we examined whether or not the much-smaller casualty totals incurred in Iraq had a similar influence on the 2006 Senate contests. We found that the change in vote share from 2000 to 2006 for Republican Senate candidates at both the state and county level was significantly and negatively related to local casualty tallies and rates. These results provide compelling evidence for the existence of a democratic brake on military adventurism, even in small-scale wars, but one that is strongest in communities that have disproportionately shouldered a wars costs.

Presidential Particularism and Divide-the-Dollar Politics

When influencing the allocation of federal dollars across the country, do presidents strictly pursue maximally efficient outcomes, or do they systematically target dollars to politically influential constituencies? In a county-level analysis of federal spending from 1984 to 2008, we find that presidents are not universalistic, but particularistic—that is, they reliably direct dollars to specific constituents to further their political goals. As others have noted, presidents target districts represented by their co-partisans in Congress in the pursuit of influence vis-à-vis the legislature. But we show that, at much higher levels, presidents target both counties within swing states and counties in core states that strongly supported the president in recent elections. Swing state particularism is especially salient during presidential reelection years, and core partisan counties within swing states are most heavily rewarded. Rather than strictly pursuing visions of good public policy or pandering to the national median voter, our results suggest that presidents systematically prioritize the needs of politically important constituents.

Divided Government and Congressional Investigations

This article explores the political determinants of congressional investigatory activity. Using Mayhews list of high-profile probes updated through 2006, we developed five measures of the frequency and intensity of investigative oversight. Contra Mayhew, we found that divided government spurs congressional investigatory activity. A shift from unified to divided government yields a five-fold increase in the number of hearings held and quadruples their duration. Conditional party government models also offer explanatory leverage because homogeneous majorities are more likely to investigate the president in divided government and less likely to do so in unified government. This dynamic is strongest in the House, but analyses of the Senate also afford consistent, if muted, evidence of partisan agenda control.

Investigating the President: Committee Probes and Presidential Approval, 1953-2006

For more than fifty years, scholars have described how a unitary executive sitting at the top of an elaborate institutional hierarchy has significantly expanded presidential power. Standard portrayals of Congress, by contrast, cast it as a weak institution, beset with collective action dilemmas, transaction costs and super-majoritarian requirements, that is ill-equipped to check even brazen assertions of executive power. However, we argue that, even when Congress cannot act legislatively, the investigative reach of its committees serves as a potentially important check on presidential power. Investigations are often specifically crafted to attract sustained media attention, and they can represent genuine institutional challenges to executive actions. We argue that committee probes are able to influence presidential behavior indirectly by eroding the president’s standing among the public. Marshaling an original data set of more than 3,500 investigative hearings and over 50 years of survey data, we show that increased investigative activity in the hearing room significantly decreases the president’s job approval rating. We then supplement this observational analysis with experimental data, which both confirms our causal assertion that investigations decrease public support for the White House and shows that committee-led charges of misconduct have a greater influence on public opinion than identical charges not attributed to a congressional actor.

Reassessing American Casualty Sensitivity: The Mediating Influence of Inequality

Scholars have long conceptualized public support for war as the product of a cost–benefit calculation in which combat casualties factor significantly. This article argues that, when calculating the human costs of conflict, Americans care about more than just the number of war dead; they also care about the distribution of those casualties across society. Using two original survey experiments, we show that inequalities in sacrifice affect Americans’ casualty sensitivity. We find strong evidence that learning about socioeconomic inequalities in casualties in previous wars decreases Americans’ casualty tolerance toward future military endeavors. These effects are stronger for some mission types, particularly non-humanitarian interventions, than others. The effects are also concentrated among Americans from states that suffered high casualty rates in the Iraq War. Our results suggest that raising public awareness of inequalities in wartime sacrifice could significantly strengthen popular constraints on policy makers contemplating military solutions to future crises.

Conscription, Inequality, and Partisan Support for War

While recent scholarship suggests that conscription decreases support for military action, we argue that its effect is contingent both on a draft’s consequences for inequality in military sacrifice and on partisanship. In an experiment examining public support for defending South Korea, we find that reinstating the draft significantly decreases support for war among Democrats; however, this effect is diminished if the draft reduces inequality in sacrifice. Support for war among Republicans, by contrast, responds neither to information about conscription nor its inequality ramifications. A follow-up experiment shows that conscription continues to significantly decrease support for war, even in the context of a retaliatory strike against a foreign state that targeted American forces. Moreover, partisanship and the inequality ramifications of the draft continue to moderate the relationships between conscription and public opinion. More broadly, our study emphasizes the importance of examining how Americans evaluate foreign policy–relevant information through partisan lenses.

Limited War and American Political Engagement

Prior studies of war and political engagement focus on mass mobilizing, successful conflicts and treat war as a monolithic variable affecting all Americans equally. In this study, we analyze the more limited, less successful conflicts prevalent since 1945, and we examine the influence of disparities in local communities’ casualty rates on their residents’ patterns of political engagement. Using both individual- and aggregate-level data, we show that citizens from communities that suffered high casualty rates in the Vietnam and Korean Wars were significantly less politically engaged in each conflicts wake than their peers from low-casualty communities.

Congress, public opinion, and an informal constraint on the commander-in-chief:

US presidents have routinely ordered the use of force without seeking prior authorisation from Congress. However, this practice does not mean that the legislature is irrelevant, as Congress often influences decisions by exercising informal political levers. One of the most important is through Congress’ ability to affect popular support for the commander-in-chief. Through a pair of experiments embedded on nationally representative opinion surveys, this article evaluates whether Congress’ constitutional prerogatives in war powers remain relevant when battling the president in the public sphere. Policy criticism significantly decreased support for the use of force, as did challenges to administration actions on constitutional grounds. Although Congress routinely fails to use the constitutional tools at its disposal to check the commander-in-chief, these powers bolster Congress’ capacity to influence public opinion. Hence, while presidents enjoy considerable leeway in the military arena, Congress’ capacity to erode public support can serve as a check on presidential power.