Author Meets Critics: Andrew Payne's "War on the Ballot"

Session Submission Type: Author meet critics

Session Description

This roundtable brings together a group of leading scholars to discuss Andrew Payne's book, "War on the Ballot: How the Election Cycle Shapes Presidential Decision-Making in War" (Columbia University Press, 2023).

It is an inconvenient truth, rarely admitted, that leaders habitually take electoral considerations into account when making decisions about military and diplomatic strategy in war. At once commander-in-chief and holder of the highest elected office, presidents must balance the often-competing objectives of the national interest with their own political self-interest when weighing alternative courses of action. Yet while we all have some intuitive sense that elections “matter” in some way, exactly how, why or when they do so is not well understood. Frequently invoked in an ad hoc manner to give color to historical accounts, the systematic analysis of the relationship between electoral politics and wartime decision-making remains a blind spot in an otherwise bountiful literature on the domestic components of U.S. foreign policy.

War on the Ballot addresses this gap, drawing on a wealth of archival material and interviews with senior officials to reveal the surprisingly large role played by electoral politics during some of America’s costliest wars since 1945. All too often, critical decisions in Korea (1950-53), Vietnam (1963-73) and Iraq (2003-11) were taken with one eye on the domestic political calendar, sometimes with striking disregard for the national interest. In each case, recently declassified documents and insider accounts of key decision-making episodes unearth a series a series of opportunities to limit the human and financial costs of each war, gain material advantage on the battlefield, or sue for peace, which were all missed thanks to the exigencies of the electoral cycle.

The roundtable comprises a range of scholars who have published widely on adjacent themes, including the role of public opinion and polarization in presidential decision-making, as well as the influence of domestic constraints in debates about US foreign policy and grand strategy more generally. They are ideally placed both to weigh the arguments presented in the book and reflect on the theoretical and empirical implications for the study of democratic accountability and war. The panel will also reflect on the troubling normative questions raised by the book. Responsiveness to the concerns of voters is cherished as a core principle of democracy, yet time and again it has led to ill-advised strategies on the battlefield. While this book demonstrates that electoral politics clearly matters when it comes to high stakes decisions involving war and peace, whether it should do so remains very much open to debate.

Sub Unit

• Division 19: International Security 

Chair

• Elizabeth Nathan Saunders Columbia University

Presenters

• Andrew Payne City University of London

• Peter Harris Colorado State University

• Jordan Tama American University

• Jessica L. P. Weeks University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Peter Trubowitz London School of Economics