Increased Saliency of Foreign Policy at the Times of Economic Hardships

• In Event: Elite Cues, Public Opinion, and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Most studies in diversionary use of force literature focus on drivers (e.g., economic crisis, presidential approvals) and target selection (e.g., rivals, human rights abusers etc.), yet treat the public as passive followers of politics, who are ready to consume with whatever they are fed. This paper strongly challenges the “passive consumer” assumption, and theorizes about the preconditions of diversionary use of force by building a bridge between the motivations and actions to divert. We argue that when leaders have incentives to resort to use of force abroad for diversionary purposes, they first need to increase the saliency of foreign policy issues in public sphere to pave the ground for public to take the bait. We test this argument in the context of US, using mediation model between economic difficulties and use of force abroad through increased saliency of foreign policy issues by collecting presidential speeches from 1961 to 2022. Our findings show that leaders do not treat the public as passive consumers, but attempt to shape their predispositions first to have them convinced about the policy. In so doing, our paper contributes to the diversionary use of force literature in both theoretical and empirical ends: we do not only advance the theoretical mechanism by arguing that leaders also need to prepare the public for their strategy, but also provide a more accurate test by adopting a mediation model instead of a moderation one in testing the novel theoretical mechanism.

Authors

• Efe Tokdemir, Bilkent University

• Burak Kazim Yilmaz, Emory University