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Discretionary Military Action in Political Time

Abstract This study investigates whether a president’s place in Stephen Skowronek’s theory of political time affects the likelihood that the president will use his power as commander-in-chief to take discretionary military actions abroad. The study presents a new approach to an age-old question: what makes the president more or less likely to decide to use military force abroad? The study’s theory section combines Skowronek’s framework and the larger political time the literature with insights from literature on diversionary theory, foreign policy decision-making, and executive-legislative relations. The political time literature argues that the president’s relationship with the dominant party regime of their day, and the strength of that regime, creates systematic incentives for presidents who serve during similar places in political time. The theoretical framework presented in this study argues that presidents who are unaffiliated with the dominant party regime of their day will be more likely than others to engage American armed forces in minor military conflicts. The study uses two datasets to test this argument and finds evidence that presidents who serve during the politics of preemption and the politics of reconstruction are more likely than other presidents to order the military into relatively small-scale, minor international conflicts. This finding builds on Skowronek’s argument that presidents who serve during the politics of articulation are the most likely to engage in major wars.