Partisan Motivated Reasoning and the Rally Around the Flag Effect

• In Event: Understanding the Contours of Partisanship

Abstract

The rally around the flag effect, first posited by Mueller (1970), argues that presidential approval has a tendency to spike in the short-term surrounding international conflicts, major diplomatic actions, and war. Critically, this approval cuts across political affiliation. However, as time wears on and the costs of war become apparent to Americans, there is a gradual decrease in support for war and a polarization in attitudes about war. There are two causal mechanisms proposed behind this theory. The first, the “patriotism” argument, posits that the voters see the president as the embodiment of the nation; the other, the “opinion leadership” argument posits that in times of international conflict, the opposition party fails to criticize the President and so the news coverage of the crisis is one-sided, giving individuals no opposition cues (Baker and Oneal 2001). Here we build on a larger project testing the limits of classic theories in political science in the face of current state of American party identity and the overwhelming strength of partisan-motivated reasoning in structuring public opinion and political behavior. In this paper, we posit that given the level of political polarization in modern politics, the rally around the flag effect will only be evident among independents. In accord with Baker and Oneal’s (20001) finding that presidential approval ratings will only experience a bump when there is bipartisan support, we argue that in today’s hyperpartisan environment, no “rally” effects are possible as there is no bipartisan coverage of any international conflict. Instead, we argue that not only will presidents not experience a bump in approval ratings but who approves of the president during international crises will be partisanship-dependent. We test this by leveraging American opinion towards American intervention in Syria in 2013 (Obama) and 2017 (Trump), respectively. Using two original surveys conducted by YouGov in 2013 and 2017, we examine the partisan-based attitudes of military opinions about using strategic air-strikes in Syria, and find that partisan cues dominate short-run opinion such that Presidents are unlikely to experience a rally around the flag effect, even in the short-term, and that responses to crises are dependent upon co-partisanship with the president. We discuss the implications of this both for the literature on public opinion on foreign policy and for partisan-motivated reasoning more generally.

Authors

• Joshua J. Dyck, University of Massachusetts Lowell

• Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz, University of Rhode Island