Limited Spin: When the Public Punishes Leaders Who Lie about Military Action

• Author: Sarah Maxey
• Date: 01 February 2021
• DOI: 10.1177/0022002720961517
• Published date: 01 February 2021
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Limited Spin: When the

Public Punishes Leaders

Who Lie about Military

Action

Sarah Maxey

1

Abstract

Presidents have significant incentives to mislead the public about the use of force.

Under what conditions are members of the public willing to hold presidents

accountable for what they say about military action? This article examines both spin

and deceit at the micro-level to clarify when individuals are most likely to punish

presidents for misinformation. Three survey experiments demonstrate that

presidents incur political costs for misinformation, even when operations succeed.

Introducing partisanship into the analysis then reveals that not all individuals are

equally likely to punish all presidents—Republican leaders primarily concerned with

their base have the most leeway to mislead. The findings highlight the dynamic nature

of democratic accountability and domestic constraints on military force. Rather than

a static institutional feature, the strength of accountability can vary across presidents

and electoral coalitions. Additionally, the results show political costs are not limited

to large-scale deception—even spin generates backlash.

Keywords

military intervention, public opinion, democratic institutions, misinformation

Democratic institutions constrain the use of force by empowering the domestic

audience to hold leaders accountable for their decisions. In the context of military

1

Loyola University Chicago, IL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Sarah Maxey, Loyola University Chicago, 1032 W. Sheridan Rd., Chicago, IL 60660, USA.

Email: smaxey@luc.edu

Journal of Conflict Resolution

2021, Vol. 65(2-3) 283-312

ªThe Author(s) 2020

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DOI: 10.1177/0022002720961517

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interventions, however, leaders hold a strong information advantage and can employ

misinformation to increase their latitude for action (Baum and Groeling 2010;

Jacobs and Shapiro 2000; Kernell 1997; Western 2005). Misinformation encom-

passes deceit, associated with outright lies (Schuessler 2015, 8), and spin, which

allows leaders to minimize domestic dissent by emphasizing certain facts over others

(Mearsheimer 2011, 16). Both deceit and spin threaten democratic accountability for

the use of force. The public cannot meaningfully hold leaders accountable for and

serve as a check on military action if it does not know the reality of the situation.

Whether democratic institutions are strong enough to consistently deter misinfor-

mation remains a topic of debate. One side expects the public to defer to the president

on national security issues, creating leeway for misinformation (Mearsheimer 2011;

Schuessler 2015). The other expects democratic institutions to ensure lies are

exposed and met with a public backlash that outweighs any potential benefits (Reiter

2012). This debate remains unresolved in part because of its focus on elite incentives

for large-scale deception. Both sides use historical evidence to explore leaders’

decision-making processes and provide insight into whether leaders anticipate public

backlash. However, this approach gives us little information about how the public

actually responds to misinfo rmation and whether elite cal culations are accurate,

leaving a key question unanswered: Under what conditions are members of the public

willing to hold presidents accountable for what they say about military action?

As a result of its focus on elite incentives, the existing debate evaluates con-

straints as relatively static features of democratic institutions—leaders either are or

are not held accountable for what they say about military action.

1

Instead, I argue

that democratic accountability is dynamic and that this dynamic stems from varia-

tion in the public’s willingness to impose political costs on different types of leaders

under different circumstances. To move the debate forward and better assess the

strength of domestic constraints, it is thus necessary to investigate accountability’s

microfoundations. Settling this debate and understanding its implications for foreign

policy is of growing importance as concern over “alternative facts” and “fake

news”—combined with ideological and affective polarization that make individuals

less likely to doubt elites from their own party—takes center stage in American

politics (Mason 2018; Rogowski and Sutherland 2016; Schuessler 2017).

The article investigates publ ic reactions to misinformatio n with three survey

experiments. The first considers whether the public ever imposes costs on leaders

who provide misinformation a nd whether these costs apply equal ly to spin and

deceit. The second examines potential moderat ors of individuals’ willingness to

impose costs, including the nature of the threat, perceptions of the president’s intent,

and the intervention’s outcome. A third experiment evaluates whether all individuals

are equally likely to punish all presidents, taking partisanship into account.

The results indicate that whe n their attempts at misinformat ion are exposed,

presidents incur short-term political costs in the form of lower support for thei r

policies. Operations that end successfully attenuate but do not eliminate the costs

of misinformation and presidents are punished as severely for mistakes as they are

284 Journal of Conflict Resolution 65(2-3)