Peace at What Price

Peace at WhatPrice?
Why do some leaders stay in wars they are unlikely to win? Why do
other leaders give in to their adversaries demands when continued
fighting is still possible? Peace at What Price? answers these questions
by offering a new theoretical concept: leader culpability. Culpable
leaders those who can be credibly linked to the decision to involve the
state in the war face a significantly higher likelihood of domestic pun-
ishment if they fail to win a war than nonculpable leaders who do the
same. Consequently, culpable leaders will prosecute wars very differ-
ently from their nonculpable counterparts. Utilizing a large-N analysis
and case illustrations, this books findings challenge the conventional
wisdom regarding the relationship between war outcomes and leader
removal and demonstrate the necessity of looking at individual leader
attributes, instead of collapsing leaders by regime type. The book also
offers new insights on democracies at war and speaks to the American
experience in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Sarah E.Croco is Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at the

University of Maryland, College Park. Her work has appeared in the
American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political
Science, The Journal of Politics, International Studies Quarterly, and
World Politics, among others. She has also won numerous teaching
awards.
Peace at WhatPrice?
Leader Culpability and the Domestic
Politics of War Termination
SARAH E.CROCO
University of Maryland
32 Avenue of the Americas, NewYork, NY 10013-2473,USA
Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the Universitys mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.
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Information on this title:www.cambridge.org/9781107081499
Sarah E.Croco2015
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge UniversityPress.
First published2015
Printed in the United States of America
A catalog record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging in PublicationData
Croco, Sarah E., 1978 author.
Peace at what price? : leader culpability and the domestic politics of war
termination / Sarah E. Croco.
pagescm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-107-08149-9 (hardback)
1. War Termination Political aspects. 2. Politics and war.
3. Administrative responsibility. 4. Public opinion. I. Title.
JZ6385.C7762015
327.17dc232014034729
ISBN 978-1-107-08149-9 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs
for external or third-party Internet Web sites referred to in this publication and does not
guarantee that any content on such Web sites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
To my family.
Especially Ed and SuzanneCroco
&
Ian, Lacey, and Natalie.
You ask, what is our aim? Ican answer in one word. It is victory,
victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however
long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no
survival.
Winston Churchill
Fact is, we went to war, and now there aint no going back. . . .
Once you in it, you init.
Slim Charles, Mission Accomplished, TheWire
Contents
List of Tables page viii

List of Figures x
Acknowledgments xiii
1 Introduction 1
2 A Theory of Leader Culpability 19
3 Culpability and Domestic Punishment 52
4 Culpability and Leader Behavior 100
5 Culpability in the Legislature 131
6 Conclusion 168
Appendix to Chapter3 191

Works Cited 219
Index 231
vii
Tables
2.1 Possible Wartime Scenarios:State Performance and

Leader Culpability page 39
3.1 Possible Wartime Leader Types 54
3.2 Possible Leader Types, Subgroups, and Examples from
the War in Iraq 62
3.3 Wartime Leaders 72
3.4 The Effect of Culpability on Leader Punishment 78
3.5 The Effect of Culpability on Leader Punishment
Accounting for Regime Type 82
3.6 Fates of Losing Replacement Leaders 85
3.7 The Effect of Culpability on Leader Punishment
Conditional on Adversary War Aims 87
4.1 War Outcomes Coding Scheme 104
4.2 The Effect of Culpability on War Outcomes 108
4.3 The Effect of Culpability and Regime Type on War
Outcomes 111
4.4 The Effect of Culpability on Presiding Over an Extreme
Outcome 115
5.1 The Effect of Being a Supporter or an Associate on Voting
for Antiwar Bills (Two Legislator Types) 142
5.2 The Effect of Being a Supporter or an Associate on Voting
for Antiwar Bills (Four Legislator Types) 143
3A.1 Recoding Culpability to Include Supporters/Looking at
Different Culpable Leader Types 193
3A.2 Recoding Culpability to Include Escalators/Looking at
Different Culpable Leader Types 196
3A.3 The Effect of Being an Initiating Loser vs. a Targeted
Loser on the Likelihood of Domestic Punishment 198
viii
Tables ix
3A.4 The Effect of Losing on the Likelihood of Domestic

Punishment among First Leaders and Final Leaders 199
3A.5 The Effect of Losing, Culpability, and Regime Type 205
3A.6 Determinants of a Replacement Leaders Culpability 207
3A.7 Reestimating the Model After Recoding Nonculpable
Leaders Who Stay in the War for More Than a Year
After Coming to Office 209
4A.1 War Outcomes by Leader Type 210
4A.2 The Effect of Culpability on War Outcomes 211
4A.3 The Effect of Culpability and Regime Type on
War Outcomes 212
5A.1 List of Bills Used in Roll Call Analysis 216
Figures
3.1 The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of

Punishment Given a Poor Outcome page 79
Punishment Given a Poor Outcome 83
4.1 War Outcomes by Leader Type 102
4.2 The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of Securing
a Total Victory 109
4.3 War Outcomes by Leader Type: Replacement Leaders vs.
Full Set Comparison 110
4.4 The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of Securing
a Total Victory for Democratic Leaders Baseline:
Nondemocratic, Culpable Leaders/Democratic,
Nonculpable Leaders 112
4.5 War Outcomes of Cuplable Leaders by Regime Type 113
Presiding Over an Extreme Outcome 116
5.1 The Effect of Being a Supporter or Associate on
Voting for Antiwar Legislation in the House 144
5.2 The Effect of Being a Supporter or Associate on Voting
for Antiwar Legislation in the Senate 145
5.3 Voting for Antiwar Bills by Legislator Type
(House of Representatives) 163
5.4 Voting for Antiwar Bills by Legislator Type (Senate) 163
5.5 The Distribution of Different Types of Culpable Members
of Congress during Wartime 166
x
Figures xi
3A.1 The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of

5A.1 The Effect of Moving Bushs 2004 Vote Share
(Max to Min) (House of Representatives/Senate) 214
Acknowledgments
Having now completed my first book, Ihave a newfound appreciation

for the opportunity to write an acknowledgments section. Although my
name is the only one on the spine, several others belong there in spirit.
Because it would require writing a tome longer than War and Peace to
get a spine that could accommodate all of the names of the people who
deserve recognition, I opted for this route instead. What follows is my
attempt to thank the many people who helped in many ways, and at
many different points, over the many years this book was in progress.
The idea at the core of this book came out of my PhD dissertation
at the University of Michigan, where Ibenefited greatly from having a
fantastic committee. Paul Huth and Jim Morrow served as cochairs, and
both brought valuable strengths to the project. Paul has always been,
and continues to be, as my colleague at Maryland, an absolute model
of how to carry out empirical political science research. Without his
example and encouragement, and the opportunities to coauthor with
him on other projects, this book would have been a far more daunt-
ing task. Jim Morrow also proved to be critical in my development as
a scholar, having been my advisor since day one of graduate school.
During my time at Michigan, his door was always open to help sharpen
a theoretical argument or work through a data issue. He continues to
be a terrific source of support and advice. Ben Valentino served as the
committees third member and was an invaluable advisor despite being
hundreds of miles away from Ann Arbor in Hanover, New Hampshire.
Ben read countless drafts of chapters from both the dissertation and
the book and was always happy to talk on the phone. Above all, Bens
xiii
xiv Acknowledgments
enthusiasm for the project inspired me to keep going when things got
hard, as book projects oftendo.
Two other scholars who deserve top billing in any list of thanks are
Dani Reiter and Hein Goemans, both of whom graciously agreed to
participate in a book conference on an earlier draft of the manuscript,
along with Ben and Paul. Dani has always been supportive of the proj
ect, even when it was in its infancy as a dissertation, and proved to be a
wonderful book conference participant. The theory chapter, especially,
benefited enormously from his thoughtful suggestions. Iam very grateful
for his advice and kindness over the years. Heins extensive knowledge
about leaders and domestic punishment were also critical to improving
the book, especially in terms of how to think about the case studies.
His boundless enthusiasm for the subject matter was also a pleasure to
be around. Heins first book was an inspiration for this one, and Ifeel
incredibly fortunate to have had his feedback.
Irfan Nooruddin, Dan Corstange, and Ben Appel also played critical
roles. Irfan read every chapter of this book, some multiple times, and
always offered great advice for how to improve them. His guidance for
navigating the book publishing process was equally essential. Dan also
served a crucial function by being one of my primary comrades in the
first book trenches. Though we study very different things, Iknew his
door was always open when Ineeded to vent my frustrations or celebrate
finishing a chapter. Ben helped in innumerable ways:answering endless
Stata questions, reading version after version of troublesome sections,
and serving as both a friend and sounding board ever since Iarrived at
Maryland.
Another equally important group in the long list of people to whom
Iowe a debt of gratitude are the numerous undergraduate research assis-
tants from the University of Michigan and University of Maryland who
helped at every stage of the process, from building the dissertation data
set to proofreading the final manuscript. They are, in rough chronolog-
ical order:Jessica Enger, Megan Irving, David Larson, Alexandra Link,
Rachel Welford, Christopher Caruso, Roberto Rosales, Marcus Johnson,
Alex Knobel, and Jessica Liu. They have my eternal gratitude for the
energy and dedication they brought to the project.
I am also deeply indebted to the wonderful community of scholars
I am privileged to call my colleagues at the University of Maryland.
David Cunningham, Kathleen Cunningham, and Joel Simmons all read
substantial portions of the manuscript, often on very short notice, and
offered their invaluable support in myriad ways throughout the process.
Acknowledgments xv
Antoine Banks, Jhanna Birnir, Kanisha Bond, Jennifer Hadden, Mike

Hanmer, Virginia Haufler, Paul Hernson, David Karol, Scott Kastner,
Karen Kaufmann, Frances Lee, Kris Miler, Irwin Morris, Bill Reed, Stella
Rouse, Shibley Telhami, Ric Uslaner, Ian Ward, and Patrick Wohlfarth
also provided valuable feedback on everything from methods questions,
to chapter organization, to the ins and outs of the publishing process.
Chapter5 also benefited enormously from comments from the American
politics faculty and graduate students, who were kind enough to discuss
it at their regular workshop. Special thanks are also due to Jim Curry
who patiently walked me through the basics of roll call vote analysis
and offered valuable feedback on the empirical setup. I am also grate-
ful to Mark Lichbach who, as department chair, provided financial sup-
port for the book conference with additional funding and encouragement
provided by Wanye McIntosh from the Deans Office in the College of
Behavioral and Social Sciences. The Deans Office has also been exceed-
ingly generous in terms of sponsoring programs for undergraduate
research assistant support, without which Iwould have never been able
to work with Alex or Jessica.
Several scholars outside of the University of Maryland also contrib-
uted to the project. Bear Braumoeller is responsible (culpable?) for my
becoming a political scientist, having been such an inspiring undergrad-
uate thesis advisor many years ago. Iam grateful hes still willing to put
up with endless questions from me with his equally infinite kindness. Iam
also indebted to many other scholars for the countless conversations and
e-mails about this project over the years. Foremost among them (with my
deepest apologies to anyone Imight have missed):Emily Beaulieu, Adam
Berinsky, Carew Boulding, Grace Cho, Jeff Colgan, Allan Dafoe, Andrew
Enterline, Scott Gartner, Christian Grose, Michael Horowitz, Gary
Jacobson, Michael Koch, Greg Koger, Douglas Kriner, Rob Salmond,
Elizabeth Saunders, Katie Simmons, David Smith, Elizabeth Stanley,
Manny Teodoro, and Jana von Stein. Iam especially grateful to Dominic
Tierney who, in addition to initiating several thought-provoking conver-
sations about the major themes of the book, read and provided incredi-
bly helpful comments on a large portion of the manuscript in very short
order. Iam also thankful for having found in Jessica Weeks a fantastic,
supportive friend and wonderful coauthor for exploring other applica-
tions of culpability.
In addition to those mentioned, Iam exceedingly grateful to a select
group of scholars who provided crucial support along the way, often on
a daily basis, through our writing group. Michelle Allendoerfer, Sarah
xvi Acknowledgments
Fischer, Tom Flores, Jessi Grieser, and Leanne Powner helped me to con-
tinue putting one foot in front of the other, even when the to-do list
seemed endless, often offering feedback or advice when I ran into an
obstacle. Above all, their camaraderie made the process far less isolat-
ing. Leanne also read over several versions of many chapters with her
unmatched eye for clarity. This book is infinitely better thanks to her
guidance, and Iam incredibly grateful for the amount of ink she spilled
in the form of corrections and comments in the margins.
I am also fortunate to have received extensive and thoughtful feed-
back from several reviewers and editors, foremost among them Arthur
Stein, at The American Political Science Review, where an article related
to this book was published. This book and related work also benefited
from workshops at several schools including (in rough chronological
order): The Pennsylvania State University, The University of Virginia,
Harvard University, Dartmouth College, The University of Pennsylvania,
Cornell University, Princeton University, and American University. Thanks
are also in order for my editor, Robert Dreesen, and Elizabeth Janetschek
at Cambridge University Press for their advice and patience, and for guid-
ing the book through the publication process. Iam also deeply grateful
for the thoughtful feedback from the scholars who served as anonymous
reviewers. Their suggestions helped me improve the manuscript signifi-
cantly. Finally, working with Scott Nychay, who created the artwork used
for the cover, was an absolute pleasure.
Last but certainly not least, words cannot express how grateful Iam
for the love and encouragement from my family. Foremost among them,
of course, are my parents, Ed and Suzanne Croco, whose support never
wavered, even when Icame home from college and declared Iwas off to
graduate school to become a political scientist. Ihave both of them to
thank for instilling in me through their example a love of reading and
learning; the dedication required to complete such a massive project; and
the drive to pursue a career Iloved. Special thanks are also due to my hus-
band, Ian, for not only reading the entire manuscript but for also provid-
ing steadfast support during the time Ispent writing it. Living under the
same roof of someone writing a book is no easy task. The project spans
years and can become all-consuming for the author. Iam thankful every
day for having a partner in life who was willing to put up with my messy
home office, the erratic hours Ikept, and, above all, the constant presence
of this book in my mind.
1
Introduction
In January 2007, President George W.Bush ordered an additional twenty

thousand American military personnel to the Persian Gulf to join their
fellow soldiers in the war in Iraq. The war, which had lasted for nearly
four years at that point, had already claimed thousands of American lives
(and many more Iraqi ones) and had an estimated long-term cost of more
than three trillion dollars.1 The decision to put more troops in the con-
flict, a move that came to be known as the surge, also came at a point
when roughly 60percent of Americans thought the war was a mistake.2
This massive deployment made news at the time, but it is also noteworthy
from a theoretical perspective as Bushs decision to implement the surge
runs counter to several pieces of conventional wisdom regarding how
democratic leaders should behave in times ofwar.3
First and foremost, the surge only served to escalate and extend a con-
flict that had already gone on much longer than anyone had anticipated.
In the run-up to the war Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had set
high expectations for a quick victory, stating that he doubted the war
1 icasualties.org, Stiglitz and Blimes (2008). Francis (2011) later claimed that once the cost
of replacing equipment is figured in, the price could reach as high as four to six trillion.
Several, however, have taken issue with these high numbers and feel a more reasonable
estimate is in the one to two trillion range (Katel 2008 and Herszenhorn 2008). Others
contend that Stiglitz and Blimes do not weigh the cost of the war against the obvious
counterfactual:the cost of containing Saddam Hussein. . . . Keeping a big force in the
region big enough to cow the dictator into letting weapons inspectors do their job
would not have been cheap. . . . Nor do they pay much attention to the benefits of the
invasion (Eyeing the Wages of War,2008).
2 Gallup (2013).
3 Though see Taliaferro (2004), Milburn and Christie (1990), Pillar (1990), Tierney (2015).
1
2 Peace at WhatPrice?
would last longer than six months. This prediction quickly proved to
be wholly inaccurate.4 If existing theories are correct, democratic lead-
ers who find themselves in situations like this should avoid taking steps
that might prolong the conflict. If they cannot win the war quickly, they
should cut their losses and end it. The fact that Bush was willing to put
more troops into a war that had already gone nearly eight times as long
as people predicted runs directly counter to this expectation.
A democratic leader should also avoid perpetuating a war his citi-
zens perceive as being overly costly in terms of casualties or national
resources.5 While the Iraq war may have relatively few casualties when
compared to major conflicts throughout history, such as the World Wars
or Vietnam, the loss of several thousand troops makes it an outlier when
compared to the more recent military operations the United States has
participated in throughout the last thirty years. This makes the Iraq wars
relatively low casualty figures seem considerably higher because this lat-
ter set of conflicts are the ones citizens are more likely to use as a frame
of reference.
The national reaction to casualty milestones bears this out. On the
day when the number of American military dead surpassed two thousand
people, several major national newspapers, including The New York
Times, USA Today, and The Washington Post, all ran feature stories
on the event.6 A similar reaction occurred when the toll reached three
thousand, with several groups organizing protests in response.7 Again,
while these numbers are small compared to the number of lives claimed
in other conflicts, the amount of attention these benchmarks attracted
illustrates that people were both paying attention to and were upset by
the human cost of the war. The staggering financial cost is also notewor-
thy. In theory, democratic leaders should channel money toward public
goods that benefit the masses. Some wars can function as public goods if
they are fought to ward off a powerful enemy or to gain valuable terri-
tory that provides resources for citizens. The war in Iraq had neither of
these characteristics. Yet it was on track to cost more U.S.expenditures
than did World War II, even after adjusting for inflation.8
There is also the matter of what the war was costing Bush in personal,
political terms. His job-approval ratings were abysmal. While he peaked
4 Rumsfeld Foresees Swift Iraq War (2003).

5 Valentino etal. (2010).
6 Profita (2005).
7 Hopey (2007).
8 Francis (2011).
Introduction 3
at 90percent in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, by the time

he left office in 2008, only 34percent of citizens approved of his job per-
formance.9 The war in Iraq was also unpopular and growing more so by
the day. Yet, when pressed on this issue and asked if he ever considered
withdrawing the troops, Bush replied, We arent leaving. Even if Laura
and Barney are the only ones who agree with me.10 Bushs reluctance to
heed the widespread public disapproval and to claim that his constitu-
ency consisted of only his wife and his pet Scottish terrier challenges a
core assumption about democratic leaders:a sensitivity and willingness
to respond to shifts in public opinion. Democratic leaders should, in the-
ory, end wars that the public dislikes to maintain good favor with voters
and protect their political capital. Letting an unpopular war dominate
ones agenda at the expense of other objectives is not a desirable out-
come. But this is precisely what Bush actively allowed to happen.
Finally, it is important to recognize that the decision to deploy more
troops represented a tremendous risk both in terms of the escalation it
could trigger and the potential for more casualties inherent in putting more
personnel in harms way. There was also no guarantee that the strategy
would be successful. As Washington Post reporter Thomas Ricks wrote
in his aptly named book on the subject, The Gamble, it is easy to forget
now, after it has become conventional wisdom that the surge worked, at
least tactically, how audacious a venture it was.11 Top military figures
publically opposed Bush on the issue at the time. General Abizaid, chief
of the Central Command, told the Armed Services Committee that he
didnt think it was the solution to the problem.12 Colin Powell, former
secretary of state and a four-star general, also expressed doubt, stating
on CBSs Face the Nation that I am not persuaded that another surge
of troops . . . will work.13 Things did not improve for Bush domestically
as the surge went into effect. Indeed, less than six months later, even
his fellow Republicans were turning against him. Senator Orrin Hatch
acknowledged on a trip to Baghdad that we could lose this thing, while
Senator Richard Lugar called for an all-out end to the surge on the floor
of the Senate, stating, I believe that the costs and risks of continuing
9 Saad (2009). Sixty-one percent disapproved of Bushs job performance at this time. By
comparison, Richard Nixon, often considered one of the most unpopular presidents, had
a disapproval percentage of 66percent when he left office.
10 Woodward (2006:430).
11 Ricks (2009:149), emphasisadded.
12 Ibid.,92.
13 Ibid.,93.
down the current path outweigh the potential benefits that might be
achieved by doingso.14
How can we explain Bushs behavior? Why would a democratic leader
stay in a war for so long, despite mounting costs and public disapproval,
and then double down with a strategy of escalation when the likelihood
of victory was judged by many to be very small? This question becomes
even more pressing once we realize that Bush is only one of many dem-
ocratic leaders to act this way. Harry S.Truman, for instance, stayed in
the Korean War despite a 23percent approval rating and more than half
the country demanding that he drop the bomb and get it over with.15
Several British and French prime ministers exhibited a similar intran-
sigent tendency in conflicts with colonies struggling for independence.
Many of these wars dragged on for years amidst public disproval, with
thousands of British and French soldiers dying in the process. Existing
theories cannot explain the behavior of Bush in Iraq or any of these other
leaders. Although these theories do a fine job of explaining the wars in
which democratic leaders fare well, they fail to account for a leaders
behavior when he finds himself in a war where the state is doing poorly.
This problem can be generalized to nondemocratic leaders as well:apart
from the rare case in which a state is fighting for its very survival, why
would any leader stay in a war they knew they were unlikely towin?
The theory Ipresent here offers an explanation for this behavior by
exploring a concept scholars have overlooked:a leaders culpability for
the conflict.16 Aleader is culpable if he can be credibly linked to the deci-
sion to involve the state in the conflict.17 This includes any leader who
was in charge of the state when the conflict began as well as leaders who
took power during the war who have a political connection to a culpable
predecessor (e.g., is from the same party, ruling military junta). Leaders
who meet either of these criteria are subject to the pressures of culpability
14 Ibid.,1878.
15 McCullough (1992:872).
16 In doing so, Ijoin a growing group of scholars advocating the need to appreciate how
traits that apply to specific leaders might affect their behavior. See, e.g., Chiozza and
Goemans (2011), Dafoe and Caughey (2011), Saunders (2011), and Horowitz and Stam
(2013).
17 Two notes on language are warranted. (1) The term culpable typically has a negative
connotation. Less negatively charged terms, like responsible or accountable, could just as
easily stand in, and Iuse them interchangeably with culpable throughout the book. Given
the lack of a true neutral term, Iopted to use culpable as the primary term when discuss-
ing the theory because it fits with the books general focus on the effects of culpability
when a war goes wrong. (2)Iuse masculine pronouns for culpable leaders and feminine
for nonculpable leaders throughout the book for presentational clarity.
Introduction 5
because of their proximity to the decision to go to war. The leaders prox-

imity, in turn, makes it easy for citizens, or elites who may shape citizens
opinions, to assign responsibility to these leaders for thewar.18
Because a leaders proximity to the conflict is public information, his
culpability is also known from the moment the war begins, or, in the
case of a leader who comes to power during the war, as soon as he takes
office. It is not, in other words, a characteristic assigned by another party
after the war. It is also, importantly, not contingent on the leaders perfor-
mance during the war. Both culpable and nonculpable leaders win, lose,
and draw in wars. It is not, therefore, a trait that need only be thought of
in a negative sense.19
Recognizing a leaders culpability provides us with a better under-
standing of why some leaders stay in costly wars, even when their chances
of victory are very low. It also explains the opposite behavior, in which
leaders accede to an adversarys demands when continued fighting is still
possible. Regardless of whether they are in charge for the whole war or
just a portion of it, all culpable leaders will have strong incentives to con-
tinue fighting in the face of high costs. This incentive exists because their
domestic audiences will want to remove them from office if they fail in
a war they played a role in starting.20 Nonculpable leaders have a differ-
ent incentive structure. Because citizens will be more forgiving of leaders
whom they perceive to be disconnected from the decision to involve the
state in the war, nonculpable leaders will be more willing to end the con-
flict, even if this means accepting an outcome less than victory. Critically,
this logic holds for both democratic and nondemocratic leaders.
This theory has considerable explanatory power. In an analysis of
data that span nearly two hundred years, I find that culpable leaders
approach wars differently than their nonculpable counterparts and are
treated more harshly by members of the domestic audience if they lose,
18 Put differently, making proximate leaders culpable makes sense because they are, objec-
tively speaking, the members of the political elite who are most likely responsible for the
war. Therefore, they are the most obvious choice when thinking about politicians whom
the public may blame. Iexplore other potential sources of culpability such as whether
a leader openly supported a conflict or escalated it once taking office in later chapters.
Neither appears to capture what people think of when they think of which leaders wor-
thy of blame. The objective political criteria Ilaid out in the preceding text are far better
predictors of whether a leader is punished for a poor outcome inawar.
19 Indeed, as Croco and Weeks (2014) demonstrate, culpability can also confer benefits (i.e.,
a lower hazard of losing office) on leaders whowin.
20 I use the terms domestic audience and citizens interchangeably throughout the book.
Irecognize that these are not equivalent groups in many states; this is simply for presen-
tational convenience.
regardless of the nature of the states political system. This effect is height-
ened in democracies where culpable losers who draw also face a higher
likelihood of punishment. In addition, Ifind that the effects of culpability
extend beyond the executive. Members of the legislature, for instance,
who share political ties with a culpable executive are also reluctant to
curtail unpopular conflicts. In sum, although the argument turns on a
relatively simplistic concept the leaders role in bringing the state to
war it is able to pack a hefty empiricalpunch.
Lacunae the Existing Literature

In recent years, several important pieces of scholarship have emerged that
speak to the issues of leader incentives, domestic politics, and the war
termination process. Among these are Reiter (2009), which highlights
the bargaining problems that must be resolved before a war can end;
Goemans (2000) and Chiozza and Goemans (2011), which underscore
the importance of understanding how a leaders potential postwar fate
informs his or her decisions regarding conflict; and Stanley (2009), which
examines the role of domestic coalition shifts in the ending of wars. All
of these works have advanced the war termination literature in different
yet importantways.
Several critical issues, however, still need to be addressed. First, while
other theories have suggested that not all leaders will have the same
motivation to stay in a conflict, we do not yet have a precise means of
predicting which particular leaders will feel compelled to gamble for
resurrection (Downs and Rocke 1994), and which will be more likely
to give in, a priori. Existing work makes broad predictions for exam-
ple, first leaders or leaders of a certain regime type will be more prone
to gamble but does not offer a means to explain variation in leader
motives within those broad categories. Second, although recent work has
highlighted how information and commitment problems can impede the
war termination process, we do not yet have a way to predict which lead-
ers might be more susceptible to these bargaining hurdles.
Third, we do not have a solid understanding of the relationship between
leader and citizen in times of war. Why, for instance, do some leaders seem
to ignore public opinion while others serve as faithful agents on the citi-
zens behalf? Why do citizens seek to punish some leaders who lose wars,
but not all? Scholars should be aware if there are systematic reasons why
some leaders ignore dissent while others heed it, or why some leaders are
forgiven for a policy failure while others are removed from office.
Introduction 7
Fourth and finally, we need to develop a more nuanced understanding of

the nature of democracies at war. Doing so requires that we appreciate the
sluggish nature of democratic politics, which can often afford a leader great
flexibility, even in times of war. It is easier to remove a democratic leader
than a nondemocratic one, and leadership changes happen more regularly,
but this does not mean leadership changes happen swiftly or at the whim
of the public. This has important consequences for several arguments in the
literature most notably, those that assume public consent is required for
a leader to continue prosecuting a conflict and those that assume a leader
should bow to mass dissent by ending an unpopular war. If leadership
changes do not happen quickly, leaders can trade off short-term popularity
for long-term stability in office, even if this means ignoring dissent and ris-
ing costs in the current term to potentially increase the chances of victory
later on. Existing work that focuses on democracies at war overlooks lead-
ers ability to do this because it often focuses on either the relative ease with
which democratic leaders can be removed or the institutional features that
should (in theory) encourage leaders to value public opinion.
The theory of leader culpability I present here speaks to all of these
lacunae and, in doing so, advances the literature on war termination con-
siderably. The remainder of this section explains how, and describes the
implications of these contributions.
Culpability and Leaders Incentives to Gamble for Resurrection

The core claim of the theory is that culpable leaders will have stronger
incentives than nonculpable leaders to win wars because the former will be
punished by the domestic audience in the event of a loss while the latter will
not. Once we recognize this incentive structure, a leaders culpability serves
as a good predictor of which leaders will want to gamble for resurrection.
This represents an important advance because scholars currently do not
have an ex ante means to determine which leaders will gamble that allows
for variation both in terms of when the leader came to power or the states
regime type. They can only say after the fact which leaders appeared to
gamble and which chose to lay down theirarms.
Downs and Rocke (1994), for instance, posited that leaders who preside
over the start of the war will be more willing to continue fighting than those
who replace them.21 This allows for some prediction first leaders will fight
21 They are not alone in thinking that first leaders will be especially prone to gambling.
Calahan (1944: 209), Ikl (1991), and Craig and George (1995: 2323) share this
opinion.
harder than their successors but it is inherently limited because it assumes

that all successor leaders will have similar preferences. In reality, of course,
this is not the case. Some replacement leaders take power and end the war
on unfavorable terms, but others exhibit the same determination to win
as their predecessors. Chiozza and Goemans (2011) recognize that lead-
ers who inherit a conflict may face a different set of incentives than those
leaders who initiated the war or who were in power during an attack. They
do not, however, condition the likelihood of punishment on the leaders
culpability and, thus, commit the same omission as Downs and Rocke.22
Simply knowing whether a leader took power during the war is insufficient.
We need to know if the new leader is also culpable because the presence of
political ties to the first leader determines if the new one will have an incen-
tive to gamble.
Goemans (2000) and Goemans and Chiozza (2011) allow for some
ex ante prediction all mixed regime leaders (or leaders who face a high
likelihood of forced removal) will have an incentive to gamble but
they cannot address why leaders of other regime types (or those facing
different degrees of vulnerability) engage in this behavior, or why some
mixed regime leaders do not gamble. This lack of flexibility emerges
because their argument is largely based on institutional features within
the state that are generally static during wars. Hence, apart from the
aforementioned allowance Goemans and Chiozza make for inheritors,
they cannot accommodate any features that might vary with individual
leaders with respect to the war. The theory presented here is flexible
enough todoso.
Stanley (2009) starts from a different premise, arguing that shifts that
occur within the domestic coalition can bring hawkish or dovish leaders
to power, with the former being more willing to continue fighting. This
represents an improvement in some respects because it recognizes that
leaders can have different preferences for fighting, even if they are from
the same state in the same war. She does not, however, account for the
source of these tendencies or how they might transfer across coalitions.
Her central hypotheses regarding these shifts are that hawkish ones will
take place early in the war while dovish shifts will tend to happen toward
theend.
22 They do note that some of these inheritors may gain the reins of power during a long
protracted conflict with the explicit mandate to bring it to a conclusion (55). They do
not, however, speak to which leaders will feel safe acting on this mandate. Nonculpable
leaders should end the war quickly, but nonculpable ones should refrain, knowing they
could still face repercussions for accepting anything less than victory.
Introduction 9
Knowing a leaders culpability improves our predictive abilities.

Because the only information we need to know is whether a political con-
nection exists between the two leaders, we can predict which ones will
gamble and which will try to end the war from their first day in office.
This, in turn, allows us to know which leadership changes should have
consequences for the states future in the war. While it is true that some
domestic shifts may hasten a wars termination namely those involving
the transfer of power to a nonculpable successor others may prolong
the states involvement in the conflict.
Culpability and Leaders Reactions to Information and

Commitment Problems
The theory also helps improve our expectations for leader bargaining
behavior, specifically with respect to information and commitment prob-
lems. Reiter (2009) argues that these problems often act as obstacles that
prevent leaders from reaching an agreement to end a war. Appreciating
culpability helps us build on this premise and refine our predictions
because both problems have the potential to become exacerbated if at
least one leader involved in the war is culpable. As I noted in the pre-
ceding text, culpable leaders (who are faring poorly) will be unwilling
to recognize the wars eventual outcome because there are political costs
for admitting that victory is no longer a possibility. This makes the bar-
gaining process more difficult and more likely to deadlock because the
culpable leader will not lower his war aims to reflect his actual chances
of winning, even if he knows he cannot win.23 Stanley offers a multitude
of reasons why leaders may behave this way, but very few can be known
exante.
The theory presented here offers a parsimonious way to anticipate
how a leader will respond to the knowledge that he will likely fail to
achieve his war aims. Culpable leaders may be fully aware that victory is
improbable, and that ending the war sooner rather than later would be
better for their citizens. Despite this, they will not want to end the conflict
as doing so would bring about unpleasant personal political consequences.
Indeed, concern about their political future is arguably the source of many
of the biases Stanley mentions. Culpable leaders should be more likely than
23 Or, in more formal terms, any attempt at bargaining will be inefficient because the culpa-
ble leaders win set of acceptable outcomes will not expand to include terms acceptable
to the otherside.
their nonculpable counterparts to succumb to success bias (i.e., being overly

optimistic) or commitment biases (i.e., finding reasons to continue the task
at hand). The expression of these biases may be an unconscious act or a
deliberate one meant to convince onlookers that the war is worth fight-
ing. Regardless of how the bias manifests, however, culpability is the likely
source. Nonculpable leaders, by contrast, will have an easier time solving
any information problems that might exist because they face minimal nega-
tive personal repercussions for losing.24 In fact, in many cases it is in a non-
culpable leaders best interest to end the war quickly so resources that have
been devoted to the war can be redirected toward othergoals.
Culpability should also inform leaders assessments of commitment
issues. Culpable leaders should be more likely to renege on cease-fires
and other peace agreements that required them to accept unfavorable
terms because their domestic political fortunes depend on delivering a
win. Trying to secure their original aims at a later date, therefore, will
likely be on their agenda (assuming they are still in power). This incentive
means their opponents will be less likely to trust them to adhere to the
terms of the agreement and may opt to fight to what Reiter (2009) calls
an absolute outcome (e.g., annihilation) instead of negotiatingterms.
A nonculpable leader, by contrast, makes for a relatively more reli-
able bargaining partner because she will have much weaker incentives to
revise the postwar status quo. The domestic audience knows the leader
may have presided over the bad outcome, but will also recognize that she
was not responsible for it. Consequently, the leader will not fear punish-
ment nearly to the same degree as a culpable leader. The opponent will
be aware of this dynamic, and will have less of a reason to pursue an
absolute outcome.25
24 Hawkish members of the opposition, e.g., may try to fault the leader for ending the war
on poor terms, arguing that the state could have achieved more if the leader had only
continued to fight. The potential for this backlash is real, but its impact will be tempered
by the size of the opposition and the domestic audiences enthusiasm for continuing the
war. If citizens are fed up with the war, the attacks from the hawks among the opposition
may fall on deafears.
25 I do not test these claims about how a state responds to changes in their opponents
domestic sphere. The purpose of this book is to examine how culpability affects the
behavior of individual leaders in terms of how they prosecute the war and how citizens
respond to these leaders. In Chapter 6, however, I discuss how the Iraqis were more
willing to believe that Barack Obama (a nonculpable leader) would be more likely to
adhere to the terms of the status of forces agreement (SOFA) agreement than a (culpable)
Republican would be. At minimum, this illustrates that the international observers are
aware of the culpability of the leadership in other states.
Introduction 11
Culpability and the Relationship between Leaders and Citizens

How does a leader balance his personal political interests against the
wishes of his citizens regarding the war, and when will the two sets of
interests come into conflict? Which leaders will citizens want to punish,
and why? These questions are central to the war termination process,
yet existing work cannot address them adequately because it does not
appreciate the effects culpability has on the relationship between leaders
and citizens. Once we recognize this, answering these questions becomes
straightforward.
With regard to the first question, culpable leaders will be more likely
than nonculpable ones to prioritize their own interests at the expense
of their citizens when the state is at war. They will do so because their
personal political future hangs on the wars outcome. If they win, there
is the potential for personal benefits to accrue.26 If they lose, or, in the
case of democratic states, lose or draw, they face a possible loss of office
or perhaps an even grislier fate, like imprisonment or death. The stakes,
in other words, are high. Given this, a culpable leader will be tempted to
keep the state in the war, even if doing so is unlikely to result in a win
and instead result in a greater number of citizen lives lost. He will have
strong incentives to be an unfaithful agent on behalf of the citizens if
the war is not going well.27 This could entail any number of things, from
attempting to rally the populace to stay in a war he knows the state may
lose to actively suppressing information about how the state is faring to
stave off mass protest.
A nonculpable leader, by contrast, will not have an incentive to be
unfaithful as her fate is not tied to the states performance in the war. She
will, therefore, be more honest about how the state is performing and
more willing to end the war if it becomes unpopular. This insight is sim-
ple, but critical. War scholars have noted the potential for a conflict of
leader and citizen interests to develop, but do not offer a means to predict
when this will happen.28 Culpability helps us do this. When the leader is
culpable, his preferences will diverge from his citizens if the state begins
to fare poorly in the war. Anonculpable leaders preferences, by contrast,
will align with her citizens if the state is performing badly. Put differently,
26 Croco and Weeks (2014).

27 The issue of faithfulness is less acute when the state is winning because the culpable
leaders preferences and the citizens align. Iwill return to this point in more detail.
28 This dynamic is often referred to as a principal-agent problem. Ireturn to this concept in
the Chapter2.
citizens are more likely to have to pay needless additional costs under a
culpable leader compared to when a nonculpable leader is at thehelm.29
This insight also helps us answer the second question about which
leaders citizens will punish. In particular, it tells us why citizens will limit
punishment to culpable leaders who perform badly instead of simply pun-
ishing whichever leader was in power when the bad outcome occurred.
While citizens may not use the term culpable, they will know that a leader
who has a political connection to the war has more at stake, personally
and, therefore, more reason to act unfaithfully than a leader who is
not connected to the decision to enter the conflict. Citizens preferences
for a faithful leader will be especially strong in the context of a conflict
given the potential for the leader to force them to pay unnecessary costs
in the form of military and possibly civilian casualties in pursuit of a goal
that serves his own interests. Because culpability serves as a proxy for a
potentially unfaithful leader, citizens will be more inclined to remove
him if they suspect he has run afoul of their interests.30
One could argue that nonculpable leaders also have the potential to be
unfaithful agents by ending a war prematurely, leaving would-be spoils
unclaimed. This is a fair point, but should not be overblown. As Iargue
29 Discussing the notion of leader faithfulness in terms of citizens suggests a democratic

context, but the logic transfers to nondemocratic states. In a regime where power is more
centralized, the leader will have a smaller relevant audience, but, by virtue of being the
executive, he will still be an agent responsible for carrying out tasks on their behalf. This
delegation of authority creates the opportunity for the leader to act in his own interests
if he finds himself at cross-purposes with the audience. This smaller group of political
actors may mean the audience is able to detect and sanction the transgressions by the
leader more quickly, but the possibility for unfaithfulness still exists. Culpability, there-
fore, has consequences for the relationship between leader and citizen, regardless of the
regime type of the state in question, but the size of the relevant audience and the leaders
ability to hide his unfaithfulness will vary. Koch (2013) represents an important step
forward on this issue of explaining variation in leader agency within regime type. His
results demonstrate that democracies with party-centric systems (i.e., led by a prime min-
ister) will have less agency loss than those states with candidate-centric systems, which
he defines as presidential. He attributes this difference to the increased monitoring and
sanctioning ability of the party in the first type of state. The leader may want to act in
his own interest, but the party leadership will have several opportunities to prevent him
from doingso.
30 Critically, as Idiscuss in the next section, citizens may not always be able to remove a
leader whom they suspect has betrayed their interests. Significant political hurdles exist
that prevent citizens from removing leaders quickly, even in democracies. There may,
therefore, be long periods of time when the domestic audience is upset with the war
and the way the leader is conducting it, but the leader will still be in power. Alack of
leader removal, in other words, does not mean there is a lack of awareness among the
population.
Introduction 13
in Chapter3, conditions exist that would motivate a nonculpable leader

to continue fighting even when she could, in theory, back down. The most
obvious of these is if the state is engaged in a war with an aggressive adver-
sary. In this scenario, both the nonculpable leader and the citizens would
agree that the war should go on until the enemy is no longer a threat (i.e.,
they back down or relinquish their war aims) because both parties stand
to lose if the enemy wins. Their interests, therefore, will remain aligned.
In general, with a culpable leader citizens have to worry about spending
their money and sacrificing their lives unnecessarily in pursuit of a goal
that may only benefit the leader. With a nonculpable leader, it is possible
that she will give up too soon, but citizens will know that she has no
incentive to do this if the stakes are truly high. The only real risk, then,
posed by an unfaithful nonculpable leader is that she will not ask citizens
to continue to devote their resources and their lives to fight for things she
could potentially obtain in a low stakes war. On balance, the latter type
of leader should be strongly preferred to the former.
Apart from determining whether the leader is a faithful agent, citizens
should also care about culpability in its own right. If they have the means
to identify the leader (or leaders) who was responsible for involving the
state in a war that turned out poorly, they will want to remove him to
prevent him from carrying out similarly incompetent acts in the future.
The fact that citizens are willing to condition removal on responsibility
is key. Removing all leaders who preside over bad outcomes, regardless
of whether they were responsible, is inefficient. Why remove a leader
who had nothing to do with involving the state in the war? She has done
nothing to indicate that she makes bad choices and, given the logic Ilaid
out in the preceding text, has a higher likelihood of having similar prefer-
ences to the citizenry regarding thewar.
This insight has several implications. First, it suggests that the bar for
punishment is higher than we previously thought. Scholars often assume
that citizens will want to punish all leaders who preside over bad out-
comes. The historical record with respect to punishment for wars, how-
ever, tells a different story. Some leaders who lose or draw in wars are
removed from power, but others are not. Culpability tells us why this is
the case:citizens will only want to punish leaders who have a connection
to the decision to go to war. When they are able to identify the responsi-
ble parties which, as Iargue in Chapter2, is easy to do in times of war
they will want to target their ire where it is most deserved. This, in turn,
implies that we should not think of a nonwinning leaders likelihood of
punishment (or even postremoval punishment) as being a function of just
his regime type. Although some regime types facilitate leader removal, we
should not assume that all leaders of a given regime type who fail to win
face the same risk of falling from power. Indeed, doing so pools leaders
inappropriately because, as Idemonstrate in Chapter3, the punishment
risk is significantly higher for culpable leaders who lose or draw com-
pared to their nonculpable counterparts.
Culpability and Wartime Leadership Changes in Democracies

The final contribution offered by the theory is the new light it sheds on the
nature of wartime leadership changes in democratic states. It does so by
forcing us to consider closely changes in leadership and the circumstances
surrounding these changes instead of focusing on the larger, static institu-
tions that define the regime. Once we do so it becomes clear that while
democratic leaders are easier to remove than nondemocratic leaders, the
masses cannot wield the electoral check on a whim. Instead, democratic
leaders often have a considerable amount of time to try to improve their
odds of retaining power, even if the public is currently upset with them
regarding the war. Once we appreciate this, several conventional notions
about how a democracy should function during wartime namely that
wars depend on public consent to continue, and that leaders will be sen-
sitive to costs are called into question.
Popular conceptualizations of democracy tend to portray the leader
as being easy to throw from power, especially when compared to lead-
ers of nondemocratic states. In reality the process is more cumbersome.
In presidential systems, for instance, elections are held at predetermined
intervals.31 This makes it practically impossible to remove the leader out-
side of the narrow window leading up to an election.32 In parliamentary
systems, the leader is technically vulnerable at any point because mem-
bers of the legislature can call for a vote of no confidence. Yet even under
this type of system, the leader still enjoys some degree of insulation from
public dissent. This is true for at least two reasons. First, by virtue of his
31 Gaubatz (1991). For more on the advantages presidents enjoy relative to prime ministers,
see Koch (2013).
32 Removing the leader through impeachment is, in theory, possible, but extremely unlikely.
For a president to be impeached, he or she must be accused of a criminal act. Keeping
the state in a costly war may be unpopular, but it is not against the law. Antiwar citizens
may call for impeachment proceedings, but such demands are unlikely to gain political
traction. Indeed, there is a not a single instance of this occurring in the data, which span
nearly two hundredyears.
Introduction 15
position, the executive still has a large degree of control over the domestic
sphere. The leader can work to rally public opinion though speeches and
appearances. By framing the war as a necessary means to a valued end,
he may be able to buy himself more time to turn the conflict around.33
Second, and perhaps more importantly, for the leader in a parliamentary
system to be removed, several of his colleagues in the legislature must be
willing to come out against him. This is unlikely (though, not impossible),
as Idiscuss in Chapter2 and in Chapter5, because many of these politi-
cians would be culpable for the war aswell.34
Taken together, these points suggest that the existing conceptuali-
zation of democratic leaders being especially vulnerable is overblown.
Democratic leaders are certainly more at risk for losing office than their
autocratic counterparts. Indeed, as I argue in subsequent chapters, this
relative risk creates significant differences between democratic and non-
democratic leaders. But this does not mean that leadership changes in
democratic states necessarily happen quickly. Instead, the political trans-
mission belt is sticky and sluggish. Leadership changes can happen, but
not fast enough to translate public dissent into immediate changes in how
the leader prosecutes the war. The leader should and will care about the
threat of punishment, but even widespread outrage (which is rare, even
during unpopular wars) cannot remove him instantaneously. His citizens
may be fully aware that he is subjecting them to additional costs that will
likely be paid in vain, but because they cannot call an election at will, the
leader will retain power for the timebeing.35
This notion of a sticky transmission belt is important to recognize
because it raises several challenges to how we typically think about the
calculus of democratic leaders who are fighting a war. Namely, the com-
mon assumptions that public consent plays a critical role in democracies,
and that once consent for a war is lost (or waning), leaders should end the
conflict. For instance, as Bennett and Stam (1988) posit in their declin-
ing advantage of democracy argument, democratic leaders should be
more willing to settle as wars get longer because their citizens will not
33 Gelpi etal. (2005/2006) and Gelpi et al. (2009).

34 This dynamic is more likely to emerge in majority governments. Prime ministers in coa-
lition and minority governments are more likely to see their governments fall given the
lack of party discipline at their disposal.
35 In nondemocratic societies, speedy removals are possible, say, in a state where the leader
can be checked by a group of political elites (Weeks 2012). In this type of regime, how-
ever, those elites are not paying the costs directly, so their incentive to remove the leader
on these grounds will not be as strong.
want to tolerate the costs of continued fighting.36 The leader, they theo-
rize, should want to end the war before the public withdraws its consent
for it, and, by extension, for his continued tenure in office. This argument,
therefore, assumes that the leader will be responsive to public opinion
during times ofwar.
There are, however, at least two problems with this assumption that
become apparent once we recognize a leaders culpability. First is the notion
that the leader is beholden to the publics wishes and that approval is a
necessary element for staying in power. The second is the idea that bowing
to public opinion and ending an unpopular war is beneficial to the leader,
or at least costless. Neither of these is true if the leader is culpable. With
regard to the first point, as Inoted in my preceding discussion, instances of
democratic leaders fighting wars amidst abysmal approval ratings are not
rare. We know, therefore, that, at minimum, several leaders throughout
history have been unresponsive to public outcry and must have felt it was
possible to ignore it, at least in the short term. As the rest of this book will
demonstrate, this behavior is a hallmark of a culpable leader.
With regard to the second point, ending a war without first achieving
victory can have real political costs for culpable leaders. Citizens care
about punishing leaders who are responsible for bad policies. If a leader
involves a state in a war that goes poorly, correcting the mistake and
retreating will not be sufficient to keep him in the good graces of the
public. Citizens will still want to punish him for both having made the
error of participating in the war in the first place and for failing to secure
a victory. Existing theories that give primacy to the leaders need to be
sensitive to the publics wishes overlook this. The publics unwillingness
to forgive and forget, however, is consequential because it means culpa-
ble leaders have nothing to gain from backing down. Continuing to fight
may eventually get them turned out of office at some point in the future,
but staying in the war (i.e., gambling for resurrection) is the only option
that leaves open the possibility of winning and continuing to serve as the
36 See also Reiter and Stam (2002:178). Reiter and Stam echo the need to generate the
consent of the governed (4)sentiment (emphasis mine). Koch (2009) adds nuance to
this debate, demonstrating that important variation with respect to dispute can also
exist with democratic states. More specifically he finds that the political orientation
(left or right) and ideological complexity of the government, along with various struc-
tural factors (e.g., the presence of a majority government) all inform how costly it is
to remove leaders of that state. In states where it is harder to remove elected officials,
disputes will endure longer than in states where removal is easier. See also Palmer etal.
(2004). Similarly, Koch and Sullivan (2010) find, when looking at interstate disputes, that
right-wing governments appear less sensitive to a loss of approval than left-wing ones,
and are more likely to continue fighting as a result.
Introduction 17
leader after the war is over. Hence, while we should expect all democratic
leaders to be aware of the loss of consent regarding a war, we should only
expect nonculpable leaders to act on it because they are the only ones
who stand to benefit from doing so. Culpable democratic leaders know a
loss or even a draw spells political disaster for their future in office.
This is an important insight for scholars to recognize because it dem-
onstrates an underappreciated drawback to living in a democratic state.
Stories of great victories by democratic states illustrate the virtues of
democracy and dominate the theoretical literature.37 Amajor axiom of
this line of scholarship is that democratic institutions encourage leaders
to select wars with great care, picking only those they think they have a
high chance of winning. Most of the time, they are successful. But, as the
introduction to this chapter demonstrated, history also contains many
examples of democratic leaders behaving in ways that defy our expecta-
tions, staying in wars long past when they should have accepted lesser
terms in order to end the conflict.
This is an oversight that needs to be addressed. This book does so
explicitly by discussing the related issues of what democratic leaders do
when they realize they have chosen poorly, and how they got trapped in
these suboptimal situations in the first place. Recognizing the possibil-
ity for the democratic selection story to go awry is critical because it
demonstrates that citizens of autocratic states are not the only ones who
may pay a price for their leaders personal political ambitions. Indeed, the
same electoral check that drives many of the benefits that go along with
being in a democratic state can backfire at the expense of the citizens if
the leader picks a war that goes badly. If a leaders personal fate is tied to
the outcome of the war, he will have strong incentives to pursue victory,
even if this means exposing his citizens to more hardship. Knowing which
leaders are culpable allows us to predict which democratic leaders will
engage in this type of behavior.
Outline of theBook
The rest of this book proceeds in five chapters. Chapter2 presents my
theory of leader culpability in greater detail. Iopen the chapter by laying
out the assumptions I make about leaders and citizens. I then explain
why culpability is an important factor to consider and elaborate on how
it allows us to predict when a conflict of interests between leader and
37 E.g., Reiter and Stam (2002) and Valentino et al. (2010). Some authors disagree; see, e.g.,
Desch (2008) and Downes (2009).
citizen will occur. After specifying several testable hypotheses, Iclose the
chapter with a discussion of the implications of the theory. Next, Iexplore
whether the hypotheses Iestablished in Chapter2 receive empirical sup-
port. As expected, culpability has a large and significant effect on the
behavior of leaders and citizens.
I begin with the punishment side of the process in Chapter3. Using a
new data set detailing the culpability and fate of every wartime executive
for conflicts that occurred between 1815 and 2007, Ifind that domestic
audiences are far more likely to punish losing leaders whom they perceive
to be responsible for involving their state in the conflict than leaders who
are more distant from this decision. This relationship holds for leaders
of all regime types; in democracies, culpable leaders who lose or draw
face an increased risk of punishment. Iclose this chapter with an illustra-
tive case study of Italys experience in World War I.38 Chapter4 investi-
gates how the increased threat of punishment associated with culpability
affects the decision-making process for executives in times of war. Once
again, I find that this simple concept has a large effect. Culpable lead-
ers preside over qualitatively different types of outcomes than their non-
culpable counterparts. While nonculpable leaders tend to end wars on
mediocre to poor outcomes, culpable leaders often either win big or lose
disastrously. Chapter4 closes with a brief vignette about Argentina in the
Falklands war and a longer illustrative case study centered on Australias
participation in the VietnamWar.
The empirical evidence from Chapters3 and 4 makes for a very strong
case in favor of the theory. Citizens evaluate culpable leaders by a differ-
ent standard than they do nonculpable ones, and culpable leaders behave
differently than their nonculpable counterparts. In Chapter5, Iexplore
whether these findings hold for political actors outside of the executive
branch by investigating whether culpable politicians within the legisla-
ture behave differently than their nonculpable colleagues in terms of vot-
ing on bills that challenge the Iraq war. Once again, culpability has strong
effect. This chapter also explores how culpability affects voters attitudes
on the campaign trail by exploring several examples of culpable leaders
who faced reelection when the war in Iraq was deeply unpopular. Finally,
Chapter6 concludes with a postlude on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan
and a brief discussion of the theorys implications for academics and
policy makers.
38 For a detailed discussion of the role of the illustrative case study, see Levy (2008).
2
A Theory of Leader Culpability
Chapter1 established two puzzles. First, why do some leaders continue

fighting wars they seem destined to lose while other leaders accede to the
adversarys demands when further resistance is possible? Second, why do
domestic audiences punish some leaders who fail to secure victory in con-
flict yet spare others who preside over similarly unfavorable outcomes?
The answer to both of these questions, I argued, centers on a leaders
culpability for the conflict.
The remainder of this chapter develops a theory of leader culpability,
and demonstrates why distinguishing leaders based on their culpability
is critical to understanding not only war termination decisions but also
wartime domestic political dynamics. Iproceed in five parts. In Part1,
Ibriefly outline the theoretical assumptions that shape my expectations
for leader and citizen behavior. Iassume, for instance, that leaders will
want to stay in power and that citizens will want to remove incompetent
leaders from office. Both of these assumptions, and others that Idiscuss,
are well established in the current literature and are familiar components
of existing theories of war termination and international relations more
generally.
In Part2, Ishift my focus to a new assumption that has hitherto gained
little recognition from scholars:that citizens will only want to punish a
leader on the grounds of incompetence if they have reason to believe that
the particular leader was at fault in creating a poor outcome. As Inoted
in Chapter1, this claim represents a departure from the dominant view in
the responsibility attribution literature, which assumes that citizens will
punish whichever leader is in power when the poor outcome materializes,
regardless of whether he was responsible for bringing it about. Although
19
this assumption of blind retrospection makes sense in many policy areas

(e.g., economics), it is less applicable in the case of wars. When a state is
involved in an international conflict, citizens will have a very clear under-
standing of which leaders were culpable for entangling the state in the war
and, importantly, will want to target any punishment to these specific lead-
ers (and only them) if the war goesbadly.
Incorporating this new assumption is consequential because it allows us
to predict when a conflict of interests will develop between a leader and
his citizens. As Idiscuss in greater detail in Part3, culpable leaders alone
will have strong incentives to stay in wars until they win, even if this means
defying the wishes of their citizens and subjecting them to more costs. While
other scholars have recognized the possibility that leaders will act in this
manner in an attempt to gamble for resurrection, existing theories do not
offer a rationale for why some leaders will engage in this behavior while
other leaders will refrain and choose to cut their losses instead. The theory
Ipresent here addresses this lacuna. Once we understand that citizens will
want to condition their desire to remove a leader on his culpability for a
conflict that has gone poorly, the reason for leaders seemingly irrational
gambling behavior becomes clear. This causal logic suggests several testable
hypotheses for both leader and citizen behavior, which Ipresent in Part4.
Finally, Part5 rounds out the chapter by discussing several ways in which
recognizing leader culpability improves our understanding of war termina-
tion and international conflict more generally.
Part1:Theoretical Assumptions about

Leaders and Citizens
Leaders
Following much of the existing literature, my first assumption about lead-
ers is that they are rational actors whose primary goal is retaining office.
Leaders value their position because it grants them tremendous influence
over the affairs of the state. This power allows them to generate public
goods that benefit their domestic audience, such as increased economic
growth or a strong national defense. It also grants them discretion over the
distribution of private goods, which they can use to reward key members
of their winning coalition that is, the members of the domestic audience
whose support is critical for the leader to stay in office.1
1 Bueno de Mesquita etal. (2003).

A Theory of Leader Culpability 21
A states regime type affects the mixture of goods the leader utilizes
to maintain support. In democratic states, where the leaders winning
coalition is relatively large, the leader may choose to reward supporters
with favorable tax policies or other forms of assistance to members of
a general industry or interest group. In nondemocratic states, where the
leaders winning coalition is much smaller, especially relative to the size
of the general population, the rewards are often targeted more precisely
to key individuals. A leader may distribute important positions in the
ranks of the military, for example, or influential posts in the government.
He may also choose to literally buy the loyalty of important supporters
with a share of the states oil revenues, for instance. Regardless of the
particular mixture of public and private goods a leader chooses to use to
reward his winning coalition, his ability to continue the flow of benefits
to his supporters depends on his staying in power. Given this, we should
expect leaders to make policy choices that will increase their chances of
maintaining control of the provision of these goods, and, by extension,
retaining office.
One consequence of this first assumption is that leaders will also care
about the political fortunes of their allies (hereafter, cofaction members)
within the government. The regime type of the state dictates which domes-
tic political actors are associated with the leaders faction. In democra-
cies, for instance, members of the executives political party are a part
of the leaders faction. In nondemocracies, generals from the same junta
in military dictatorships or family members in monarchies may serve
as cofaction members. The defining characteristic of a faction is that it
implies a political connection between a member and the leader that is
both observable and common knowledge within thestate.
A leader will care about protecting his fellow faction members because
their continued tenure makes it easier for him to maintain office. His
motivation, in other words, is grounded in his own self-interest. Having
more faction members in the government facilitates achieving his pol-
icy objectives, which in turn facilitates generating goods to reward the
members of his faction. Given this, we should expect executives to take
steps to enable the political survival of their fellow faction members.
While this often consists of supplying either financial or political sup-
port, the actions that the leader makes as an individual have conse-
quences for the faction as well. The public links that exist between the
leader and the rest of the faction mean their political fates are inter-
twined, for better or worse. This connection to the leader can benefit
those in the faction if the leader is successful:in democratic states, for
instance, this coattails effect can allow members of an executives

party to capitalize on his popularity and coast to electoral victory.
An unsuccessful leader, however, can drag other politicians in the
faction down with him, putting the entire groups political fortunes
in jeopardy. Cotton (1986) provides evidence of this phenomenon in
the American context where he finds that members of the presidents
party often suffer in midterm elections held during unpopular wars.
This potential for widespread negative repercussions, which ultimately
affect the leaders own political survival, gives leaders strong incen-
tives to avoid policy missteps that might tarnish the groups collective
reputation.2
My second assumption about leaders is that they will enjoy a com-
parative advantage in terms of access to information about state affairs
relative to their citizens. Consequently, the leader can form a more accu-
rate picture of the state of the world, especially about the international
environment because happenings in this realm are generally beyond ordi-
nary citizens. The leader is also an active participant in the actual imple-
mentation of policy. His position gives him a better working knowledge
of the true effects of different policy options. It also provides him with a
better and more up-to-date understanding of what is happening on the
ground in the conflict, especially compared to citizens who are more
removed from the process.
The leaders information advantage is reinforced by the fact that citi-
zens cannot monitor the leaders actions closely. This is true for at least
two reasons. First, leaders daily activities require detailed and specialized
knowledge that citizens lack. Consequently, it is often hard for the aver-
age citizen to know if a leader made a misstep. Citizens are better at rec-
ognizing large-scale failures, but these often take a long time to develop
and are the product of many decisions, not justone.
2 This motivation to protect the groups image will hold even for leaders who are subject to
term limits in democratic states. While such leaders may not be able to run for reelection,
they still require the support of their fellow faction members if they wish to enjoy the full
benefits of leadership in their final term. Without allies in the government, a leader may
find it difficult to accomplish their remaining policy goals. This potential lack of support
is consequential because a single term can often be several years long. Cofaction members
have incentives to check the leader because their time horizon is longer. Because at least
a subset of them will want to remain in power after the leader has left office, they have
no incentive to allow him to behave like a reckless lame duck. Asimilar story exists for
leaders who wish to retire. While their personal electoral motivation is absent, the elec-
toral needs of their cofaction members and the enduring reputation of the larger partys
brand encourage them to continue to push for polices that benefit the larger faction. See
Simmons (2014).
Second, most of these activities take place behind closed doors, or, at
most, in front of a very limited audience of political elites and bureaucrats.
This practice holds even in democratic states where domestic political
norms encourage transparency. In such polities, citizens may technically
be able to witness a large portion of the policy process, say, by watch-
ing legislative hearings or reading transcripts. Doing so comprehensively,
however, would require a herculean amount of effort and a very robust
attention span. Moreover, even if a citizen were able to keep up with the
massive amount of public information, many of the leaders most impor-
tant tasks are performed out of the public eye, such as treaty negotiations
or calls to other heads of state to ask for assistance. The fruits of these
efforts are made public (e.g., signing ceremonies, joint appearances) but
the process that led to the final outcome remains private. Some of this
obscurity is by design. Citizens delegate policy-making authority to their
leader to allow the state to run more efficiently. By entrusting the leader
with the business of running the state, citizens are free to go about the
tasks of their own day-to-day lives without needing to concern them-
selves with the details of how a leader actually implements policies.
This arrangement, however, has a potential downside. The informa-
tion asymmetry combined with citizens inability to monitor the leader
creates an opportunity for the leader if he so desires to choose policies
that advance his interests, as opposed to those that work in the best inter-
est of the citizens. Moreover, he can do so without the citizens knowing,
at least in the near term. This is, of course, the crux of what scholars refer
to as the principal-agent problem. In this scenario, the leader is the agent
and the citizens are a collective principal. In theory, the leader is supposed
to act as a faithful agent by pursuing policies that benefit the principal. In
practice, however, the leader can capitalize on the informational advan-
tage he enjoys over citizens and act as an unfaithful agent and pursue his
own interests while appearing to work on behalf of the citizens. By virtue
of its inability to monitor the leader, however, the domestic audience will
often not detect an unfaithful agent until the consequences of the leaders
policy choices materialize.3
This problem is ameliorated somewhat in nondemocratic states where
the closed nature of the political system and the corresponding smaller
domestic audience gives members the ability to monitor the leader more
3 As other scholars have noted, this information asymmetry often motivates citizens to uti-
lize signals from third parties as fire alarms to help them detect transgressions on the
part of the leader. See Chapman and Reiter (2004) and Chapman (2011).
effectively. Members of the relevant domestic audience will typically have

access to the leader and be privy to knowledge about current political
issues. While this does not allow them to monitor the leader perfectly,
their relative advantage in this regard, in combination with their abil-
ity to sanction the leader quickly, leaves the leader with less room to be
unfaithful. In democratic states the opposite is true. Because the relevant
domestic audience is much larger, most members will have neither direct
access to the leader nor a detailed understanding of the problems the
leader must solve. Their ability to monitor and evaluate the leader effec-
tively, therefore, is greatly reduced. Consequently, the leader has more
freedom to act as an unfaithful agent if it is in his interest to do so.
Members of the opposition, who will have greater knowledge about cur-
rent issues and the leaders actions by virtue of being in the government,
may be able to assist citizens in monitoring, but this is a noisy signal.
Because citizens know that members of the opposition have incentives
to undermine the leader, the simple presence of an opposition (even an
active one) cannot solve the principal-agent problem. Citizens will always
lack the ability to monitor the leader perfectly.
Importantly, while this monitoring problem means the principal-agent
problem is always present, this does not necessarily lead to a conflict
of interest between the leader and the citizens. A leader can act in his
own interests and pursue policies that also advantage citizens. So long
as the leaders preferences align with the citizens, he has no reason to
deviate from being a faithful agent. He will act in accordance with the
citizens preferences even though they have no means to confirm that he
is doingso.
Mutually beneficial situations are quite common. Democratic leaders
who negotiate beneficial trade agreements, for instance, provide a public
good for their citizens in the form of lower commodity prices and overall
economic growth. But the agreement also has positive externalities for the
leader because citizens will want to reward him by allowing him to con-
tinue serving in office. In cases like this, the citizens may not fully grasp
the financial intricacies that explain how the trade agreement improved
their states economic standing, or know what the leader did to strike the
bargain. Still, they can be reasonably confident that the policy benefited
them by looking at the size of their pocketbook. Consequently, they will
be willing to reward the leader for his role in bringing the deal to fruition.
Asimilar story could be told for nondemocratic leaders. Members of the
small cadre of elites that comprise the winning coalition may not be able
to fully monitor the actions of the leader that led to increased revenue
streams from the black market, for instance, but they will have little rea-
son to care. Instead, they will be content with a situation that is win-win
for both the leader and themselves because their preferences are shared.
Agency problems arise when circumstances render the leaders and
citizens preferences incompatible. In this situation, the leader is both in a
position and has an incentive to abuse both his informational advantage
and citizens inability to monitor him. At some point, members of the
domestic audience may suspect that the leader is behaving unfaithfully,
but, as Inoted previously, they have a limited ability both to know this
with certainty early on and to sanction him quickly once they realize the
wrongdoing. This problem is compounded by the fact that the leader is
aware of these limitations and will do his best to appear as though he
is acting faithfully when in reality he is doing the opposite. Idiscuss the
circumstances under which this scenario is likely to arise in greater detail
in the followingtext.
Citizens
Turning to citizens, I first assume that they want a competent leader,
meaning one who demonstrates that he is capable of making good pol-
icy choices, executing those choices well, and obtaining outcomes (as a
result of those choices) that serve the domestic audiences preferences.
Competent leaders will have a higher probability of policy success,
which translates into increased amounts of public and/or private goods
for members of the domestic audience. Ahistory of policy successes also
serves as a good predictor of the leaders future policy success. Taken
together, these reasons provide members of the domestic audience with
incentives to keep competent leaders in office and remove those that have
exhibited incompetence.
These incentives hold regardless of the leaders regime type, though
the bar may be higher in democracies. In nondemocratic states, where
the winning coalition is relatively small, the leader need only be compe-
tent enough to keep private goods flowing to the pockets of his circle of
key supporters. The leader may make poor policy choices that affect his
ability to deliver public goods to the general population, but his tenure is
secure so long as he continues to provide goods to his relevant domestic
audience. The numerous leaders of autocratic states who have presided
over decades of slow economic growth or, in some extreme instances,
massive famines or widespread starvation while still remaining in power
serve as cases inpoint.
Democratic leaders have less room for error. Because their winning
coalition is so much larger (i.e., a sizeable proportion of the electorate),
they need to be competent enough to provide a steady flow of public
goods that benefit the general population. The frequency with which
democratic leaders are turned out of office for failing to provide their
citizens with a strong economy a classic public good is evidence of
this phenomenon.4 Differences between regime types aside, however, the
larger point remains that the relevant domestic audiences in all states will
want to remove a leader if he demonstrates that he is incompetent.
My second assumption about citizens is that they will, on average,
be less willing to tolerate casualties than leaders.5 This difference stems
from the fact that citizens bear the costs of war entirely while the leader
remains above the fray. In the past, leaders would often serve as com-
manders of their states armed forces, subjecting themselves to the possi-
bility of dying in the war they chose to involve the state in. The last leader
to die in an interstate conflict, however, was Francisco Solano Lpez of
Paraguay, who met his grisly fate at the hands of his Brazilian foes dur-
ing the War of the Triple Alliance in 1870. Since then, leaders have been
removed from the risks of direct combat leaving their citizens to face the
dangers of serving on the front lines. The uneven exposure to the costs
of war has a dramatic effect on how leaders and citizens will respond
when the casualty numbers begin to rise. To understand why this is, it is
helpful to consider how the costs of war affect each actor more formally.
Citizens feel the effects of casualties directly. When the country goes to
war, their spouses, children, and neighbors serve on the battlefields. This
means they will become less willing to stay in the war over time because
their utility for the conflict generally declines as casualtiesmount.
This tendency holds even if the casualties are not from a citizens
immediate family or social circle. The connection between the citizen
and the deceased need not be close. Gartner (2008), for instance, posits
that a citizen only needs to know of a war-related death for it to affect
their opinion of the war. As he explains, the subject knows a casu-
alty, but the victim may or may not have known the subject . . . [the
4 George H. W. Bushs loss in the 1992 presidential election serves as a good example.
Despite the fact that he had just won a war in the Persian Gulf, leading the coalition that
expelled Saddam Husseins Iraqi forces from Kuwait, Bush was still soundly defeated
by challenger Bill Clinton. Democratic strategist James Carville succinctly captured the
reason for Bushs loss when he quipped his now famous line in 1992:Its the economy,
stupid.
5 Gelpi etal. (2005/2006).
key aspect] is whether an individual can personalize a conflict victim

(6901).6 Recent work by Karol and Miguel (2007) makes a similar
point. In their study of the effects of casualties in the 2004 presidential
election, the authors find that Bushs vote share significantly declined
in states that had higher numbers of casualties. This finding is striking
because the total number of casualties at the time of the 2004 election
was only 1,101. While this figure made the war one of the most costly
for the United States in the postVietnam era, the fact that a little more
than a thousand deaths could have such a strong and consistent effect
across fifty states with a combined total of close to three hundred mil-
lion people suggests that casualties have an effect beyond the families
of the victims. Simply being aware of the deaths is enough to high-
light the costs of war. This suggests that citizens should become increas-
ingly opposed to the war as it goes on because continuing to fight only
increases the probability that more of their fellow citizens will die as a
result of the conflict.7
Leaders, by contrast, should have a relatively higher tolerance for
losses because casualties only affect their utility for continuing the war
indirectly. Losing soldiers can hamper the armed forces ability to repel
the enemy, for instance, but the loss of each individual is marginal. Anor-
mal number of casualties is typically not enough to weaken a states
fighting strength by an appreciable amount. Alarge number of losses can
also take a toll on a leaders popularity and, by extension, vote share.
Wartime popularity, however, should only be a secondary concern for a
leader, at most. If given the choice between making a popular decision
now but being out of office in the near term (i.e., bowing to the will of the
citizens and ending the war without winning) and being unpopular now
but staying in office for longer (i.e., remaining in the war until victory is
secured) a (culpable) leader will prefer the latter. Popularity can eventu-
ally rebound; regaining power after being removed is considerably more
difficult. Taken together, we should expect casualties to have a smaller
effect on leaders than they do on citizens.
6 Local casualties, of course, will have an even bigger impact because they make the costs
feel more immediate (Kriner and Shen 2012), though the effect of these loses on public
opinion may be short-lived (Althaus etal. 2012).
7 Considerable evidence for this inverse relationship between casualties and public support
for war (and, by extension, incumbent vote share) exists in the literature See, e.g., Gartner
and Segura (1998), Gartner, Segura and Barrat (2004), Koch and Gartner (2005), Karol and
Miguel (2007), Kriner and Shen (2007), and Gartner and Segura (2008a,b). Though see
Feaver and Gelpi (2004), Berinsky (2007, 2009), Gelpi et al. (2009), and Koch (2011).
This difference is important to recognize because casualties are a fact

of life for almost all states that participate in wars. With rare excep-
tion most notably, the allied air campaigns in Kosovo in 1999 and the
early phases of the war in Afghanistan in 2001 all states lose military
personnel when they engage in international conflict.8 While the median
number of military losses for states involved in wars since 1815 is around
two thousand battle deaths, some states have sacrificed far more. Iran, for
instance, lost close to three-quarters of a million soldiers in its eight-year
war with Iraq. Many of the Great Powers lost more than a million sol-
diers each during the two world wars. Yet even these grim figures pale in
comparison to historys biggest loser, the Soviet Union in World War II,
which lost a staggering seven and a half million soldiers over the course
of the conflict.9
Casualties are (very nearly) a universal part of the war fighting experi-
ence for states because they have to be paid by both winners and losers.
Conventional wisdom would expect states that win to lose fewer soldiers,
but this is not always the case.10 The reason for this lack of a relationship
is that some wins are only achieved at a high price, when leaders are will-
ing to invest a tremendous amount of manpower to overwhelm (or sim-
ply outlast) the enemy. Stalin eventually secured a victory over Germany
in World War II, but only after he sacrificed millions of his citizens lives
in some of the costliest battles on the Eastern Front. The loss of life over
which Stalin presided represents an extreme, but the general pattern is
undeniable. Win or lose, casualties are the price of participating in war.
This is consequential because it means casualties and the fact that they
are being borne by the citizens and not the leader will be an issue for
everywar.
In addition to being a part of every war, casualties also typically
occupy a central role in framing wars in public discourse. Given this,
citizens in a state at war are typically at least aware of the fact that their
fellow citizens are dying, even if nobody in their immediate social circle is
8 Civilian casualties, of course, are also extremely salient to citizens. Indeed, as Valentino
et al. (2006) make clear, civilian fatalities account for a large number of war-related
deaths in the twentieth century. These deaths also affect citizens directly. Ido not dis-
cuss them in great detail here because they do not occur in every war, or even a majority
ofthem.
9 Sarkees and Wayman (2010:140).
10 In their analysis of patterns of wartime losses, e.g., Valentino et al. (2010:530)find that
outcomes and losses are only weakly correlated (-0.13) and that military losses are not a
significant predictor of whether the state is among the victors or vanquished at the end
of the conflict.
involved.11 Indeed, casualties are such a common part of the wartime par-
lance that scholars and public opinion pollsters often think of casualties
as a means by which citizens assess whether a war is worth fighting.12
Given this, we should expect casualties, and the different risk propensi-
ties they create for citizens and leaders in costly wars, to play a major role
in domestic wartime dynamics.
Part2:Attributing Culpability in TimesofWar

The preceding section established several important assumptions about
leaders and citizens. Leaders are primarily interested in maintaining office.
They also, by virtue of their position, have better information about state
affairs and policy making than citizens. This affords them the opportu-
nity to act as unfaithful agents that is, pursuing their own interests at
the expense of the citizens if they have the incentive to do so. This pos-
sibility is open to leaders because citizens can detect transgressions only
with difficulty, especially in the near term. Iassume as well that citizens
want their leaders to be competent and that they bear the costs of war
during international conflicts. These four assumptions lay the ground-
work for the argument Iadvancehere.
My fifth assumption forms the theoretical core for the argument:citi-
zens should condition their desire to punish a leader on their perception
of how culpable the leader was for creating a poor outcome provided they
are able to make this determination. When citizens are able to do this,
they will only want to punish leaders whom they deem are both incom-
petent and culpable for the decision that led to the outcome. Leaders
who were not party to the decision, by contrast, did not contribute to the
initial misguided choice or the poor outcome, and thus may still be com-
petent; therefore, they will be spared.
11 I set this relatively low bar of basic awareness because there is reason to believe that
citizens may not have an entirely accurate sense of the actual losses. Berinsky (2007),
e.g., finds that partisanship has a significant effect on an individuals estimation of casu-
alties. Similarly, at least in the American context, wars are often portrayed in a sanitized,
bloodless fashion in the media, further contributing to the publics misestimating the true
costs of war (Aday 2005, 2010, and Althaus etal. 2014). The medias coverage of the
war also does not necessarily track with the events on the ground, especially with respect
to casualties. Althaus etal. (2012:1065), e.g., found that news coverage of war deaths
is unrelated to how many American combatants have recently died . . . [and that] news
coverage is more likely to mention war deaths when reporting combat operations and
less likely to mention them when a war is goingwell.
12 Berinsky (2009).
This claim differs from a common assumption in the literature that

citizens are purely retrospective when deciding whether to punish a
leader. If members of the domestic audience were purely retrospective,
they would remove the incumbent if they were unhappy with the cur-
rent status quo, regardless of whether that particular leaders incompe-
tence was responsible for creating the poor outcome. This assumption
of blind retrospection is widespread. Among others, Achen and Bartels
(2004:9)assert that, incumbents will pay at the polls for bad times,
even in situations where objective observers can find little rational basis
to suppose that those incumbents have had any part in producing the
voters pain. The authors point to instances of voters punishing lead-
ers for things they could not have possibly been at fault for (e.g., shark
attacks) as evidence of this claim. Wolfers (2002, abstract) takes a sim-
ilar position claiming that in general, voters make systematic attribu-
tion errors and are best characterized as quasi-rational. In cases like
this, the leaders only mistake was being in office at the time the event
tookplace.
While Iagree with the general notion that citizens use cues from the
current status quo to make inferences about the leaders competence, they
will not punish leaders blindly if they have the means to sort the culpable
ones from those who had nothing to do with creating the situation. In
situations in which accurate responsibility attribution is possible, domes-
tic audience members will want to target punishment to the culpable
parties to ensure they remove the incompetent leaders. Removing leaders
who were not responsible is inefficient on the part of citizens. They do
not have an incentive to remove a leader whom they know did not create
the problem and who has not exhibited any other signs of incompetence.
Indeed, all evidence available to citizens would suggest that the leader is
not problematic. Moreover, as I discuss in greater detail in the follow-
ing text, punishing leaders who were not responsible can, under some
circumstances, force the nonculpable leaders preferences to diverge from
citizens when they would otherwise align. This creates a situation that is
unattractive to both nonculpable leaders and citizens.
Recognizing that citizens will want to limit punishment to leaders
who are culpable for bad outcomes is important for the topic at hand
because citizens can determine the locus of responsibility easily in times
of conflict. As Imentioned previously, accurate responsibility attribution
is not a skill typically associated with citizens in the context of com-
plex policy decisions. This apparent shortcoming of citizens, however,
is largely a product of the topic scholars typically focus on, economic
problems.13 Although the economy is a logical place to start, it presents

several challenges for citizens in terms of responsibility attribution.14
Identifying culpable leaders in wars is a far easier task for at least three
reasons.
First, the timelines of wars are relatively easy to define. Because the
majority of wars have clear start dates, identifying which leader was in
charge when the conflict began is a simple task for citizens.15 In decades
past, for instance, the executive often issued an official declaration of
war against the adversary, clearly marking the opening of hostilities. This
practice has declined in modern times, but most wars typically open with
crises capable of capturing national attention. Wars also typically involve
a large-scale mobilization of both people and resources.16 Even in the
absence of a draft, the act of calling up troops for deployment is generally
national news, and the need to sustain the flow of materiel to the front
keeps the war in the spotlight.
Wars also generate political rhetoric that is specifically designed to
capture public attention. Before the conflict begins the leader may engage
in saber rattling to rally the population and intimidate the adversary. In
democracies, the leader and members of the legislature may debate the
13 E.g., Hibbing and Alford (1981), Peffley (1984), and Rudolph (2003). In recent years,
scholars have begun to turn their attention to how citizens assign blame for natural
disasters (e.g., Achen and Bartels 2004; Healy and Malhotra 2009; Malhotra and Kuo
2009). Natural disasters are also different from wars because they require responses
from multiple levels of government and are not triggered by any action of government.
This makes identifying the party most responsible for handling the response difficult. By
contrast, wars are typically managed entirely within the central governments executive
branch.
14 Economic problems typically have nebulous timelines. Economic problems also build
slowly; the large crises, such as stock market crashes, that punctuate them are often
symptoms rather than causes, and they rarely mark the true inception of the problem.
These characteristics make it difficult to identify when things began to go awry and, by
extension, which leader was in charge at the time. Economic problems are also inher-
ently complex. Arecession is a multifaceted event that is the product of several decisions,
many of which are not deterministic, not all of which are made by political actors (e.g.,
private firms, hedge funds), and many of which were made well before the onset of the
recession. Finally, economic outcomes are jointly determined, with multiple actors who
could be equally responsible. Identifying a single leader who as a fault, therefore, is a tall
order for citizens.
15 As Inote in my discussion of initiators and targets, this does not mean that it will always
be clear which state started the war, only that people will know which leader was in
charge of their state when the hostilitiesbegan.
16 According to recent work by Flores-Marcas and Kreps (2013), the act of mobilizing
the necessary finances for war (e.g., levying a war tax) can underscore the costs citi-
zens are being asked to bear, and often carries significant political consequences for the
leadership.
merits of the war, sparking a dialogue that will likely continue through-
out the conflict. The public nature of this debate means the leader who
started the war is unlikely to be able to escape negative scrutiny if the
state fares poorly. Even in cases where the war is a product of low-level
skirmishes that eventually escalate, identifying which leader was at the
helm when the smaller incidents occurred is not especially difficult.17
Recognizing the publics ability to know when the war began is impor-
tant because it allows even the least-informed citizens to identify the
leader responsible for involving the state in the conflict.
Knowing when the war started also facilitates identifying which other
actors beyond the first leader may have been party to the decision. This
has implications for leaders who come to office during wars (hereafter,
replacement leaders) who may try to distance themselves from the con-
flict if the state is faring poorly when they took office.18 This ability to
identify connections between leaders may strike some as far-fetched given
the relatively low levels of interest average citizens have in foreign pol-
icy specifically19 and politics more generally, but we should not under-
estimate the role of the domestic opposition.20 Citizens may not be able
to recall offhand whether the new executive was in the cabinet of the
leader who started the war, for instance, but nonculpable opponents of
the incumbent will have strong incentives to remind the public of these
connections. The probability that the domestic audience will accept the
oppositions claims about the replacement leaders ties to the war is high;
research has found that citizens are willing to assign blame to leaders pro-
vided there is a psychologically appealing causal connection between
the leader and the event angering them.21
A second characteristic of wars that makes it easy for citizens to deter-
mine culpability is that the causal pathways that produce them are fairly
clear. Although leaders may disagree about the events leading up to the
conflict which side shot first, which border was violated, and so forth
the process of involving the state in a war typically follows a series of
17 The escalation from a crisis to a war typically happens quickly. Any ambiguity regarding
the link between the two, therefore, will likely be minimal.
18 As Idiscuss in greater detail in Chapter3, replacement leaders can be culpable or non-
culpable. Only culpable replacement leaders will have issues distancing themselves from
a conflict where the state is not performingwell.
19 Aldrich etal. (1989).
20 Although, see Slantchev (2006).
21 Achen and Bartels (2004:4). Iaddress the conditions under which the opposition can
convince the public to shift the blame from the leader who started the war to the replace-
ment leader in greater detail in the followingtext.
well-established, easily observable steps. Acts like declaring war, mobiliz-

ing troops, making alliances, or escalating the level of violence serve as
markers along a states path into a conflict. Because these steps are often
public and follow an orderly causal progression, answering the question
of how did we get here? is straightforward. Once citizens can link the
war to a specific decision (or cluster of decisions), identifying which lead-
ers were party to it becomes an easiertask.
Third and finally, the act of involving a state in a war often involves
only small number of political actors. Decisions related to international
conflict are almost exclusively confined to the highest echelons of the
government. If citizens are trying to determine whom to punish, their first
instinct will be to focus on national-level political elites. This potential
pool of actors to blame narrows further when we consider the different
roles these high-level actors typically assume. The executive, for instance,
is almost always the dominant foreign policy actor.22 Any diffusion of
tactical or strategic decision making happens vertically within the execu-
tive branch (e.g., the leaders of the armed forces) instead of horizontally
to other actors in different branches. Although other actors, such as the
legislature, may have veto authority over the executive in a general sense,
on matters of security their powers are usually limited to constraining the
executive instead of blocking him outright or making the decisions them-
selves.23 The limited number of actors who could have been party to the
decision overall combined with the executives very public role in shaping
foreign policy facilitates the domestic audience identifying the party that
was culpable for involving their state in a conflict.
In sum, and in contrast to the problems scholars interested in respon-
sibility attribution traditionally study, culpability for decisions related
to war is relatively easy for citizens to ascertain. Although citizens may
default to punishing the incumbent who was in charge when the econ-
omy soured or when the hurricane struck, they are better equipped to
target their anger in cases of war at the leader who was actually responsi-
ble for the problem and, furthermore, they will have incentives to doso.24
22 Wildavsky (1991).
23 Howell and Pevehouse (2007) and Kriner (2010).
24 Importantly, this does not mean that the monitoring portion of the principal-agent prob-
lem is ameliorated in times of war. Citizens may know which leader (or leaders, if more
than one are in charge over the course of the war) were responsible for involving the state
in the conflict, but they will still face the challenge of having far less information than
the leader will about the implementation and day-to-day happenings of the policy (e.g.,
how the state is faring on the battlefield, the enemys actions) just as they would in any
nonconflict setting
Leaders Reactions to Their Own Culpability

Given the ease with which citizens are able to identify culpable leaders
in times of war, how might leaders respond? Do they embrace their cul-
pability? Or do they attempt to spread it to other parties or even shed
it completely? With regard to the first option, a leader may try to earn
points with the domestic audience by admitting his role in involving the
state in the war, especially if the war is going poorly. George W.Bush, for
instance, took ownership of the war in Iraq when in January 2007, in a
speech delivered from the White House library, he said the situation in
Iraq is unacceptable to the American people, and it is unacceptable to
me. Where mistakes have been made, the responsibility rests with me.25
While Bush may have been trying to earn some political capital by issu-
ing a bold statement of culpability, it likely did little to alter anyones
perception of him for the better. The war clearly belonged to Bush. It
had been his decision to initiate it, and he had proudly championed its
mission as both noble and necessary when it first began. To admit that
he was responsible for it likely struck many as stating the obvious. All
culpable leaders would face a similar scenario. Some may decide to try to
gain domestic favor by portraying themselves as honorable, honest peo-
ple who own their mistakes, but this is, at best, political theater. Citizens
may respect the leader for taking the high road, but they will still hold
him responsible for the failure.
Being a culpable leader does, of course, have its benefits in a war that
went well. As Croco and Weeks (2014) demonstrate, culpable leaders
of certain regimes enjoy a higher probability of staying in office for
longer after a military victory. Even in cases of a win, though, leaders
may be reluctant to take credit directly out of fear of appearing brash or
arrogant. They also will likely realize that they need not go out of their
way to attract accolades. The same logic that applies to culpable lead-
ers who lose applies to those who win:their responsibility for the war
is obvious and indisputable. Different domestic groups who stand to
gain by pointing out the leaders failures or accomplishments will also
highlight the leaders culpability. Political opponents may be the ones
who point fingers at leaders who are responsible for debacles, while
political allies will take care to underscore the successes of their culpa-
ble colleague, but the public will know the identity of the responsible
executive eitherway.
25 Transcript of President Bushs Address to the Nation on Iraq (2007).

As for the remaining two options shedding or spreading culpability

the latter of the two has a higher (though, perhaps, still a very modest)
probability of working. Although a culpable leader may want to shed
responsibility and disassociate himself from a war, especially one that is
going badly, domestic political opponents will work hard to ensure he
is unable to do so. Even without adversaries looking to capitalize on a
leaders failure, though, extricating oneself from a bad decision is a tall
order for any executive. To do so necessarily means implying that they
were either unaware of major events occurring at the highest levels of
foreign affairs or that they lacked the ability to control their subordinates
who actually executed the unfortunate policy. Given this, most executives
would likely take a page from Harry Trumans book and recognize that
the buck stops withthem.
Spreading culpability is a slightly different matter, worthy of more dis-
cussion. While a culpable leader may not be able to disconnect himself
from the decision to go to war in the publics eye completely, he may be
able to cast the net wider to ensnare others within the binding effects of
culpability. If the war ends badly, the leader will still have to take respon-
sibility for the outcomes, but having others tied to the decision may pre-
sent him with opportunities to soften the blow earlier in the process.
As a case in point, consider Barack Obamas behavior with respect to
the question of whether to take military action against Syria in the fall of
2013. Syria had become an issue of international concern approximately
a year earlier when it became increasingly clear that the Assad regime
was stepping up its campaign to repress domestic dissent. On August 20,
2012, when asked about recent events in Syria, Obama stated that a red
line for us is [when] we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons
moving around or being utilized. That would change my calculus. That
would change my equation.26 The strength and clarity of the statement
puzzled some at the briefing because, with such an evocative phrase, the
president had defined his policy in a way some advisers wish they could
take back.27 The use of the words red line seemed to draw a prover-
bial line in the sand that Obama would have to reckon with should Assad
decide to use chemical weapons in the future.
Roughly a year later, in June 2013, the White House said that Assad
had, in fact, resorted to using such weapons. On August 21, 2013 a
year and a day after the now famous red line speech more than
26 Jackson (2013).
27 Ibid. (emphasismine).
1,400 people were killed by an alleged chemical attack in Damascus.28

Obama now found himself in a political quandary. Would he stand by
his earlier statement about chemical weapons being a sufficient trigger
for action? His problems were exacerbated eight days later when British
Prime Minister David Cameron suffered a humiliating defeat when the
House of Commons refused to support his call for military action against
Syria.29
While it is impossible to know what Obamas private reaction was to
this news from one of his closest international allies, what is known is that
it led to an abrupt change in his behavior. Two days after the U.K.vote,
in a speech in the White House Rose Garden, Obama announced his
plans to ask Congress to grant approval for military action in Syria. This
move represented an about-face for Obama who until that point had said
that he would not seek Congressional authorization and that he had the
legal right to order the start of military strikes.30 Indeed, Obama had
been planning on doing just that until the news from London brought
to a halt a full weeks worth of administration officials laying out war
plans.31
Obamas about-face led to a variety of reactions. After all, he did have
the legal authority to carry out military action unilaterally, just as he
had done when he used force to take down the Gaddafi regime using
air strikes in 2011.32 Why risk a possible political firestorm by seek-
ing approval from Congress? One former Obama administration offi-
cial, who confessed that his jaw hit the floor when he heard Obama
announce his plans, wondered Why make this more complicated?33
By subjecting himself to Congress approval, he risked the same politi-
cal embarrassment Cameron had faced. He also chanced fallout in other
respects as many thought a losing vote could weaken the President
ahead of the debates on key domestic issues including the budget, debt
ceiling, Obamacare funding and immigration. On the international stage,
it could embolden Syria, Iran and other unfriendly countries.34 Others
28 Bissegger (2013).
29 Espo (2013).
30 Lee and Entous (2013).
31 Allen and Epstein (2013).
32 DeYoung (2013). In the same article law professor Martin Lederman agreed that while
Obama technically had the legal authority to intervene in Syria, he cautioned that a uni-
lateral use of force . . . also would have been unprecedented in important ways, and proba-
bly more corrosive to the modern balance of war powers between the political branches.
33 Corn (2013).
34 Allen and Epstein (2013).
noted that by turning to Congress at this juncture, Obama was creating

a legal precedent that would make it highly unlikely that at any time
during the remainder of his term he will be able to initiate military action
without seeking Congressional approval.35
Clearly, the potential costs were high. But congressional approval also
carried a significant benefit for Obama. If Congress voted yes, Obama
could, at least on some level, share responsibility for the strikes with the
legislators who voted yes.36 If Congress voted no, Obama could back
off from his earlier red line statement and refrain from taking action
against Syria, citing the lack of congressional and, by extension, popu-
lar consent. In short, it was a win-win situation for Obama that allowed
him to either alter his culpability for a (potential) military conflict with
Syria or avoid one altogether while also sidestepping any accusations of
flip-flopping.37
For their part, congressional Republicans suspected they were being
used for political cover, which did not sit well with them.38 Bob Corker
(R-TN), the senior Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
said, I hope this is not a case of them having second thoughts and using
Congress as a foil.39 Representative Peter King (R-NY) also openly ques-
tioned Obamas motives, quipping The president doesnt need 535 mem-
bers of Congress to enforce his own redline.40 Obamas own remarks did
little to discredit the notion that he was attempting to spread responsibil-
ity. At a press conference in Stockholm, he insisted, My credibilitys not
35 DeYoung (2013).
36 While it is difficult to know Obamas motives, which are, of course, unobservable,
Congress could have been his second choice for a partner in culpability, with David
Cameron being the first. Once the possibility of sharing responsibility with an interna-
tional actor was off the table, Obama had to turn to local options. Ireturn to this notion
of an allys role in indicating shared responsibility in Chapter6.
37 It is, of course, impossible to know how things would have played out had the conflict
continued to escalate. As Imake clear elsewhere in this book, executives are seen as the
chief foreign policy actor. Congressional co-ownership of a war may create political
costs for those who voted yes should the war go badly, but the executive will still pay a
price. This is not to say that attempting to spread culpability is a worthless exercise, but
rather that there is little the executive can do to eliminate his culpability for a war that
starts on hiswatch.
38 Baker (2013). The tactic of enlisting help (or political protection) from domestic oppo-
nent is a common one (Tierney 2015). Ireturn to this strategy in Chapter6.
39 Lee and Entous (2013).
40 Allen and Epstein (2013). Lending credence to the notion that Republicans had been
bested by Obamas political maneuverings, former Obama advisor David Axelrod
tweeted, Big move by POTUS. . . . Congress is now the dog that caught the car. Should
be a fascinatingweek!
on the line. The international communitys credibility is on the line. And

Americas and Congress credibility is on the line.41 This political power
play did not go unnoticed by the political press. Writing for Slate, Eric
Posner summed up Obamas accomplishment thusly:If Congress now
approves the war, it must share blame with the president if what happens
next in Syria goes badly. If Congress rejects the war, it must share blame
with the president if Bashar al-Assad gasses more Syrian children.42
At the end of the day, all of the political maneuvering was unneces-
sary. On September 12, 2013, Assad joined the UN Chemical Weapons
Convention, which provided Obama, and other world leaders, with suf-
ficient cover to refrain from action.43 Moreover, given the timing of the
summer recess and a request to postpone from Obama, the congressional
vote never happened and Obama, consequently, never had to show his
hand. In any event, Obamas behavior on this matter is extremely tell-
ing. By tying his hands to congressional approval, Obama incurred the
potential for real costs, both at home and abroad. The fact that he was
willing to do so simply to get out of being solely responsible for an inter-
national venture that had little allied support illustrates both the salience
and drawbacks of culpability in the eyes of leaders.
Part3:The Importance of Leader Culpability

Having demonstrated that culpability is easy to attribute, Inow turn to
its consequences. The notion that citizens will recognize and respond to
a leaders culpability is critical because it establishes the conditions under
which the aforementioned conflict of interest will emerge between lead-
ers and citizens. Based on the assumptions from Part 1, we know that
citizens will be upset with policy failures (which indicate incompetence)
and that they will shoulder the burden of costly wars. This should make
them disapprove of staying in a war when it appears winning is no longer
possible.44 Once we introduce the responsibility attribution assump-
tion, however, we know that this anger should only cause the citizens to
want to punish the leader if he was culpable for involving the state in the
conflict.
41 Baker (2013).
42 Posner (2013:emphasismine).
43 Bissegger (2013).
44 The usual ceteris paribus disclaimer applies. Conditions may exist where citizens may
want to stay in costly wars (e.g., if the adversary is intent on annexing a part of the state).
Iexplore this possibility in later chapters.
Table2.1. Possible Wartime Scenarios:State Performance and Leader

Culpability
Leader Type
State Performance Culpable Leader Nonculpable Leader
Victory likely state is 1. No conflict of interest. 2. No conflict of
faring well Leader will be a interest. Leader will
faithful agent. be a faithful agent.
Victory unlikely state 3. Conflict of interest. 4. No conflict of
is faring poorly Leader will be an interest. Leader will
unfaithful agent. be a faithful agent.
This creates two very different sets of incentives for culpable and non-
culpable leaders who find themselves in a conflict. Again, the assumptions
from Part1 provide the underlying rationale. Both types of leaders will
want to stay in power. The fact that citizens will evaluate culpable leaders
differently than nonculpable ones, however, means that the two leader
types will have to adopt opposite strategies to accomplish this goal. For a
culpable leader to stay in power, he must demonstrate to his citizens that
his decision to involve the state in the war was not an incompetent one.
The only way for him to achieve this is to win the war. To do this requires
that he keep the state in the war against the citizens wishes in the
hopes that he can eventually secure a victory. This is, of course, the very
definition of being an unfaithful agent. The leader is doing something
that serves his own interests that simultaneously conflicts with citizens
preferences.
Nonculpable leaders will take a different path. Because citizens do not
see them as incompetent if they do not win a war they did not have a role
in starting, they will act as faithful agents and end wars they are unlikely
to win. Doing so maximizes their chances of retaining office. Put differ-
ently, although both leader types could be unfaithful, only culpable lead-
ers will have reason to act against the publics wishes if the war is going
poorly. Isummarize these expectations for leader behavior in Table2.1.
As Table2.1 makes clear, the conflict of interest only arises in cell 3
when the state is faring poorly in the war and the leader is also culpable.45
If these two conditions hold, culpable leaders will opt to be unfaithful
45 As one might expect, all leaders, regardless of type, would have incentives to stay in a
war they are winning. If the state is faring very well in the war, neither type will face pun-
ishment from the citizens because they have no reason to charge him with incompetence.
agents by staying in the war to salvage their own political fortunes, even
if it means subjecting their citizens to more costs.46
Other scholars have recognized the potential for a clash of leader and
citizen preferences during costly wars.47 Several have discussed this ten-
dency for leaders to gamble for resurrection in the past, using the same
principal-agent framework I described previously. What earlier work
has missed, however, is that the incentive to gamble only applies to cul-
pable leaders. Until now, scholars have failed to make this distinction.
Moreover, when they do offer predictions about which leaders will gam-
ble and which will refrain from doing to, their chosen criteria always
exclude at least one subset of leaders who will have incentives to roll the
dice and stay in the war in the hopes of remaining in office.
Some, for instance, argue that leaders who start wars will want to
gamble, and that any leader who takes over midwar will lack the incen-
tive to do so.48 This line of reasoning is overly simplistic. While leaders
who start wars will certainly feel the pressures of culpability, citizens
can hold leaders who come to power during the war culpable for the
46 The conditional aspect of this is key; citizens preferences will only diverge from a cul-
pable leaders if the state is doing poorly. Removing all culpable leaders, or prohibiting
war entirely (insofar as citizens can do such a thing), is premature and inefficient. If a
leader is doing well, there is no point in removing him simply because he could become
unfaithful if the tides of war turn against the state. This is the risk citizens take that is
inherent in not just war, but any policy realm in which the leader has primary authority
to act on their behalf. Citizens want things accomplished (e.g., annexing a piece of terri-
tory, rescuing ethnic kin in a neighboring state), so the state is not immune from needing
to go to war. The state could also likely win some of these wars, so fighting is not nec-
essarily a bad idea. The leader is the only person who has the power to act as an agent
for the citizens in the context of war. Delegating authority to the leader, however, creates
the potential for the principal-agent problem to arise. Going to war could bring sizeable
benefits to citizens if they win. Going to war could also cost citizens dearly in terms of
blood and treasure if they lose. Moreover, if they find themselves in the latter scenario,
these costs could be compounded if their leader is culpable because, as Inoted previously,
it will be difficult to remove him quickly. This dilemma is made worse by the fact that
citizens are unlikely to know their states true chances of winning, and must therefore
rely on the leader to select wars in which the state is likely to be successful. If they want
to accomplish aims that can only be achieved through warfare, though, entrusting the
leader with the authority to enter the war and prosecute it is a necessary evil. They must
balance the likelihood of winning against the likelihood of faltering on the battlefield
with a culpable leader in charge of their collective destiny.
47 Downs and Rocke (1994), Goemans (2000), Stanley (2009), Stanley and Sawyer (2009).
48 Downs and Rocke (1994). The authors allow for some amount of variance in theory, not-
ing that citizens will want to punish any leader who initiates or actively perpetuates
a losing conflict (363) early on in their paper. The remainder of the work, however,
focuses on the burden carried by initiators. They also do not specify the circumstances
under which replacement leaders will have incentives to gamble.
conflict as well. Indeed, as Idiscuss in Chapter3, a large percentage of

leaders who take office during the war have ties to the decision to involve
the state in the conflict, making them culpable like their predecessors.
Assuming the resulting incentive to gamble only applies to first leaders
overlooks this possibility.
Other scholars have argued that the incentive to gamble is conditional
on regime type, with leaders of mixed regimes having the highest likeli-
hood of engaging in such behavior.49 This is a useful contribution, but as
with the first leader explanation, it overlooks the possibility for vari-
ation. Some leaders of mixed regimes may choose to gamble, but only if
they are culpable. Likewise, some leaders from states with regime types
that are, theoretically, less prone to gambling may also choose to stay in
the war because they know citizens will hold them responsible for the
war if they fail to secureawin.
Introducing the idea of leader culpability allows us to overcome the
limitations of earlier theories because the incentive to gamble hinges on
characteristics of individual leaders. In doing so it avoids potentially
pooling leaders who feel the need to gamble and be unfaithful agents
with those who have no incentive to deviate from serving the citizens
preferences.
One could argue that the culpable leader label need not be so deter-
ministic. Staying in the war is only one of the options available to leaders.
Moreover, it offers no guarantee that the leader will be able to remain in
power. Having a strong desire to win is not the same as having the ability
(or simple good fortune) to do so. Why then, do so many culpable leaders
choose to gamble? Iargue that they do so because staying in the war, even
if the chances of winning are slight, represents the single best strategy the
culpable leader has for maintaining office.
Consider the alternatives. First, a culpable leader could cut his losses
and end the war on a less favorable outcome in the near term. While citi-
zens may be glad that he ended the war, they will still be upset with him
for subjecting them to a conflict they could not win (this is the unwill-
ingness of citizens to forgive and forget Idiscussed in Chapter1). In a
similar vein, culpability also precludes the leader from lowering his war
aims in an attempt to appear more successful. If he tries this, the public
will fault him for failing to secure the aims he promised initially.50 For a
49 Goemans (2000).
50 These costs are not limited to the executive. Members of the opposition who took strong
stances on the war will also have a difficult time revising them, especially if they are from
the executives party. Ireturn to this point in Chapter5.
culpable leader, having to resort to either of these options will imply he

is incompetent and signals to the public that they should remove him.
Trying to compensate for the imminent loss by buying off the public
with other policies (say, a job creation program) will also likely fall flat
for similar reasons.
Moreover, even if the nonwar policy is beneficial to citizens, demon-
strating competence in one realm does not make up for incompetence in
another. The domestic audience is unlikely to forget the leaders blunder
in the conflict, and in polities where a viable opposition exists, the leader
will have a hard time moving the failure off the citizens radar because his
opponents will have strong incentives to keep it in the public eye. The low
likelihood of success for these alternative options implies that staying in
the conflict and hoping for a win will be a culpable leaders best option.
Staying in does not make him any worse off in the current time period,
and it can only help his long-run prospects for remaining in office. The
fact that leadership changes at the domestic level typically do not hap-
pen quickly (i.e., the sticky transmission belt concept Imentioned in
Chapter1), regardless of a states regime type, enables leaders to continue
prosecuting wars, at least in the shortterm.
This process by which the citizens preferences essentially trap a cul-
pable leader into continuing a war that they want him to end seems both
counterintuitive and counterproductive. If the threat of domestic punish-
ment is what is keeping the culpable leader in, why not forgive the leader
so he can both end the war and halt the ever-increasing costs of war the
citizens are paying? Two answers exist.51 First, as Inoted, by getting the
state into the current predicament, a culpable leader has already dem-
onstrated that he is incompetent. As a result, the citizens should want to
remove him even if he acts as a faithful agent in the near term and does
what they want by ending the war. The leaders recent acquiescence to
the publics wishes regarding the war does not trump their desire for a
leader who is competent. Moreover, once a leader has demonstrated that
he is incompetent, winning back the trust of his domestic audience will be
difficult. This logic also explains why nonculpable leaders are relatively
attractive alternatives in the eyes of citizens. A nonculpable leader, by
definition, has no ties to the decision to go to war. The probability of the
51 Note that these two answers speak specifically to the question of why citizens will want
to remove culpable leaders. In more general terms, citizens will also want to remove lead-
ers who engage in reckless behavior to deter future leaders from behaving in a similar
manner (Downs and Rocke1994).
domestic audience labeling her incompetent because of events in the war,

therefore, is very low.52 While she may reveal that she is incompetent in
other realms at a later date, in the current period all citizens know is that
she is, at the very least, not incompetent regarding the war. The culpable
incumbents incompetence vis--vis the conflict, by contrast, is a known
quantity.53
Second, if the culpable leader has prosecuted the war past the point
at which the state was clearly winning, his citizens will know there is a
high probability that he has been an unfaithful agent. Although they may
not speak in these terms explicitly, they will sense that the leaders pref-
erences regarding the war no longer align with their own.54 In this way,
unfaithfulness is like incompetence. Once a culpable leader has revealed
his type, he will have hard time convincing his citizens that he deserves
theirtrust.
The culpable leaders inability to win back the good favor of his citi-
zens works to the advantage of nonculpable leaders. Unlike her culpable
counterparts, a nonculpable leader has given citizens no reason to think
she will be an unfaithful agent with respect to the war. Because she has no
52 As Imentioned in Chapter1, the use of feminine pronouns to discuss nonculpable lead-

ers is arbitrary and solely for presentational clarity.
53 It is, of course, possible that citizens will make this assessment unfairly. Aculpable leader
could suffer a setback due to matters beyond his control (e.g., the weather preventing a
key deployment of reinforcements from getting to the battlefield in time). The fact that
citizens regard him as responsible for involving the state in the conflict, however, will not
inspire forgiveness on their part. Instead, they may reason that because the leader made
the decision to participate in the war, he should have had the foresight to anticipate and
prevent any major obstacles that might stand in the way of victory. Anonculpable leader,
by contrast, has a lower bar to clear in this regard. Because she inherited a war in pro-
gress and had no connection to the decision to involve the state in it, citizens will cut her
considerable slack in handling unforeseen problems, especially in the initial phase of her
tenure in office. (Though, as Idiscuss in Chapter3, this forgiving tendency will wane the
longer the nonculpable leader stays in the war after coming to power.)
54 As Inoted previously, this does not require citizens to be hyperaware of how the state
is fairing on the battlefield. All that is needed is a general sense that the war is going
poorly. It could be something as rudimentary as the length of the war. Long slogs tend
to be more costly for both sides and indicative of a stalemate. At minimum, citizens will
begin to wonder why nothing concrete has been accomplished. Moreover, the citizens do
not need to ferret out information about the war on their own. In a democracy, polit-
ical elites who have access to far more information than ordinary people will do it
for them through the public discourse (e.g., Zaller 1992 and Berinsky 2007). Granted,
the information elites present will likely be selected with a political goal (e.g., make the
executive look good, or, in the case of the opposition, bad), but it still serves as a channel
for citizens to obtain knowledge about the conflict. In more closed political systems, the
political elites are the relevant domestic audience, so the information asymmetry will not
be as great (though, not completely absent).
recent history with the public in the capacity of being their leader, she has
not sent them any signals indicating that she would deviate from serving
their preferences. Moreover, citizens also know that if they install her in
power, she will not have the incentive to become unfaithful, at least with
respect to the conflict.55 The logic behind this last claim is as follows. The
nonculpable leader will know her likelihood of punishment is low, even
if she fails to win the war. The citizens do not have incentives to punish
her because the threat of doing so would create the same divergence in
preferences they experienced with the culpable leader. Consequently, the
nonculpable leader will have every reason to follow their wishes. Both
she and the citizens benefit from their willingness to give her more flexi-
bility in terms of the outcomes she can accept.
Part4:Hypotheses for Citizen and Leader Behavior

Having discussed the rationale for why citizens and leaders alike should
care about a leaders culpability for a war, Inow present my hypotheses
about leader behavior and leader punishment.
Leader Behavior Hypotheses

The preceding discussion suggests that culpable leaders should behave
differently from nonculpable leaders across several aspects of the
war-fighting process. The first has to do with the types of outcomes over
which culpable leaders should preside. Because culpable leaders face a
heightened likelihood of domestic punishment if the war ends poorly,
they have stronger incentives than nonculpable leaders to secure the best
outcome possible. This suggests the following hypothesis:
Leader Behavior Hypothesis 1: Culpable leaders should be more likely
to preside over favorable war outcomes than nonculpable leaders.
Furthermore, given the advantage democratic domestic audiences have

in terms of the relative ease with which they can remove their leaders,
culpable democratic leaders may be more susceptible to the pressures of
culpability. This suggests the following hypothesis:
55 As Inoted in Chapter1, it is possible that the nonculpable leader could act in her own
interests by ending the war too soon. She is unlikely to do this, however, if the stakes
of the conflict are truly high and settling would have disastrous consequences for her and
the citizens.
Leader Behavior Hypothesis 2: Among culpable leaders, democratic

leaders should be more likely to preside over favorable outcomes than
culpable, nondemocratic leaders.
Of course, as I noted previously, simply having stronger incentives to

devote more effort to the war in the hopes of securing a victory does
not mean that leaders will always be able to do so. All culpable leaders
should try to win, but a stochastic component determines which gambles
for resurrection will pay off. Some culpable leaders may succeed while
others may stay in too long, making their state worse off than if they had
settled earlier. Indeed, an additional expectation implied by the theory
is that, of the leaders who fight, culpable leaders should be most likely
to fight until they have lost what Slantchev (2003) calls the power to
hurt (i.e., the ability to inflict costs on ones enemy). This suggests that
culpable leaders should be associated with extreme outcomes. I define
extreme outcomes as those at either end of the win-loss spectrum, that is,
both major victories and catastrophic defeats. Nonculpable leaders, by
contrast, should be more likely to preside over medial to poor outcomes.
Hypothesis 3 expresses this prediction more formally:
Leader Behavior Hypothesis 3: Culpable leaders should be more likely
than nonculpable leaders to preside over extreme outcomes.
Punishment Hypotheses
The preceding discussion established that citizens have both the ability
to identify culpable leaders and the incentive to condition their desire
to punish a leader for a poor outcome based on his culpability for the
war. This suggests the following hypothesis regarding the relationship
between a wars outcome and a leaderstype:
Punishment Hypothesis 1: Citizens are more likely to remove culpable lead-
ers for poor war performance than nonculpable leaders who fare poorly.
Of course, the ability to punish culpable, losing leaders will vary across
states. Because only some polities have institutions that enable the rou-
tine removal of leaders, the frequency of observed punishments might
vary by regime type. More specifically, we might expect culpable dem-
ocratic leaders who lose to be punished more often than their culpable
nondemocratic counterparts. This suggests the following hypothesis:
Punishment Hypothesis 2: Among culpable leaders who perform poorly in
a war, leaders from democratic polities should be more likely to be removed
from office because of the war than their nondemocratic counterparts.
Importantly, this hypothesis is only about the frequency with which

domestic audiences will be able to remove leaders because of their perfor-
mances in wars. It does not preclude the possibility that the postremoval
fates of nondemocratic leaders may be more severe than the simple loss
of power most democratic leaders will face. Indeed, as Goemans (2000)
found, when domestic audiences in nondemocracies are able to success-
fully coordinate against the executive, the leaders potential fates range
from exile or imprisonment to death. While this difference in fates is
important to recognize, we must also remember that such grisly fates
should be relatively rare. Members of an autocratic leaders inner circle
rarely have reason to overthrow the incumbent as doing so may upset
their stream of private benefits.56 Moreover, colluding against the leader
should be hard given the closed, nontransparent nature of these sys-
tems.57 The possibility remains, however, that the extreme consequences
that often accompany a loss of power for a nondemocratic leader may be
enough to motivate him to secure a victory even if the chances of being
removed are relatively low. If this is the case, we should not expect to
see large differences in culpable leader behavior across regime types even
if culpable democratic leaders who fail to win get removed more often.
Ireturn to this point in my discussion of the effect of culpability on leader
punishment in Chapter3.58

57 This, of course, varies across nondemocracies. In nonpersonalist systems where power
is distributed among a group of elites instead of being concentrated in the leader, sanc-
tioning the executive may have little effect on the welfare of the coalition members. See
Weeks (2008, 2012) and Croco and Weeks (2014).
As the discussion thus far has made clear, citizens should hold a nonculpable leader
58
to a different standard than a culpable leader because the former type is more politi-
cally distant from the decision to go to war. While citizens have incentives to main-
tain this relationship, are there any conditions under which a nonculpable leader can
assume culpability and the accompanying increased threat of punishment? I argue
that at least two such conditions exist. The first condition is related to the war aims
of the adversary. If the adversary has extremely aggressive war aims (e.g., total con-
quest of the state, annexing a large portion of the territory, regime change), citizens
should want the nonculpable leader to continue fighting. In situations like this, giv-
ing in to the demands of the adversary has the potential to bring long-term, negative
consequences for citizens even after the war stops (e.g., occupation). Consequently,
citizens should encourage all leaders to resist regardless of their role in bringing the
state to war. Second, citizens may also be reluctant to be lenient with a nonculpable
leader if the leader stays in the conflict for an extended period of time. The more time
a nonculpable leader invests in prosecuting the war, the less credible she looks as
someone who had nothing to do with the conflict. Iexplore both of these possibilities
in Chapter3.
Part5:Implications from theTheory

The theory suggests several implications that are worthy of discussion
before concluding this chapter.
A Rationale for Irrational Leaders

First, the notion that culpable leaders may choose to stay in wars even
if they have sufficient information to know they will likely lose forces us
to broaden what we mean by rational to include factors beyond those
involved in the interaction between international adversaries as described
in the bargaining model of war. As the preceding discussion made clear,
culpable leaders face a tough dilemma that has its origins in domestic
politics. They can stay in a war that is going poorly on the slim chance
they will be able to eke out a highly improbable victory, thereby avoiding
punishment, or admit their failure and lose power (and all its benefits) in
the near term. Recognizing these domestic dynamics reveals that staying
in a war irrationally and opting to gamble may be a culpable leaders
best strategy.
This insight sheds light on the puzzle of why some wars seem to last
longer than they should. Several scholars have examined this question
in recent years and offered a number of explanations. To take but one
example, Reiter (2009) posits that wars drag on because combatants
have difficulty either overcoming information problems or because they
cannot solve the commitment problem.59 The theory of leader culpability
builds on this work in important ways. First, it offers a reason why lead-
ers may appear as though they are incapable of recognizing their actual
likelihood of winning when faced with a series of setbacks. If the leader is
culpable, he may fully understand that he is likely to lose, but fear for his
own domestic political fate prevents him from admitting defeat. Second,
it also speaks to the commitment problem. An adversary may not trust a
culpable foe to commit to unfavorable terms because he knows the leader
will face repercussions from his citizens if he does not secure a win. Given
such a scenario, the adversary may feel he has no choice but to continue
59 As Inoted in Chapter1, in the case of the former, a leader, for a variety of reasons, will
have difficulty making accurate predictions about how his state will fare in the conflict,
and continue prosecuting a war he is bound to lose. Wars drag on longer than they ought
to because the leaders do not realize that they would be better off settling. Acommit-
ment problem occurs when a leader does not trust his adversary to adhere to the terms
of the settlement. The war persists because neither side is willing to lay down arms in
goodfaith.
the war until the culpable leaders state is vanquished completely and ren-
dered incapable of challenging the postwar statusquo.
None of this is to say the bargaining model of war is wrong. Indeed,
it remains a useful model for examining why wars end, and is the one
Iassume is at work in the background of the theory Ipresent here. As
Idiscuss in Chapter4, Iassume that wars occur when states cannot agree
on a division of goods that they both would prefer to fighting that is,
when there is no overlap in the sets of potential agreements both sides
would accept. Understanding leader culpability advances our understand-
ing because it not only tells us which leaders are unlikely to agree to any-
thing short of victory (culpable leaders), but it also provides us with some
insight as to when and how a bargaining space might open up. When a
nonculpable leader comes to power, her reservation point for ending the
war will be lower than that of her predecessor because she does not need
to demonstrate her competence with a victory. This means she will be
more open to ending the war on lesser terms, allowing for a larger set of
mutually agreeable settlements to emerge and increasing the likelihood
that the war will end. By contrast, a war may drag on with a culpable
leader because he will not want to end it without achieving the war aims
he promised. He is able to do this because, as Iargued in my discussion of
the sticky transmission belt analogy, it is difficult to remove the leader
immediately, even if the domestic audience is fully aware that the leaders
decision is forcing them to pay additionalcosts.
The Importance of Domestic Politics

Recognizing the importance of leader culpability and the fact that a
leadership change must occur to bring a nonculpable leader to power
also highlights a purely domestic explanation for why some wars persist
longer than we might otherwise expect. If a culpable leader will do every-
thing in his power to stay in the war until he wins. Aconflict will likely
continue until he wins, has a loss forced upon him by the adversary, or
until the domestic audience is able to replace him with a nonculpable
leader who will end the war. This last option, of course, is easier said
than done. The wheels of domestic political change often move slowly,
and there is little ordinary citizens can do to speed up the process. In
nondemocratic societies, for instance, the leader typically has a large
repressive apparatus to protect him against any would-be challengers.
This apparatus also serves as a means to insulate him from public uprisings
or coups that might materialize in response to a costly war. This apparatus,
in combination with the lack of domestic institutions that allow for the reg-
ular removal of leaders, make unseating a nondemocratic leader during a
war very difficult, even if he is clearly incompetent.
Democracies, as Idiscussed in Chapter1, are only better by comparison.
Their domestic political transmission belt may move at a more predictable
pace, instead of fits and starts, but it still is sluggish. Although democra-
cies have the domestic structures in place that permit regular and peaceful
changes in power, the electorate cannot simply remove the leader at will.
In presidential systems, for instance, the leader can really only be replaced
through an election, which occur years apart at predetermined times.
Parliamentary systems, in theory, make leaders more accountable because
a prime ministers government could fall at any point by a vote of no confi-
dence. This is hard to implement in practice, however, because the members
of the ruling party have an incentive to either rally in support behind the
leader or preempt the action by forcing the leader to resign so the incum-
bent coalition can remain in power. In short, across all regime types, leaders
typically have a fair amount of protection, either informally (e.g., secret
police who eliminate opponents before they become a threat) or institu-
tionally (e.g., elections at predetermined intervals). Because citizens cannot
remove leaders at will, they may not be able to replace a culpable incumbent
with a nonculpable replacement rapidly. This gives leaders more time to
gamble for resurrection, thus prolonging the conflict.
Culpability and DemocraciesatWar

Finally, as Inoted in Chapter1, the theory also suggests some troubling
implications for how we think about democracies at war. The existing lit-
erature offers two predictions. First, democratic leaders should generally
win the wars they fight (the democratic war selection hypothesis), and
second, in the rare instances they find themselves in a losing war, they
should bow to a loss of domestic consent and back down (the declining
advantage of democracy hypothesis).60 Both hinge on the notion that
60 See Reiter and Stam (2002) and Bennett and Stam (1998), respectively. Sullivan (2007,
2012) makes a similar point about when leaders of powerful states may choose to back
down when facing a much weaker adversary. Namely, once they realize that in order
to achieve their war aims they must coerce the target state into doing what they want
(instead of achieving it by brute force), they may decide that continued fighting will push
the costs of war above what their state will tolerate. She includes a variable to control
for a states regime type (drawing on the idea that democracies might have a lower toler-
ance for costs for reasons given in the preceding text), but finds it to be insignificant. She
democratic leaders are driven by a desire to stay in the good graces of the
public. This makes them strive to select only into wars they can win and
to end wars on lesser terms when they realize the public has paid too high
a price and wants the war toend.
While the theory I advance here makes predictions similar to those
of the war selection hypothesis, it suggests that a culpable democratic
leaders sensitivity to public consent may have a perverse effect when he
finds himself in a losing war. In this situation, the same threat of electoral
sanction that makes democratic leaders choosy about war participation
can actually work against the publics interests and encourage a culpable
leader to stay in a war citizens would rather end. Indeed, the only demo-
cratic leaders who are likely to adhere to the declining advantage argu-
ment are those who are nonculpable because they are the only ones who
can admit a loss without fear of negative repercussions. This aspect of
democracy receives scant attention in the literature because democratic
leaders have strong incentives to avoid this situation entirely by making
good initial choices about war selection. Generally speaking, this incen-
tive serves them well; democracies win the vast majority of wars they
fight largely because of their proficiency in choosing wisely. Sometimes,
however, like Truman in Korea or George W.Bush in Iraq, democratic
leaders choose poorly. The theory Ipresent here helps us understand the
incentives of the leaders caught in this predicament.
Conclusion
This chapter had several purposes. First, Iestablished several assumptions
about leaders and citizens that serve as the bedrock of the theory. Second,
Idiscussed a key assumption currently absent from the existing literature
that is critical for the theory at hand:namely, that citizens will want to
reserve punishment for leaders who were culpable for creating poor out-
comes, as opposed to punishing any leader who presides over a bad out-
come, without regard for the role he played in involving the state in the
conflict. Ithen explored how the introduction of this assumption allows
us to identify the circumstances under which a costly conflict of interests
is likely to develop between a leader and citizens and, by extension, when
a leader is most likely to gamble for resurrection. As my discussion in
argues that this may be because democratic governments are both more sensitive to the
costs of wars with weak adversaries and more selective about the use of military force
against these adversaries so that the two attributes effectively cancel each other out
(2007:514).
Part3 made clear, culpable leaders who find themselves faltering in wars
will be far more susceptible to this temptation than nonculpable leaders.
Following this, I presented my hypotheses for leaders and citizens and
closed with a brief discussion of some important theoretical implications.
The next two chapters subject these hypotheses to a rigorous empir-
ical examination using a new data set collected specifically for this
study. While many of the variables are standard in the conflict litera-
ture, several most notably, leader culpability are entirely novel. Iturn
first to my hypotheses regarding citizens decisions to punish leaders in
Chapter3. If the preceding theory is correct, culpable leaders who fail to
win should fare worse than their nonculpable counterparts. In Chapter4,
Iexamine whether culpability has the predicted effect on leaders in terms
of the outcomes they preside over. If the culpability argument has merit,
culpable leaders should prosecute wars differently than leaders who were
not connected to the decision to involve the state in the conflict.
3
Culpability and Domestic Punishment
In Chapter 2, I presented my theory of leader culpability, and laid out

broad predictions for how it would affect both leader and citizen behavior.
My primary assertion regarding leader behavior was that culpable lead-
ers should be more willing than nonculpable leaders to continue fighting
the war until they achieve a favorable outcome, regardless of the costs or
chances of victory. These differences between culpable and nonculpable
leaders are driven by the fact that culpable leaders face a higher likelihood
of being removed from office by their domestic audience if the war ends
poorly than their nonculpable counterparts.
The purpose of this chapter is to evaluate the validity of the citizen
behavior portion of this causal mechanism. That is, are citizens both capa-
ble of and willing to differentiate between leaders based on their culpability
when deciding whom to punish for poor war performance? Demonstrating
that citizens will do both of these things represents a crucial building block
in demonstrating the power of the larger theory. If both leader types have
the same (high) probability of punishment upon failing to win the war,
there is no reason to expect that their incentives will diverge regarding
the termination of the war. Instead, both culpable and nonculpable lead-
ers will be unfaithful agents, and stay in the war to try to win and protect
their position. Given this, establishing that culpable leaders face starkly
different incentives than nonculpable leaders is a logical first step in the
theory-building process.
The rest of this chapter proceeds in three parts. In Part1, Idescribe the
three different types of leaders that could exist during times of war, two
of which could be considered culpable. Ialso address the rationale behind
52
Culpability and Domestic Punishment 53
my coding rules for the domestic punishment variable.1 Following this,

in Part 2, I discuss the case-selection criteria and present the central set
of large-N empirical results, which lend strong support to the notion that
domestic audiences reserve punishment for culpable leaders almost exclu-
sively. Ithen perform several additional tests to determine if the relation-
ship between culpability and punishment is conditional on characteristics
of either the state (e.g., regime type) or the war (e.g., the adversarys war
aims). Finally, in Part3, Iturn my attention to the three culpable leaders
who presided over Italys experience in World War Ito illustrate how the
predictions of the theory play out in an actual war and, not incidentally, in
a nondemocraticstate.
Part1:Measuring Major Concepts

Measuring Culpability
Given the central role culpability plays in the theory, we need to deter-
mine which types of leaders citizens will view as responsible for the war
and why. In this section, Ipresent the three possible leader types that can
exist during wars. Broadly speaking, citizens should apply the pressures
of culpability to any political actor connected to the decision to involve
the state in the war. Critically, this rule applies regardless of whether
the leader is in charge for the entire length of the war or only a portion
of it. Although the leader who is in charge when the war begins is the
most obvious candidate for culpability, citizens desire to remove actors
responsible for the poor outcome will not wane if the first leader leaves
office while the war is ongoing.
Given this, a complete theory should be able to make predictions about
how citizens will evaluate leaders who are in charge when the war begins,
first leaders, as well as those who come to power at some point during
the conflict, hereafter replacement leaders. Because there is no reason
to expect this latter group of leaders to be homogenous in terms of the
role they played in the war, the next step in the theory-building process
is identifying the circumstances under which a replacement leader will
inherit the pressures of culpability from his or her predecessor.
Citizens will extend culpability to a replacement leader if a plausi-
ble connection exists between the new leader and the war. In practice,
1 This discussion of variable measurement draws, in part, on Croco (2011).

TABLE3.1. Possible Wartime LeaderTypes
Leader Type Role in War
First Leader A leader who presides over the beginning of his

states involvement in a conflict.
Associate A replacement leader who has a political
connection with the first leader (e.g., shared
party or cabinet membership).
Nonculpable Leader A leader who comes to power during the war who
is not an associate of the first leader.
this means any actor who was a political associate of the first leader has
the potential to take on the burden of culpability should he assume the
executive position during the war. Leaders who lack political ties to their
predecessors will not be culpable. Table3.1 provides a list of the three
types and a brief definition ofeach.
First Leaders
I define a first leader as any leader who occupied the chief executive posi-
tion when the war began.2 Importantly, this group includes leaders who
initiate wars, leaders who join wars already in progress, and leaders of
states that are attacked. Hence it is not always the leader who started the
overall war, per se. The key criterion is that the leader presided over the
states transition from peace to war. Iuse this rule because, although other
domestic political actors may play some role in decisions regarding for-
eign policy (e.g., voting to authorize funding for the conflict), the power
to mobilize forces and interact with leaders of other states resides with
the executive. The first leaders explicit authorization is, for all practical
purposes, a necessary condition for a states involvement in a conflict.
Consequently, an executive who was in power when the war began will
have a difficult time disassociating himself from the states involvement
in the conflict. His role as the states primary foreign policy actor means
that any conflict that begins on his watch will become his responsibility
in the eyes of the public.
Some may argue that citizens should hold targeted leaders less respon-
sible than initiators or joiners because the latter two types participation
in the war is the result of a deliberate choice on their part instead of a
2 In states with a dual executive, this is usually the head of government instead of the head
of state, whose duties are often ceremonial.
response to actions taken by another state. If, after all, a leader has little
control over when and where the war begins, thereby losing the benefits
that come with initiation, it is reasonable to think his citizens may forgive
him if he fails to defeat the aggressor. Although this scenario is plausible,
arguments exist for why targeted leaders should be held accountable for
wars that go poorly.
For example, as Bueno de Mesquita, Siverson, and Woller (1992:640),
posit, while initiators who lose should certainly expect domestic pun-
ishment, a defeated victim who survives the wrath of the victor still
confronts the prospect of punishment by its own citizenry for failing to
cut losses and settle up earlier. In testing this claim, the authors find that
while leaders who lose wars they initiated have the highest risk of pun-
ishment, losing targets are still twice as likely to be punished than leaders
who win.3 Hence, it seems reasonable to conclude that first leaders who
do not actively select into the war are not entirely off the hook in the eyes
of the domestic audience.
Though this may seem like a draconian portrayal of citizen behav-
ior, two things are important to remember. First, very few wars are the
product of true surprise attacks. Instead, interstate animosity typically
builds over time before culminating in a full-scale war. Many wars grow
out of border skirmishes, in which both sides are guilty of relatively small
aggressive acts, and nonmilitarized tensions can also erupt in conflict.4 In
either scenario, targeted leaders would have likely anticipated the possi-
bility of fighting.5 Second, even if a leader is genuinely caught completely
by surprise, the option to end the war by surrendering to the adversarys
3 I obtain a similar result in a test Iperform in the Appendix to Chapter3.

4 Indeed, this is why identifying the initiator of many wars is a difficult task, even for those
scholars who are experts on the topic. Academics may determine one state is the initiator
because of a technicality (e.g., the first to declare), but this does not mean the other side
was unaware of what was happening or totally innocent of any hostility before the decla-
ration occurred. Given this, it is more prudent to treat all first leaders as culpable and look
for differences between targets and initiators instead of simply assuming that citizens will
not hold targeted leaders accountable. It is also the most conservative approach because
it provides a harder test for the theory. If it is true that citizens are willing to give targeted
leaders more leeway if they lose, including them in the sample of culpable leaders should
depress the effect of culpability, making it harder to find a result.
5 The Six Day War in 1967 provides a nice example of this concept. On June 5, Israel
executed an early morning attack on the Egyptian airfields that demolished the vast
majority of Egypts air force (Clodfelter 1992:1042; Phillps and Axlerod 2005:106). As
swift as it was effective (Israel won the war a mere six days later), this move by Israel is
often cited as a prime example of a true surprise attack; Clodfelter (1992:1041), for
instance, notes the attacks overwhelming suddenness. Despite this notoriety, tensions
had actually been building between the two states for more than a decade, and both
demands always exists. Any leader who decides to stand and fight, there-
fore, is consciously choosing both to continue the war and, by extension,
to subject his citizens to its costs. It is reasonable to expect members of
the domestic audience to consider this choice when evaluating the leader
as the war progresses. In light of these two mediating factors, it seems
fair to suggest that targeted leaders are not completely immune from the
burdens of responsibility.
Associates
The second group of executives that domestic audiences will consider
culpable is leaders who come to power during the war who are associ-
ates of the first leader. Associates come in many forms. The first type of
associate is an actor who is a member of the first leaders political faction
and who is thus connected to the decision to go to war. The term polit-
ical faction is purposely vague so it can apply to any regime type. In an
authoritarian regime, for instance, where power is highly centralized, the
leaders political faction might be made up of a small circle of elites who
serve as advisors to the executive. In monarchies, a faction would include
members of the king or queens immediate family, while in a military
junta the generals surrounding the leader would comprise the faction.
In all three of these scenarios, the closed nature of the political sys-
tems means that any replacement leader would have likely played a large
role in the decision-making process leading up to the war. Moreover,
given the small size of these types of factions, and the similarity in prefer-
ences among members, it is reasonable to presume that the first leaders
replacement, and his associates more generally, were active supporters
of the decision to go to war.6 These connections make it hard for faction
members to distance themselves from the first leader and the war more
generally if they assume the executive position during thewar.
A replacement leader who is from the same political party as the first
leader would also be considered part of that leaders faction. Given that
one of the primary functions of parties is to group individual political
sides had begun to mass forces along their shared border (see Tessler 1994: 37389).
Moreover, in May 1967, Nasser demanded the removal of the United Nations emergency
force that had been stationed near the Suez, and closed the Strait of Tiran (Phillps and
Axlerod 2005:106). Both moves alarmed members of the Israeli government and mili-
tary, and more or less solidified their belief that an Egyptian attack was imminent (Reiter
1995:1718). Consequently, while the Egyptian domestic audience likely shared Nassers
outrage, it is unlikely that they would have believed the notion that Nasser had no inkling
of a possible Israeli response.
actors who have similar preferences, domestic audience members will nat-
urally assume the first leaders coparty members will share his preferences
regarding the war. The assumption that citizens will pass blame along
party lines has found a great deal of support in the literature on political
behavior. Scholars commonly assume that citizens rely on party as a heu-
ristic device to determine which leaders are similar.7 Therefore, given a
shared partisan tie between leaders, citizens will assume the replacement
leader also supported the war and transfer culpability for the war from
the first leader to his successor with little to no discounting.8
We should expect this partisan signaling effect to be stronger in fully
developed democracies. In established democracies, where political
actors have the freedom to choose among existing parties or even start
their own, membership in a particular party serves as a strong indica-
tor of ones policy preferences. In less democratic states political actors
have fewer options; if parties even exist, one party often dominates and
membership is largely required if the actor wants to participate at all. In
systems like this, where the number of elites privy to the decision-making
process is very small, the partisan cue is less meaningful; anyone who is
active in the party is also integral to the decision-making process.
An additional type of replacement leader whom domestic audiences
would classify as an associate only exists in parliamentary democracies
where a cabinet or council of ministers comprised of members of the leg-
islature surrounds and works closely with the executive.9 In such systems,
if the replacement leader was also in a culpable predecessors cabinet,
citizens will extend the pressures of culpability to him when he assumes
office. This is true for at least one of three reasons. First, in many cases
(i.e., those involving majority governments), members of the first leaders
cabinet will also be members of his party. In cases like this, citizens will
transfer culpability along the partisan lines Idescribed previously.
7 E.g., Erickson (1988); Cohen (2003); and Kam (2005). The literature on the coattails
effect makes a similar point (e.g., Campbell and Sumners 1990). While dissent from ones
party is possible, legislators are unlikely to challenge an executive from their ownparty.
8 The notion that members of an executives party will support him in his decision to go
to war also has roots in the actions of the leader. As Schultz (2001) has argued, because
executives want to avoid appearing unresolved in the eyes of foreign adversaries, they will
only proceed with wars that have broad domestic support. At minimum, this involves the
support of their copartisans, but usually includes a significant percentage of the opposi-
tion as well. Ireturn to the implications of this pattern in Chapter5. This logic should
apply to nondemocratic leaders as well. While the size of their winning coalition is smaller,
the support of the members is just as vital to their staying inpower.
9 In the interest of simplicity, Irefer to both assemblies as cabinets for the remainder of
the chapter.
Second, even if some members of the cabinet are from a different party
than the prime minster (i.e., the government is comprised of a multiparty
coalition), membership in the cabinet implies a close proximity to both
the executive and the policy-making process.10 Indeed, the reason why
cabinet posts serve as such valuable bargaining chips in the coalition for-
mation process is because the occupants of those positions have a hand
in crafting policy. This relatively high degree of access makes it difficult
for members of the cabinet to distance themselves from the decision to
involve the state in conflict if it goes poorly, even if they lack a formal
partisan tie to the prime minister.
Countering the claim of culpability becomes all the more difficult if
the cabinet member in question held a position that was directly relevant
or otherwise vital to the war effort (e.g., head of either the war or finance
ministries). Given the necessity of these resources or services, it is reason-
able to expect members of the domestic audience to assume that the cab-
inet member in question was an active supporter of the war because the
prime minister would have been keen to have his support. The empirical
record suggests many replacement leaders have found themselves in just
such a position. Of the twenty-three replacement leaders who were from
a different faction than the first (culpable) leader, eight headed ministries
that were essential to thewar.
Third and finally, membership in the first leaders cabinet can bring the
pressures of culpability to replacement leaders because cabinet member-
ship implies support for a policy.11 Iexpect the majority of cabinet mem-
bers of first leaders to find themselves in this position due to the strong
incentives that exist for prime ministers to avoid dissent within their coa-
lition. Because strong opposition from a cabinet member could fracture
the coalition (especially for nonmajority governments) and, by exten-
sion, bring down the government, prime ministers are unlikely to pursue
10 The complexity of the cabinet, however, has implications for the states likelihood
to select into conflicts (Ireland and Gartner 2001 and Palmer et al. 2004; though see
LeBlang and Chan2003).
11 I discuss replacement leaders who actively publicize their support for the war in greater
detail in the Appendix. Even if a replacement leader was not an enthusiastic supporter
of the war (or even a quiet voice of disagreement) when it began under his predecessor,
however, his failure to speak out when the conflict was brewing would provide ample
ammunition to viable domestic opponents (e.g., members of a party that were not in
the cabinet when the war began). The lack of a public track record of dissent forces
the leader into an unenviable defensive position where he must choose between either
explaining why he was not opposed to the war when it began or, if he was, why he was
not persuasive or powerful enough to stop the prime minister from pursuingit.
policies that members of their governing coalition would disapprove of.

This logic is especially relevant in decisions related to war where, given
the gravity of the issue and the potential for severe consequences, the
executive should only want to proceed if he has strong domestic sup-
port.12 This incentive creates a selection effect similar to the one described
in which members of the cabinet will support a disproportionate number
of the policies the prime minister actually decides to implement.
From a practical standpoint, then, most wars should have the full
backing of the cabinet, or at least a general lack of vocal opponents.13 The
empirical record supports this notion. While there are eleven instances of
replacement prime ministers coming to power who neither share a par-
tisan tie with the first leader nor hold a cabinet position that was neces-
sary for the war, only two such leaders were vocal opponents when the
war started. The first leader was Palmerston, who was a harsh critic of
Aberdeens handling of the Crimean War while he was home secretary in
the latters cabinet. The second was Clemenceau, who was critical of how
previous French prime ministers had handled World War I.Importantly,
neither of these men was against the wars. Rather, they disagreed with
how their respective prime ministers were conducting them. These excep-
tions notwithstanding, however, any replacement leader who was in the
cabinet of the first leader will have a difficult time credibly distancing
himself from the decision to involve the state in the conflict.
Nonculpable Leaders
Finally, there are nonculpable leaders. As is likely evident from the pre-
ceding discussion, a nonculpable leader is any replacement leader who
was not an associate. We can divide nonculpable leaders into four types.
The first is someone who was in the government (e.g., a member of the
legislature, though not the cabinet) when the war began who was not an
associate of the first leader and who did not actively support or oppose
the war. In practice, this type of nonculpable leader should be rare. In
12 This strategic behavior should be more pronounced in parliamentary systems with

minority governments. Governments with this type of structure are especially fragile,
making executives even more cautious about their policy choices (see also Palmer etal.
2004 and LeBlang and Chan 2003). Ireland and Gartner (2001), e.g., find that minority
governments are less likely to initiate conflicts. Koch (2009) makes a similar point, find-
ing that majority governments will engage in longer disputes.
13 This is more likely to be the case with majority governments, because the prime minis-
ters party will control, by definition, a large number of seats. But widespread agreement
should also exist in coalition and minority governments, at least initially, given the lead-
ers strategic selection incentives Idescribed previously.
polities where political organs exist outside the executive branch (i.e., any
political system with a meaningful, independent legislature), members of
such a body will usually be charged with checking or at least curtailing
the executives powers regarding the war. One important consequence of
this is that members of the government may be forced to express their
preferences regarding the war, likely by way of a formal vote. Short of
abstention a rare act in most legislatures remaining neutral on the war
will be difficult for a sitting member of the government. Hence, a non-
culpable leader who was in the government yet had no history regarding
the war should be less common than other nonculpable leader types in
practice.
This leads to the second type of nonculpable leader is someone who
was not an associate of the first leader but who supported the war.
Given the preceding logic, we should expect this type of nonculpable
leader to be relatively more common than the first type. This is true
because of the aforementioned incentive for the executive to only select
into wars that will meet with little dissent from other members of the
government. One need not look far to find such examples in history.
In the Korean War, for instance, Winston Churchill openly declared in
the House of Commons that the opposition party would support Prime
Minister Atlee. The wars between the United States and Afghanistan
and the United States and Iraq serve as more recent examples. In both
of those cases, a majority of Congress voted to support Bushs decisions
to go to war. Given the partisan balance of the House and Senate at the
time, this necessarily meant that some Democrats (i.e., nonassociates)
had to have votedyes.14
A third type of nonculpable leader is a leader who was in the govern-
ment when the war started, was not an associate of the first leader, and
who actively opposed the war. Although open opposition should be rare
14 It is reasonable to think that this type of leader should be coded as culpable given the
political lock in costs associated with publically supporting a war. As both Senator
John Kerry and Senator Hillary Clinton learned in their (failed) bids for the presidency,
earlier demonstrations of support can be difficult for leaders to disassociate themselves
from later on if the conflict becomes unpopular. One could, therefore, imagine a scale of
culpability where supporters rank below first leaders and associates in terms of cul-
pability, but higher than nonculpable leaders who do not publically express support for
the war. Iexamine this possibility in the Appendix to this chapter. Ifind that supporters
who lose wars are no more likely to be punished than nonculpable losers. Supporters are
also significantly less likely to be punished than first leaders who lose and associates who
lose. Given this, Iconsider them nonculpable leaders, but Idiscuss the possible types here
for completeness. Ido explore the role of an earlier expression of support in Chapter5,
though, where Ilook at the effects of culpability within the legislative branch.
given the executives incentive to select wars the majority of the legisla-
ture will support, dissent from individual actors is possible. Apolitician
who makes her disapproval known at the start of the war will be in a
prime position to challenge the first leaders handling of the war if the
state fares poorly, and will easily sidestep blame for conflict should she
assume the executive position. Her record of dissent insulates her from
any attacks from opponents who would try to link her to the war. It also
provides her with an easy piece of ammunition against her opponents
who initially supported the ill-fated war and who may be trying to retreat
from their earlier position. If a leader has a history of consistently oppos-
ing a war that has become unpopular, she can more credibly cast her
opponents as opportunists who are merely jumping on the bandwagon
in an attempt to gain publicfavor.
While this is an attractive position to be in, as Idiscuss in Chapter5,
political pressures on the home front may prevent this nonculpable leader
type from materializing frequently. Outright disapproval of a war when
it begins is rare among political elites because doing so is often a costly
political move. This is true for several reasons. First, challenging the war
would require positioning oneself against the executive who decided to
involve the state in the conflict. Doing so is no mean feat because execu-
tives often enjoy the benefit of a rally effect in the early stages of a con-
flict.15 These rallies are typically defined by large surges in popularity for
the executive, which provide him with additional political capital, mak-
ing him a formidable foe. Second, questioning the countrys participation
in the war will expose the politician to charges that she is unpatriotic,
lacks faith in the countrys ability to prevail or that she is unsupportive
of the countrys armed forces.16 Finally, disagreeing with the war also
puts the politician in the awkward position of having to explain why
she is unwilling to support a war that others have framed as a necessity.
Executives typically cast wars as being vital to the national interest, even
if the states war aims are not purely defensive. This posture makes it dif-
ficult for others to question the rationale for fighting. In sum, although
consistently opposing a war has the potential for political benefits if the
war turns out poorly, doing so also carries a high risk of considerable
domestic backlash.
The final type of nonculpable leader is a politician who was not a
member the government when the war began and who lacks a political
15 Chapman and Reiter (2004).

16 Kriner (2010).
TABLE3.2. Possible Leader Types, Subgroups, and Examples from the War
inIraq
Leader Type Role in War Subgroups within Type Iraq War

Example
First Leader A leader who Leaders who initiate President

presides over wars. George
the beginning Leaders who join wars W.Bush (R)
of his states in progress.
involvement in Leaders of targeted
a conflict. states.
Associate A replacement Member of first Senator John
leader who leaders faction.a McCain
has a political Member of first (R-AZ)
connection leaders party.
with the first Member of first
leader. leaders cabinet/council
of ministers.
Nonculpable A replacement Political actor who is President
Leader leader who not an associate and Barack
is neither an was neutral on the Obama (D)
associate nor a war.
supporter. Political actor who is
not an associate who
supported the war.
Political actor who is
not an associate who
actively opposed the
war.
Political actor who
was outside the
government when the
war began who is not
an associate.
a
This type refers to nondemocratic leaders (e.g., members of the same military junta).
connection to the first leader.17 Of all nonculpable leaders, this type of

leader will have the easiest time credibly distancing herself from the war
because she could not have been party to the decision-making process.
17 An additional leader type an actor who was outside the government but who shares a
political affiliation with the first leader also exists. While it is possible that the lack of
a formal role in the government when the war started would provide this actor with a
way to slip the bonds of culpability, actors like this are unlikely to materialize. To cred-
ibly market themselves as nonculpable, actors in this position would have to come out
Her position outside the government also makes it unlikely (though not
impossible) that her opinion on the conflict when it started is a matter of
public record.18 This characteristic provides her with significant freedom
of action relative to her culpable, domestic opponents. Consequently, as
with the other nonculpable leader types, we should expect politicians
in this position to be willing to break with the policies of her culpable
predecessor(s) regarding the war. Moreover, we should also expect this
leader type to emerge as a front-runner in domestic political contests
during the war. In democracies, the lack of any connection to the war
makes her an attractive candidate for a party hoping to claim more rep-
resentation within the government, especially at the executive level. More
generally, her political distance from the earlier culpable leaders makes
her the most direct means for the domestic audience to entrust the war to
new management.
Table3.2 summarizes the possible leader types and presents the differ-
ent subgroups within each type to give the reader a sense of how Icoded
the final variable. The rightmost column contains an example from the
recent war between the United States and Iraq of each leadertype.
Measuring Leader Punishment

I now turn to my discussion of the primary outcome of interest for this
chapter:whether a leader is punished because of the war. As Imentioned
previously, Iconsider a leader punished if he was removed from power
as a direct result of the conflict. The rationale behind a leaders departure
is critical to recognize because, as the following discussion illustrates, lead-
ers can leave power for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons may
be an unquestionable result of the war, such as Napoleon IIIs fall from
power after Frances defeat in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 or the
removal of Spains Prxedes Sagasta in 1899 after the Spanish-American
War. Other wartime departures from power, however, may be totally
strongly against the incumbent who is also a member of their own party. This strategy
will also likely fail to win favor from the actors fellow partisans in the government.
Without support, securing office is a tallorder.
18 It is possible for leaders in this group to have a track record of being either a supporter or
a nonsupporter. Dwight Eisenhower, for instance, was not a member of the government
when the Korean War started, yet he expressed public support for Trumans decision to
involve the United States in the conflict. Iconsider leaders like Eisenhower supporters
in my analyses in the Appendix. These leaders do not have a significantly higher likeli-
hood of punishment than nonculpable leaders who do not make public statements of
support.
unrelated to the war. The death of Franklin D.Roosevelt of the United

States during World War II from complications related to polio is such
a case, as is the death of Muhammad Ali Jinnah of Pakistan who passed
away from cancer in September of 1948 during the First Kashmir War
with India. Finally, it is also possible for the relationship between the
war and the leaders leaving office to be uncertain. One such leader is
Yamagata Aritomo, who left office in October 1900 after a rough patch
for Japan in the Boxer Rebellion.
Thinking about leader punishment in terms of why the leader left
power represents a departure from how scholars typically conceptual-
ize this concept. Scholars generally measure punishment in one of two
ways:(1)Counting the number of days a leader remains in power after
the war and assuming leaders with shorter postwar tenures are pun-
ished while those who stay in office for longer are not, or (2)assum-
ing every removal that happens within a certain time frame after the
war (usually a year) is an instance of war-related punishment.19 Although
both of these methods are intuitive, they are less suitable for the analyses
here for several reasons.
With regard to the first method, my theory offers predictions for why
certain leaders will be removed, not when. While one could hypothe-
size that culpable leaders who lose will be removed more quickly than
nonculpable ones, the simpler outcome of whether a leader was removed
(and why) is actually more informative. One leader, for instance, could be
thrown from power immediately after the war ends (e.g., Nikos Samson
in Cyprus in the Turco-Cypriot War in 1974), while another might not
be removed for months due to an institutional constraint or some other
reason idiosyncratic to his particular state. Tejada Sorzano of Bolivia,
for instance, lost to Paraguay in the Chaco War in June 1935, but his
detractors who were angry about the terms of the truce were not able to
remove him in a coup until May 1936. Distinguishing between these two
leaders in any way imposes a false dichotomy because both left power
for the same reason, just at different times. Although the first leader left
office more quickly after the war than the second, it would be erroneous
to infer that his punishment was more related to the war than the second
leaders. Thus, even though most culpable leaders who are punished do
19 E.g., Bueno de Mesquita, Siverson, and Woller (1992); Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson
(1995); Goemans (2000); Bueno de Mesquita etal. (2003); and Chiozza and Goemans
(2004).
leave office quickly, methods that rely on variation in time to removal

complicate matters unnecessarily.
Methods that classify leaders as punished because they leave during
a certain time frame introduce a different problem. Because leaders can
leave power for a variety of reasons, assuming that every leader who loses
office within the set time period was punished runs the risk of miscat-
egorizing leaders. Indeed, if one decides to use the standard time frame
of one year after the war ends, a full 26percent of the leaders who leave
office for reasons unrelated to the war would be classified as punished.
Elpido Quirino of the Philippines, for instance, was removed from power
roughly five months after the end of the Korean War due to charges of
corruption having nothing to do with the conflict. Given this, a coding
rule that explicitly incorporates the reason for a leaders departure from
office is more appropriate.
I considered a leader punished if his or her removal met two cri-
teria.20 First, the removal had to be a clear and direct result of the war.
To determine this, Irelied on several sources including general reference
texts, historical volumes, and leader biographies. To be classified as pun-
ished, a majority of the sources had to indicate that the war was a major
factor in the leaders departure from office. Because all of this coding was
done specifically for this project, it is important to note that there was
very little disagreement among the sources. Of the 396 leaders in the data
set, the role the war played in their departure from office was unclear in
only eleven cases, or about 3percent of the time. Uncertainty in coding
often arises when the leader removes himself from power amidst a com-
plex set of circumstances. Anthony Eden, for example, resigned shortly
after the United Kingdoms debacle in the Suez in 1956. While he was
certainly not short on political critics, his health was rapidly deteriorat-
ing at the same time. Consequently, while Eden was clearly debilitated
(to the point of leaving the United Kingdom during the crisis to recover in
Jamaica), the coincidental timing with the crisis in Egypt requires that we
consider the possibility that political issues played at least a partialrole.
Harry Trumans decision not to run for reelection in 1952 is another
tricky case. When Truman stated he would not seek the Democratic nom-
ination, the Korean War was going poorly and was taking a heavy toll on
20 Note this definition does not exclude the possibility that the postremoval fates for non-
democratic leaders will be worse in terms of their severity (Goemans 2000). The point
of the hypothesis is that democratic leaders are more likely to be removed from office
because of the war than nondemocratic leaders.
Trumans popularity. Because Truman had only been elected president once,
he was constitutionally eligible to run for a second term. His decision to
forego this opportunity, therefore, could be interpreted as recognition on his
part that he would likely lose the general election.21
A different causal story, however, also exists. According to Trumans
biographer, David McCullough, Truman decided early in his first term
before the conflict in Korea dominated his presidency that he would not
run again. Because he had become president after Roosevelt died in office
in April of 1945, finishing out his first elected term (which began after he
won the election in 1948)would have brought his total time in office after
only one election to nearly eight years. Wanting to avoid the backlash from
some segments of the population who had expressed their disproval at
FDRs lengthy tenure in office, Truman documented his desire not to run in
a memo, which he locked away in a drawer.22 Because Trumans true moti-
vation for declining to run is impossible to discern given the circumstances,
as with Anthony Eden, Itreat him as a questionable case.23
The second criterion is that the punishment had to be the result of a
coordinated move by domestic actors or by the leaders own doing when
domestic punishment was imminent. The latter possibility is important
because many leaders resign before they can be punished at the hands of
others. While such resignations are technically the decision of the leader,
the threat of punishment is what drives the decision.24 Ialso considered
leaders who removed themselves from office (permanently) by commit-
ting suicide as punished if a reasonable link existed between the war and
the leaders decisions to end their lives. Such was the case with two lead-
ers: Germanys Adolf Hitler and Alexandros Koryzis, both, coincidently,
21 This notion is strengthened by the fact that the eventual Democratic nominee, Adlai
Stevenson, lost the presidency to Eisenhower by 10percent of the popular vote. While it
is impossible to know how much of a role the war played in Stevensons defeat, it seems
reasonable to posit that Truman, whose popularity was hovering in the low twenties,
would not have fared much better.
22 McCullough (1992:7701).
23 Dropping this small number of questionable cases from my analyses and reestimating the
models does not have any effect on the results.
24 In parliamentary systems, a resignation can also provide a means for the culpable leaders
party to remain in control of the executive position while the current leader steps down.
This has two advantages:it allows the party members to avoid risking their positions
with an election and it gives them a chance to remove the current leader as a gesture to
the public that they are doing something to alter the course of the war. While this may
not be a very effective strategy for members of majority governments because all of the
Members of Parliament who were in the leaders party will share in his culpability, it is
the best option available to thegroup.
from World War II. Koryzis took his life as Nazi forces were approaching
Athens and Greeces defeat seemed certain. Likewise, Hitlers reign ended in
one of historys most famous double suicides when he and his new wife, Eva
Braun, took their lives in his private bunker as the Russians were advancing.
Based on these two criteria, Iconsider sixty-three leaders, or around
16percent of the full sample, as being punished because of the war. But
what of the remaining 333 leaders who leave office for reasons unrelated
to the conflict? As Imentioned, a leaders time in office can end in a wide
variety of ways. Some leave for mundane reasons, such as term limits or
retirement. Others leave for more dramatic reasons that are harder to
predict, such as being overthrown by either domestic or foreign foes
or dying in office either by natural causes or an assassins bullet.
Beginning with the most predictable class of removals unrelated to
the war those that are predetermined three types exist. First, leaders
can leave office after serving a maximum number of terms in office. For
example, both leaders who participated in the Ecuadorian-Columbian
War (1863) left because of term limits:Gabriel Moreno of Ecuador, who
left power in 1865, and Toms Cipriano de Mosquera of Columbia, who
left power in 1864. Second, leaders can also leave office after they com-
plete their time serving as a regent for a young monarch. Such was the
case with Abd al-Ilah of Iraq, who was the regent for King Faisal II until
the latter came of age in 1953. Finally, leaders can also serve in an interim
or provisional capacity. This arrangement often occurs when a leader dies
or otherwise leaves office suddenly without a predetermined replacement.
In either case, the leader takes office with the understanding that their
post is temporary. Frank Forde of Australia, for instance, took over as an
interim after John Curtin died of heart disease during World War II, and
left power once new elections were held. In a scenario involving these
temporary leaders, the leadership change would have occurred even if the
war had not taken place.25
Turning to the more stochastic means of exit, natural deaths in office
are not unheard of, especially for nondemocratic leaders who commonly
stay in power for life. Victor Emmanuel II of Italy, for example, died
peacefully at age fifty-seven in 1878, twelve years after the last war
he fought had ended. While it is possible that some of the deaths may
have been hastened by the war many leaders, for instance, die of heart
25 One could argue that these leaders faced a lower risk punishment because the domestic
audience knew their time in office was limited. As a robustness check, I drop leaders
whose tenures were limited by structural constraints (e.g., term limits, interim leaders).
My results do not change.
attacks, which could be triggered by the stress from the conflict such
cases would still not qualify as instances of leader punishment because
the death was not the direct result of efforts of the domestic audience to
remove the leader.
Other deaths happen as a direct result of the war, but are not the result
of a domestic political sanction. Justo Rufino Barrios of Guatemala, for
instance, died in 1885 while invading El Salvador. Similarly, Francisco
Solano Lpez of Paraguay died in 1870 when Brazilian soldiers attempted
to disarm him in the War of the Triple Alliance. Although the wars cer-
tainly played a role in bringing about the end of these leaders time in
office, neither of their deaths were coordinated political actions from
their domestic audiences. Nor did either leader choose to die because he
felt domestic punishment was inevitable. Instead, both deaths could be
more accurately thought of as accidents that happened to take place dur-
ing the war. Hence, Ido not consider them cases of leader punishment.
Instances of assassination are interesting because they appear to be
prime examples of leader punishment in its most extreme form. Alethal
shot from a lone gunman (e.g., the fates of Nasser al-Din Shah Qajar of
Iran and Sidnio Pais of Portugal, who were both slain by fanatics in
1896 and 1918, respectively), however, is neither a coordinated political
sanction from the domestic audience nor an action that is a direct result
of the war. Consequently, Ido not consider assassinations as instances of
punishment.
That being said, in centralized regimes, where the relevant domestic
audience may consist of only a handful of elites, it is possible that assassi-
nation could be the most expedient way to get rid of the incumbent if the
audience is displeased with how the war is going. Given this, Iconsidered
carefully four questionable assassinations where someone close to the
leader either ordered or carried out the deed. Because all four deaths were
in autocratic states (Kuang-Hsu of China in 1908 [rumored to have been
poisoned by his power-hungry aunt], Yahya Ibn Muhammad Ibn Hamid
Al-Din of Yemen in 1948 [shot by his bodyguard], Faisal of Saudi Arabia
in 1975 [shot by his nephew], and Hee Park of South Korea in 1979
[shot by the director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency]), it is
plausible that these cases may have been instances of the relevant domes-
tic audience sanctioning the leader. Closer inspection, however, revealed
that none of these killings were in response to the leaders performance
in thewar.
Moving to less dramatic means of exit, some leaders leave office due to
health problems that prevent them from carrying out their duties. When
faced with leaders who purportedly left office for this reason, Ihad to
take care to ensure that the leaders were not simply victims of wartime
fever that is, feigning illness to provide themselves with a graceful
means of leaving office if the war is either going poorly or had just ended
badly. To do this, Ionly considered leaders as leaving for health reasons
if they were bedridden or otherwise unable to function or if the health
issues were the only likely reason for their leaving. Woodrow Wilson,
for instance, who oversaw the United States participation in World War
I, suffered a stroke in October 1919 that left him largely incapacitated.
Though Wilson finished out his second term as president in this weak-
ened state, at the time American presidents were not restricted to two
terms in office. Consequently, he was not compelled to leave office for
institutional reasons and thus could have run for a third term had he
been in better health. Similarly, Vladimir Lenin was also beset by a series
of strokes, which left him partially paralyzed and eventually mute, in the
early 1920s before dying in office in1924.
Other health-related departures are not as obvious because the
leader may be ill but not completely debilitated. One such leader is
Tom Masaryk of Czechoslovakia who left power in 1935 at the age
of eighty-five due to general poor health. While Masaryk was not totally
incapacitated (he lived for an additional two years), it is unlikely his leav-
ing office was at all connected to the last war he fought, which ended
in 1919 (with Czechoslovakia winning). He also won reelection several
times between 1919 and 1935, which suggests the war had little effect on
either his political fortunes or decision to leave office.
Another way for leaders to leave office is to retire. As with the health
reasons rationale described previously, a leader who is looking for polit-
ical cover may claim to be leaving to spend more time with his family
when in reality he is attempting to avoid a public sanctioning because of
poor war performance. Indeed, retirements (especially sudden ones by
young leaders) are considerably more suspect than claims of poor health
because there is no potential for independent confirmation of the leaders
stated reason for leaving (e.g., visible signs of illness, death shortly after
leaving) Given this, as previously, I set a high bar for departures from
office to count as retirements instead of punishments. Namely, a major-
ity of the sources had to agree that the retirement was the choice of the
leader and not related to the war. Many of these retirements happened
years after the war ended, making the likelihood that the retirement was
related to the war fairly small. Chiang Kai-shek of China, for instance,
retired nearly four years after the close of World WarII.
Time between the war and the retirement, however, is not always a
reliable criterion. It is possible, for instance, to retire during the war and
not be classified as punished. Such was the case with Robert Menzies
of Australia, who retired in the middle of the Vietnam War by his own
choice. Although, on the face of it, the timing is suspicious, especially
because the war was not popular with the Australian public, historians
agree that Menzies was one of the countrys most popular leaders. His
second and final term as prime minster lasted an astonishing sixteen
years still the Australian record for the longest time in office and he
was enormously popular when he left office in 1966. Indeed, as Davison
and others note, When he retired from Parliament (the last prime min-
ster to do so while still secure in office), he dominated public life. His
supremacy was such that contemporaries argued only over the merits of
his success (2001:426).
Leaders can also leave for what Iterm domestic reasons, which can
include a wide variety of rationales. Saito Makoto of Japan, for instance,
who ended a war with China in 1933, resigned in 1934 due to outcry
over a financial scandal. In cases like this, only one of the two criteria is
met the threat of removal by the domestic audience compels the leader
to leave but because it is for reasons other than the war, the removal
does not count as an instance of punishment.
As Inoted, just less than 16percent of the leaders who fight in wars are
punished because of their performance in a conflict, so leaving for domes-
tic reasons that are unrelated to the war is fairly commonplace. Leaders
in parliamentary systems, for instance, often have only a precarious hold
on power because their continued tenure is dependent upon their coali-
tion (be it one comprised of members of their own party or a coalition of
parties). Such was the case with Arthur Fadden of Australia in World War
II, who lost his position as prime minster when his party lost the majority
after two members switched their allegiance to the opposition.
Finally, a small number of leaders leave power for a variety of other
reasons that are unrelated to the war, though this is fairly rare in gen-
eral. Some are largely idiosyncratic to a particular state or era. See, for
example, the small European states (e.g., Bavaria and Wrttemberg) that
eventually were united under German control after a series of wars in
the late 1800s. Instances of leaders leaving the executive office to take
another key position in government are rare (this occurs twice in the data
set:Charles Alexandre Dupuy [1893] and tienne-Alexandre Millerand
[1920], both of France), but careful investigation of the circumstances
surrounding their transition from one post to another revealed that they
were not cases of leader punishment. Other leaders remained in power

several years after the last war in the data set ended in 2000, and thus are
not considered punished. Qaboos bin Said Al Said of Oman, for instance,
whose state participated in the first Gulf War in 1991, was still in power
as of this writing.
The final way a leader can leave power without being classified as
punished is to be removed from office by a foreign power. For exam-
ple, Jurez of Mexico, whom the French removed in 1863, or Manuel
Bonilla of Honduras, who lost power at the hands of Jos Zelaya and
the Nicaraguan army in 1907. As is the standard practice in the litera-
ture, Idrop these cases from the analysis because although the leaders are
removed from power because of the wars, their removals do not come at
the hands of their domestic audience. Importantly, in instances where the
leader flees the country during the war but later comes back to the coun-
try soon after the conflict ends, Idid not drop the leader from the data
set. Idid so because they could be punished because of the war upon their
return (e.g., de Geer of the Netherlands in World War II). Hence, includ-
ing them as leaders who have the potential to be punished is necessary.
Part2:Quantitative Results
Having established the key variables of interest, Inow turn to specifying
the models I will use to test the punishment hypotheses I presented in
Chapter2.
Punishment Hypothesis 1: Citizens are more likely to remove culpable
leaders who preside over unfavorable outcomes than nonculpable lead-
ers who preside over similar outcomes
Punishment Hypothesis 2: Among culpable leaders who preside over
unfavorable outcomes, leaders from democratic states should be more
likely to be removed from office than their nondemocratic counterparts.
To construct the data set, I first turned to the most recent version of
the Correlates of War Projects list of interstate wars. Covering the years
between 1815 and 2007, the data set includes 85 wars and 291 war-
ring states.26 Following the literatures standard, a conflict qualifies as an
interstate war if it is between at least two sovereign states and has at least
one thousand military combat fatalities. Using this list of warring states,
26 I use the most recent version of the Correlates of War Projects list of wars (Sarkees and
Wayman2010).
TABLE3.3. Wartime Leaders
Leader Position Frequency
First 291
Second 56
Third 24
Fourth 14
Fifth 5
Sixth 3
Seventh 2
Eighth 1
Iidentified every leader who was in power during the conflicts, even if
their time in office only overlapped with a small portion of the war. This
list of 396 leaders draws heavily on the Archigos projects compilation of
world leaders.27
Including all the leaders who participated in the wars is important
for at least two reasons. First, as I alluded to in earlier chapters, it is
not uncommon for states to undergo leadership changes during wars.
Indeed, of the 291 participants in this data set, fifty-six states, or nearly
20percent, witnessed at least one change in national leadership during
the course of a conflict resulting in a second leader (see Table 3.3). As
Idiscuss in detail in the following text, while some of these changes are
a direct result of the conflict (e.g., Neville Chamberlain of the United
Kingdom in World War II), other leadership changes occur indepen-
dent of the war. These wartime leadership changes are almost uniformly
overlooked in the existing literature, because most scholars focus on the
state as the unit of observation instead of the leader.28 Doing so, how-
ever, misses an important source of variation that happens within states.
Table3.3 provides a sense of how frequently these wartime leadership
changes happen.
The second reason any analysis of leader punishment needs to incor-
porate all of the leaders who fight in wars is because using only one leader
introduces a bias that obscures the important effects of a leaders culpa-
bility. Critically, this bias is present regardless of which leader is included.
If, for instance, the data set only includes leaders who are in charge when
27 Allen (1978); Lentz (1994, 1999); Bueno de Mesquita (2003); and Goemans etal. (2006)
were also helpful sources.
28 There are important exceptions to this (e.g., Stanley 2009; Stanley and Sawyer 2009; and
Quiroz Flores2012).
the war begins first leaders every one of them will be culpable, by def-
inition. This makes it impossible to estimate culpabilitys effect on either
their behavior or that of the domestic audience because the critical com-
parison group nonculpable leaders is missing. If, by contrast, we only
include leaders who preside over the ends of conflicts final leaders the
sample will systematically exclude all of the culpable leaders who may
have been removed during the conflict because of the war. Such was the
fate of Mariano Ignacio Prado of Chile, for instance, who left office in
the middle of the War of the Pacific after a series of setbacks. Likewise,
Jules Ferry of France also lost power before the war ended soon after
the disastrous Langson incident in March 1855, which forced France to
withdrawal in her battle against China in the Sino-FrenchWar.
Because of this potential for leaders to leave the sample due to reasons
that relate to the war, a sample of final leaders will be a mixture of culpa-
ble leaders who were faring well enough to avoid being removed during
the war and nonculpable leaders who were brought in to replace their
culpable predecessors who had fared poorly. Culpable leaders who fare
poorly will be systemically excluded from the set of final leaders. This has
the effect of reducing the estimate of the effect of a leaders culpability on
his likelihood of punishment. To provide a sense of the magnitude of this
potential bias, of the sixty-three leaders who are punished because of the
war, nearly 70percent (43 leaders) are removed before the war ends, and
would thus be missing from a sample of final leaders. Of these forty-three
leaders, thirty-eight (88percent) are culpable.
All leaders, therefore, need to be included when testing hypotheses
about leader punishment. Because all of the leaders who are in power
during a war have the potential to be removed from office because of
the conflict, all of them need to be included in the analysis. This is true
regardless of when they come to power during the conflict or the percent-
age of the conflict they preside over.29
Testing the hypotheses requires thinking about other important fac-
tors in addition to culpability that might also predict leader punishment.
Including these factors in the final model allows us to isolate the effect
of a leaders culpability on his likelihood of punishment in the event of a
loss. Idiscuss these additional factors briefly here to provide the reader
with a sense of why their inclusion is justified.30
29 I return to the consequences of failing to include all of the wars leaders in the Appendix.
30 For a more complete discussion of the measurement of these variables, please see the
Appendix.
An obvious one to begin with is the adversarys war aims. If the adver-
sary has aggressive war aims (e.g., his goal is to take a major piece of
territory), the domestic audience might be more upset with the leader
should he lose than if the adversary had less aggressive war aims (e.g.,
wanting to maintain the prewar status quo), all else equal. This possibil-
ity exists because losing to an aggressive adversary will carry negative
consequences that affect the domestic audience as well as the leader. If the
adversary is able to annex a large piece of territory, for instance, residents
of the area will be forced to live under a new regime, which may or may
not be friendly.
Even if the land is not heavily populated, losing territory often involves
giving up valuable resources or a strategically important position (e.g.,
the Golan Heights). Consequently, when these outcomes occur we should
expect the domestic audience to be more displeased with the leader than
if he simply backed down from an earlier commitment that involved tak-
ing something from the adversary. In cases like the latter, where the state
does not lose anything but instead fails to gain, the leader is the primary
bearer of the costs of the unfortunate outcome. The loss of face that
comes with failing to deliver on promised war aims is costly in a political
sense for the leader because it raises his likelihood of removal, but does
not have any direct consequences for the public.
Including a measure that captures the adversarys war aims also serves
a second purpose in that it acts as a proxy for the overall stakes of the
conflict. While all of the conflicts in this data set are nontrivial (each one
involved a minimum of one thousand battle deaths), some conflicts stand
out as being more consequential than others. Conflicts like the world
wars, for instance, where a states sovereignty is potentially at risk, fall
into this category, as do wars where major swaths of territory are at stake
(e.g., the war between Iran and Iraq). Including a measure of the adver-
sarys war aims helps identify wars that domestic audiences would likely
have regarded as important at thetime.
Knowing this information is necessary for the analysis because it is
possible that nonculpable leaders may behave like their culpable counter-
parts if the stakes are high. Although they may not face personal political
repercussions if they fail, losing to an aggressive adversary may carry
negative consequences that they would like to avoid, regardless. It is also
possible that the domestic audience may be upset with any leader who
presides over a massive loss, even if the leader lacks culpability. That is,
citizens may be willing to differentiate among leaders if the stakes of the
conflict are relatively low, but not if they are severe. Given this possibility,
a measure of the stakes of the conflict is an important factor to include

if we wish to assess the effect of culpability accurately across a variety of
contexts.
Another factor that is often related to leader punishment is the number
of casualties suffered by the state. Scholars of both international relations
and American politics have demonstrated time and again that leaders
who preside over wars with high numbers of losses are likely to face an
angry domestic audience. While most of this work examines the inverse
relationship between casualties and public approval of the leader,31
recent work has demonstrated that casualties can also have more direct
consequences for the leader (e.g., a loss in vote share for incumbents in
democracies).32 Given this relationship, it is important to account for the
number of casualties in models of leader punishment. I use a per cap-
ita measure of casualties to account for the fact that states with smaller
populations may have less of an ability to absorb (and, therefore, toler-
ate) large-scale losses than states with bigger populations.
Moving from the war-specific factors to the leader-specific ones,
I also account for the length of time a leader was in office before the
war began. Scholars have argued that a longer prewar tenure allows a
leader to secure his hold on power, making him more able to weather a
bad policy outcome, such as losing a war. This phenomenon is likely to
be stronger in autocratic states, where leaders rely more on the loyalty
of those in their immediate circle, than in democracies, where leaders
are more dependent on mass approval.33 Maintaining the support of the
inner cadre of elites is easier for the former type of leader because they
31 Gartner and Segura (1998).

32 Karol and Miguel (2007). But see Gelpi etal. (2005/2006). In recent work, Koch and
Nicholson (2014) demonstrate that casualties are positively related to voter turnout.
While they do not make any claims as to whether this is necessarily bad for a culpable
incumbent, they do note that leaders may fear activating any latent anti-war sentiment
that may exist in the population(26).
33 Importantly, this does not mean that the opposite effect is true for democratic leaders;
that is, democratic leaders who have been in power for a long time before the war are not
more likely to lose power should they lose. While it makes intuitive sense that democratic
leaders may be more likely to fall victim to fracturing coalitions as their length of time
in office increases, this is not the case empirically for democratic leaders who participate
in wars. As Bueno de Mesquita (1995:851)note, while nondemocratic leaders clearly
benefit from longer prewar tenures, the effect of the time spent in office before the war
for democratic leaders is statistically indistinguishable from zero. Put differently, this
variable has the potential to account for a large number of nondemocratic leaders who
are able to weather poor outcomes precisely because of their long tenures in office, but
its effect should be muted for their democratic counterparts. Hence, including it does not
present anissue.
can reward their supporters with private goods. Democratic leaders do

not have this option given their need to please a much larger portion of
the population.34 Given the potential for the length of a leaders prewar
tenure to decrease his likelihood of being punished, including it as a con-
trol alongside his culpability is key to testing the hypothesis accurately.
A final factor that needs to be accounted for is the leaders perfor-
mance in the war. While I address this issue in much greater detail in
Chapter 4, where war outcome is the outcome of interest, the leaders
performance in the war has an obvious role to play in models of punish-
ment. As Iargued in Chapter2, citizens should be interested in a leaders
ability to make sound decisions, handle the war favorably, and secure a
good outcome. Given this, they should have incentives to punish leaders
who fare poorly, provided those leaders had a hand in bringing about the
war, either by starting it or supporting the leader whodid.
Because a state can have multiple leaders at the helm in a single
conflict and that set of leaders can include both culpable and noncul-
pable executives testing this hypothesis requires a measure of war per-
formance that could apply both to leaders who leave power during the
war as well as to those who end them. Leaders who leave during the war
can lose the war if they preside over major setbacks. To capture this,
Icreated a war performance variable that measures how the state was
faring in the conflict around the time of the leaders departure for leaders
who do not stay in power for the whole conflict. For leaders who preside
over the end of the conflict, Iused the war outcome as a measure of the
leaders performance.
While this measurement scheme necessarily involves two different
types of observations because a snapshot of a states progress at a partic-
ular point in a war is not the same as the final outcome, it is also the most
accurate way to represent what members of the domestic audience would
have known at the time they were evaluating a leader. Hence, for all of the
punishment models that follow, loser can refer to a leader who was in
charge while the state was faring poorly during the war or a leader who
held the executive position when the war ended on unfortunate terms for
the state. The same is true for leaders who draw or win; their performance
is assessed either when they leave office or when the war ends, whichever
comes first. While most of the discussion in the following text refers to
outcomes, this is purely for notational convenience because a leader
need not preside over the final outcome to be punished for thewar.
34 Bueno de Mesquita and Siverson (1995).

The United Kingdoms participation in the Crimean War provides a

nice example of why this scheme is appropriate. Two leaders held office
during the war. Aberdeen, who came to power in 1852 and presided over
the United Kingdoms declaration of war in March 1854, and Palmerston,
who took office in December 1855 and oversaw the end of the conflict
in March 1856. During Aberdeens wartime tenure the United Kingdom
had met with limited success and had suffered a major setback with the
now infamous Charge of the Light Brigade at the Battle of Balaklava
in October 1854, in which the British lost 40percent of their forces on
the scene. The United Kingdom was dealt another blow soon after on
Mount Inkerman, a battle that claimed the lives of nearly a quarter of
all their forces dedicated to the war.35 If asked to evaluate how their
leader was performing in late 1854, most British citizens would have
probably answered very poorly. Based on the information they had at
the time, this assessment would have been accurate. What they could
not have foreseen, however, was that the tide would soon turn in the
United Kingdoms favor and they would eventually win in March 1856.
This reversal of fortunes illustrates why two observations based on dif-
ferent sets of information are necessary. Because he left during the war,
Aberdeens outcome is a loss, while Palmerstons outcome (which was
also the final outcome) is awin.36
I now turn to the statistical analysis. As Inoted, because it is neces-
sary to include all leaders when testing hypotheses about punishment, the
data set consists of 396 leaders, representing the wars between 1815 and
2007.37 If the theorys predictions are correct, being a culpable leader who
presides over a poor outcome should have a positive and significant effect
on a leaders likelihood of punishment. Conversely, being a nonculpable
leader should not be a significant predictor of punishment, regardless of
the outcome. As Inoted previously, however, there are several factors that
may condition the effect of culpability. These factors include the culpa-
ble leaders regime type, how long the replacement leader chooses to stay
in the war after coming to power, and the nature of the war aims of the
35 Clodfelter (1992: 297).

36 See the Appendix for more information on how I coded the wartime performance
variable.
37 Because the dependent variable is binary leaders are either punished because of the war
or not Iestimated the model using a logistic regression model. Based on the preced-
ing discussion, a complete model of leader punishment that would allow us to estimate
the effect of a leaders culpability can be expressed as follows:Pr(Leader Punishment)=
+ Culpable Losing Leader + Nonculpable Losing Leader + Adversary War Aims +
Casualties + Prewar Tenure Length+.
TABLE3.4. The Effect of Culpability on Leader Punishment
Model 1 Model 2
Culpable Loser 1.569*** 1.618***

(0.45) (0.44)
Nonculpable Loser 0.165 0.080
(0.87) (0.84)
Culpable Drawer 1.231*
(0.55)
Aggressive Adversary 1.418** 1.230**
(0.47) (0.41)
Casualties Per Capita 0.295 0.215
(1.53) (1.51)
Prewar Tenure (logged) 0.162* 0.161**
(0.07) (0.06)
Constant 2.423*** 2.333***
(0.51) (0.48)
Observations 289 364
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
adversary. Ireturn to these factors after presenting the basic punishment

findings. Iclustered the observations by country and war to account for
the possibility that unobservable state-specific factors may have an effect
on a leaders likelihood of punishment.
Because Model 1 includes indicator variables for both culpable and
nonculpable losing leaders, the effects of these variables need to be
interpreted against the excluded category:winners. Idrop leaders who
draw for the time being for simplicity of presentation, but include them
in Model 2 because drawing is also a suboptimal outcome. Winning
leaders are a suitable baseline because there is no theoretical reason to
expect domestic audiences to punish leaders who win, regardless of their
culpability. The results of Model 1 strongly support the predictions of
Punishment Hypothesis 1.The coefficient on Culpable Loser is positive
and significant, indicating that leaders who lose (or perform poorly in)
the wars they played a role in starting are more likely to be removed from
office than leaders who win. By contrast, the coefficient for nonculpable
leaders who lose is considerably smaller and not significant. This suggests
that there is no difference between winning leaders and nonculpable lead-
ers who preside over losses. Figure3.1 demonstrates this graphically.
As is evident from the pair of bars on the left-hand side of the figure, the
effect for culpable losing leaders dwarfs the effect for nonculpable ones
.2
Change in Probability from Baseline
.15
.1
.05
.05
Leaders Who Lose Leaders Who Draw
Culpable Leaders
Nonculpable Leaders
FIGURE3.1. The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of Punishment Given a

Poor Outcome.
who preside over similarly bad outcomes. Indeed, the fact that the confi-
dence interval surrounding the effect for nonculpable losers includes zero
suggests that this leader type is no different from winners in the eyes of cit-
izens. Clearly, domestic audiences respond not only to the wars outcome,
but to the role the leader played in bringing about that outcome aswell.
Losses, of course, are only one type of war outcome that citizens might
be displeased with. Draws, or instances where the leader fails to meet the
wars objectives but does not suffer any significant losses, should also
be interpreted as failures, especially if the leader is culpable for the war.
To test for this possibility, Ireestimated Model 1, but included two new
variables for culpable and nonculpable leaders who draw. The models
baseline is still winners. Icannot estimate an effect for nonculpable lead-
ers who draw because (as the theory would predict) none of them are
punished. This creates a situation of perfect prediction so the variable
drops from the model. Given this, Isimply dropped these cases from the
analysis. As with Model 1, in Model 2 culpable leaders fare worse than
nonculpable leaders whether they preside over losses or draws; the bar
on the right-hand side of Figure3.1 depicts the effect for culpable lead-
ers who draw. Interestingly, the coefficients for culpable who lose and
draw are close in size and statistically indistinguishable from one another
(p-value < 0.379). This suggests that it is not necessarily the magnitude of
the loss, but rather the failure to deliver promised outcomes that matters
to citizens when evaluating a culpable leader.38
For both models, the control variables work as expected. Both vari-
ables that capture hard or costly wars were positive and significant.
Leaders confronting adversaries with aggressive war aims face a higher
likelihood of punishment (though the effect is only significant in Model
1), as do leaders who preside over a large number of military casual-
ties.39 Finally, as predicted by other scholars, an inverse relationship
exists between the length of a leaders prewar tenure and his likelihood
of punishment.
Before exploring any factors that might condition the effect of culpabil-
ity, it is worth pausing to note the implications of the first set of findings.
The fact that stark differences exist between culpable and nonculpable
leaders who preside over equally unfavorable outcomes challenges many
of the current literatures assumptions about the relationship between
punishment and wartime performance. First, it illustrates that leader
punishment is not driven by costs or performance alone, two factors long
thought to be the primary determinants of war-related removals. While
these factors are certainly important, the roles individual leaders play
in bringing the state to war also matter a great deal. This sharpens our
understanding of why citizens remove leaders to neutralize leaders who
made bad choices (or who were unfaithful agents) and to deter leaders
38 The results do not change for Models 1 and 2 when Iinclude a variable for culpable vic-
tors. The coefficient is insignificant, thus confirming that this type of leader is no more
likely to be punished than the (new) baseline, nonculpable victors.
39 Interestingly, there does not appear to be a penalty for especially costly victories. Put
differently, very few leaders who win are thrown from power, even if they presided over
significant casualties. This suggests that citizens care if leaders make them endure a mis-
take, which is not necessarily the same thing as a costly policy, which could be worth
fighting for (e.g., the United States joining World War II after Pearl Harbor). To exam-
ine this, Ilooked at the culpable leaders who presided over the end of wars that ended
in a victory for their state (so citizens would be aware of the wars final outcome and
the total number of people killed in the war) and who were in power when the state
incurred a significant number of casualties (i.e., more than the 75th percentile). Of these
twenty-seven leaders, only three (11percent) were punished. By way of comparison, six
of twenty-eight (21percent) culpable losers in this group are punished. (No nonculpable
leaders of either type are punished.) One Pyrrhic victor was Vittorio Orlando of Italy
during World War I, whom Idiscuss in great detail in the following text, and the oth-
ers were Levon Ter-Petrosyan of Armenia during the Azeri-Armenian War and Eusebio
Ayala of Paraguay during the Chaco War. All of these leaders were removed because their
domestic audiences were upset with the final terms the leader secured. While the casual-
ties were undoubtedly upsetting to the people, it was not a major factor in the leaders
falls frompower.
from making similar choices in the future. It also suggests that domestic
audiences are capable of distinguishing among executives who may have
played different roles in the war. Finally, looking at things from the lead-
ers perspective, these results also suggest that not all leaders will face the
same set of incentives. While, as Inoted in Chapter2, it is true that all
leaders would like to retain office, this does not mean that they will all
have equally strong motivations to try to win the war. The wars outcome
most strongly affects the fate of those leaders whom the public associates
with the decision to enter the conflict.
Conditional Factors
Having established that culpability has the predicted positive effect
on leader punishment, I now turn to the secondary hypotheses, which
explore whether the effect of culpability is conditional on characteristics
of the leader or thewar.
RegimeType
An obvious factor to begin with is a leaders regime type. As I argued
previously, culpable leaders in democracies may face a higher risk of pun-
ishment than their less democratic counterparts in the event of a loss. The
relative ease with which democratic publics can sanction their leaders
and the means of repression available to more authoritarian leaders gives
the latter set of leaders a considerable edge in maintaining power. To test
for the conditional relationship suggested by Punishment Hypothesis 2,
Icreated a series of variables that identify different types of regimes using
the Polity IV data set and the literatures standard thresholds. As men-
tioned previously, loser refers to leaders who lose the war or who leave
during the conflict while the state is faring badly.40
The first model (Model 3)compares leaders who lose to the baseline of
winners, while leaders who draw are dropped. These cases are included
in the second version of the model (Model 4), which includes indicator
variables for both leaders who lose and leaders who draw. Both models
are presented in Table3.5.
Several things are worth noting. As with the first set of results, we
see that culpable losers are uniformly more likely to be punished than
40 More specifically, I estimated the following model: Pr(Leader Punishment)= +

Democratic Culpable Losing Leader + Nondemocratic Culpable Losing Leader +
Nonculpable Losing Leader + Adversary War Aims + Casualties + Prewar Tenure
Length+.
TABLE3.5. The Effect of Culpability on Leader Punishment

Accounting for RegimeType
Model 3 Model 4

(0.87) (0.86)
Culpable, Democratic Loser 3.080*** 3.033***
(0.82) (0.79)
Culpable, Nondemocratic Loser 1.364** 1.347**
(0.44) (0.43)
Culpable, Democratic Drawer 1.784**
(0.65)
Culpable, Nondemocratic Drawer 0.006
(0.83)
(0.47) (0.42)
(1.53) (1.54)
Prewar Tenure (logged) 0.165* 0.134*
(0.07) (0.06)
Constant 2.403*** 2.447***
(0.52) (0.53)
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
winners and nonculpable leaders who lose, regardless of regime. The

cluster of three bars on the left-hand side of Figure 3.2 illustrate this
graphically41 the two types of culpable losing leaders are significantly
more likely to be punished than winners, while nonculpable losers are
statistically indistinguishable from winners.42
When we move to Model 4, we start to see some variation among
the culpable leader types (again, there is no bar for nonculpable leaders
41 Figure 3.2 is based on Model4.

42 The results of Models 3 and 4 also hold when Iput in separate variable for democratic
and nondemocratic nonculpable losers. No democratic, nonculpable leaders are pun-
ished and nondemocratic, nonculpable leaders are statistically indistinguishable from
winners in terms of their likelihood of being punished. The specification of the preced-
ing model provides the most straightforward test of the hypotheses because I do not
expect nonculpable leaders of either regime type to be punished in the event of a loss.
Similarly, as Inoted, Ido not expect winners to be punished, regardless of their culpa-
bility. This expectation also holds for winners of different regime types. Hence, Ichose
the specification utilized instead of an equivalent model with a cumbersome three-way
interactionterm.
.8
.6
.4
.2
Leaders Who Lose Leaders Who Draw
Culpable Democrats
Culpable Nondemocrats
Nonculpable Leaders

Poor Outcome.
who draw because of the perfect prediction issue mentioned). Culpable

nondemocratic leaders who draw are no different from winners or
nonculpable leaders who lose. The coefficient is still positive, but not
statistically distinguishable from zero; the relatively small size of the
right-most bar (and its large confidence interval) demonstrates this as
well. This finding is not surprising given the relative ease with which
authoritarian leaders can weather (relatively) minor policy failures.
The fact that this finding only applies to leaders who draw, however,
and not those who lose, suggests that these leaders are not completely
immune from the pressures of culpability, even though their relevant
domestic audience is relatively small and generally more insulated
from failure inwar.
To test Punishment Hypothesis 2 more directly, however, a compari-
son of the effects of culpable losing leaders of different regime types is
needed. Asimple test of equivalency of the two effects provides strong
support for the hypothesis. Using the results from Model 3, culpable
democratic leaders who lose or perform badly during the war are signifi-
cantly more likely to be punished than their nondemocratic counterparts
who do the same (p-value: 0.024). The same result holds in Model 4:
democratic leaders who lose or draw are more likely to be punished
than nondemocratic leaders who preside over similar outcomes (p-value

[lose]:0.021; p-value [draw]:0.074).
What are the implications of these findings? First and foremost, they
suggest that not all leaders from a given regime type are going to have the
same incentives to secure favorable outcomes. This challenges much of
the existing literature, which generally assumes leaders operating under
the same domestic structures will behave in similar ways.43 More specif-
ically, conventional wisdom suggests that democratic leaders should be
sensitive to public opinion given the presence of an electoral check. The
preceding analyses suggest that the story we ascribe to democratic leaders
has been applied too broadly. All democratic leaders will be interested in
public dissent regarding a war, but we should only expect nonculpable
leaders to respond to it by ending the conflict.
Length of Conflict Involvement Postaccession

The second conditioning factor related to leaders centers on a choice
every nonculpable leader faces when taking office during a war:that is,
should she continue fighting the war or try to end her states participation
as soon as possible? As Iargued previously, nonculpable leaders who stay
in the conflict too long could take on the burden of culpability in the eyes
of the domestic audience, and, in doing so, increase their risk of punish-
ment if the country fares poorly in the war. This potential for the reassig-
nation of culpability exists because while citizens might expect a culpable
leader to continue fighting until he wins, they should be more surprised
if a nonculpable leader decides to stay in the war for a long period of
time after taking power. Because the public knows the leader could end
the war with minimal backlash, citizens will likely assume a nonculpable
leader who stays in a war is doing so of her own volition, and not because
she thinks she will be punished if she ends the conflict in the current term
(as a culpable leader would). Given this, nonculpable leaders who stay in
the war for a long period of time and eventually lose should face a higher
likelihood of punishment than their counterparts who terminate the war
on unfavorable terms more quickly.
Testing this hypothesis is not as straightforward as the other tests for
a conditional relationship because the number of cases is significantly
43 In his influential work on domestic politics and war termination, Goemans (2000) advo-
cates breaking leaders into three regime types (autocracies, anocracies, and democracies)
instead of the standard two. Ido this in the Appendix and find that culpability is still
a very worthwhile leader characteristic to consider when modeling leader punishment.
Croco and Weeks (2014) reach a similar conclusion regarding multiple regime types and
culpability.
TABLE3.6. Fates of Losing Replacement Leaders
Stay in Less Than One Year Stay in More Than One Year
Fate Nonculpable Culpable Nonculpable Culpable

Not Punished 12 (63%) 7 (37%) 3 (60%) 2 (40%)
Punished 1 (20%) 4 (80%) 3 (38%) 5 (62%)
smaller. While there are 105 replacement leaders, only 50 of them are
nonculpable. Moreover, as one might expect based on the logic presented,
very few nonculpable replacement leaders stay in the conflict for a long
period of time after coming to power. In fact, of these fifty leaders, only
ten (or 20percent) continue fighting the war for more than a year.44 By
contrast, twenty-two (of fifty-four) culpable replacement leaders (or
41percent) stay in the war more than ayear.
Even within these small sets of leaders, however, interesting patterns
still exist. Table3.6 presents information on punishment rates for leaders
who lose, broken down by culpability and the length of time they stay in
the war postaccession.
Two aspects of the distribution of cases are important to note. Looking
at the less than one year group of leaders who either lose or fare poorly
(bottom left two cells), we see that, as the theory would predict, noncul-
pable leaders are less likely to be punished than culpable leaders. While
the numbers are admittedly small, 80percent of the culpable leaders who
lose in this time period are punished while only one nonculpable leader
leaves power because of the war. The leader was Alexandros Korizis of
Greece, who committed suicide as German troops descended upon Athens
in World War II. The difference in the rates of punishment between the
two leader types is significant (p-value:0.002), suggesting that domestic
audiences are indeed more forgiving of nonculpable leaders who lose,
provided they are only in the war for a short amount oftime.
A different pattern emerges when we consider the set of replacement
leaders who lose after staying in the war for more than a year after com-
ing to power (bottom right two cells). While culpable replacements who
lose are still more like to be punished than nonculpable ones, the differ-
ence in rates of punishment across the two groups is no longer significant
(p-value:0.194). This suggests that if a nonculpable leader stays in the
war for a long period of time after coming to power, members of the
44 Five leaders end their wars, while the remaining five leave power during the war. Of these
ten, six lose, one draws, and threewin.
domestic audience are more likely to treat them as they would culpable
leaders by holding them accountable for failures.
Given the small number of cases, this result should be interpreted with
caution. As an additional test, and one that incorporates a larger sample,
I recoded the ten nonculpable leaders who stay in the war more than
a year as culpable and reestimated Model 1.45 As expected, the results
remained the same: culpable leaders who lose are significantly more
likely to be punished than winners and nonculpable losing leaders. Taken
together, these findings suggest that domestic audiences may be more
tolerant of nonculpable leaders who lose, but this tolerance has limits.
They also have implications for how we think about the rationale behind
domestic punishment. Citizens are willing to forgive leaders who preside
over mistakes that were not of their own making, but grow less so if the
leader willingly takes ownership of the conflict by opting to stay in it for
an extended period of time. This not only suggests that the choices lead-
ers make matter in how citizens assess them but that citizens classifica-
tion of leaders (i.e., as either culpable or nonculpable) can change over
time. These findings also have implications for leader behavior. Namely,
that nonculpable leaders should do everything in their power to get out
of wars quickly even if this means accepting an unfortunate outcome in
the current time period to avoid the possibility assuming the blame for
a war that ends badly in the future.
Adversary WarAims
Having addressed two leader-specific factors that could condition the
effect of culpability, Inow turn to a factor that has to do with the specific
conflict:the adversarys war aims. Iposited earlier that if a state is fac-
ing an opponent with aggressive war aims, domestic audience members
should be just as likely to punish a nonculpable leader who loses as a cul-
pable one given the consequences of such a defeat. To test this hypothesis,
Isplit the sample into two groups. The first group consisted of leaders
who faced adversaries with aggressive war aims (e.g., those intent on cap-
turing, at minimum, a large portion of territory), while the second group
consisted of leaders facing less aggressive adversaries. Ithen reestimated
Model 1 without the adversary war aims variable on each of the samples,
so Model 1 becomes Model 5 and Model 2 becomes Model 6. I pre-
sent the statistical results in Table 3.7; Figure 3.3 displays the effects
graphically.
45 See Chapter3 Appendix.

TABLE3.7. The Effect of Culpability on Leader

Punishment Conditional on Adversary WarAims
Model 5 Model 6
Culpable Loser 1.834* 1.492*

(0.76) (0.64)
Nonculpable Loser 0.143
(1.07)
Casualties Per Capita 86.227* 3.022
(36.31) (1.56)
Prewar Tenure (logged) 0.246** 0.062
(0.09) (0.11)
Constant 1.167 2.862***
(0.95) (0.67)

p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
.4
.2
.2
High War Aims Low War Aims
Culpable Leaders
Nonculpable Leaders

Poor Outcome.
The adversarys war aims do not appear to have a conditional effect.

Culpable leaders are more likely to be punished for losing than winners
in both samples (though the size of the effect for losing to an adversary
with high war aims is understandably larger). They are also more likely
to be punished than nonculpable leaders who lose or draw, though it is
not always possible to estimate these effects directly. This is true for two
reasons. First, as the theory would predict, no nonculpable leaders who
draw are punished. Second, in the sample of adversaries with less aggres-
sive war aims, none of the nonculpable leaders who lose or fare poorly
are punished. It seems reasonable to conclude, therefore, that although
we cannot determine the significance of the difference, their chances of
punishment are substantially lower than their culpable counterparts.
This finding coincides with the theorys predictions and strengthens it
terms of generalizability. If nonculpable leaders were only spared pun-
ishment in wars where the adversary did not have high war aims, one
could claim that citizens would only care about a leaders role in the war
if vital interests were not at risk.46 This does not appear to be the case.
Instead, citizens differentiate between leaders based on their culpability,
regardless of what is at stake in the war. Importantly, this finding does
not appear to be driven by the distribution of nonculpable leaders across
the two samples. Although nonculpable leaders make up a minority of
the leaders in the data set, they account for roughly the same proportion
of leaders across the two types of wars (12percent of the leaders facing
less aggressive adversaries, and 14 percent of the leaders facing more
aggressivefoes).
Part3:Italy in WorldWarI
The story of Italys experience in World War Iis a useful case to explore
in greater detail for three reasons. First, a nonculpable leader is not in
charge at the end of the war. Instead, all three of Italys leaders were
culpable for the conflict. This is an attractive feature because the spe-
cific individual occupying the executive position changes twice, but the
culpability remains, allowing us to see if and how the pressures to win
transfer. Second, Italy at this point in history is a mixed regime, placing
it between established democracies, such as the United States or United
Kingdom, and more authoritarian states that come to mind when we
46 As a related aside, while one might expect domestic audiences to be more forgiving
of leaders who were targeted by and lose to aggressive adversaries (e.g., a state that
was invaded with the intent of conquest by another state without warning), this is not
the case. In an analysis of first leaders (i.e., the leaders who would be true targets or
responsible for the decision to willingly involve the state in the conflict) facing aggressive
adversaries, both targets and initiator/joiner leaders are significantly more likely to be
punished than winners (p-values 0.014 and 0.002, respectively).
think of classic dictatorships.47 Although a significant portion of the dis-

cussion thus far has been framed in democratic terms (e.g., citizens voting
a leader out of office), the theory is not restricted to democracies, so it is
instructive to see how it operates in the absence of full-fledged democratic
institutions. Third, the wars final leader presides over a win. Using a war
that involves a victory (although not a total one) shows how important
it is for culpable leaders to secure all of the war aims they promised their
citizens. Italy is a particularly interesting case in this regard because she
actually gained a substantial amount of territory in the 1919 settlement
and lost nothing. The fact that the winnings did not include the small
town of Fiume and portions of Dalmatia critical items on Italys list of
war aims however, was enough to bring down Italys final leader. In the
following paragraphs Iexplore these aspects in greater detail and discuss
how the culpability of Italys three leaders Antonio Salandra, Paolo
Boselli, and Vittorio Orlando contributed to their downfalls.
Before turning to the individual leaders, it is important to under-
stand the path that Italy took into World War I. Many of the partici-
pants became involved in the war as the result of alliance commitments.
Indeed, World War Iis often used as a classic example of chain-ganging
in which a small bilateral conflict spreads to other states using alliance
networks. In this case, the dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia
quickly erupted into a massive war that involved Russia, Germany, Great
Britain, and France, among others. These states were members of one
of two alliance blocs. The Triple Entente, which consisted of the United
Kingdom, France, and Russia, and The Triple Alliance, which was made
up of Austria-Hungary and Germany. Italy was, in theory, the third state
in the latter bloc, but her contentious history with Austria-Hungary (the
two states had long-standing disagreements over territory) made her
reluctant to participate in the war on Austria-Hungarys behalf. This
abstention was within Italys rights under the treaty agreement. Because
Austria-Hungary had initiated the conflict, and the alliance was defensive
in nature, Italy was not required to join the fight.48
This strategy served Italy well; it allowed her to remain above the fray
while World War I unfolded, giving her better insight as to which side
47 Italys Polity score from 190021, thus all of World War I, is1 (Marshall and Jaggers
2000). This puts it squarely in the range of mixed regime based on conventional coding
rules (e.g., Chiozza and Goemans2011).
48 Di Scala (1995:1946). Indeed, Italy even went so far as to demand compensation from
Austria-Hungary for the gains made by the latter in the Balkans in the early stages of the
war (ibid.,198).
would emerge victorious. Eventually, Italian political elites decided that

joining the war on the side of the Triple Entente would best serve Italys
interests. This move was not completely unexpected because Rome had
spent the years leading up to the conflict courting the members of the
Entente, often with private bilateral agreements, in an effort to remain
on friendly terms and keep her options open. Many Italian political elites
at the time thought that participating in the war was quickly becoming a
necessity if Italy was to maintain her status as a major power.49 Fighting
alongside the Entente also brought the added bonus of allowing for the
possibility for Italy to gain Trent and Trieste, two pieces of territory she
had long wanted from Austria-Hungary.50
It was with this rationale that Rome dispatched [a representative]
in great secrecy to London with the suggestion that Italy was open to a
good offer from the Entente.51 The Entente was receptive to the idea,
and on April 26, 1915 the Treaty of London was signed. According to
the terms of the agreement, Italy had to declare war on Austria-Hungary
and Germany within a month. In exchange, she would receive extensive
amounts of territory along the Adriatic coast in the event of an Entente
victory. Two aspects of this treaty are worth emphasizing as they would
come back to haunt Italys leaders later in the war. First, the United States
was not party to the treaty because she would not join the war until 1917.
Second, the treaty did not include an Italian claim to the small town
of Fiume. Indeed, Giorgio Sidney Sonnino, the Italian Foreign Minister,
agreed to allow the Serbo-Croats an outlet at Fiume, for this town did
not feature among Italys ambitions.52
The leader responsible for Italys involvement in the war was Antonio
Salandra. Salandra had come to power in March of 1914 after Giovani
Giolitti, a strong advocate of Italian neutrality, had resigned.53 At the
time, Salandra did not seem like the type who was anxious to embroil
Italy in a multilateral conflict. This impression, however, would soon
49 According to historian Denis Mack Smith, for instance, As the war gathered momen-
tum, more Italian politicians began to feel that neutrality was undignified for a nation
of their status, whereas intervention would mark them indisputably as a great power
(260). See also, Di Scala (1995:200).
50 Smith (1997:257,260).
51 Ibid.,260.
52 Ibid., 261, emphasisadded.
53 Di Scala (1995:198200). While Giolittis support of continued neutrality was not the
reason for his departure, his disagreement with Salandra over Italys eventual participa-
tion in the war would come to serve as the dividing line for Italian political elites during
thewar.
prove incorrect as Salandra demonstrated that he was, in fact, an

ambitious gambler who was ready to break free from Giolittis system
and throw Italy into a crippling war.54 Making this decision entailed
a considerable amount of risk on Salandras part. As he would later
admit, he pursued the Treaty of London in absolute secrecy against a
large known majority in parliament and the country.55 The fact that
he decided to continue on the path to war despite the political risk
in doing so demonstrates just how confident he must have been in an
eventual Entente victory and, critically, in Italy making extensive terri-
torial gains.56 Indeed, so emboldened was Salandra by the prospect of
winning that he did not even bother to consult the military leadership
about a change in policy that demanded a complete inversion of their
military plans.57
Thus, World War Ibegan for Italy on May 23, 1915.58 Importantly,
Salandra only declared war on Austria-Hungary, as Italy had no major
territorial quarrels with the Germans.59 Things quickly took a turn for
the worse. As historian Spencer Di Scala notes, the conflict with Turkey
two years before had left Italy militarily unprepared . . . intervention
[had also come] at a crucial time when the war turned in favor of the
Central Powers. As a result, Italy failed to deliver Austria a swift knock-
out punch and Italians bogged down in the trenches as had their French
and British allies on the Western front.60 The lack of a demonstrable sign
of victory rapidly became a political problem for Salandra. A success-
ful Austrian offensive served as the nail in the coffin. As The Christian
Science Monitor described it, For over a year the back and forth struggle
has continued, and now, at the end of that time, not only are the Italian
lands unredeemed, but, as Signor Salandra expressed it in the Chamber
last Saturday, Austrians have succeeded in treading on a small but sacred
54 Smith (1997:256).
55 Ibid., 262. His lack of a majority in parliament would have made it difficult for Salandra
to get the treaty ratified had it not been for Giolittis fateful decision to remain quiet on
the issue. Without Giolitti to serve as a focal point, opponents to the war effectively gave
Salandra a majority for the time being. Di Scala (1995:201).
56 For more on the assumption that Italy would win, see Albrecht-Carrie (1950:102)and
Smith (1997:272).
57 Smith (1997: 262). The war required a complete overhaul of Italian military strategy
because the generals had been operating under the assumption that Italy would be fight-
ing with the Triple Alliance, not againstit.
58 Dupuy and Dupuy (1993:1039).
59 Smith (1997:267).
60 Di Scalia (1995:201).
portion of Italy.61 In the wake of this failure, Salandra fell on a vote of

no confidence.
One of the reasons behind Salandras loss of power was that he had
always lacked a strong, cohesive legislative majority. Part of this had to
do with the norms of Italian politics at the time. Legislative coalitions
made up of several parties with loose attachments to one another were
standard. While he knew this going into the war, his lack of strong allies
weakened him from both sides. The NewYork Times account described
this dual-front attack as follows in their coverage of the event: The
Giolattians and Official Socialists were and are opposed to the war and
his leading of Italy into the war. The Interventionists [i.e., prowar bloc]
opposed him because they thought he was not carrying it on energet-
ically enough.62 As this quote suggests, however, Salandras personal
role in involving the state in the conflict that is, his culpability also
played a part in his downfall. This sentiment is echoed in another account
of the ouster:The faith of the country was shaken and some deputies
had not forgiven the way he had stampeded them into the war. . . . His
unforgiveable error was to have gambled on the war being over by 1915,
and Italians soon discovered that Giolittis warnings had been amply
justified.63
After Salandras exit, the general consensus was that the next leader
would have to be more open to a broader set of opinions. As The NewYork
Tribune noted on June 13, 1916, Popular sentiment demanded greater
vigor, solidarity, and unity of purpose in the conduct of the war, and
naturally demanded changes in the ministry which would make the gov-
ernment representative of all the political elements. The leader selected
to lead the new governing coalition was Paolo Boselli. To some at the
time, Boselli may have seemed an odd choice for a wartime executive.
As Smith describes him, Boselli was seventy-eight years old, perhaps
the oldest deputy in parliament, [he] was a nonentity and a stopgap.64
Indeed, it seemed that Bosellis main strength was his ability not to offend
the diverse set of groups represented in new government.65
This portrayal correctly highlights Bosellis broad appeal, but misses
two crucial aspects about him:namely, his ties to Salandra and the war.
Boselli had long been a political ally of Salandras, having made an
61 The New Cabinet in Italy,10. June 131916.

62 Fall of the Boselli Cabinet, 12. October 29, 1917. Emphasisadded.
63 Smith (1997:272). Emphasisadded.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid., 273; Di Scala (1995:204).
important speech at the time of Italys entry into the war in support of
giving full powers to Salandra.66 He was also a member of the pro-war
bloc, or the group of people who did not agree with Giolittis calls for
continued neutrality when the legislature split over the issue of the war
in 1915.67 (This group was sometimes collectively referred to as the
war party.68) He also retained several members from Salandras cabinet,
including keeping Sonnini on as foreign minister.69 Taken together, Boselli
certainly qualified as a culpable leader. The Christian Science Monitor
recognized the implications of this at the time, albeit using different ter-
minology, when they noted that, if the attitude of its chief is any key of
the situation, the policy of the new ministry bids fair, as far as essentials
are concerned, to differ but little from that of its predecessor.70
Boselli did not take long to exhibit symptoms of culpability. Roughly
two months after coming to power he deepened Italys role in the war
by declaring war on Germany, something even Salandra had been reluc-
tant to do.71 He also took aggressive actions to reverse the earlier loss
Italy had suffered to Austria, and was successful in doing so. Sadly, for
both Boselli and Italians in general, this good fortune would not last
long. The Germans shifted some of their troops to the south to aid their
Austrian allies, and were quick to deliver a destructive blow to Italys
northern flank in the battle that would come to be known as the disaster
at Caporetto.72 In Smiths words, the battle began in the early hours of
October 24 achieving tactical surprise against demoralized troops, and
by midday the Italians were in full retreat. It was a serious collapse when
seven hundred thousand men had to fall back for a hundred miles. . . .
The psychological effect of this retreat was enormous.73 Given the mag-
nitude of the loss, it was no surprise to anyone that Boselli did not survive
as leader. Amere six days after the German advance, he resigned.74
66 As The Christian Science Monitor described him, Boselli sat with Signor Salandra in the
last two cabinets of which he was a member, and that it was he who . . . read into the
chamber the report of the commission appointed to discuss the conferring of extraordi-
nary powers on the government in case of war (Italian Premirs Case Removed, July
18,1916).
67 Lentz (1999:259).
68 Italian War Frenzy Downs Opposition, 1.May 16,1915.
69 Bosselli Forms Cabinet, 3.June 17,1916.
70 Italian Premirs Case Removed, Christian Science Monitor, 3.July 18,1916.
71 Boselli, Encyclopedia Britannica.
72 Military Expert (1917).
74 Boselli, Encyclopedia Britannica.
Bosellis replacement, Vittorio Orlando, took office soon after amidst

an interesting set of conditions: while the rout at Caporetto had ini-
tially stunned Italian citizens, it quickly became a point around which
they could rally. King Victor Emmanuel did his best to capitalize on
this, proclaiming to his people, We look adversity in the face without
flinching. . . . Citizens and soldiers, be a single army.75 The Kings call
to arms meshed well with Orlandos approach to the war. Orlando was
culpable for the conflict, having served in the cabinets of both Salandra
and Boselli, and it showed.76 As Di Scala described it, With the Orlando
government, Italy finally found the organization to pursue the war with
great vigor.77 Eventually, the tide began to turn in favor of Italy and the
rest of the Entente. Indeed, at one point, Orlando was so confident of
victory that he overrode the advice of reluctant generals and ordered
the military to seize Italys long-held goals of Trent and Trieste. From
his perspective, in the wake of these military victories, circumstances
could not be better for taking such a risk.78 The gamble paid off:Italy
successfully captured both territories, and Orlando was able to preside
over what appeared to be a triumphant conclusion to Italys participa-
tion in WorldWarI.
The war, however, was not completely over. While the majority of the
fighting had ended by late 1918, the combatants had yet to hammer out
the final agreement regarding the postwar status quo. The negotiations,
which would ultimately result in the Treaty of Versailles, were set for
Paris in early 1919. Orlando and his foreign minister, Sonnino, would
serve as Italys chief delegates. It is unlikely that Orlando knew what he
was in store for as he made the journey from Rome to Paris. Odds are
he was still basking in his militarys recent successes, and eager to bring
home an official victory to his people once the treaty was complete. He
must have known at the time that Italians were expecting great rewards
for the large price they had been asked to pay. As Di Scala notes, while
Italian losses were smaller than those of the other European combatants,
they were extremely heavy considering the country entered the war ten
months after it began.79 Given this, it is not surprising that Orlando
raised expectations by claiming the small port town of Fiume, which,
75 Fuller (1956:3:305).
76 Lentz (1999:259).
77 Di Scala (1995:204). Emphasisadded.
79 Di Scala (1995:205).
as I mentioned previously, was not among Italys demands when she

entered the war in 1915.80
Orlandos plan was destined to falter for two reasons. First, the
Entente powers were none too keen on rewarding Italy for what they
saw as a lackluster contribution on her part.81 The other European states
also had their own losses to consider, which were far larger than Italys
in absolute terms. Italys dead were two thirds that of the British and
40% of the French. . . . The devastation of [Italys] soil was incompara-
bly smaller than that suffered by France, and her expenditures likewise
were far lower than those of either the British or the French.82 Given this
sentiment, Orlandos wins over Austria toward the end of the war were
unlikely to elicit generous rewards from his northern allies.
Orlandos second obstacle was Woodrow Wilson. The American presi-
dent was often portrayed as the Ententes savior as the influx of American
troops in 1917 had helped turn the tide in the blocs favor.83 Wilson took
full advantage of this heros welcome and decided to take the opportunity
to champion what he saw as the outline for a new world order, which
came to be known as The Fourteen Points. This would create issues for
Italy because the ninth point stated that, a readjustment of the fron-
tiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognized lines of nation-
ality.84 In terms of territory, this meant that Italy would not get all it
had been anticipating from the Treaty of London. Fiume, moreover, was
completely off the table because its current population did not include a
significant number of Italians.
Importantly, and much to his consternation once he realized his error,
Orlando had already implicitly accepted that [The Fourteen Points]
superseded the treaty of London when he had reached an earlier armi-
stice with the Central Powers. The earlier agreement was based on The
Fourteen Points so, from the point of view of the other powers, when
Orlando agreed to it, he was simultaneously endorsing it as the foundation
80 Ibid.
81 MacMillan (2001:283).
82 Albrecht-Carrie (1950:109). This characterization of Italys losses is somewhat unfair,
or, at minimum, a biased view from the French and British perspective. Of the Entente
powers, France, Great Britain, and Romania lost more lives on a per capita basis than
Italy, but Italy lost more than the seven remaining members of the alliance. While it
makes sense that this would be an issue at a conference where Great Britain and France
were major players, it downplays Italys relativecost.
83 Albrecht-Carrie (1950:103).
84 MacMillan (2001:286).
for the entire peace process.85 Orlando attempted to protest, but met with
limited success. He was able to secure gains for Italy along her northern
frontier because Wilson was able to be persuaded that the region was a
case in which a strategic boundary took precedence over nationality and
language, but he did not give the Italians all they had been promised
under the Treaty of London.86 As he pointed out at the time, he was not
party to the agreement and, therefore, saw no reason to honor its terms.87
Wilson also was not willing to compromise on Fiume. When presented
with Orlandos objections on the latter point he dismissed them, noting
with what one can only assume was a heavy dose of sarcasm, that if
self-determination applied to the city of Fiume it might also apply to
regions of NewYork City where there were many Italians.88
Wilsons rejection sent Orlando into a tailspin. Italians had been
expecting all the territory promised in the Treaty of London since
Salandra had been in power. Fiume had come to hold a similar level of
salience ever since Orlando had made it the centerpiece of the spoils
he vowed to deliver to his citizens.89 Needless to say, he was concerned
about the domestic consequences of Wilsons demands because accept-
ing them necessarily meant he would not be able to credibly claim that
he had achieved all of Italys aims. In her discussion of the negotiations,
Margaret MacMillan described the Italians as desperate.90 Orlando
seemed to vacillate between regretting ever having introduced Fiume into
the demands91 and claiming that if he did not get it, violent outbursts
in Italy should endanger the whole peace process.92 Whether Orlando
truly believed failing to secure Fiume and the full set of territories prom-
ised in the Treaty of London would result in mass uprisings is impos-
sible to know. He could have simply been using the threat of domestic
backlash to force the other leaders into acquiescing to Italys demands.
85 Ibid. Why Orlando failed to realize the legal consequences of his earlier actions is unclear.
His knowledge of English was extremely limited (Albrecht-Carrie 1950:113), but one
would think his translators would have made him aware of the importance of the earlier
agreement.
86 Smith (1997:278).
87 MacMillan (2001:286).
88 Smith (1997:279).
89 In her recounting of the domestic scene of Italy during the Versailles negotiations, e.g.,
Margaret MacMillan (2001:295)noted the Italians preoccupation with Fiume, adding
that public opinion often fastens itself to trivial objects . . . whenever [Orlando] men-
tioned Fiume, his audience rose to their feet with a cry of Viva Fiume!
90 MacMillan (2001:293).
91 Ibid.,294.
92 Smith (1997:278).
He certainly presented a convincing performance at the time, however.

At one point he broke down and openly wept in Wilsons apartment in
Paris in the presence of other delegates over his concerns about how his
citizens would react to the news.93
In the end, the Italian delegation left the negotiations in protest. Before
his departure, he had tried his best to secure all of the aims specified
by his predecessors and himself. His culpability left him little choice.
As MacMillan acknowledges, Standing firm was all that Orlando and
Sonnino could do at this point. They had put themselves in a position
where any compromise would look like a major concession. Throughout
the negotiations the Italians remained absolutely inflexible.94
Ultimately, Orlandos attempt at brinkmanship would fail. After sulking
in Italy for two weeks, he and Sonnino had to pocket their pride and
return, just in time to witness the presentation of the peace proposals to
Germany without the opportunity of putting the Italian case on contro-
versial points.95
The domestic reaction to the treaty was predictable. The Washington
Post captured the mood by reporting that hardly a flag was flown in
Rome in celebration.96 Although Italy had gained roughly nine thousand
square miles of territory, Orlando had failed to achieve all of the terms of
the Treaty of London and been forced to give up his claims to Fiume.97 It
was clear that his remaining days in office were numbered. In an attempt
to justify the terms of the treaty, Orlando had meekly offered as a reason
Italys need to remain faithful to our duties towards the allies.98 This
only served to arouse the anger and hostility of the deputies, several
shouting across the chamber at the Government bench from where the
Premier was speaking.99 In the eyes of the opposition and, presumably,
the general public, Orlandos lack of a resounding victory . . . was in
itself sufficient reason why he should be voted down.100 Orlando left
office in disgrace on June 19th, 1919.101
93 MacMillan (2001:2798).
94 Ibid., 2989. Emphasisadded.
95 Smith (1997:281).
96 Italy Does Not Rejoice, 1.July 2,1919.
97 Smith (1997:280).
98 Orlandos Cabinet Defeated, Resigns, The St. Louis Dispatch, June 20,1919.
99 Ibid.
The Fall of Signor Orlando, Manchester Guardian, June 21,1919.
100
Johnson and Tierney (2006:8)make a similar point regarding Italys collective disap-
101
pointment and note its long-term effects:Unlike the other victors Britain, France, and
the United States many Italians had bitter perceptions of the war because Italy had not
In sum, all three of Italys leaders were culpable for World War I, and
all three were punished because of it. Salandra and Boselli were both
removed because of a perceived failure on their part to secure an Italian
victory where victory was defined by the highest aims set during the
war. Orlando was removed because the victory he secured was not com-
plete enough to satisfy the expectations of the domestic audience. He did
not deliver all he and his successors had promised and, being unable to
revise the war aims downward due to his culpability, he paid the ultimate
political price. If culpability were not important to citizens and leaders,
a very different story would have unfolded for Italy. Most obviously,
Salandra likely would have been the only leader punished for poor per-
formance in the war because he was the only one who was actually in
charge when Italy joined the conflict. Boselli and Orlando, by contrast,
would have been off the hook. This, of course, is not what happened.
Instead, Boselli and Orlando acted like Salandra by staying in the war
and escalating. They behaved like this because they knew the domestic
audience saw them as being culpable for the war. This domestic pressure
to secure all the promised aims was especially evident in Orlandos case
in the Versailles negotiations. If the threat of punishment was not a cred-
ible one, Orlando could have made things far easier on himself by giving
up Fiume, whose only real value was the intrinsic significance it held for
citizens. This would have removed a great deal of the friction with Wilson
and may have allowed Orlando to obtain gains on some other issue. But
Orlando could not bring himself to give up the claim. He knew his polit-
ical life dependedonit.
Conclusion
This chapter had three main objectives:(1)Establish the operational defi-
nitions for two of the key variables implied by the theory leader cul-
pability and leader punishment; (2) Determine whether culpability has
a positive relationship with leader punishment; and (3)Explore several
factors that might condition this relationship. In the process of accom-
plishing these objectives, several important findings came to light. First,
as the theory predicted, there is a strong relationship between culpabil-
ity and punishment. Culpable leaders who lose are far more likely to be
made all the territorial gains it had hoped for. With the emergence of Mussolini, extreme
nationalism, and revisionism, Italys postwar society quickly came to resemble those of
states that had lost the war (emphasis in original).
punished than their nonculpable counterparts. Indeed, across multiple

specifications, nonculpable leaders who lost had the same probability of
punishment as leaders who won their wars. Moreover, culpable, losing
leaders of both regime types face a heighted risk of punishment. While
democratic, culpable leaders who lose have the highest likelihood of
being removed, leaders who were less dependent on mass approval also
lost power if they failed to secure a favorable outcome. The relationship
was also not conditional on the adversarys war aims or on whether the
leader involved the war in the state voluntarily. Having established that
a strong and significant relationship exists between a leaders culpability
for a conflict and his likelihood of punishment should he lose, Inow turn
to examining how this threat of punishment affects leader behavior.
4
Culpability and Leader Behavior
In Chapter 3 I established that domestic audiences are more likely to

punish culpable leaders who fare poorly in international conflicts than
nonculpable leaders who perform badly. In this chapter, Iturn my focus
to how a leaders likelihood of punishment affects his behavior during
the war. As Iargued in Chapter2, culpability can have both positive and
negative effects on the choices a leader makes during thewar.
The rest of this chapter proceeds in three parts. Part1 examines the
hypotheses related to the types of outcomes a culpable leader is likely
to preside over and the amount of effort a culpable leader is willing to
expend in pursuit of victory. If the logic Ilaid out in Chapter2 is correct,
culpable leaders should try harder to win wars and preside over more
favorable outcomes than nonculpable leaders. Ifind strong support for
both of these hypotheses.
Trying harder and securing favorable outcomes is a good thing from
the vantage point of culpable leaders because winning wars makes it
more likely they will be able to stay in power. There is the possibility,
however, that a culpable leaders gamble for resurrection will fail and
lead to a catastrophic loss instead of a partial one. If the threat of punish-
ment compels a leader to stay in a war, even if the likelihood of victory is
essentially zero, he may end up presiding over a loss that would be even
worse than what he would have received had he settled earlier. This leads
to the expectation that culpable leaders are more likely than nonculpable
ones to preside over extreme outcomes, both good and bad. Iexplore and
find strong support for this hypothesis in Part2. Iend this section with a
brief vignette on Argentina in the Falklands war, which serves as a good
100
Culpability and Leader Behavior 101
example of how even leaders from nondemocratic regimes can fall victim to
the pressures of culpability and stay in a war toolong.
Finally, in Part3, Iclose the chapter with a case illustration of Australias
experience in the Vietnam War. This case is a useful one for several reasons.
First, it demonstrates how culpability can affect leader behavior, even across
multiple leader changes (in this case, five), and that the pressures associated
with culpability can last for many years. It also illustrates how culpability
is a factor in determining leader behavior even in relatively low-stakes wars
(e.g., wars where a state has relatively few troops at risk and where the
states security is not threatened directly).
Part1:War Outcomes
Given how central predicting war outcomes has been within the security
literature, it is fitting to begin my discussion with how a leaders culpability
might influence how he or she decides to end a conflict. Doing so makes
a substantial contribution because scholars have, until recently, assumed
that the primary determinants of how well a state will fare in a war are
based on characteristics of the war (e.g., the issue at stake) or the state (e.g.,
whether the state initiated the war, the states regime types).1 As Iargued
in Chapter1, focusing on the leader allows us to explain variation within
these subgroups (e.g., democratic states) because culpable and nonculpable
leaders can appear in the same state in a singlewar.
As was the case in Chapter3, the primary independent variable of inter-
est is a leaders culpability. Having defined it in Chapter 3, I will not go
into it at length here. In short, a leader is culpable if he was either in charge
when the war began or came to power during the war and shared a politi-
cal connection with a culpable predecessor. If Leader Behavior Hypothesis
1 is correct, culpable leaders should be associated with better outcomes,
ceteris paribus. Although wars are inherently complex, and their outcomes
difficult to predict with only one variable, an examination of the different
types of outcomes culpable and nonculpable leaders preside over is sugges-
tive of a relationship. Figure 4.1 illustrates this graphically. In the figure,
the bars represent the proportion of each types total set of outcomes that
are losses, draws, or victories.2 Comparing the proportion accounted for
1 E.g., Stam (1996).
2 I collapse the outcomes into three classes for presentational simplicity. As I discuss in
more detail in the following text, there are six possible outcomes. Producing the same
graph with six outcomes paints a similar picture. Indeed, when done in that manner,
culpable leaders tendency to win is even more striking:of the 138 victorious outcomes
culpable leaders preside over, 114 (or 87percent) are total victories.
50
40
Proportion
30
20
10
0
Losses Draws Victories
Outcome Types
Culpable Leaders
Nonculpable Leaders
FIGURE4.1. War Outcomes by Leader Type.
by each outcome for the different types of leaders, then, provides us with a
sense of which type of outcome they are most likely to presideover.
As the graph makes clear, victories account for just more than 50per-
cent of culpable leaders outcomes. Moreover, as the theory would pre-
dict, nonculpable leaders are much more likely to lose. Asimilar pattern
emerges when we consider the percent of the specific outcome types
accounted for by culpable and nonculpable leaders. Culpable leaders pre-
side nearly 96percent of the total victories and 95percent of the favor-
able outcomes, overall.3
I determined winners and losers by examining the degree to which a
leader succeeded in achieving the states maximum war aims.4 Using the
3 For a complete breakdown of the percent of each outcome type associated with the dif-
ferent kinds of leaders, see the Appendix.
4 Classifying war outcomes in this way also helps address (though does not solve completely)
the problem of perfect prediction. That is, using the classic win, lose, or draw scheme,
in a bilateral war if we know one state wins, we know with certainty its adversary loses.
The same is true if a state draws. Because a draw under the existing scheme implies that
neither side made out better than the other, the outcome for one state is implied by the
outcome of the other. Under the new scheme such perfect prediction is less likely to hap-
pen. If the conflict ends with return to the prewar status quo, the target may consider it a
win because their only aim was to have things the way they were before the conflict broke
out. For the challenger, however, the outcome would be closer to what scholars typically
consider a draw they did not lose any ground, but they failed to accomplish their stated
maximum war aims as the metric for accomplishment is appropriate for

two reasons. First, because war aims can evolve as the war progresses, the
goals set at the start of the war may no longer serve as the finish line
a few years or even a few months into the conflict.5 Second, if a leader
raises the states war aims, this establishes a new baseline for what the
domestic audience expects their state will be able to achieve. If a culpa-
ble leader falls short of these aims, members of the domestic opposition
will be quick to point out this failure, and encourage the larger domestic
audience to sanction the leader.6
Once the states maximum war aims are accounted for, Iclassified a
wars outcome using the following six-point scale presented in Table4.1.
Because Iam only interested in the wars final outcome, the table only
contains one observation per war, perstate.
A leaders culpability, however, is only one factor that determines how
a war will end. Existing work has demonstrated that several other char-
acteristics of either the state or the war can help us predict with greater
accuracy whether a state will win or lose a conflict. Including these fac-
tors also allows us to estimate the effect of a leaders culpability with
greater precision.
An obvious factor to start with is a states capabilities relative to its
adversary, with the expectation being that stronger states are more likely
to win. I calculated this variable as the ratio of the states capabilities
over the sum of capabilities on the battlefield.7 The resulting variable
ranges from zero to one, with higher values corresponding with stronger
states. In the data set, 59percent of states have less than 40percent of the
total military forces involved in the conflict; 14percent are on roughly
equal footing with their adversary (i.e., they account for between 40 and
60percent of the forces); and 27percent have a preponderance of power,
or more than 60percent of the military might represented in the conflict.
It is also necessary to account for whether the state joined the conflict
by choice. This is true for two reasons. First, leaders who initiate wars will
aims. I discuss this issue further in the Appendix. Because war outcomes can never be
totally independent, however, Icluster observations by war when the dependent variable
is outcome.
5 Goemans (2000); Reiter (2009).
6 I classify the outcomes that nonculpable leaders achieve according to this same scale. Of
course, as Idemonstrated in Chapter3, because their lack of responsibility for involving
the state in the war leads domestic actors hold them to different standards, they do not
face the same risk of political fallout for failing towin.
7 I drew data on national capabilities from EUGene; I utilized the composite capability
score in the final calculations (Bennett and Stam2000).
TABLE4.1. War Outcomes CodingScheme
Outcome Type Outcome Definition Frequency

(Percent)
Favorable Total Victory Accomplishes all war 119 (41%)

aims; no losses.
Partial Victory Achieve most, but not all 19 (6%)
war aims; no losses.
Unfavorable Prewar Status Accomplish no war aims; 42 (14%)
Quo (Draw) no losses.
Partial Loss Accomplish no war 61 (21%)
aims; make minor
concessions. Allya
suffers major loss.
Major Loss Accomplish no war 16 (6%)
aims; make major
concessions
Catastrophic Loss Loss of sovereignty; 34 (12%)
occupied.
a
Ally is defined here as a state whose protection was a key war aim of another state. E.g.,
South Korea was an ally of the United States in the Korean War because a major objective
of the United Statesled UN coalition was maintenance of the boundary between North
and SouthKorea.
have greater control over when and where the conflict starts. This affords
them a logistical advantage. The German blitzkrieg strategy utilized in
World War II serves as a good example of this tactic. Striking first with
a fast-moving offensive can give states the upper hand (though this, of
course, does not guarantee success). Second, states that willingly join con-
flicts already in progress have had a chance to watch the war unfold from
the sidelines, and, consequently, have a better sense of how it will play out.
If their would-be-coalition partner is faring well, they can join in the fight.
Likewise, if she is faring poorly, they can remain above the fray so as not
to share in her loss. Taken together, these two points suggest that leaders
that enter conflicts of their own volition are more likely to win than lead-
ers who are attacked. Within the data set, 183 of the 291 warring states
(or 63percent) participate in their respective conflicts by choice, with 108
(37percent) joining the conflicts as the result of an attack.
Another factor to consider when predicting war outcomes is the adver-
sarys war aims. Idiscussed the coding of this variable in Chapter3 (and
its Appendix) because leaders who lose to adversaries with aggressive
aims are more likely to be punished. Controlling for the adversarys war
aims in models of war outcomes is necessary for at least two reasons.
First, states facing aggressive adversaries are more likely to lose. Because
leaders set their war aims strategically, they are only likely to make sig-
nificant demands of their opponent if they feel they have a chance of
winning. Second, as Imentioned in Chapter2, it is also possible that an
adversary with high war aims would inspire any leader culpable or
not to try hard to win because the consequences of losing would have
negative effects beyond the domestic political fallout (e.g., losing a large
piece of strategically valuable territory). An aggressive adversary, in other
words, could act as a counter to a nonculpable leaders disincentive to
continue fighting. In the set of all war participants since 1815, approxi-
mately 60percent of states face opponents with low war aims, leaving the
remaining unlucky 40percent to tangle with more aggressivefoes.
Finally, it is also important to account for a states regime type because
earlier work has demonstrated that democratic leaders are more likely
to win the wars they fight.8 Losing democratic states, of course, are not
unheard of. Several smaller states in World War II found themselves
overrun, and even great powers such as the United Kingdom and United
States have met with defeat in modern wars. Still, generally speaking,
democratic leaders fare considerably better than leaders of more cen-
tralized regimes. Of the seventy democracies in the data set, for instance,
only twelve (or 17 percent) end their wars on losing terms; by way of
comparison, nearly 45percent of the autocratic states in the data set (99
of 221)end their wars with defeats.
Scholars typically offer two explanations for this pattern.9 The first is
that democratic leaders are likely to be more cautious than nondemocratic
leaders in selecting the wars they participate in, and will do their best to
only enter into conflicts they are fairly confident they will win. This incen-
tive for democratic leaders to be selective stems from the relative ease with
which the public can remove them from power. The presence of an elec-
toral check imbues democratic leaders with a heighted sense of caution,
especially with regard to wars that have the potential to be long and have
heavy losses.10 Given this, we should expect the subset of all possible wars
that democracies choose to fight to be characterized by quick, and relative
easywins.
8 Reiter and Stam (2002).

9 Ibid.
10 Valentino, Huth, and Croco (2010).
The second explanation centers on how democratic states fight their

wars. As Reiter and Stam (2002) argue, two characteristics of demo-
cratic societies give their militaries a strategic edge on the battlefield. The
first is the tendency for military elites in democracies to be promoted
based on merit. This stands in contrast to more closed political systems
where leadership roles in the military are handed out as political rewards
or along family lines to ensure loyalty to the executive. Compare, for
instance, the U.S. military, where officers are promoted based on sev-
eral objective criteria, to the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein, where
the elite members of the Republican Guard were disproportionally from
Husseins inner circle. The second is the general tendency within demo-
cratic societies to reward individual initiative, which allows soldiers to
adapt to situations as they unfold on the battlefield instead of relying on
directives from central command. Given these two tendencies, coupled
with democracies incentives to select winnable wars, it is reasonable to
include democracy in models of war outcomes.
Testing the Basic Relationship

If the logic outlined in Leader Behavior Hypothesis 1 is correct, culpability
should have a positive and significant coefficient.11 Iestimated two models
to explore the robustness of the relationship between culpability and posi-
tive outcomes. Model 1 is estimated on the full set of leaders who end wars,
whereas Model 2 is estimated on the subset of leaders who ended wars
who were also replacement leaders (i.e., those who came to power during
the war). Model 2 is necessary for two related reasons. First, it allows me to
test whether the behaviors associated with being culpable for conflict can
transfer from first leaders to their successors who share a political connec-
tion. While the results in Chapter3 demonstrated that the incentive to win
transfers that is, culpable replacement leaders who lose are just as likely
to be punished as culpable first leaders who lose the possibility exists that
first leaders may feel especially pressed to succeed because they were the
ones most directly responsible for involving the state in the conflict.
Second, Model 2 allows me to guard against the possibility that the
relationship between culpability and outcome is driven by a selection
11 The fully specified model would be as follows:Pr(War Outcome)= + Culpable Leader +

Relative Capabilities + Voluntary Participant + Adversary War Aims + Democratic State
+ . To test this, Iutilize an ordered logistic regression model with higher values on the
dependent variable corresponding with more favorable outcomes (recall Table4.1).
effect. Because nonculpable leaders can only come to power when there
is a leadership change, it could be the case that the nonculpable leaders
who appear in the data set and end wars were brought to power because
the state was faring poorly.12 If a state does well, by contrast, it is likely
that the first leader who is also, by definition, culpable will remain in
power until the war is complete. Put differently, wars that go well should,
by and large, be ended by first leaders whereas wars that go badly will be
more likely to be ended by replacements, specifically, nonculpable ones.
This potential for nonrandom leader replacement could make it appear
as though culpable leaders are more likely to win, when in fact the culpa-
ble leaders who were destined to be defeated are thrown out in favor of
nonculpable replacements who end up presiding over the losses.
As it happens, there is very little evidence that leaders who perform
badly are more likely to see a nonculpable successor. Instead, a little
more than half (22/43, or 51 percent) of the replacement leaders who
follow those who were punished because of the war are culpable. Asim-
ilar, balanced proportion obtains when we consider the distribution of
culpability among replacement leaders who follow leaders who leave for
nonwar reasons (e.g., natural death, term limits):a slight majority (33/62,
or 53percent) are culpable, but a full 47percent are nonculpable. Taken
together, there is little reason to think that a change in leadership neces-
sarily implies that the war is going poorly and that a nonculpable leader
will soon take the helm and accept a loss to end thewar.
Another selection effect should also be considered. Because there are
more first leaders than replacements, the winning effect of culpability
could be driven entirely by successful first leaders. These leaders could
feel more pressure to win the war because they were in charge when it
first began and consequently could be more readily linked to starting
the war by their domestic audience. Their simple numerical advantage
would allow their tendency to win to dominate in the full sample, even
if there was little or no difference in the outcomes attained by culpa-
ble and nonculpable replacements (i.e., if the pressures of culpability did
not transfer to subsequent leaders). Estimating the model on replacement
leaders only helps alleviate this concern and provides the hardest test for
the theorys prediction.
12 I explored this possibility in an analysis presented in the Appendix to Chapter3. Ido

not find support for the idea that nonculpable leaders only come to power when the
state is losing the war or when the previous leader was removed because of the war.
Nevertheless, it is important to address the possibility of nonrandom selection by esti-
mating Model 2 on replacement leadersonly.
TABLE4.2. The Effect of Culpability on War Outcomes
Model 1 Model 2
(Dropping
First Leaders)
Culpable Leader 0.925** 1.281**
(0.33) (0.47)
Military Capabilities 1.345** 0.896
(0.44) (0.90)
Voluntary Participant 0.526 2.994***
(0.39) (0.88)
Aggressive Adversary 2.196*** 4.325***
(0.42) (0.63)
Democracy 0.961* 0.898
(0.39) (0.59)
Observations 291 56
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
Turning to the results, we see that culpability has the predicted effect
across both models (see Table4.2).13
In Model 1, we see culpable leaders are more likely to be associated
with more favorable outcomes. Although the controls perform largely
as expected, and have relatively large effects, the fact that the culpable
leader variable is also significant is impressive. Importantly, these results
hold when we move to the subsample of replacement leaders in Model
2.Despite losing approximately 80percent of the observations, a signif-
icant difference remains between culpable and nonculpable leaders who
end wars. The magnitude of the effect is also very close to the effect for
culpable leaders in the full sample. Figure4.2 displays this graphically.
In the full sample, culpable leaders are 20percent more likely to pre-
side over total victories than nonculpable leaders; in the smaller sample,
culpable replacement leaders are 27percent more likely to secure total
victories than nonculpable replacements.
In addition to addressing the concerns about possible selection issues,
the finding from Model 2 also lends further credence to the idea that the
pressure to win extends beyond the first culpable leader. Put differently, my
findings on culpability are not driven by any characteristics that might be
particular to first leaders (i.e., being the executive in charge when the conflict
13 For clarity of presentation, I have removed the (ordered) cut points from the ordered
logistic regression models. Iinclude the full set of estimates with the cut points in the
Appendix.
.45
.4
.35
.3
.25
.2
.15
.1
.05
0
All Culpable Leaders Culpable Replacements
Leader Types
FIGURE4.2. The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of Securing a Total Victory.
starts and taking on any additional pressures that may come with that posi-
tion). An examination of the raw data demonstrates why the effect of culpa-
bility is so similar across the two samples. In Figure4.3, the light and dark
gray bars represent the same proportions as depicted in Figure4.1 the
proportion of wins, losses, and draws associated with culpable and noncul-
pable leaders but for replacement leaders only.14 The black outline par-
tially overlaid underneath the culpable replacement bar depicts the height of
the bar for culpable leaders from the full sample (i.e., the bars representing
outcome/leader type proportions copied from Figure4.1).
Two comparisons are relevant to this discussion: the comparison
of the light gray bars to the dark gray bars, and the black outlines to
the light gray bars. If the concerns about selection were true, and the
culpable leaders who come to power during wars are less likely to win
(perhaps because they feel less pressure to do so) than first leaders, the
lighter bars should be roughly the same height as the darker ones (i.e.,
there should be no difference between culpable and nonculpable leaders
among replacements), and the black outline should not correspond with
the lighter bars. As the figure clearly shows, however, neither of these
claims receives support. Instead, the light gray bars representing culpable,
14 Because, by definition, there are no first leaders who are nonculpable, we only need to
compare the full set of culpable leaders with culpable replacements.
50
40
Proportion
30
20
10
0
Outcome Types
Nonculpable (Replacements Only)

Culpable (Replacements Only)
Culpable (All Leaders)
FIGURE 4.3.War Outcomes by Leader Type: Replacement Leaders vs. Full Set
Comparison.
replacement leaders remain distinct from those representing nonculpa-

ble replacements, just as they did in Figure4.1 when first leaders were
included. Moreover, because the height of the black outline approximates
the height of the lighter bars fairly closely, this suggests that the pressures
of culpability transfer fully to replacement leaders and that first leaders
alone are not driving the result in the larger sample. The distribution of
the different types of outcomes remain roughly the same, regardless of
whether we are looking at the full set of culpable leaders or just those
who come to power during thewar.
The Joint Effect of Culpability and RegimeType

How might a leaders regime type condition the relationship between
culpability and war outcomes? Leader Behavior Hypothesis 2 posited
that democratic leaders might be more responsive than nondemocratic
leaders to the incentives created by culpability because the former can
be removed more easily and at more regular intervals than the latter. To
test this claim, Iestimated a model similar to Model 1 in Table4.2 on a
subsample of only culpable leaders who end wars.15 Ithen replaced the
15 I do not reestimate Model 2 due to a lack of observations. A sample that drops first
leaders from the set of culpable leaders who end wars only has twenty-six observations,
TABLE4.3. The Effect of Culpability and Regime Type

on War Outcomes
Model 3 Model 4
Culpable Leader 1.537

(0.81)
Democratic Leader 1.065*
(0.48)
Military Capabilities 1.630*** 0.887
(0.48) (0.99)
Voluntary Participant 0.544 0.992
(0.42) (0.83)
(0.44) (0.70)
Observations 261 70
p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
culpable leader variable with an indicator variable that highlights cul-

pable leaders who are also democratic.16 Because of the limited nature
of the sample, the coefficient on the first variable captures the differ-
ence between culpable democratic leaders and culpable nondemocratic
leaders, the models baseline. If the hypothesis is correct, this variable
should be positive and significant. The results of this test are presented in
Table4.3, Model3.
As is clear from the results, Leader Behavior Hypothesis 2 is sup-
ported. Among culpable leaders, leaders of democratic states are sig-
nificantly more likely to preside over more positive outcomes. Indeed,
in terms of the predicted probabilities, moving from a nondemocratic
leader to a democratic one, while holding their median value or (for
dichotomous variables) modes, the likelihood of securing a total vic-
tory jumps significantly (see the left bar of Figure4.4). An examination
of the raw data demonstrates why this is thecase. As Figure4.5 makes
clear, among culpable leaders who end wars, democratic leaders are
more likely to get a victory than all other possible outcomes combined.
Nondemocratic, culpable leaders, by contrast, are nearly equally likely
to lose or win (43.1 percent compared to 44.1 percent, respectively).
which is not large enough to perform a meaningful statistical analysis. The raw data,
however, align with the theorys prediction: of the sixteen nondemocracies, nine (or
56percent) lose; the remaining seven win. However, of the ten democratic leaders in the
sample, only one loses; seven (or 70percent) win (the other twodraw).
16 This resulted in the following model: Pr(War Outcome)= + Culpable Democratic
Leader + Relative Capabilities + Voluntary Participant + Adversary War Aims+.
Change in Probability from Baseline .6
.5
.4
.3
.2
.1
0
Among All Culpable Leaders Among Democratic Leaders
FIGURE 4.4.The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of Securing a Total

Victory for Democratic Leaders Baseline: Nondemocratic, Culpable Leaders/
Democratic, Nonculpable Leaders.
While culpable, nondemocratic leaders are still more likely to win than
nonculpable leaders in general (who only achieve victories in a 23per-
cent of the wars they end), they are far more likely to lose and less likely
to win than their culpable democratic counterparts, who win 71percent
of the time and lose 14percent. This finding lends further support to the
notion that the pressures of culpability are intensified when it is easier
for the domestic audience to remove the leader.
It is also useful to explore the differences between culpable and noncul-
pable leaders among democratic states.17 It could be the case, for instance,
that because nondemocratic leaders make up 63percent of the sample of
nonculpable leaders who end wars, that something about a states regime
type is driving the earlier finding of nonculpable leaders being more likely
to lose. This claim is entirely plausible because all of the reasons scholars
17 I chose the model specification for Model 4 in the interest of presentational clarity
because I am most interested, for this particular test, in differences within the set of
democratic leaders, having demonstrated in Model 3 that there are differences between
culpable leaders of democracies and nondemocracies. The same result obtains if Ispecify
Model 4 with an interaction term (democracy * culpable leader) or with a set of dummy
variables for each of the four leader/regime type combinations. Culpable democratic
leaders are more likely to get total victories than either culpable nondemocratic leaders
or nonculpable democratic leaders.
80
60
Proportion
40
20
0
War Outcomes
Nondemocratic
Democratic
FIGURE4.5. War Outcomes of Cuplable Leaders by Regime Type.
typically give for democracies winning wars either hold regardless of the
leaders culpability or maintain their effect even after the first culpable
leader(s) has left office. The positive effects of having a merit-based sys-
tem of promotion and respect for individual ingenuity, for instance, will
continue to make democratic militaries more effective, even with a non-
culpable leader as commander in chief. Likewise, the benefits associated
with initiation have the potential to last beyond the first leaders tenure.
If it is these characteristics of democracies in general, and not the pres-
sures of culpability coupled with the increased accountability of lead-
ers in democratic regimes, which accounts for the preceding results, this
would weaken the explanatory power of the theory Iadvance here. To
test this claim, I estimated Model 4 (without the regime type variable)
on a sample of only democratic leaders. This allows me to see if there
is any difference in the types of outcomes culpable democratic leaders
achieve compared to nonculpable democratic leaders, which act as the
models baseline for this particular sample. As the significant and posi-
tive coefficient on the culpable leader variable in Model 4 suggests, there
are appreciable differences between the leader types (see the rightmost
bar of Figure4.4). Culpable democrats are nearly 33percent more likely
to preside over total victories than their nonculpable counterparts. This
finding lends further support to the power of leader culpability as the

traditional explanations for democracies winning are constant across
all leaders in the sample.
Part2:The Downside of Culpability

The previous section demonstrated that the threat of punishment
motivates culpable leaders to secure better outcomes as compared to
nonculpable leaders. In general, this is a good thing from the leaders
perspective because winning a war helps him stay in power. But how
do citizens fare when a culpable leader is at the helm? In this section,
Iexplore a key drawback of living in a state during a war when a cul-
pable leader is in power. Namely, that the possibility that the leaders
attempt to gamble for resurrection will fail, leaving the state in a worse
condition than if the leader had been willing to settle for a partial loss
earlier in the conflict.
As I argued in the introduction, the incentive to continue fighting a
war while there is still a possibility of victory is strong for culpable lead-
ers because this strategy represents their best chance for staying office.
Sometimes these gambles pay off, and leaders are able to snatch victory
from the jaws of defeat. Other times they backfire, and the states situa-
tion degrades because of the leaders decision. For culpable leaders, the
risk associated with this gamble is always worth taking because citizens
will be upset with their culpable leadership, regardless of the size of the
loss. The same preference for gambling for victory does not hold for citi-
zens. For citizens, a partial loss, say having to relinquish a small piece
of territory or pay some sort of war reparation, is vastly preferable to a
total loss, which can often involve a large loss of territory and even sov-
ereignty. Total losses are also more likely to be associated with more mil-
itary and civilian casualties. While gambling may be the rational thing
for a culpable leader to do personally, such behavior is often not in the
best interest of his citizens. This is a classic example of how the conflict of
interest between a culpable leader and his citizens can be detrimental to
the welfare of the state in general and the masses in particular.
An examination of the raw data suggests that there is some truth to
the notion that culpable leaders will be more likely to engage in last-ditch
efforts that turn out poorly. Of the thirty-four total losses in the data set,
culpable leaders preside over a whopping 88percent of them. To more
formally test the notion that culpable leaders are more likely to be asso-
ciated with the extreme outcomes at either end of the spectrum that is,
total victories and catastrophic losses Iestimated a model very similar
TABLE4.4. The Effect of Culpability on Presiding Over

an Extreme Outcome
Model 5 Model 6
(Replacement
Leaders Only)
(0.42) (0.41)
Military Capabilities 0.143 1.465
(0.66) (1.33)
(0.42) (0.88)
Aggressive Adversary 0.017 0.317
(0.40) (0.76)
(0.41) (0.74)
Constant 1.144 0.737
(0.67) (1.17)
Observations 291 56
p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
to Model 1, which Iused to predict victories. The dependent variable is

a 1 if the states final outcome for a war was a total victory or total loss
and a 0 otherwise. The results are presented in Table4.4.
As is evident from Model 5, culpability is a very strong and significant
predictor of ending a war at one of the two extremes. The control vari-
ables, not surprisingly, do not perform well because many of them only
predict one type of outcome. Stronger states should win, for example, or
states facing aggressive adversaries should lose. Culpability is the only
one for which a single causal story exists for both types of outcomes.
Moreover, as before, this effect holds when Idrop all of the first leaders
and reestimate the model on the subset of replacement leaders (Model 6).
Figure4.6 presents these findings graphically. The fact that the bars are
roughly the same height suggests that the tendency to gamble does not
wane after the first leader has left office. Any culpable replacement leader
who succeeds him will feel the same pressure todoso.
Argentinas behavior in the Falklands war serves as a good example
of this tendency of culpable leaders to stay in a war too long. It also is an
important case because it involves a nondemocratic leader. Galtieri was the
leader of a military junta, which ruled over Argentina in the 1970s with
no tolerance for dissent, representative institutions, or anything resem-
bling checks and balances. Power was centralized in the ruling cadre ofthe
.45
.4
.35
.3
.25
.2
.15
.1
.05
0
All Culpable Leaders Culpable Replacements
Leader Types
FIGURE 4.6.The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of Presiding Over an

Extreme Outcome.
military elite. As a culpable leader, Galtieri behaved just as we would expect.

This illustrates that this mechanism does not require the threat of an angry
mass electorate. Small winning coalitions can have the same effect.
Leopoldo Galtieri initiated the conflict in an effort to reclaim a set
of small islands off the coast of Argentina. Known as Islas Malvinas to
Argentines, sovereignty over the islands had been a source of conflict with
the United Kingdom for nearly 150years. While the United Kingdom had
exercised formal, recognized control over the islands since 1833 when
she first colonized them, Argentina believed the islands were rightfully
hers.18 This long-held claim served as the motivation for Galtieris deci-
sion to invade in April 1982. Soon after the invasion, speaking from the
Casa Rosada in Buenos Aires, he announced that he had no alternative
other than to do what had been done and was met with cheers of wild
approval from the crowd in the square.19
The war, however, quickly took a turn for the worse for Argentina.
Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was not about to let what she
regarded as British territory slip away without a fight. Three days after
18 Sarkees and Wayman (2010).

19 Hastings and Jenkins (1983:75).
the invasion, Thatcher launched a military task force to the region to

rebuff the Argentine advance. It worked. Less than seven weeks later, the
British had Galtieris forces on the run. Argentine forces were faced with
what historian Martin Middlebrook termed a collapse . . . which left the
British there able to dominate all the open ground to the west of Stanley
[Island].20 Several of the Argentine military elite knew the war was lost
at this point. As General Menendez put it:This is finished. We have no
means left.21 The commanders in the field agreed with this assessment.
In the early morning hours of the 14th of June, Commander-in-Chief of
the Navy Anaya received a call from the naval units on the Islands noti-
fying him that they were already destroying archives and codebooks.22
Clearly, the writing was on the wall: Argentina could not repel the
British from the islands, thus their hopes of establishing sovereignty were
lost. Galtieri, however, refused to acknowledge the facts on the ground,
choosing several times to continue fighting when it was beyond evident
that he could not win. Aphone call between him and General Menendez
shortly after the aforementioned collapse illustrates his unflagging tenac-
ity. Menendez tried to convince Galtieri that continued resistance was
a wasted effort:This defense has no future; it makes no sense as it is
now . . . Ido not know if Ican hold out until tonight. . . . [T]he troops
cannot stand this anymore.23 But despite reiterating this message sev-
eral times during their short phone call, Galtieri continued to insist that
Argentine units should be attacking, not falling back.24 At one point,
Galtieri flat-out ordered Menendez to grab all the forces you have left
and counter-attack.25 Galtieris intransigence is a hallmark of a culpable
leader who knows that admitting defeat is always a losing proposition,
no matter what is happening on the battlefield.
This unwillingness to accept the reality of the situation on the ground
by continuing to fight had appeared at other points in the conflict as well.
Several third party actors were surprised at Galtieris determination and
approach to the war. Before the task force from the United Kingdom set
sail, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, in a meeting in the Casa
Rosada found Galtieri only marginally more rational than the mob
20 Middlebrook (1989:270).
21 Freedman and Gamba-Stonehouse (1991:402).
22 Ibid.
24 Middlebrook(272).
25 Hastings and Jenkins (1983:325). In the end, Menendez refused to heed Galtieris com-
mand and chose instead to surrender to the British.
[gathered outside the palace]. . . . No amount of persuasion by [Haig]

that he knew the British to be in deadly earnest could sway [the junta].26
Historians Lawrence Freedman and Virginia Gamba-Stonehouse noted
a similar act of willful ignorance later in the war once Galtieri and the
junta had to have been fully aware of their miscalculation. Once the
task force had been dispatched the Junta faced a wholly different stra-
tegic situation from the one that it had expected to face and its objec-
tives should have been moderated accordingly. This inability to relate
its available military means closely to the developing political situation
characterized the Juntas overall conduct of the war.27 While Freedman
and Gamba-Stonehouse seem surprised by this apparent irrational
behavior and the juntas refusal to adapt, it is directly in line with what
we would expect from a culpable leader. Retreating at this point may
have been a rational military decision, but it would have spelled doom
for Galtieri. Hence, even though the president likely knew he was out-
matched, staying in on the off chance, no matter how remote, of securing
a victory made pressing on a rationalmove.
Part3:Australia in Vietnam
When Australia joined the Vietnam War in 1965, she had been involved
in international conflicts almost continuously for the past two and a half
decades.28 Vietnam would come to represent the end of this chapter in
Australian history. After leaving Vietnam in 1972, Australia would not
participate in an interstate conflict until the invasions of Afghanistan in
2001 and Iraq in 2003.29 When Australia first committed troops to the
conflict in Southeast Asia in the mid-1960s, she was an enthusiastic sup-
porter of the both the war and U.S. policy toward the region. A mere
seven years later, her stance on the war and her relationship with the
United States had changed dramatically. What accounts for this shift?
Iargue that one of the central factors was the change in leadership that
brought a nonculpable leader, Gough Whitlam, to power in1972.
Whitlam was the sixth leader to preside over Australias participation
in Vietnam and the only one who was not culpable for the conflict. The
26 Hastings and Jenkins (1983:108).
28 Australia fought alongside the Allies in World War II and as a part of the UN coalition
inKorea.
29 NB:this is based on the Correlates of War Projects list of interstate war participants.
Australia did send a small contingent to the first Gulf War in 1990, but it did not meet
the standard threshold to count as a participant.
first of his five predecessors, Robert Menzies, was the leader who com-
mitted Australian troops to the fight and the remaining four were all
his political associates. Consequently, they were all culpable for the con-
flict. While there was variation among the culpable leaders in terms of
how they approached the conflict, the ascension of Whitlam represented
a clear break in Australias foreign policy. As I argue in greater detail
in the following text, the behavior of Australias leaders in Vietnam is
completely consistent with the theorys predictions. Whitlams lack of
connections to the war (and the larger goal of wooing the United States)
and the political distance between him and his predecessors afforded him
the flexibility to take Australia in a different direction. Of the six leaders
who presided over the war, Whitlam was the only one willing to defy
the United States and remove Australia from the war completely. The
others either increased Australias involvement in the war or showed a
willingness to defy public opinion once the war became unpopular. In
the following paragraphs, Ibriefly discuss the larger security issues facing
Australia at the start of the Vietnam War and then examine each leaders
behavior during the conflict. In doing so, it is evident that the culpabil-
ity of the first five leaders, and the lack of culpability for the sixth, is the
clearest explanation for Australias foreign policy shift in this time period.
Australias participation in Vietnam is best understood as part of a
larger context. The war was but one piece of a much broader policy,
namely, obtaining a security guarantee from the United States to protect
Australia from what Canberra perceived to be a growing threat from
Communist China. Hence, we should not only be concerned with the
leaders behavior vis--vis the war but also in how they react to the larger
policy goal because it was the main objective. While the two states were
both members of the Australia, New Zealand, and the United States
Security (ANZUS) treaty since 1951, Canberra was always interested in
shoring up what many referred to as the American insurance policy.
The memory of enemy ships in Australian waters (and the subsequent
bombing of Darwin and raiding of Sydney Harbor) during World War
II, coupled with the general instability in South Asia brought about by
decolonization, demonstrated to Australian officials that they needed to
win the favor of a superpower protector who had a stake in the region.30
The United States fit the bill. The United States had led the charge
in the defense of South Korea when communist forces crossed the 38th
parallel in 1950, and had made no secret of her willingness to use her
30 Bridge (1998:181).
power to check Moscows desire to spread communism into other parts

of the region, as Americas participation in Vietnam made clear. Given
Australias proximity to Red China and other communist allies, it is no
wonder that, the Menzies government was delighted to see a US ground
force on the Asian mainland and more than happy to encourage the move
by committing Australian troops.31 Australias deployment to the war
was very small compared to the size of the American contingent. Roughly
fifty thousand Australians served at some point during the war with 519
giving their lives in the process. The United States, by contrast, rotated
2.5 million soldiers through the conflict and lost more than fifty-seven
thousand.32
This is not to say that either party saw the Australian contribution as
insignificant. Indeed, quite the opposite was true. The war was a salient
issue for the Australian public and was the centerpiece of the states for-
eign policy at the time. Moreover, Australias participation also meant a
great deal to leaders in the United States, with President Johnson making
a special trip in 1966 to express his gratitude.33 From the point of view of
the Australian political elite, however, the most important consequence of
having a presence in Vietnam was the tight relationship with the United
States that it entailed. As Thomas Millar wrote in his historical account
of Australias foreign policy, the main purpose [of joining the war in
Vietnam] was to show the United States that Australia was a willing ally,
one that stood up to be counted and thus deserved to be stood up for if
necessary.34
This was also the interpretation shared by several Australian politi-
cians at the time. Australias ambassador to the United States, Alan
31 Ibid., 185. The perceived threat of China to Australia should not be underestimated. As
Menzies put it, the defense of South Vietnam [is] a defense against the aggression of
Communist China, an aggression which is backed by a vast population and a developing
technology, including nuclear capacity, and which, if unrestrained, could threaten the
peace and security of the whole world Menzies (1970:219).
32 Bridge (1998:188).
33 It is difficult to overestimate how much this trip meant to Australians. According to an
account by The Australian newspaper, LBJs visit in October 1966 generated almost as
much enthusiasm and even bigger crowds than the Queens first excursion to these shores
12years earlier. . . . In Melbourne, 500,000 people turned out to see the president, a riot-
ous welcome, in the words of one report, that destroyed forever Melbournes reputation
as a sedate city. His visit to Sydney produced a tickertape storm, and by the time Air
Force One flew out of Townsville, where LBJ had been stationed as a naval commander
during the war, it was estimated that one million Australians had seen him in the flesh
Bryant(2011).
34 Millar (1978:216). Emphasis in original.
Renouf, for instance, in an official communication wrote, that partici-

pating in Vietnam, would give Australia such a habitual closeness of
relations with the United States and a sense of mutual alliance that in
our time of need . . . the United States would have little option but to
respond as we would want. Harold Holt, who would eventually suc-
ceed Menzies as prime minister agreed, noting, [t]he USA are there to
stay. We will win there and get protection in the South Pacific for a very
small insurance premium.35 Taken together, it is apparent that the war
in Vietnam was not an isolated event for Australia, but instead the first
major step in solidifying her relationship with the United States, which
was her ultimate policy goal. Thus, it is important to understand how
culpability affected Australian leader behavior in terms of both the war
and this broader foreign policyissue.
The man responsible for taking this first step was Robert Menzies,
who had served as prime minister since 1949. While Australia had been
involved informally since 1962 by sending military instructors to South
Vietnam, her formal participation began in earnest in 1965 when the
first battalion of Australian troops deployed.36 As one would expect from
a first leader, Menzies was an adamant supporter of the war. He also
framed the war publicly as one that was vital for the country, claim-
ing the security of Australia would be at stake if South Vietnam fell.37
Menzies words were not without material backing. He increased defense
expenditures substantially some estimates have it growing by 100per-
cent38 and also reintroduced conscription (which had not been in
effect for decades) to ensure the war effort would be fully supported.
Importantly, at this point in the war, the public was behind Menzies.
While polling data on the war is scarce in 1965, it is safe to say that sup-
port in the early phases of the war was high. In August 1966, for instance,
after being a war for more than a year, a full 74% favored the propo-
sition that Australia should aid the United States militarily in Southeast
Asia.39 These high levels of support are even more striking because they
were sustained despite the unpopularity of Menziess conscription pol-
icy. Polls taken earlier that year estimated that a majority of about 50 to
60percent opposed sending drafted men to Vietnam.40 Menzies was no
35 Bridge (1998:1856).
36 Menzies (1970:76)and Martin (2008:202).
37 Martin (2008:202).
38 Bridge(1998:184).
39 Polls in Australia Back Vietnam Role, The NewYork Times, August 14,1966.
40 Ibid.; Use of Draftees Stirs Australia, The NewYork Times, April 3,1966.
doubt aware of these numbers, but paid them no mind.41 His larger con-
cern was keeping Australia in the war to gain a solid relationship with
the United States. As the theory would predict, very little could move
Menzies from his commitment to the war effort. Luckily for him, this
did not create an overwhelming conflict of interest between him and his
citizens. While opposition to conscription and the war more generally
would certainly take a toll on his successors, Menzies left office on his
own terms by retiring after serving an astonishing nineteen years total in
office (across two terms), a record that still standstoday.
Upon Menziess retirement in 1966, Harold Holt succeeded him in
office. Holt had several connections with his predecessor. The two had
founded the Liberal Party together in 1941 and Holt served as Menziess
treasurer. He took over from Menzies as the leader of the Liberal Party
in January 1966 and assumed office as prime minster on the twenty-sixth
of the same month.42 Given these myriad connections, he was clearly an
associate. As such, we should expect him to behave similarly to his cul-
pable predecessor. Holt lived up to the role. Indeed, he seemed to relish
it. As historian Ian Hancock notes, Exuding confidence over the out-
come in Vietnam, Holt in 1966 plunged into defending American and
Australian actions.43 Furthermore, he echoed Menzies in underscoring
the threat of communism and the importance of continuing to fight the
war. In a speech on March 9, 1966, for instance, he claimed that We are
[in Vietnam] because while Communist aggression persists, the whole of
Southeast Asia is threatened.44 Holt also raised the number of troops
being sent to fight in Vietnam substantially, bringing the total number in
Vietnam from 6,300 to more than 8,000 a substantial increase given the
relatively small overall force size.45
This exuberance seemed fitting at the time because popularity was still
high for the war at the beginning of his term. In fact, his prowar posi-
tion also allowed Holt to win reelection later that year. As the Australian
newspaper The Observer pointed out, Holt made foreign policy the key
issue in the election campaign, promising virtually nothing on the domes-
tic front.46 Not long after this election, however, public opinion began to
41 As Idiscuss in more detail in the following text, conscription stayed in effect, against
growing public outcry, until Whitlam, a nonculpable leader, took office seven yearslater.
42 Lentz (1994:52).
43 Hancock (2008:277).
44 Australias Vietnam Force Will be Trebled to 4,500, The New York Times, March
9,1966.
45 Bridge (1998:184).
46 Australia Backs Holt and His Vietnam Policies, The Observer, November 26,1967.
shift. Less than a year later, when the deployment of an extra battalion
to Vietnam was announced . . . an opinion poll revealed that 46% of the
electorate disapproved of the decision, 17% were undecided. Only 37%
were in favor, making it the first time that opponents of the commitment
outnumbered supporters.47
Despite all of this, Holt did not waiver in his position. While the
growing unrest was obvious, Holt faced other pressures that worked
to keep him in the war. There was, of course, the perceived threat to
Australian security if South Vietnam were to fall to the Communists.
In addition, there was the larger issue of maintaining a link with the
United States to ensure their protection in the future. Indeed, Hancock
identifies this second rationale as the reason for the increased troop
levels because to Holt this would have seemed like, the appropriate
insurance premium.48 Last, but certainly not least, there is also the fact
that Holt was culpable for involving Australia in the conflict given his
connection to Menzies. Direct evidence for this particular causal link is
sparse because we would not expect leaders to admit to this motivation,
especially when their citizens lives are on the line. His behavior, how-
ever, fits the pattern for culpable leaders suggested by the theory. He
stayed in the war despite the fact that it was quickly becoming a polit-
ical albatross.49 This is not the course of action we would expect from
a democratic leader who is supposed to be in tune with public opinion.
Yet as Hancock notes, nothing affected the Prime Ministers resolve50
regarding thewar.
Holts determination was tested further when the United States asked
Australia to send an additional battalion. While public dissent was grow-
ing, Holt had painted himself into a corner earlier in 1966 by assuring
Johnson in a speech at the White House that Australia was willing to
go all the way with LBJ.51 Adding more troops in the current political
climate would be asking a great deal of the Australian public. Especially
because Holt knew that it would, make no difference militarily, that
Treasury was worried about defense costs, and that there would be reper-
cussions for economic development and the balance of payments. . . .
Despite all of this, Holt committed the additional troops claiming
47 Australia and the Vietnam War (2012).

48 Hancock (2008:278).
49 LBJ Aid Costly to Allies, The Boston Globe, October 22,1967.
50 Hancock (2008:280). Emphasisadded.
51 Hancock (2008).
publically that Australias relationship with the United States must be

hardened up at each opportunity.52
The long-term political consequences of this decision for Holt did not
have a chance to materialize. For it was around this same time that Holt
decided to take a respite from what was turning out to be a difficult sec-
ond year in office with a trip to Chevroit Beach with his family. What
happened next is a strong contender for the most mysterious departure
from office for any modern leader. What is known is that Holt walked
into the ocean, unaccompanied, ducked beneath a wave, and never resur-
faced. His bodyguards, who had been watching him from shore, immedi-
ately dove in to rescue him, but to no avail. An organized search went on
for weeks and found nothing. To this day, the body has never been recov-
ered. Many assumed he had drowned, some posited suicide. Another the-
ory (albeit one with a hefty element of conspiracy) was that Holt had
been a spy for the communists and that what appeared to be a drowning
was actually the prime minister rendezvousing with a mini-sub hovering
just below the waters surface.53
Whatever the cause of Holts disappearance, Australia could not go
on without a prime minister so John McEwen was installed as a tempo-
rary leader until new elections could be held. Even though he was only
the interim prime minister for less than a month, and, as such, had no
real hopes of crafting new policy, he still took the time to address the
situation in Vietnam. Given that he was the leader of the County Party,
which was the long-time coalition partner of Menziess and Holts Liberal
Party, his support for the war was not surprising. He behaved precisely
as we would expect a culpable leader to. Indeed, on December 20, 1967,
the day after Holt was officially declared dead, McEwen made a speech
clearly stating that, Australia will continue to fight alongside the United
States and its allies in Vietnam.54
Soon after, new elections were held and the Liberal Party chose John
Gorton as its new leader on January 9, 1968; he was sworn in as prime
minister the following day. Gorton was also culpable for the war. In addi-
tion to his partisan ties to Menzies and Holt, he had served in both of
their cabinets.55 Like Holt before him, Gorton also made a pledge of
support to the American president; only this time the president was the
52 Ibid.,280.
53 Grey (1983).
54 McEwen Vows to Stay with US in Vietnam, Los Angeles Times, December 20,1967.
55 Lentz (1994:52).
newly elected Richard Nixon and not Lyndon Johnson, who had with-
drawn his bid for reelection amidst the domestic turmoil over the war.
Not two months after making this pledge, however, Nixon changed the
game on Gorton. In July 1969, Nixon announced the Guam Doctrine
(later known as the Nixon Doctrine), which was intended to start the pro-
cess of Vietnamization to turn the conflict over to the South Vietnamese
in an effort to reduce American casualties.
This development put Gorton in a difficult position. As The Christian
Science Monitor noted at the time, Gorton had painted himself into a cor-
ner domestically regarding the small Australian commitment to Vietnam
because he had all too often defended the reason for Australias being
there.56 Pulling out would embarrass Gorton and his fellow conserva-
tives, who had long been very public advocates of the need to intervene in
Vietnam as part of the larger policy of convincing the Americans to pro-
vide protection from China. The shift in American policy toward Vietnam
made this policy more difficult to defend because it made the government
appear as though it had been backing the wrong horse all along. After
all, if the Americans were leaving Vietnam, what sense did it make for
Australia to remain there? Thus the ruling coalition was trapped. As his-
torian John Murphy put it, During 1968 and 1969, the conservatives
were becalmed, unable to reassert their old policy, which the Americans
were undermining, and unable to consider its replacement.57 This polit-
ical paralysis was a direct result of the culpability of Gorton and those
who came before him. Their track record of having supported the war
(and its rationale) so often in the past made it difficult for them to change
their tune, even when the Americans were essentially forcing their hand.
The domestic opposition was quick to capitalize on this turn of events,
claiming that any change in policy on the part of the government was,
an admission of defeat, personal as well as national. . . . The present
Government is unable to produce any new ideas, and so it sticks to the
old, even when they have failed.58
Gorton eventually came around to recognizing the changing facts
on the ground, but it was not without great reluctance on his part.
Indeed, as Bruce Grant, a frequent commentator on Australian foreign
policy noted in the newspaper The Age, the Government maintains
56 Australian Leadership Shift Hints Foreign Policy Change, The Christian Science
Monitor, March 16, 1971. Emphasisadded.
57 Murphy (1993:201).
the public position that nothing has changed, a position so fanciful

that it is impossible to contest seriously.59 Finally, in December of that
year, Gorton announced an in principle decision to leave Vietnam.60
At the time, many assumed that Gorton made this move to respond
to political pressure at home. This is too simple an interpretation.
The fact of the matter is, Australia remained an active participant in
the war for years to come and Gorton continued to take flack for not
pulling out faster throughout the remainder of his time in office.61
Moreover, the withdrawal itself was hedged about with ambigui-
ties, with Gorton telling his audience that he knew of no timetable
for American withdrawals, and that it had not been decided which
Australian units would be withdrawn, nor when they would return.62
This purposeful hedging and the tension with the domestic audience
was, once again, a product of Gortons culpability for (and resulting
commitment to) the larger policy of courting the United States by fol-
lowing its lead in the war in Vietnam. Anonculpable leader who did
not care about the war or the larger policy would have pulled out
completely. Gorton could not do so out of fear of appearing incompe-
tent to his domestic audience.
This tendency to press on in an unpopular war by culpable mem-
bers of the Australian political elite continued when William McMahon
took office in March of 1971.63 McMahon was also a Liberal and had
been a member of the cabinets of several of his culpable predecessors.
Immediately after coming to power, McMahon declared that Australias
policy on Vietnam has never been more strongly pressed than by me.64
He also took actions signaling his commitment to the conflict by mov-
ing prowar politician Leslie Bury from the treasurer position to the head
of foreign affairs. As the Australian newspaper The Guardian observed,
Significant changes in Australian foreign policy are unlikely . . . as a
Minister [Bury] fully supported the growth in the Australian Vietnam
commitment. Observers say Mr. McMahon would not have put him in
charge of foreign affairs if he doubted whether Mr. Bury agreed with his
59 Ibid.,206.
60 Hancock (2008:310).
61 Australians Protest War, NewYork Times, September 9,1970.
62 Murphy (1993:242).
63 Gorton lost power after a vote of no confidence brought on by a series of political deba-
cles, the largest of which being the resignation of his Defense Minister, Malcolm Fraser
(Defense Minister in Australia Quits Criticizing Gorton, NewYork Times, March 9,
1971)over a disagreement regarding the conduct of thewar.
64 Top Jobs Switch, Los Angeles Times, March 14,1971.
views.65 Finally, McMahon also continued to move in lock step with the
United States, despite growing public outcry over the war. While he did
state that the bulk of the troops would be home by Christmas of that
year,66 Australian boots remained on the ground for almost a year beyond
that under his watch. This prompted The Guardian to note, that despite
the wars unpopularity, the Government continues to endorse any and
every US action in Indo-China in an article fittingly titled McMahon Is
the Last to Understand.67
Such was the state of Australian politics in 1972. The country had
been mired in a war for years that was growing increasingly unpopu-
lar yet the string of culpable leaders refused to bow to public opinion
and remove the troops completely for fear of appearing incompetent for
having pursued the policy in the first place. This combination of circum-
stances created the perfect opportunity for a nonculpable leader to seize
the initiative and make a bid for the executive position. Much to the con-
sternation of the ruling coalition, just such a leader existed.
The leaders name was Gough Whitlam, and his career seems to have
been tailor-made for this pivotal moment. Whitlam was a member of the
Labor Party, which had been in the opposition since 1949. At the start
of the war, Labor had had a difficult time navigating its position on the
conflict.68 As I mentioned earlier, this is common problem for opposi-
tion groups because playing their typical role and challenging the leaders
policy may strike many citizens as unpatriotic, especially if the war is
popular. Whitlam was a savvy politician, and recognized this early on.
Consequently, when the leader of his party, Arthur Calwell, attempted
to capitalize on the anticonscription sentiment by calling for imme-
diate and unconditional withdrawal69 in the 1966 elections, Whitlam
adopted a more measured stance. In the words of historian Michael
Sexton, Whitlam gained political capital by eschewing Calwells emo-
tional response to [Vietnam] by emphasizing the practical problems and
the international reaction against it. . . . He refused to support . . . imme-
diate withdrawal of the Australian contingent, believing that the elector-
ate would not accept this.70
65 Canberra Foreign Policy Unchanged, The Guardian, March 21, 1971. Emphasisadded.
66 A Loyal Ally Going Home, Christian Science Monitor, August 13,1971.
67 McMahon Is the Last to Understand, The Guardian, June 30,1972.
68 Sexton (1979:20).
69 Walter (1980:28).
70 Sexton (1979:20). Also see Lloyd (2008:3367).
Having established his position as an opponent of the culpable party

yet not as extreme as some of his fellow Labor party members Whitlam
had set himself up nicely to ride the wave of antiwar sentiment that grew
as the conflict dragged on. Indeed, the entire Labor Party benefited, as is
often the case when a war goes on long enough to start to look like a bad
idea. As Millar points out, in retrospect [the political left] would seem
justified in suggesting that Australia should not have accepted uncritically
American assessments of the nature, conduct and progress of the con-
flict.71 Whitlam was also the beneficiary of serendipity in which a trip
of his to China coincided with a visit to the Chinese leader from Henry
Kissinger, who was there to arrange a meeting for Nixon some months
later. The fact that Whitlam and Kissinger were there at the same time
made Whitlam appear in touch with events in a way that deprived [the
Government] of initiative and credibility and, importantly for Whitlam,
[gave] him international credibility.72
The McMahon government made matters worse for itself by going out
of its way to criticize Whitlam for making the trip. McMahon had chided
Whitlam by saying I find it incredible that at a time when Australian
soldiers are still engaged in Vietnam, the leader of the Labor Party is
becoming a spokesman for those against whom we are fighting73 Two
days later, Nixons upcoming visit was announced. The combination
of these events made the government appear out of the loop with their
superpower ally and unaware of the importance of engaging China.74
Moreover, as Murphy notes, The debacle was a demeaning commen-
tary on that habitual closeness with the Americans which the conserva-
tives had cultivate to the point of losing all initiative. But more than this,
it revealed the extent to which the conservatives were captives of their
past. . . .75 Murphys observation about McMahons behavior describes
the predicament of a culpable leader to a tee. McMahon may have very
well realized that his foreign policy was out of step with the times, but
changing it would be tantamount to admitting he (and his predecessors)
71 Millar (1978:217).
72 Walter (1980:66).
73 Murphy (1993:272). See also, Bridge (1998:192).
74 Sexton (1979: 21) and Walter (1980: 119). The announcement was quite a blow for
McMahon. According to Murphy, At a tense press conference, McMahon appeared
shaken, allowed no questions, and was reduced to claiming that this had been his policy
all along. Murphy (1993:272). This claim, of course, was not credible given McMahons
very recent statements. This political blunder by the government apparently prompted a
joyous Whitlam to exclaim, Theyre finished (ibid).
75 Murphy (1993:273). Emphasisadded.
had been wrong. Thus while his behavior prompted The Age to specu-
late that McMahons political antennae were dysfunctional, it is per-
haps more accurate to think of them as being constrained to only receive
(and broadcast) information on one particular channel. When faced with
an increasingly powerful (and nonculpable) opponent like Whitlam,
who had successfully claimed the new policy toward China as his own,
McMahon had no choice but to adhere to the position he had a record
of defending.
The serendipity of the China visit in combination with the growing
antiwar sentiment and political blunders by McMahon set the stage for
Whitlam to stage a major coup and unseat the long-ruling Liberal-Country
Party coalition in the election of 1972. At this point, the Australian pub-
lic was so frustrated with the state of things that all Whitlams party had
to do was run on the slogan Its Time and the electorate responded to
the call.76 The changes were large and immediate. The new government
abolished conscription and recognized China, North Vietnam, and East
Germany.77 Whitlam then removed the remaining military advisors and
stopped all military aid to Vietnam and Cambodia.78 He also adopted a
rather brazen approach toward Nixon, taking him to task for bombing
North Vietnam in December 197279 and on one occasion referring to him
as a barbarian.80 This behavior amounted to a complete about-face for
Australia, especially compared to earlier leaders who had gone out of
their way to show deference to the American leaders.
This radical shift in policy, both toward the war and Australias for-
eign affairs more generally, aligns precisely with the predictions of the
theory. While the election in 1972 did not turn entirely on the war, as
an issue the war provided Whitlam with an opening to use his lack of
culpability for the conflict to his advantage. His relative distance from
Vietnam compared to his predecessors gave him the freedom to make big
changes that would win him favor with citizens. His lack of culpability
also allowed him to reset expectations on both the domestic and interna-
tional stage. Interestingly, Whitlam was quite candid on this very point.
76 Bridge (1998:192). Labor won with 53percent of the vote(194).

77 Walter (1980:253).
78 Millar (1978:409).
79 Ibid.,406.
80 Sexton (1979:33). The bad blood between Nixon and Whitlam was mutual. According
to The Australian, Nixon never forgave Whitlams Labour minister, Clyde Cameron,
for referring to those maniacs in the White House and exploded at the mere mention
of Whitlam, according to Australias ambassador to Washington at the time Bryant
(2011).
When writing about the consequences for foreign policy of his ascension
he noted, the change is real and deep because what has altered is the
perception and interpretation of [Australias] interests, obligations and
friendships by the elected Government.81
In sum, the switch from a culpable leader to a nonculpable one offers
a simple explanation for Australias evolution over the course of the war.
Nothing about the world environment had changed; the United States
was still the dominant superpower and Australia still had an interest in
protecting her regional security. Yet, Whitlam felt safe in decisively end-
ing a war that earlier leaders had been prosecuting for seven years and
snubbing the United States in the process.
Conclusion
This chapter demonstrated that culpability has the potential to be some-
what of a blessing but mostly a curse. On the positive side, my findings
indicate that culpable leaders are significantly more likely to preside over
wins than nonculpable leaders and this effect is stronger among culpable
democratic leaders. Both effects also hold if Iremove all of the first lead-
ers from the sample and redo the analysis on the subsample of leaders
who take office during the war, which demonstrates that the pressures
of culpability pass from one leader to the next if there is a political con-
nection between them. The motivation to stay in a war until victory is
achieved, in other words, does not stop when the first leader leaves power
so long as the new leader is also culpable.
There is, however, a downside of culpability, especially from the citi-
zens standpoint. First, while a culpable leaders gamble for resurrection
will sometimes result in an unexpected victory, this determination can
also keep him in a war long past the point when he should have exited.
As a result, it is not surprising that culpable leaders are more likely to
preside over total defeats than their nonculpable counterparts. This find-
ing serves as a stark example of just how detrimental the principal agent
problem can be for citizens living under a culpable leader in times of war.
Having established that culpable leaders decisions can have disastrous
consequences for their citizens, I now turn to investigating how culpa-
bility affects the members of the domestic institution designed to check
(democratic) executives:the legislature.
81 Walter (1980:119). Emphasisadded.

5
Culpability in the Legislature
Chapter4 painted a rather grim picture of the consequences of culpability

for citizens. Although culpable leaders are more likely to win wars, culpa-
ble leaders also have the potential to leave the state in a worse condition
than if they had settled earlier. The fact that this type of leader behavior is
also evident in democratic states is particularly troubling because schol-
ars typically think of democratic leaders as having the strongest incen-
tives to act in the best interests of their public. The electoral check, after
all, is supposed to keep the leaders preferences aligned with citizens. But
this same check can create an incentive for the leader to act contrary to
his citizens interests when he is both culpable and losing the war. In these
situations in which the public has strong incentives to punish the leader
for failing (i.e., when he is culpable), the leader will pursue a victory at
any cost, even if this is not what the citizenswant.
What means of recourse do democratic publics have against such cul-
pable leaders? For some scholars, the answer is the legislature. In the
U.S.context, for instance, some have argued that Congress has several
means by which it can constrain the president when a war becomes
unpopular or unexpectedly costly.1 Members of Congress can initiate
hearings or investigations, frame the debate about the war through inter-
views to the media, and, of course, cast votes on bills that pertain to
thewar.
The literature on this issue represents an important step forward in
terms of how we think about the domestic political dynamics of interna-
tional conflict by highlighting the important role of the legislature. In this
1 E.g., Clark (2000); Kriner (2010); and Howell and Pevehouse (2007).
131
chapter, Ibuild on this work by exploring how culpability among mem-

bers of the legislature affects their willingness to engage in actions that
attempt to limit or end a war that has become unpopular. Chapters 2,
3, and 4 focused on the executive, but there is no reason to assume that
culpability is limited to this branch of government. The executive is
almost always the chief foreign policy actor, but he is just one actor in a
large constellation of domestic political players who are relevant to the
war. In times of war, the legislature has the potential to be a powerful
actor because it can control the continued funding of the war through its
power of the purse. If culpability matters to legislators in the same way
it does for executives, we should expect culpable members to be reluctant
to support antiwar legislation. Moreover, if members of the public apply
the logic of culpability to legislators in the same way they do for execu-
tives, we should expect culpable members to be punished more frequently
when the state is faring poorly in a conflict.
Using the legislature as a testing ground also provides me with the
opportunity to explore different means of acquiring culpability. In ear-
lier chapters, Idefined culpable replacement leaders based solely on their
associational ties to earlier culpable leaders. In Chapter 3, I raised the
possibility that members of the domestic audience might hold nonassoci-
ates who supported the war when it began culpable for the war as well.
Interestingly, Ifound that these supporters were indistinguishable from
nonculpable leaders in terms of their likelihood of being punished if the
state lost the conflict.2 This finding suggests that an earlier expression of
support does not act as a strong constraint on leaders who eventually
occupy the executive position during the war. Moving to the context of
the legislature, however, opens the possibility for a previous expression
of support to play a larger role.3 Because members of the legislature must
formally cast votes in favor of or against a war, they create a very visible,
public track record of their position on the conflict. Given this, in this
chapter, Iargue that being an associate or a supporter are both potential
paths to being culpable in the eyes of citizens.
The rest of this chapter proceeds in three parts. In Part1, using a set of
ten roll call votes pertaining to the United States recent war in Iraq six
in the U.S. House of Representatives and four in the Senate Itest for
2 See Chapter3 Appendix.

3 The legislature is also attractive because (nonassociate) supporters occur within it with
greater frequency. Among the executives who take power during wars, less than 5percent
were (nonassociate) supporters.
Culpability in the Legislature 133
whether a members culpability for the war influenced their vote on these
contentious pieces of legislation. As expected, members who belong to
the Republican Party (associates) and members who voted for the war
when the authorization bills came before Congress in 2002 (supporters)
are significantly less likely than nonculpable members to vote for bills
that sought to curtail the conflict, even as it became increasingly unpop-
ular and casualties mounted.4 Of the two means of acquiring culpability,
an associational tie has the larger effect; the legislators earlier position
of support constrains her behavior, though not nearly to the same degree.
Taken together, this suggests that culpability might best be viewed as a
continuum in the context of the legislature:associates will be held most
responsible, supporters less so, and nonculpable leaders (i.e., those are
neither associates nor supporters) least of all. This pattern is reflected
in the rates of punishment, which is the focus of Part 2. While some
Democrats who supported the Iraq war faced backlash from their con-
stituents (including a few challengers in primary elections), Republicans
were far more likely to be punished. This latter finding reinforces the
notion that culpability acquired through associational ties serves as an
especially powerful cue to voters who are unhappy with how the war is
progressing.
In Part 3, I discuss what these findings imply about citizens ability
to use Congress as a check against a culpable executive who is bent on
winning a war at any cost. In general, the legislatures ability to stop the
executive will be dependent on nonculpable legislators. For associates,
moving against the partys leader (the culpable executive) carries real
political costs. Challenging the executives policy can lead to a decrease
in support from party elites and hinder the politicians chances for reelec-
tion, perhaps even more so than his continued support for an unpop-
ular war. Moreover, as Ishow, associates get very little credit from the
4 From a technical perspective, an associate is a member of the Republican Party, regard-

less of how they voted for the war, and a supporter is a member who voted yes on
the war, regardless of their party. My discussion of how Icoded the relevant variables
is presented in these terms. In practice, of course, four types of members are possi-
ble:(1)supportive associates (a Republican who voted yes); (2)nonsupportive associates
(a Republican who voted no); (3)supportive nonassociates (a Democrat who voted yes);
and (4)nonsupportive nonassociates (a Democrat who voted no). Of the four, only the
last one is nonculpable. For the purposes of this chapter, associate typically refers to a
member of either type 1 or type 2, though Idiscuss important differences between the two
types. Supporter, however, almost always refers to a member who is of the third type.
Type 1 members, of course, are also supporters, but their culpability is overdetermined
because they also carry the associatelabel.
public for breaking partisan ranks. The few Republicans who came out
against the war were still tarred with the associate brush, even though
their actions directly defied the partyline.
Supporters (especially those that are not also associates) are more
likely to switch their position and vote for antiwar than associates, but
they are still less likely to do so than completely nonculpable members.
Their relative hesitancy has two sources. First, there is the potential to
be accused of being wishy-washy or opportunistic if they change their
stance on the war. While some legislators will be willing to take this risk,
others may be less able to do so, especially if a credible, antiwar primary
challenger exists. Second, it is also difficult for politicians to judge where
to position themselves within the antiwar camp. Even if a majority of the
population has turned against a war, the antiwar portion of the elector-
ate is rarely a monolith. Instead, some will want immediate withdrawal,
others will want a new strategy, and still others will want something
in between. This range of antiwar opinions makes politicians who had
previously supported the war reluctant to take a firm position for fear it
will alienate voters, especially compared to legislators who are not culpa-
ble for the war in anyway.5
The fact that associates and, to a lesser degree, supporters, are less
likely to vote for antiwar bills than nonculpable leaders is consequential
because members of Congress enjoy a powerful incumbency advantage
and the rates of turnover are very low. In practice, this means that it will
take a considerable amount of time for culpability to erode out of the
legislature. If it takes a long time for a critical mass of nonculpable lead-
ers to develop, the executive may go unconstrained foryears.
The findings from this chapter offer three contributions. First, they fur-
ther underscore the powerful influence that culpability has on the behav-
ior of political elites, even beyond the executive. Second, they also shed
some light on the relative power of different types of culpability that is,
the difference between being an associate and being a supporter. Finally,
the discussion here offers an important insight to the topic of the use of
congressional powers in times of war. While it is true that Congress has
the legal ability to constrain the executive, the probability of Congress
having the political will to use these powers depends on what proportion
of the legislature is culpable. Earlier work has recognized that a partisan
connection to the president and (to a lesser extent) an earlier show of
support may affect legislator behavior. But because most of this work
5 I am grateful to David Karol for useful discussions on thispoint.

focuses on crises, it does not explore the dynamics that develop during
wars, which are much longer and costlier events. Looking at culpabili-
tys effects on legislators behavior over the course of one of the longest
and most unpopular wars in American history allows me to address this
shortcoming.
Part1:Culpability and Legislator Voting Behavior

Scholars have identified several ways in which legislators can influence
the war by constraining the executive. One of the primary means for
doing so is introducing legislation that attempts to curtail the conflict in
some way. By suggesting and supporting such legislation, members make
their opposition to the war public, and signal to the executive (and any
future electoral challengers) that they are willing to take a stand against
the conflict. Which members would we expect to be most likely to engage
in such behavior?
One predictor of obvious importance would be the members political
party. Legislators who share a partisan connection to the culpable exec-
utive are going to be less likely to challenge a war, even if they disagree
with it.6 This is true for at least two reasons. First, members of the presi-
dents party will have little reason to challenge the leader openly because
their political fates are often intertwined with his. Because the executive
is also commonly the head of the party, criticizing him detracts from
the partys brand at the national level, hurting everyones chances for
reelection. Given this, while they may grow to disagree with the war or
the executives handling of it, they should generally refrain from publi-
cally opposing him. Second, the presidents copartisans share a world-
view and positions on major issues with the executive that, after all,
is what it means to be in the same party. Because members of a party
self-select into the group, major disagreements between the members are
unlikely. This argument has also received empirical support.7 This sug-
gests the following hypothesis:
Legislator Hypothesis 1: Legislators who are members of the same
party as the executive who started the war (associates) should be less
likely to vote for antiwar legislation than legislators who are not in the
executivesparty.
6 Kriner (2010).
7 Ibid. and Howell and Pevehouse (2007).
Party connections do not tell the whole story, however. Members of

the opposition who supported the war (supportive nonassociates) may
also gain responsibility for the conflict in the eyes of the public. If being
culpable for the war creates similar pressures for these legislators as it
does for associates, we might expect members who voted for the war
to be reluctant to change their position and vote for antiwar legislation.
This suggests the following hypothesis:
Legislator Hypothesis 2: Legislators who voted for the war when it
began (supporters) should be less likely to vote for antiwar legislation
than legislators who did not vote for thewar.
To test Hypotheses 1 and 2, Iconstructed two data sets comprised of

ten roll call votes taken in the 108th110th sessions of the U.S. Congress;
six from the House of Representatives and four from the Senate. All ten
bills represented challenges to the Iraq war and the way President Bush
was handling it. The key criterion for inclusion was that the bill had to
represent a clear critique of or an attempt to halt or restrict the war. It
could not, in other words, be a call for reviewing how Bush was con-
ducting the war or a request for more information from the executive
branch. Iset this high bar for inclusion to ensure that any yes votes
would be a clear signal of opposition against the war. Calls for revising
the strategy or other nonbinding requests require less political capital
from the member.8 Setting a higher bar so also provides for a harder test
of the theory.
This design is modeled closely on Kriner (2010), which examined
Congress likelihood of challenging the president on foreign military
operations during the Reagan (19801988) and Clinton administrations
(19922000). Like Kriner, I evaluate the House and Senate separately;
the data set for each chamber consists of a series of stacked roll call
votes, with one observation per member per vote. This gives me a total
of 2,601 observations for the House and four hundred for the Senate.9
I clustered the observations by member to account for the fact that a
members set of votes on this type of bill are clearly not independent of
8 I list and describe the bills in more detail in the Appendix.

9 The total number of observations for the House of Representatives is not 2,610 (6
435)for two reasons. First, six observations drop because the Speaker of the House does
not vote on the vast majority of bills that come to the floor. Most of the missing obser-
vations, however, are due to seats that were left vacant when a member died, retired, or
resigned mid-term and the vote occurred before a special election could be held to elect a
new representative.
one another. The dependent variable is binary and coded as 1 if the mem-
ber voted yes for one of the aforementioned bills and 0 otherwise.10
The primary independent variables of interest are whether the legisla-
tor is an associate or a supporter. Iconsidered a legislator a supporter
if they voted for the joint resolution (H.J.Res 114)that granted Bush the
authority to take action against Iraq in 2002 during the 107th session of
Congress. The House of Representatives voted on October 10, with 296
voting yes, 133 voting no, and 3 abstaining. In the Senate, the vote was
held on October 11; 77 supported it, 23 opposed it, and none abstained.11
Legislators who were members of the Republican Party, regardless of
when they came to power, were considered associates because George
W.Bush, a Republican, initiated thewar.12
I also accounted for several other factors that could affect a members
vote, which fall into one of three groups. The first group involves factors
that capture how secure the member is in office. It is important to appre-
ciate seat safety because we might expect members who are secure in
office to worry less about any fallout from either their colleagues or their
constituents if they decide to adopt an unpopular position. Iutilize three
different measures:the amount of time a member has been in Congress;
whether they won their last election with more than 60percent of the
vote; and the percent of the vote in the district or state won by Bush in
2000 or 2004 (depending on congressional session during which the par-
ticular vote took place).
The length of a legislators tenure serves as a proxy for their long-term
popularity within their district. Members who have been in power longer
have necessarily won multiple elections against a variety of challengers.
This is especially true in the House of Representatives where members
10 I chose to highlight the yes votes and combine the other voting options because a yes
vote is the only response that is unambiguous in signaling the members position against
the war. Legislators who abstain may also disagree with the war, but their unwillingness
to go on the record as supporting the bill makes them qualitatively different than mem-
bers who voteyes.
11 It is important to note that only legislators who were in Congress in 2002 who voted yes
are counted as supporters. This measure does not take into consideration any members
who took office after the 107th Congress who may have also been vocal supporters
of the war. In practice, this potentially underestimates the effect of being a supporter
because members who came to power in the 108th Congress and later may also feel a
need to continue backing the war if they expressed support at an earlier date. All roll call
data are taken from the CQ Press Congress Collection.
12 Two members of Congress are officially registered as Independents:Bernie Sanders and
Jim Jeffords, both from Vermont. Following the standard practice, Iclassified them both
as Democrats because that is the major party they caucus with mostoften.
must stand for reelection every two years. Given this, we should expect
members who have been in office longer to be more willing to take unpop-
ular positions on controversial votes and care less about the negative reper-
cussions of changing their position. Newer members, by contrast, should be
more concerned about the downside of appearing inconsistent and there-
fore adhere to their earlier vote. Hence, the longer a legislator has served in
Congress, the more likely they should be to vote for one of the aforemen-
tioned bills, ceteris paribus.
The size of a members margin of victory also captures how secure a
member might feel about openly challenging the president (and members
of his party) or the war more generally. Members who took more than
60percent of the votes in the most recent election should feel relatively
comfortable doing so. Members who won election with less than 60per-
cent of the vote should feel less comfortable opposing the president, even
on highly salient matters like national security. Asmall margin of victory
in a recent election coupled with a flip-flop on the war could make the
member an inviting target for a challenger. Given this, we should expect
members who had won their most recent election by a significant margin
to be more likely to vote in favor of bills that challenge the presidents
handling of thewar.
Finally, the portion of the two-party vote Bush won in the 2000 and
2004 elections should also correlate with the members seat safety and
their willingness to take a stand against Bush and his war. As Kriner
(2010:255)explains, the stronger the presidents track record of success
in a state or district, the more wary members, even of the opposition, will
be to challenge him. Therefore, after controlling for other important
factors, we should expect members from districts or states where Bush
won larger percentages of the vote to be less likely to vote for antiwar
legislation. This factor also serves as a proxy for the probable level of
support for the war in a given district. Districts where Bush captured
a larger share of votes are more likely to be Republican and, therefore,
more likely to be supportive of the war. Given legislators incentives to
win reelection, accounting for their constituents preferences regarding
the war is essential.
The second group of variables speaks to a members characteristics
that are not related to their electoral history. The first captures whether
the legislator was ever a member of the armed services (including reserve
membership). Including this variable is important because veterans may
be reluctant to vote for a bill that could potentially hamper the militarys
operations in the field.13 I also include variables that indicate whether

the member served on either the Armed Services or Foreign Affairs
Committee at the time of the votes on the war. Controlling for mem-
bership on either of these committees is necessary because legislators in
these positions are more involved in decisions regarding wars than other
members. Consequently, they may feel more invested in the operation,
and less likely to challenge the president once the conflict is underway.14
As Kriner (2010:253)points out, however, it is also possible for these
variables to have the opposite effect. Members of these committees could,
for instance, be more willing than others, ceteris paribus, to defend
Congress war powers and vote to constrain executive discretion. Their
predicted effect, consequently, remains an open empirical question.15
I also account for whether the legislator represents a southern state.
According to the standard practice in the American politics litera-
ture, Idefine the South as the eleven states that were members of the
Confederacy in the 1850s.16 Including this characteristic of the member
is important because, as Kriner (256) points out, traditionally, the South
13 Feaver and Gelpi (2004); Kriner (2010). Horowitz and Stam (2013) have refined this
further and found that exposure to active combat also influences a leaders willingness to
engage in conflict.
14 Members may be on one of these committees because of characteristics of their district
(e.g., it is the location of a major military base). See, e.g., Mayhew (1974), Shepsle and
Weingast (1987), and Weingast and Marshall (1988). Other scholars have argued that
members serve on these committees due to their own expertise or an interest in the mat-
ters that come before the committee (e.g., Krehbiel 1990 and Gilligan and Krehbiel1997).
15 Kriner (2010) finds mixed results. In several of his analyses, the effect for each of these
committees is negative and significant, but it is insignificant (with coefficients in both
directions) in others. In my analyses, members of the Armed Services Committee are
always less likely to vote for antiwar bills than nonmembers. This effect is always signif-
icant, but not nearly as large as that of an associate. The variables marking members of
the Foreign Affairs Committee were always positive, but never significant. As a related
side note, Iexamined whether members of either of these committees were more likely to
be punished during an unpopular war. Using data from Grose and Oppenheimer (2007),
Icreated two variables indicating membership on either the Armed Service or Foreign
Affairs Committee. The dependent variable was the change in the Democrats two-party
vote share between 2004 and 2006. The analyses concerned the House of Representatives
2006 midterm elections, which were held when the war in Iraq was deeply unpopular
with the electorate. Ireestimated Models 1 and 2 from Grose and Oppenheimer (2007)
for both Democrats and Republicans and added my two new variables for committee
membership. Neither approached statistical significance in any of the four models, sug-
gesting that these committee memberships were not a large factor in voters decisions in
this particular election, despite the war being a centralissue.
16 These states are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.
has been more hawkish and supportive of military endeavors than other
regions of the country, regardless of the partisan composition of its con-
gressional delegation. As such, Southern legislators may face stronger
pressure than other members . . . to oppose any congressional efforts
potentially seen as hampering military flexibility.
This set of legislator characteristics also allows me to address the
possibility that some members are true believers that is, that they
refrain from supporting antiwar legislation because they feel the war
is justified and that there is no need to constrain the executive. This
notion is plausible.17 Many people (including Bush) used it, or similar
rationales, to justify why the president would not consider leaving Iraq
when the public turned against it. This trait, of course, is unobserv-
able. Despite this, it remains safe to assume this factor is not driving
the results because this group of variables captures several attributes of
legislators that one would associate with true believers.18 If we suspect,
for instance, that southern legislators are more likely to believe that the
war is the right thing to do, including a variable that captures this helps
soak up any explanatory power that a hypothetical true believer var-
iable might account for. Committee membership, veteran status, and
party serve a similar function. Having all of them in the model simul-
taneously further reduces the possibility that the true believers remain
unaccounted for. Any true believers that do exist that are not captured
by this set of attributes (or a subset of them) will only contribute ran-
dom noise to the model, not systematic bias. It is also important to
recognize that culpability may create true believers, or at least people
who claim to be. If a leader feels they cannot change their stance on the
war for political reasons, they may attempt to rationalize their posi-
tion by touting reasons for why they firmly believe the conflict needs
tocontinue.
Finally, the third type of factor Ineed to account for is the local cost
of the war borne by the legislators community. To proxy for the costs of
war, Iuse a measure of the per capita casualties that a state has suffered
up until the day of a particular vote. The range of state-level casualties is
considerable. By the time of the first vote in the Senate, for instance, which
occurred on June 22, 2006, Wyoming had suffered six casualties whereas
17 E.g., Foyle (1997).

18 In more technical terms, this reduces the potential for omitted variablebias.
California had lost 260. While these states, obviously, have vastly different
population sizes, which the measure accounts for, the average raw num-
ber of casualties for all states is close to fifty. Accounting for casualties is
important because many scholars have demonstrated that losses have an
effect on a members chances of reelection19 as well as their willingness to
vote for antiwar legislation.20 If we assume that legislators, like executives,
have strong incentives to stay in power, increasing casualties in their con-
stituency should encourage them to vote in favor of antiwar bills.21
Legislator Hypotheses 1 and 2 both posited that members of Congress
who are culpable for the war either by vote or by party affiliation
would be less likely to vote for bills that attempted to limit the war or
curtail the executives authority in conducting the conflict.22 There are
two ways to test these hypotheses. The first is to estimate a model with
the associate and supporter variables coded as described previously to
ascertain their effect on a members vote. The second is to create a set
of mutually exclusive variables that capture the four possible combina-
tions of the cues to determine if the various types of members behave in
different ways. Tables5.1 and 5.2 present the estimates for both of these
specifications for the House and Senate.
Turning first to the models that just examine the effects of the individ-
ual cues (Models 14), Legislator Hypotheses 1 and 2 both find broad
support.
Supporters are always less likely to vote for the antiwar bills than
nonsupporters, though this effect is muted somewhat in the Senate
when the full battery of control variables is included in the model.23
Associates are also significantly less likely to support bills that attempt
19 See, e.g., Gartner and Segura (1998); Gartner and Segura (2004); Kriner and Shen
(2007); and Grose and Oppenheimer (2007). Though see, Gelpi etal. (2005/2006) and
Berinsky (2009).
20 Kriner and Shen (2014).
21 Though, as Koch and Gartner (2005) argue, when looking at a cross-national sample, the
level of group and geographic accountability each legislator carries will also affect their
sensitivity tocosts.
22 I test these hypotheses using the following model: Pr(Voting Yes on Antiwar Bill) =
Supporter + Associate + Length of Tenure + Margin of Previous Victory + Presidential
Vote Share + Veteran Status + Committee Membership + South + Casualties+.
23 The effect (and significance) of being a supporter is dependent on the model specification.
When the Bush Vote variable is excluded from the model, the size of the effect becomes
much larger and the difference between supporters and nonsupporters is significant at
the 0.049level.
TABLE5.1. The Effect of Being a Supporter or an Associate on Voting for

Antiwar Bills (Two LegislatorTypes)
Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4
Voted For War 0.558*** 0.367* 0.711* 0.406

(0.12) (0.16) (0.35) (0.37)
Republican 4.193*** 3.714*** 5.172*** 4.706***
(0.26) (0.26) (0.73) (0.69)
Time in Congress 0.028 0.031
(logged) (0.02) (0.05)
Large Margin of 0.193 0.238
Victory (0.16) (0.37)
Bush Vote 0.029*** 9.120***
(0.01) (2.17)
Veteran 0.055 0.078
(0.19) (0.40)
Foreign Affairs 0.112 0.216
Comm. (0.22) (0.44)
Armed Services 0.380* 1.024*
Comm. (0.19) (0.42)
Southern State 0.163 0.934*
(0.14) (0.41)
Casualties Per 11666.466 5498.780
Capita (10063.25) (11643.65)
Constant 1.061*** 2.189*** 0.961*** 5.436***
(0.07) (0.34) (0.25) (1.20)
Observations 2601 2601 400 400
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
to curtail the war or the executives authority in conducting that war.

What is remarkable about the set of findings in Table5.1, however, is
how large the associate effect is relative to the effect of being a sup-
porter. In Model 2, for instance, the effect of being an associate (i.e., a
Republican) in the House of Representatives is more than ten times the
size of the effect of being a supporter. This is indicative of the contin-
uum possibility Iraised previously:supporters and associates will both
be culpable, but the effects of culpability will be more evident in the
behavior of the lattertype.
Examining the effect of the cues in combination with one another
allows us to explore this possibility further. Doing so also provides a
more accurate model of reality because legislators must base their vote
TABLE5.2. The Effect of Being a Supporter or an Associate on Voting for

Antiwar Bills (Four LegislatorTypes)
Model 5 Model 6 Model 7 Model 8
Supporter (D) 0.602*** 0.375** 0.709* 0.367

(0.12) (0.13) (0.36) (0.38)
Supporter (R) 4.655*** 4.068*** 5.902*** 5.364***
(0.26) (0.28) (1.03) (1.04)
Nonsupporter (R) 4.391*** 3.748*** 5.150*** 4.273***
(0.52) (0.52) (1.05) (0.97)
Time in Congress 0.028 0.030
(logged) (0.02) (0.05)
Large Margin of 0.192 0.247
Victory (0.16) (0.38)
Bush Vote 0.029*** 9.155***
(0.01) (2.19)
Veteran 0.055 0.092
(0.19) (0.41)
Foreign Affairs 0.114 0.175
Comm. (0.22) (0.43)
Armed Services 0.380* 1.025*
Comm. (0.19) (0.42)
Southern State 0.161 0.960*
(0.13) (0.42)
Casualties Per 11664.578 5206.934
Capita (10055.97) (11557.82)
Constant 1.075*** 2.190*** 0.960*** 5.440***
(0.07) (0.34) (0.25) (1.21)
Observations 2601 2601 400 400
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
on both characteristics simultaneously. No legislator for instance is

solely a supporter. Instead, they are a supporter who is also either an
associate or nonassociate. Including variables that represent all of the
possible combinations of cues also provides a straightforward means
of evaluating whether one type of member is less likely to support an
antiwar bill than another.24 Models 5 through 8 include three of the four
possible member types; the excluded type a nonassociate who did not
24 Obtaining these effects would also be possible using the results from Models 1 through
4.Iutilize the alternative specification in Models 5 through 8 to make the comparisons
of the different types more straightforward.
Change in Probability from Baseline 0
.2
.4
.6
Supporter-D Supporter-R Nonsupporter-R
Type of Representative
FIGURE5.1. The Effect of Being a Supporter or Associate on Voting for Antiwar

Legislation in the House.
support the war serves as the models baseline. The effects of the other
types should therefore be interpreted relative to a Democratic legisla-
tor who did not vote to authorize the war when the bills came before
Congress in2002.
Not surprisingly, the coefficients in Table 5.2 tell a similar story to
those in the previous table:namely, while war supporters are generally
less likely to support antiwar legislation, it is very unlikely that an asso-
ciate (supportive or not) would ever vote yes on such bills, regardless
of whether they voted for the war when it started. Figures5.1 and 5.2
provide a better sense of what the difference in the magnitude of these
two cues means in real terms in both the House and Senate, respectively.
The bars represent the change in the likelihood of a member voting for
the antiwar bills compared to the baseline, a Democratic nonsupporter.25
As is plainly evident from both figures, the effect of being an associate
dominates the effect of being a supporter. While there are important dif-
ferences among nonassociates Democrats who voted for the war are
less likely to vote for the antiwar measures than Democrats who did not
25 I calculated these differences by moving one variable at a time while holding the others
at their modes, or, in the case of continuous variables, medians.
0
.2
.4
.6
.8
Supporter-D Supporter-R Nonsupporter-R
Type of Senator
FIGURE5.2. The Effect of Being a Supporter or Associate on Voting for Antiwar

Legislation in the Senate.
vote to authorize the war the effect is only significant in the House and
is fairly small. Supportive nonassociates are only 9percent less likely to
vote for the antiwar bills than their counterparts who never expressed
support for thewar.
The right-most pairs of bars in the figures tell a different story. The
effect of being an associate is much larger all Republican members
are close to 60percent less likely to vote for the antiwar bills than the
baseline and the magnitude of the effect remains the same regardless of
whether the legislator was also a supporter.26 Put differently, it appears
that for Republicans their partisan affiliation is the primary driver of
their vote choice, not their track record of support.
This lack of a difference among associates is likely the result of the
nonrandom nature of the set of Republicans who were in a position to
run for national office in the 2004 or 2006 elections. Any Republican
who was interested in holding office in either the House or the Senate any
time after the war in Iraq began was more than likely a supporter of the
26 An F-test confirms that the coefficients on Supporter (R) and Nonsupporter (R) are
not statistically different from one another in either the House or the Senate (p-values
are 0.61 and 0.42, respectively), although the former is larger than the latter in both
chambers.
war. Even after the elections in 2004 and 2006, especially when the war
was taking a toll on Republican vote shares, it is unlikely that the party
leadership would endorse a candidate who was openly against the war
for which George W.Bush was culpable. Hence, the candidates that were
likely to run would be those who would have also been supporters had
they been in Congress in 2002. Given this, it makes sense that the differ-
ence between those Republicans that are formally counted as supporters
and those that are nonsupporters is negligible. This same logic also
helps explain why a relatively small difference (albeit, a significant one)
remains between supporters and nonsupporters within the Democratic
ranks. For this group, an incentive to run on an antiwar platform existed
for members who campaigned in 2004 and 2006. Therefore, we should
expect the differences between supporters and nonsupporters to grow
over time in the opposition party and remain relatively small for mem-
bers in the party of the culpable executive.
The dominance of being an associate mirrors Kriners (2010) findings.
In his study of congressional challenges during the Reagan and Clinton
administrations, Kriner finds that members of the presidents party are
significantly less likely to support legislation that attempted to curtail
the conflict. The results presented here build on these earlier findings
by demonstrating that the effect of being associated with the president
persists even in protracted wars. The conflicts in Kriners analysis (e.g.,
Bosnia, Lebanon, Somalia, Grenada), while certainly important foreign
policy events, were all relatively short. Indeed, none of them extended
beyond a single congressional session. The Iraq war, by contrast, spanned
five sessions. This longer time frame is significant because it gives associ-
ates more time to reconsider their position, especially if the war becomes
unpopular. Three of the antiwar votes in the House, for instance, took
place in mid-2007, when less than 40percent of the country approved
of the war.27 While approval figures among Republicans were higher, the
war was taking a toll on the Republican Partys brand nevertheless.
The relative strength of the associate cue, however, does not imply that
we should discount the importance of being a nonassociate supporter
entirely. Democrats who voted for the war in the House of Representatives
were still significantly less likely to support antiwar legislation than
their colleagues who had either opposed the conflict or who were not in
Congress at the time of the vote. Moreover, this difference persisted long
after the public had clearly turned against the war and, importantly, after
27 Berinsky (2009).
the 2006 midterm elections ushered in a Democratic majority. This shift

in the balance of power in the House, and the Democratic leaderships
self-proclaimed mandate to follow through on the American peoples
desire for a new direction in Iraq,28 would have increased the pressure
on Democrats who had initially supported the war to change their posi-
tion. Yet, some held their ground and continued to vote against antiwar
resolutions. This behavior, importantly, is not without precedent. Kriner
also controls for an early show of support in his analysis and finds that it
is strong and significant predictor of members who will vote against bills
that challenge the president on thewar.
Part2:Culpability and Legislator Punishment

Having established that culpability affects a legislators voting behavior,
Inow turn to the question of whether it affects their likelihood of pun-
ishment. If the logic Idiscussed in Chapter2 also applies to legislators,
citizens should be more likely to remove members of Congress who are
culpable than leaders they see as lacking culpability. As Idid previously,
Iexplore each pathway to culpability a partisan connection to Bush or
an earlier vote for the war separately.
Punishing Associates
Perhaps not surprisingly, the political cost of being an associate of a war-
time president has received considerable attention in the American poli-
tics literature. Across several wars throughout history, being a member of
the same party as the president who started the war has meant electoral
hardship for legislators. In their analysis of the congressional elections
during the Civil War, for instance, Carson etal. (2001) found that being
a Republican cost several legislators their seats, especially in 1862 when
dissatisfaction with the war was at a high point.29 Cotton (1986) uncov-
ered a similar pattern in his examination of several midterm elections
that took place while the United States was involved in an international
conflict. From the Spanish-American War through the Vietnam War, the
costs of war can hurt members of the party associated with Americas
entry into the fighting.30
28 Pelosi (2007).
29 Pratt (1931) and Tap (1993) also posited that the association with Lincoln was the cul-
prit for Republican midterm losses.
30 Cotton (1986:625).
This pattern of punishing the in party has continued with the war
in Iraq. In their study of the 2006 midterm election for members of the
House of Representatives, for instance, Grose and Oppenheimer (2007)
found that, even after controlling for a number of factors, political asso-
ciates of the wars initiator, George W.Bush, were punished at the polls.
Republicans in districts with large numbers of casualties from the war
were especially more likely to suffer a decrease in their vote share from
the previous election, as were Republicans who voted for the war (which
was nearly all ofthem).
A quick look at the number of actual incumbent losses (as opposed
to a loss of vote share) reveals why this election was widely considered a
rout for the Republican Party. Of the thirty incumbents who were turned
out between the House and Senate, an astonishing twenty-nine were
Republicans.31 Not surprisingly, the Iraq war was frequently an issue in
these elections as Democratic challengers correctly surmised that linking
the incumbent to the war and President Bush was the key to capturing
the seat. Tellingly, this strategy worked for Democrats, regardless of the
Republican incumbents position on thewar.
The easiest targets, of course, were those Republicans who remained
steadfast supporters of Bush and the war. One such incumbent was Jim
Ryun, who had represented Kansass second district for an impressive five
terms. Ryun had voted for the war when the bill came before the House
in 2002, and had remained closely aligned with President Bushs policy
on the conflict ever since32. Ryuns loss to challenger Nancy Boyda was
somewhat unexpected because he was thought to be a safe bet for reelec-
tion just a month prior.33 Yet once Election Day was upon him, he ended
up losing by more than three points, taking 47.14percent to her50.6.
A similar story explains Jim Talents loss: Talent had represented
Missouri in the House for eight years and the Senate for four before
losing to Claire McCaskill in 2006.34 In addition to his being a staunch
supporter of Bush and the war, Talents tenure on the Armed Services
Committee also gave McCaskill political ammunition with respect to the
31 The lone Democrat to lose office, Cynthia McKinney of Georgias fourth district, lost
in the runoff round of a primary election. The Iraq war was not a major issue in this
race. All information on races, including vote shares, is taken from data compiled by the
Federal Election Commission.
32 Carpenter (2006:1).
33 Milburn (2006).
34 His time in the Senate was less than the standard six years because he took office in 2002
as the result of a special election held to fill the seat Mel Carnahan had left open when
hedied.
war. In the months leading up to the election, for instance, pressure was
mounting for Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld, who was secretary of defense
at the time. Charges that Rumsfeld had badly mismanaged the war were
gaining traction among the antiwar segments of the electorate, which
kept the story in the news. McCaskill seized this opportunity to point
out that Talent had never taken the opportunity to question Rumsfeld
about his approach to the war despite his many appearances before the
Armed Services Committee, presumably in an effort to portray Talent as
a puppet of the administration.35 The tactic worked. McCaskill beat the
incumbent by more than two points. The loss did not seem to come as a
great shock to the Talent campaign team, whose members were all too
aware of the political costs of running a candidate from the same party
as a president who the public saw as responsible for an unpopular war.
When asked if he would do anything different, Talent replied: Yeah.
Run in a different year.36
His neighbor two states to the north in Minnesota, Gil Gutknecht,
likely felt a similar sentiment. Having served twelve years as the repre-
sentative from Minnesotas first district, Gutknecht was soundly defeated
by Tim Walz by more than five percentage points in the general election.
Gutknechts loss is interesting because it illustrates how the general frus-
tration with Bush and the war served to energize the Democratic base. At
one rally, for instance, Walz attracted roughly three thousand people an
impressive crowd for a political newcomer. But what was more telling
were the paltry turnout figures for Gutknecht, who at the same spot
several days before had attracted hundreds, not thousands, according to
area media reports.37 To their credit, the Gutknecht campaign realized
that there was likely little they could do given their candidates parti-
san connection to the president and history of support for the war. As
the campaign spokesperson, Bryan Anderson, put it:There was a fair
amount of frustration on lack of progress in Iraq. We saw that through-
out the state and the country that Republicans suffered for that.38
The three Republicans in the preceding examples all made for easy
marks because they had all voted for the war and did not stray from this
position going into the election. Not all Republicans, however, chose to
remain steadfast in their support. For those from more left-leaning or
35 Talent:National Trend Too Much to Overcome (2006).

36 Ibid.
37 Vezner (2006:9b).
38 Ibid.
centrist districts, asserting their independence from Bush was a logical

choice to make, though it did not often lead to electoral success.39 Rob
Simmons, for instance, who had represented Connecticuts second district
for three terms and voted for the war in 2002, made a point of declaring
that he was willing to defy Bush and Republican leaders in Washington
and that his job is to represent my constituents, not my party and not
my president. ... When my opponent claims that Isupport George Bush
on all these issues, I simply point out the areas where the president
and I have disagreed. My constituents know that I am independent.40
Unfortunately for Simmons, acknowledgment of his independence was
not sufficiently widespread in the district. He lost his bid for reelection
to Joseph Courtney, whom he had defeated by nearly ten points in the
previous midterm election. Voters in traditionally right-leaning districts
were equally suspect of Republican incumbents who tried to distance
themselves from Bush. Sue Kelly, of NewYorks nineteenth district, for
instance, did her best to underscore the issues where she and Bush dif-
fered (e.g., the environment and stem cell research).41 Her efforts were
not successful; come Election Day, her constituents put a Democrat in
office, something they had not done for more than thirty years.42
Other Republicans tried to demonstrate their independence from Bush
by reversing their earlier position on the war completely. Mike DeWine
of Ohio, for instance, who had served as a Representative for eight years
and a Senator for twelve, voted for the war in 2002 but changed his tune
significantly by the election in 2006. In an interview on Meet the Press,
DeWine said that, he would not have voted for the war in Iraq if he
had known Iraqi strongman Saddam Husseins regime did not possess
weapons of mass destruction, adding later that Secretary Rumsfeld had
made major mistakes in this war. Theres absolutely no doubt about
it (Pfeiffer 2006). Despite this attempt to shed his culpability, DeWines
opponent, Sherrod Brown, was in a far better position to appeal to the
electorate. Because Brown had not been in power in 2002, and, therefore,
did not have to cast a vote one way or the other, his antiwar position was
more credible. This difference proved to be sufficient to give the election
to Brown by a crushing thirteen-point margin, an accomplishment made
39 It is important to note that this type of legislator a defecting associate is relatively

rare. Moreover, and importantly, none of three members Idiscuss here ever actually went
so far as to vote for antiwar legislation.
40 Hernandez (2006:5).
41 Gerlach (2006).
42 Santos and OConnor (2006).
all the more impressive because, according to Joe Klein of Time maga-
zine, Brown, wouldnt have had a shot in any other year.43
The electoral misfortunes of Simmons, Kelly, and DeWine in 2006 were
perhaps more surprising than the losses suffered by their fellow party
members who remained consistent supporters of Bush and the war, but
still understandable given their earlier vote for the conflict. But what about
the small number of Republicans who voted against the war in 2002? If
any member of Bushs party had a chance of escaping culpability via asso-
ciation, it should clearly be these seven legislators six in the House and
one in the Senate who stood against their party in 2002. Yet, this was not
the case. Of the four Republicans who were still in the House at the time
of the 2006 elections (two left earlier for reasons unrelated to the war),
the two from solidly Republican districts (Ron Paul of TX-14 and John
Duncan of TN-2) were able to hold on to their seats while the other two,
James Leach from Iowas second district and John Hostettler of Indianas
eighth district, lost to Democratic challengers. To say these losses caught
some off guard is an understatement. Indeed, Leachs opponent, David
Loebsack, did not even have a victory speech prepared (Winograd2006)!
But of all the losses among Republicans who voted no, the most sur-
prising had to be Lincoln Chafees, who represented Rhode Island in the
Senate. Having taken over the office from his father in 1998, Chaffee was
never one to be mistaken for an ally of George W.Bush. In addition to
voting against the war in 2002, Chafee also disagreed with Bush on tax
cuts and the presidents prescription drug plan, and voted against two of
Bushs key nominees:John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations
and Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court.44 If ever there was a track rec-
ord that allowed a Republican to say they were not an associate of Bushs
or a supporter of the war, Lincoln Chafee hadit.
But none of this seemed to matter in 2006. Instead, all Rhode Island
voters seemed to focus on was the R after Chafees name. Some saw
removing Chafee as a symbolic gesture that had more to do with the
party and very to do with Chafee. By giving Chafees seat to a Democrat,
they could signal to Bush that they were fed up with his handling of the
war. One Rhode Islander, for instance, put it thusly:Bush has gotta get
a message. Chafees a Republican. Bush is a Republican.45 Others saw
removing Chafee as serving a more specific purpose:namely, depriving
43 Quoted in Pilkington (2006:16).

44 Harnden (2006) and Hampson (2006).
45 Hampson (2006:10A).
the Republicans of their majority in the Senate. This was the message of
choice for Chafees opponent, Sheldon Whitehouse, who often claimed
that keeping Chafee from retaining office was the only way to end the
Republican hold on power and, by extension, Republican control over the
war. In his words, The most dangerous vote of all is to put the Republican
majority back in place, he said in the debate. It meansGeorge Bush and
Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld making decisions about Iraq.46 In
fact, Whitehouse made this claim so often that at one point he was asked
by a reporter if he could go three minutes without invoking Bush or the
Republicans. His response was that thats asking a lot with the stakes as
high as they are and you-know-who and you-know-which party causing
all the problems.47
For his part, Chafee tried to protest against the accusations that
he was in the pocket of the president because of their shared partisan
ties, but these efforts seemed to fall on deaf ears. His long track record
of challenging Bush did not help matters, nor did the fact that he and
his opponent had similar opinions regarding how the war should end
(Hampson 2006). The fact that Rhode Island had also seen a dispropor-
tionate number of casualties (the first the state had witnessed since World
War II)48 also exacerbated Chafees predicament. By the fall of 2006,
Rhode Island was second in terms of the most costly October expe-
rienced by all states holding elections and third out of all 50 states....
People from Rhode Island had reason to perceive the war as . . . costly.
As an incumbent of the party directing this costly war, Chafee was clearly
punished at the polls.49 Indeed, on Election Day in 2006, voters flocked
46 Harnden (2006: 35). Whitehouse was not alone in thinking this; the partisan balance
in Congress was an issue for many Rhode Islanders as they were deciding how to cast
their vote. As one longtime Chafee supporter, William J. Oehlkers, wrote in a letter
to the editor of The NewYork Times, Senator Chafee is one of the most honest and
thoughtful senators in Congress. He has repeatedly proclaimed that the emperor has no
clothes, as witnessed by his vote against the Iraq war. Unfortunately, he is a Republican.
ARepublican majority for two more years would have bankrupted the country. We could
not afford to pay that price. The Political Fate of a G.O.P. Moderate (2006).
47 Ibid.
48 Apple (2006:23).
49 Gartner and Segura (2008: 98) Emphasis mine. The main reason for Rhode Islands
heavy toll in the war can be attributed to the makeup of the type of units that hailed
from the state. A small state with only a few types of units . . . will either get hit hard, as
Hawaii and Rhode Island have, or hardly at all, as Delaware has. . . . Heavily deployed
Rhode Island, by contrast, has a large force of military police. The states other units
include engineers crucial to Iraq reconstruction efforts and Special Forces. This high
concentration of high-demand units drives Rhode Islands rate of deployments to the
second-highest in the nation (Freedberg 2007:28).
to Whitehouse giving him a seven-point victory over one of the Iraq wars
strongest critics.
Punishing Supporters
Clearly, the costs for Republicans across the board in 2006 were high.
In an election where the war was a central issue, Republicans were pun-
ished for being Republicans. This held true even for Republicans who
were either no longer adamant supporters of the war or who had never
supported the war. This latter group is especially surprising because it is
comprised of politicians who had gone out of their way to demonstrate
that they were not in favor of backing the executive who was culpable for
the conflict, even though they were from the sameparty.
What, though, of the Democratic incumbents who had supported the
war in 2002? If citizens care about sanctioning legislators who are cul-
pable either by party or by an earlier show of support, associates and
supporters should both face a higher likelihood of removal. But this is
not what happened. Instead, as Grose and Oppenheimer (2007:549)dis-
cuss in their study of the 2006 House elections, None of the Iraq vari-
ables [e.g., local casualties, earlier vote, etc.] affected the vote swing
in Democratic House seats. . . . Fifty-four Democrats running in 2006
voted for the war in Iraq, yet the Democratic vote share swing for these
Democrats was no different than the swing for those Democrats who
voted against the war or those who were not present for the warvote.
What accounts for this marked difference in the rate of punishment
across the two parties? Why did citizens, apparently, refrain from pun-
ishing Democrats who had openly supported the war in 2002? Two
explanations exist, both of which could be true. The first is that citizens
rely heavily on the partisan cue, and use it as their main criterion when
deciding how to vote. Given that it was very easy for them to draw a
connection between Bush and the war, it did not require a great amount
of additional information to know that in a midterm election when the
executive was not an available target that they should vote against mem-
bers of his party instead. This explanation has a long history of support
in the American politics literature where scholars often assume that vot-
ers will want to punish the in-party when they are displeased with the
statusquo.
The second, related explanation has less to do with citizens tendencies
to use heuristics and more to do with the relative appeal of available alter-
natives. In this case, citizens may have been upset with the Democrats who
voted for the war, but the only alternative in a general election, given the
long-standing tradition of the two-party system in the United States, would
be a Republican. This is an unattractive choice for a citizen who is against
the war for while she may want to punish the Democrat, the Republican
challenger is unlikely to share her antiwar preferences. The one situation
where a Democrat who voted for the war would be vulnerable would be
in primary election where his challenger would be another Democrat who
had been against the war from the start. When faced with this combina-
tion, antiwar citizens would prefer the challenger because she is neither a
member of the in-party associated with the war nor does she have a track
record of supporting the conflict.
This is precisely the dynamic that emerged in Connecticut where Ned
Lamont was able to wrestle the Democratic nomination away from Joseph
Lieberman who had been representing Connecticut in the Senate since 1989.
Like many of primaries where Democratic supporters faced challengers, the
central issue was the war in Iraq. Lamont took full advantage of Liebermans
culpability for the conflict and used it against him to repeatedly draw con-
nections between Lieberman and Bush. In one television ad he literally tried
to blur the lines between the two by having Liebermans face [change] into
President Bushs as an announcer said the senator talks like George W.Bush
and acts like George W.Bush (Healy 2006:A1). Like other supporters,
Liebermans culpability for the conflict proved to be his downfall. He lost
the primary to Lamont by 3percent after a long race that captured national
attention. While Lieberman went on to win the general election running as
an independent, his experience in the primaries cemented his culpable iden-
tity in the eyes of voters and other members of Congress.
These examples notwithstanding, however, supporters who are not also
associates typically escape from elections unscathed. While the research
Imentioned found no relationship between the war and Democratic vote
shares in the general election, this is also true in the primaries. To test this
idea, Ilooked at the 2004 and 2006 primary elections and performed a
difference of means test between Democratic incumbents who voted for
the war in 2002 and incumbents who either voted no in 2002 or who
were not in Congress at the time. Neither difference was significant.50 This
finding is somewhat surprising because the war was an important issue
50 For 2004, the p-value was 0.553 and for 2006 it was 0.652. By means of comparison,
in 2002 the difference between these groups (which we would expect to be zero at this
point given that the vote happened within a month of the election) was also insignificant
(p-value < 0.603). Idropped all elections that took place in districts where significant
redistricting had taken place since the last election, with significant being defined as
in both elections, especially in 2006, and the primaries would have been
the most likely place for a nonculpable challenger to emerge. Despite this,
very few Democratic supporters lost their primaries. Part of this is cer-
tainly due to the general advantage enjoyed by incumbents, but another
potential explanation is that voters simply assigned more blame to asso-
ciates than supporters and saw fit to punish the former and spare the lat-
ter. If so, this finding aligns with the claim Imade previously:namely, that
while supporters and associates are both technically culpable for the war,
associates will be more constrained by their connection to the conflict.
Part3:Implications for the Legislatures Ability to

Check a Culpable Executive
The preceding section highlighted several interesting patterns about how
citizens respond to culpability among members of the legislature based on
whether the member is culpable through association or through an ear-
lier show of support for the conflict. Neither type is completely immune
from challengers, though associates are much more likely to be punished
for their connection to the leader who started the conflict. On the surface,
this set of findings seems like it should encourage culpable legislators to
be responsive when a sufficient number of citizens turn against thewar.
Unfortunately, as I discuss in the following text this is not the case.
While some culpable legislators (especially supporters who are nonas-
sociates) will see a potential value in switching to the antiwar camp,
nonculpable leaders will still be the most likely of all the types to take
concrete steps to end the war. After discussing why this is true for both
associates and supporters in a general sense, I return to my discussion
of Congress and the Iraq war to examine which type of legislator sup-
ported the antiwar legislation. As the following paragraphs make clear,
while Congress certainly has the ability to apply the democratic brake
to wartime executives, the task of utilizing it will typically fall to noncul-
pable members. This has important implications for Congress ability to
resolve the downside of democracy problem Idiscussed earlier because it
typically takes a fair amount of time for culpable majorities to erode out
of the legislature. So long as the culpable bloc has veto authority, much
of the antiwar legislation will be largely symbolic.
more than a 10percent swing in estimated presidential vote share (data on redistricting
generously provided by Gary Jacobson). Idid this to avoid including races where mem-
bers were more likely to lose (or win) for reasons unrelated to thewar.
Costs for Supporting Antiwar Legislation:Associates

Why might associates be reluctant to support antiwar legislation? As the
discussion in Part2 demonstrated, members of culpable executives party
are more likely to be punished if a war is going badly than nonassociates.
Citizens clearly recognize the connection between these members and
the leader who started the war, and apportion blame accordingly. Yet,
as Kriner (2010) has demonstrated in his work, associates are also the
least likely to take action against the executive, even if the war becomes
unpopular. What accounts for this apparent disconnect between the high
likelihood of punishment and associates lack of response to shifts in
public opinion?51
Two possible explanations exist. First, associates may realize that there
is little utility to be gained from switching to the antiwar camp and try-
ing to check the executive. Because they will be linked to the executive in
the eyes of the public, regardless of their actual position on the war, they
will always be fighting an uphill battle against a nonculpable challenger
from a different party. The poor electoral outcomes of Republicans who
tried to pivot away from their earlier vote in favor of the war and those
who were never supportive of the war in the first place is evidence of this
dynamic. Recall the case of Lincoln Chafee who, despite a solid history
of being against the war and Bushs policies in general, lost in the general
election because he was a Republican. Moreover, any attempt to move
against a war that has become unpopular by an associate will likely strike
antiwar citizens as disingenuous or opportunistic. Taken together, even
in situations like 2006 where the war was a major issue in the election,
the effect of the threat of punishment may be muted among members
of this group because any action they take is unlikely to reduce it. This
may be why several Republican members of Congress refused to switch
their position on the war, even when all signs were telling them to reverse
course.52
51 As I noted, one of the key predictors of a legislators behavior, if not the key, are the
preferences of his constituents. This is why it was necessary to include proxies for sup-
port for the war at the district or state level in the models of roll call vote behavior. In my
discussion in this section, Ifocus on other factors that may affect a legislators willingness
to change his or her vote, but the underlying assumption is that the preferences of their
district are held constant.
52 In the Appendix Iexplore the effect of another factor that should have encouraged leg-
islators to vote for antiwar bills:a low vote share for Bush in the 2004 election. As the
figures in the Appendix make clear, the effects of these factors are muted among associ-
ates, suggesting that they are generally less responsive than nonassociates.
Second, associates may also refrain from supporting antiwar legisla-

tion because they feel they have more to gain from continuing to adhere
to the party line. Even if the war is losing favor with the population,
remaining supportive of the conflict offers two potential benefits. First,
the associate may actually agree with the executive that the war should
continue this is the true believer notion I discussed. If members
think the war is the right course of action, blocking antiwar legislation
allows their preferred policy to persist. While this trait is, of course,
unobservable, political elites from the same party tend to have similar
worldviews because they do not select into parties randomly. Instead,
they join the party that most closely aligns with their preferences. Given
this, if an executive starts a war, odds are that his fellow partisans will
agree with the decision and continue to support him, even if the war
becomes costly.
This tendency for associates to support their executive is reinforced by
the second potential benefit:tangible rewards from party elites. Because
the partys leadership has an interest in maintaining party discipline, espe-
cially when a policy associated with their party becomes contentious, they
will want to reward members who support the policy and punish those
who insist on breaking ranks.53 Possible punishments might include with-
holding key committee appointments, minimizing financial assistance for
the members reelection campaign, or endorsing other candidates in the
primary. Indeed, the Democratic leadership in 2006 employed this tactic
in 2006 when they officially backed Ned Lamont over Joe Lieberman in
the primary race specifically because of Liebermans continued support of
the war (Healy 2006). Because legislators, like executives, want to main-
tain office (and maximize their influence while in office), they will want
to avoid angering the party leadership. While these sorts of punishment
may be less threatening to associates who are well-established, longtime
incumbents, newcomers or those members from borderline districts will
be easier to coerce. When viewed in combination with the associates
high likelihood of preferring that the war continue, these two benefits
can serve as a sufficient counter to the (relatively) high likelihood being
removed from office. Given this, we should not expect associates to lead
the charge in proposing a piece of antiwar legislation or jumping on the
bandwagon to support it when it to thefloor.
53 For more on this dynamic see Cox and McCubbins (1993) and Hasecke and Mycoff
(2007).
Costs for Supporting Antiwar Legislation:Supporters

What, though, of supporters who are not associates? If the discussion in
Part2 is any guide, this type of leader faces a lower likelihood of removal
from office because of the war because a credible antiwar candidate can
only emerge in a primary election. This is important because while primary
challenges are not unheard of, they are still relatively rare, with incumbent
losses occurring even less frequently. Indeed, in the four primaries Idis-
cussed in which Democrats faced challengers from the left in races where
the war was an issue, all of the incumbents went on to win in the general
election. What does this mean in terms of the probability that a member
who initially supported the war will change his mind and take steps to
end it? Does the relatively low likelihood of punishment encourage the
member to maintain her earlier position or motivate her to embrace the
antiwar cause in an effort to appear more in step with public opinion?
In practice, I argue, most supporters will opt for a middle ground
between the two, becoming more antiwar than associates but less so than
completely nonculpable members. This strategy emerges as a best option
because supporters are caught between two countervailing forces. On the
one hand, if they continue to support a policy that is unpopular with their
base, they increase the chances that they will lose their partys primary
election. While the probability of this happening is relatively small, politi-
cians are typically very risk averse when it comes to protecting their posi-
tion.54 Even if their seat is relatively safe, the mere possibility of losing
is enough to motivate them to avoid doing things that obviously anger
their constituents. Indeed, this is one of the reasons why incumbents lose
so infrequently.
On the other hand, adopting a new position also brings its own chal-
lenges. For one thing, just like associates who attempt to switch, publi-
cally changing ones mind on a salient issue can make a supporter appear
wishy-washy or opportunistic. Second, it may be hard for a member to
determine precisely which new position she should adopt to best capture
the antiwar vote without alienating other constituents. Taken together,
both of these work to keep supporters from becoming active opponents
of the war and taking concrete steps to endit.
With regard to the first point, several scholars have made the case that
reversing ones position on a single issue can be damaging to a politician.55
54 Fenno (1973); Mayhew (1974); and Arnold (1990).

55 For more on the presumed costs of changing positions, see Kinder et al. (1980);
Bernhardt and Ingberman (1985); McGraw etal. (1996); Poole and Rosenthal (1997);
In one study, for instance, McGraw and her colleagues found that citizens
liked politicians who were committed and disliked those whom they
described as unsure or indecisive.56 Other scholars have reached similar
conclusions. Bernhardt and Ingberman (1985:47), for example, found a link
between switching and poor electoral performance, noting that, candidates
who make rapid changes in their announced platforms tend to lose badly.
The notion that altering ones position could have negative reper-
cussions was a central concern during the Iraq war for at least two
Democratic politicians who were both supporters when the war began.
Both tried to convince the electorate that they were credible antiwar
candidates and both met with limited success. The first was Senator John
Kerry who ran for president against George W.Bush in 2004. Kerry had
voted for the war when it began in 2002, but had changed his tune in
subsequent years by the time he decided to make a bid for the presi-
dency. This move almost certainly made him more appealing to antiwar
voters. It also made him vulnerable to the Bush campaigns relentless
accusations that he was a flip-flopper who could not be trusted to
be reliable on foreign policy matters. In the second debate, for exam-
ple, Bush stated that he did not see how Kerry could lead this coun-
try in a time of war, in a time of uncertainty, if [Kerry] changed his
mind because of politics. Acountry at war, he argued, requires a pres-
ident with steadfast determination.57 Given the multifaceted nature
of national elections, it impossible to know with certainty whether the
steady stream of flip-flopper accusations cost Kerry the presidency.
At minimum, however, it put Kerry on the defensive and forced him to
justify why he had to change his mind and not had the foresight to be
against the war allalong.
The second supporter who had to grapple with her earlier vote in
favor of the war was Senator Hillary Clinton. Unlike Kerry, her challenge
came from the left in the form of the then-junior senator from Illinois,
Barack Obama. Obama had not been in the Senate at the time and, con-
sequently, did not have the burden of having a public track record of his
positions on the conflict. This lack of a formal voting history allowed him
to emphasize the informal positions he had taken on the war, most nota-
bly the now-famous speech he made in Springfield where he expressed his
disapproval of the war inIraq.
Poole (2007); and Tomz and Van Houweling (2009). Though see Croco and Gartner
(2014).
56 McGraw et al. 1996: 269.
57 Second presidential debate (2004).
When the two came head to head in the Democratic presidential pri-
mary in 2008, Obamas image as the candidate who had consistently
been against the war drew attention to the fact that Clinton had changed
her position over the past six years. This difference between them quickly
became a central issue in the primary race and a source of great conster-
nation for the Clinton campaign. On the one hand, adopting an antiwar
position made sense for a Democrat running for office in 2008. The war
had become far more unpopular than it was in 2004, especially among
Democrats. Moreover, the news out of Baghdad was not encouraging;
the rising tolls of American military and Iraqi civilian casualties served as
daily reminders that the war was not going well. Given these two things,
and the salience of the conflict, not opposing the war would likely hurt
Clintons chances at the polls. On the other hand, going from being a sup-
porter to an active opponent could also cost her votes, especially because
a consistently nonculpable alternative Obama existed.
Concerns about looking wishy-washy plagued Clinton and her advi-
sors. In their chronicle of the 2008 election, Game Change, Heilemann
and Halperin (2010: 44) claimed that within the Clinton campaign,
internal deliberations over how to handle the situation consumed doz-
ens upon dozens of meetings and conference calls; her people debated
the matter endlessly but never reached a conclusion. Mark Penn, one
of the campaigns chief strategy architects, was vehemently against her
recanting her earlier vote, claiming his polling shows that sticking to
her guns on Iraq played to her advantage as a character issue.58 Clinton
agreed. She was opposed to the idea of needing to apologize for her
earlier stance and knew that, if she reversed herself now, she would be
buying a one-way ticket to Kerryville:the GOP would tattoo her fore-
head with the lethal flip-flopper label.59
In the end, Obamas persistence in highlighting their differences on
the war forced her to tack left, but by this point it was too late. Antiwar
Democrats across the country had made it clear that they saw Obamas
lack of culpability as a major asset, and, state by state, gave him the nom-
ination over Clinton. If the fates of the Kerry and Clinton campaigns
are at all indicative of a more general trend, there are costs to switching,
even if doing so brings the politician more in line with public opinion.
While these two campaigns are not directly comparable to congressional
races because they took place on a national scale (and thus received far
58 Heilemann and Halperin (2010:40).

more public scrutiny), the general problem of shedding the culpability

that comes with an earlier expression of support is relevant for all mem-
bers of the legislature.60
The potential costs of flipping, however, are not the only thing that
supporters need to consider when contemplating a switch. Indeed, even
if the costs of changing were negligible, the question of which specific
antiwar position a supporter should adopt remains. This problem is com-
mon during wars because the portion of the population that is against
the war is rarely homogenous in terms of why they are opposed to the
war or what they think leaders should do. Some citizens may want total
and immediate withdrawal while others might want the war handled dif-
ferently (e.g., more offers of negotiations, additional international over-
sight). Still other citizens might fall somewhere in between. All of these
antiwar voters will likely agree that the status quo is unacceptable, but
will agree on very little beyond that in terms of the particular policies
theyd like political elites to pursue.
In situations like this, the safest political option for supporters is to
treat the war as a valence issue that is, to assert that they are against the
policies of the current administration regarding the war, without commit-
ting to a specific alternative course of action. This allows them to posi-
tion themselves among the antiwar crowd without locking themselves
into a particular policy that either (a)might not satisfy a large number
of voters or (b)might come back to haunt them later. This strategy is not
uncommon. During the Korean War, for instance, the Republican oppo-
sition used it against Truman and his fellow Democrats. The war was
taking a toll on the presidents popularity, and the Republicans knew they
had a chance to take back the White House if they could frame the war
as something Democrats were for and they were against. As Stokes
(1963:373)put it in his discussion of this era, both in Republican pro-
paganda and popular understanding the issue was simply a matter of the
60 As Karol (2009) points out, some circumstances necessitate a position switch. Politicians
who want to keep in line with their partys evolving platform, e.g., or those who are
trying to appeal to a larger constituency (e.g., moving from being a governor to a presi-
dential candidate) may need to revise their earlier positions to remain electorally viable.
While Karol focuses on gradual shifts over time on general issues (e.g., abortion, gun
control), the same logic was likely the motivation behind several Democratic supporters
who switched between 2002 and 2006. The larger point is that they face a trade-off:not
switching only reinforces their association with an increasingly unpopular policy, but
allows them to look consistent. Biting the bullet and switching, by contrast, opens them
up to the flip-flopper label but also creates the possibility of capturing votes they
would have otherwiselost.
Democrats having gotten the country into a war from which Eisenhower
would extract us whether by bombing Manchuria or evacuating South
Korea was not made clear (emphasis added).
Republicans in 1952 could have made the war a positional issue
very quickly by uniting behind a single alternative, but there was no good
reason for doing so. Simply emphasizing that Truman was responsible
for the conflict (an easy feat given his clear culpability for it) was suffi-
cient to direct citizens ire toward him and his associates and away from
Republicans. Refraining from suggesting a different course of action also
gave Republicans continued flexibility going into the 1952 general elec-
tion. The incentive to avoid being burdened with a commitment to a new
course of action combined with the potential cost of switching serves as
a powerful counter to the strong desire of legislators to appear respon-
sive to the desires of their constituents. The net outcome of this struggle
is that supporters will oppose the war but not to the same extent as their
nonculpablepeers.
Consequences of Congressional Culpability:The War inIraq

The preceding subsections argued that associates and supporters will
both be less willing to back antiwar legislation than completely noncul-
pable members, even if the war has become unpopular. While this was
evident from the results in Part1, the rationale for why these types refrain
from opposing the war outright is now clearer. Inow explore these find-
ings from a slightly different angle (i.e., comparing the percentages of the
different legislator types who supported the bills) to determine what this
means for the legislatures ability to provide a meaningful check on the
executive.
If the logic regarding supporters and associates is correct, the task of
opposing the war will fall to the one group that has most the political
freedom to take action, nonculpable members. This group is a mix of
two different types of legislators:those who were present when the war
began and who voted against it and nonassociates who join the ranks of
the legislature during the war who are from the nonculpable party (here-
after NP for not present at the time of the original vote). These are
the only two types of leaders who do not face a potential for backlash for
firmly opposing the war, and consequently should account for the bulk of
the yes votes on the antiwar bills Idiscussed in Part1.
Figures 5.3 and 5.4 provide strong support for this empirical
expectation.
80
60
Percent
40
20
0
Bill 1 Bill 2 Bill 3 Bill 4 Bill 5 Bill 6
Supportive Associate (R, Y)

Supportive Nonassociate (D, Y)
Nonsupportive Associate (R, N/NP)
Nonsupportive Nonassociate (D, N/NP)
FIGURE5.3. Voting for Antiwar Bills by Legislator Type (House of Representatives).
80
60
Percent
40
20
0
Bill 1 Bill 2 Bill 3 Bill 4
Supportive Associate (R, Y)

Supportive Nonassociate (D, Y)
Nonsupportive Associate (R, N/NP)
Nonsupportive Nonassociate (D, N/NP)
FIGURE5.4. Voting for Antiwar Bills by Legislator Type (Senate).
As is evident from both figures, for every bill, nonsupportive nonasso-

ciates (represented by the white bars) account for well more than half of
the votes for legislation that attempted to either end the war or constrain
Bush. Critically, this is true for both chambers of Congress and for several
years. Many of the bills in the House, for instance, occur in 2007, several
years after the war started. While not all of these bills passed, none of
them would have had a chance of succeeding were it not for the group of
legislators who lacked any culpability for thewar.
The comparisons to the other types of legislators are also notewor-
thy. First, although perhaps not that surprisingly, neither of the associate
types ever supports the antiwar bills in large numbers. This is true regard-
less of whether the legislator was in Congress at the time and voted yes
on the war (the darkest gray bars), was in Congress and voted no, or
came into Congress later on the same ticket as the culpable executive
(the lightest gray bars represent these latter two types). The bars depict-
ing these leader types are miniscule by comparison to the nonsupportive
nonassociates. Indeed, for some bills, no associates of any type voted yes
(bills 1 and 3 in the Senate,for example).
Turning to the bars representing supportive nonassociates (i.e.,
Democrats who voted yes in 2002), we see that they are often higher than
those of associates. This suggests that it is possible for a supporter to shed
the constraints of culpability. The relative size of their contribution to
each bill, however, is still smaller than that of their nonsupportive coun-
terparts. This, again, points to the continuum of culpability Isuggested.
Supporters who lack associational ties are more likely to join the antiwar
group than associates, but, as Figures5.3 and 5.4 make clear, members
who are completely without culpability will contribute the lions share of
the support for each of the antiwar bills. This makes sense as they are the
ones who are the least constrained, either by their party or their earlier
vote, and the ones who have the incentive to call attention to an executive
who is not acting in the best interests of the public.
The role played by nonculpable legislators is important to under-
score in any discussion of Congress ability to check a culpable executive
because this legislator type is likely to be a very small group for a large
percentage of the war. The rationale behind this claim has two parts.
First, as Ihave discussed at different points throughout the book, execu-
tives are strategic about the wars they decide to participate in, and will
only select into those that they expect will receive broad domestic sup-
port, at least initially. For democratic leaders, this means picking wars
that the majority of the legislature will be willing to support (Schultz
2001). This has the consequence of stocking the legislature with a large
number of culpable members, often from both parties. This means the
group of prowar members will start out large relative to the group of dis-
senters. Second, given the strong incumbency advantage and the resulting
low turnover rate, the lopsided distribution of culpable versus noncul-

pable legislators is not likely to change very much over time because
infusions of new blood, for either party, are few and far between. Even
with what was widely regarded as a rout for the Republicans in 2006 to
determine who would serve in the 110th Congress, only 20percent of the
Democrats were newcomers. This general lack of turnover means that a
culpable majority will retain veto authority for a considerable amount
oftime.
This pattern is not particular to the Iraq war. For every major war the
United States has participated in since World War II, culpable majori-
ties persist across multiple years, and, by extension, multiple sessions of
Congress. Figure5.5 depicts the distribution of associates and supporters
(defined as those who voted to authorize the war when it began) in both
houses of Congress for these wars.61 The black line (which corresponds
with the y-axis on the right of each figure) represents the percent of the
population that supported the war at a particular point intime.
Several aspects of these graphs are worthy of mention. First, apart
from the war in Iraq, which only received support from 68percent of the
members in the House and 77percent in the Senate, most wars start out
with remarkably high levels of support. This reinforces the point Imade
that executives will be selective about the wars they decide to participate
in, and only pick those they are confident will receive large amounts of
support. This has the effect of creating a substantial culpable majority
that will be difficult to remove quickly. The historical record bears this
out. Of the thirty-eight wartime chambers shown previously, the per-
centage of members who are supporters dips below 50percent only four
times:the 93rd session of the House in Vietnam, the 110th and 111th
sessions of the House in Iraq, and the 111th session of the Senate.62 All of
these minorities, importantly, only developed after their respective wars
had been in progress for many years. The fact that it commonly takes
such a long time to whittle down the group of culpable legislators is
61 I do not include a figure for the Persian Gulf War of 19901 because it did not span
multiple congressional sessions. Idid not include a figure for World War II because there
is a lack of data on whether people approved of the war from various points during the
conflict. Pollsters were very active during World War II (see, e.g., Berinsky 2009), but did
not ask questions about peoples opinion on the conflict consistently. Instead, questions
focused on other things, such as the postwar world order and Americas roleinit.
62 The number of associates, of course, will typically be considerably lower than the num-
ber of supporters because one party rarely holds an overwhelming majority of the seats
in either chamber. What is important is the slow rate at which the number of associates
declines from the numbers at the beginning of thewar.
Korea Korea
House of Representatives Senate
Percent of Public Supporting the War

1 1 1 1
Production Culpable by Type

.75 .75 .75 .75
5 5 5 5
.25 .25 .25 .25
0 0 0 0
81 (1950) 82 (1951) 83 (1953) 81 (1950) 82 (1951) 83 (1953)
Congressional Session (Year) Congressional Session (Year)
Associate Supporter Associate Supporter
Vietnam Vietnam

1 1 1 1

.75 .75 .75 .75
5 5 5 5
.25 .25 .25 .25
0 0 0 0
88 (1964) 89 (1965) 90 (1967) 91 (1969) 92 (1971) 93 (1973) 88 (1964) 89 (1965) 90 (1967) 91 (1969) 92 (1971) 93 (1973)
Afghanistan Afghanistan

1 1 1 1
.75 .75 .75 .75
5 5 5 5
.25 .25 .25 .25
0 0 0 0
107 (2001) 108 (2003) 109 (2005) 110 (2007) 111 (2009) 107 (2001) 108 (2003) 109 (2005) 110 (2007) 111 (2009)
Iraq Iraq
1 1 1 1
.75 .75 .75 .75
5 5 5 5
.25 .25 .25 .25
0 0 0 0
107 (2001) 108 (2003) 109 (2005) 110 (2007) 111 (2009) 107 (2001) 108 (2003) 109 (2005) 110 (2007) 111 (2009)
FIGURE 5.5.The Distribution of Different Types of Culpable Members of

Congress during Wartime.
striking. The importance of this pattern increases when we examine how

it tracks with trends in public opinion on the different wars. With rare
exception, public support for the wars falls faster than the percentage of
the legislature that is culpable, regardless of which proxy for culpability
weuse.63
Conclusion
The findings discussed in this chapter have serious implications for how
we think about the relationship between the executive and the legislature
in times of war. Others have made the argument that the legislature has
the institutional tools to reign in the executive, and that we should not
assume it is merely a rubber stamp. The argument advanced here does
not challenge this notion. Instead, it underscores an important aspect of
legislators that scholars in this literature have yet to fully consider:cul-
pability. As the preceding discussion made clear, only one type of legisla-
tor one who is neither a supporter nor an associate will be completely
free of any pressures to vote against antiwar legislation.
This chapter also suggested that culpability is best thought of as a
continuum in the context of the legislature. Nonculpable members are
the most likely to vote for antiwar legislation, with supporters (who are
not associates) being less likely and associates being least likely of all.
Evidence of this pattern emerged in terms of both punishment and legis-
lator behavior. Associates are far more likely to be punished than nonas-
sociates, regardless of their position on the war. Supportive nonassociates,
by contrast, faced the potential for punishment which manifested in
several notable primary races but generally retain office. In terms of
voting for antiwar bills, a similar trend emerged. Associates almost never
vote for legislation that challenges the war or the executive. Supporters
are more likely to do so, but are still significantly less likely than non-
culpable members. This final set of findings represents the crux of the
chapters contribution because it suggests that the legislatures ability to
check the executive will be directly related to the proportion of the body
that lacks culpability. So long as culpable majorities especially those
comprised of associates remain, stopping a war through institutional
means will be a tallorder.
63 The exception, of course, is the war in Afghanistan, which, until recently, enjoyed high
levels of support among the population.
6
Conclusion
This book began with a puzzle:Why do leaders elect to continue fighting

wars they are likely to lose? Why, for instance, did George W.Bush stay
the course in Iraq despite a growing insurgent threat and widespread
dissent regarding at home? Why did Harry Truman keep U.S.forces in
Korea, despite an abysmal domestic approval rating and a low likelihood
of emerging victorious? These cases are even more puzzling when one
considers that both of these leaders successors Barack Obama and
Dwight Eisenhower abruptly ended these conflicts soon after taking
office. What explains this variation in leader behavior?
I offer a simple, yet powerful theory. Culpable leaders that is, those
leaders whom the domestic audience sees as responsible for the conflict
will have strong incentives to avoid settling for anything less than a win.
This incentive exists because losing a war significantly increases the like-
lihood that a culpable leader will fall from power. Nonculpable leaders
do not face this issue. When a nonculpable leader realizes that they are
likely to lose a war, their best strategy is to cut their losses and end the
conflict, even if doing so means accepting terms short of victory. Their
distance from the original decision to involve the state in the war affords
them this flexibility. Because the public will not blame them if the war
turns out poorly, they can walk away from the conflict and direct the
resources elsewhere.
In Chapter 2, I developed the theory behind why culpability should
matter for both leaders and citizens. Ibegan with some simple assump-
tions about each actor. For leaders, Iassumed their primary goal was to
remain in power and that they enjoy an informational advantage over
the citizens in the realm of foreign policy. In terms of citizens, Iassumed
168
Conclusion 169
that they would want competent leaders who made choices with the pub-
lics best interests at heart. Ialso assumed that the citizens would bear
the brunt of the costs of war while leaders would remain safely above
thefray.
None of these assumptions are particularly novel. When viewed in
combination, however, they highlight the circumstances that make it pos-
sible for a principal agent problem to develop between a leader and his
citizens. If citizens find themselves in a war they are likely to lose, they
will be upset both because they must pay the costs for the policy blunder
and because the folly suggests their leader is incompetent. Under these
circumstances, a leader must either prove himself to be competent or the
domestic audience will attempt to remove him. Some leaders in this sit-
uation will act as unfaithful agents, and keep the state in the war, in the
hopes they can eventually eke out a win and save their job. This scenario
is obviously bad for citizens because it subjects them to further costs in
service of the leaders self-interest. In other words, the leader is desperate
to demonstrate his competence by winning the conflict, but his citizens
will pay the price for his gamble for resurrection.
This conflict of interest, however, is not inevitable. While some lead-
ers will choose to be unfaithful agents, others will act faithfully and
end the war in accordance with their citizens wishes. What accounts
for this variation? The answer, Iargued, lies in a new argument Imade
about citizens: namely, that citizens will only want to punish leaders
who are responsible for creating poor war outcomes. Provided the citi-
zens (or members of the relevant domestic audience in nondemocra-
cies) are able to determine which leaders were party to the decision to
involve the state in the war, they will limit their punishment to these
culpable leaders.
As Idescribed previously, this creates different incentive structures for
culpable and nonculpable leaders. It is in a culpable leaders best inter-
est to be an unfaithful agent to their domestic audience when the war is
going poorly, because staying in the war on the off chance that they will
win represents their only opportunity to demonstrate to the citizens
that the decision to go to war was (ultimately) a good one. Admitting
defeat leaves them open to accusations of incompetence and puts their
future tenure in office in jeopardy. Nonculpable leaders, by contrast, can
walk away from the conflict because they know the domestic audience
does not have the same incentive to remove them. Citizens assessments
of their competence do not hinge on the wars outcome as much as it does
for culpable leaders.
The remainder of the book was dedicated to testing the empirical

implications suggested by the theory. Ibegan with the citizen portion
of the argument in Chapter 3. I found strong support for the notion
that citizens will punish culpable leaders who lose wars while sparing
nonculpable leaders who preside over similarly poor outcomes. Across
a multitude of tests, culpable leaders who lost always faced a much
higher probability of losing office because of the war compared to their
nonculpable counterparts, whose likelihood of losing power was no dif-
ferent from that of the leaders who won their wars. This finding is tell-
ing not only because it illustrates that the two leader types face vastly
different pressures to succeed, but also because it demonstrates that
the wars outcome is not the sole determinant of a domestic audiences
desire to punish, as is commonly assumed in the literature.
Chapter 3 also explored factors that might condition the effect of
culpability:the leaders regime type, the amount of time a replacement
leader stayed in the conflict after coming to power, and the war aims of
the adversary. Ifound regime type to have a strong conditioning effect.
All culpable leaders who lose, regardless of their regime, are more likely
to be punished than otherwise-similar nonculpable leaders. But culpable
democratic leaders who lose are significantly more likely to be punished
than culpable nondemocratic leaders.
Chapter3 closed with a case illustration of Italys experience in World
War I.The Italian story is a telling one because it demonstrates both how
culpability creates pressures for leaders to follow through on their war
aims and how it provides citizens with an incentive to punish those who
fail to do so. All three of Italys leaders were culpable, all three either pre-
sided over military setbacks or failed to secure all of Italys goals, and
all three lost power because of the war. The removal of the final leader,
Vittorio Orlando, is particularly important because the wars settlement,
which he agreed to, technically amounted to a win for Italy. But because it
did not include additional territory that Orlandos predecessor, the wars
first leader, Antonio Salandra, had promised, Orlando returned from the
Paris peace negotiations to face an angry domestic audience. Existing theo-
ries would have a difficult time accounting for this case because they do not
provide a means to predict when the pressure to secure previously stated
war aims will extend beyond the first leader. This oversight is consequential
because, as Idemonstrate elsewhere in the book, a perceived need to fulfill
the goals of ones predecessor(s) has a profound effect on leader behavior.
Chapter4 focused on this issue directly when Iinvestigated whether con-
flicts prosecuted by culpable leaders were different than those conducted
Conclusion 171
under the leadership of nonculpable ones. As the theory predicted, sev-

eral differences emerged. First, in terms of the basic relationship, culpable
leaders are significantly more likely to preside over wins than nonculpable
leaders. This relationship was robust, even in the presence of several con-
trols that the existing literature has demonstrated are key predictors of a
wars outcome (e.g., initiation, balance of military capabilities).
I also explored the possibility that this effect might be stronger for
democratic leaders. It is. Culpable democratic leaders are more likely to
secure victories than culpable nondemocratic leaders. This result makes
sense in light of the findings from Chapter3, which indicated that dem-
ocratic, culpable leaders face a higher likelihood of punishment in the
event of aloss.
Being able to secure victories is a good thing. Indeed, one could argue
that citizens may want a culpable leader at the helm because it increases
the likelihood of a good outcome. As Iargued in the chapter, however, this
ignores the potential for a significant downside to culpability. Namely,
that culpability may drive leaders to stay in wars too long and at too great
a cost for citizens. Ifound a great deal of support for this notion; culpa-
ble leaders are more likely to preside over more extreme outcomes, both
good and bad. This means that while the incentive to stay in the war and
fight until victory may pay off in some instances, in others it may back-
fire and leave the state (and its citizens) in a worse condition than if the
leader had agreed to settle for a loss earlier. Chapter4 closed with a short
vignette of Argentinas experience in the Falklands war, which illustrated
the culpable leaders tendency to stay too long, and a longer case illustra-
tion drawn from Australias participation in the Vietnam War. Australia
made for an interesting case because it involved six different leaders; the
first five were culpable and the last, Gough Whitham, was not. All of the
leaders behaved precisely as the theory would predict. The five culpable
leaders all promoted the war, despite the fact that public support began to
wane quickly. The nonculpable leader, by contrast, was the only one who
embraced the citizens calls for Australia to withdraw completely from
the conflict in Southeast Asia. This case was also interesting because, in
contrast to the Italy case illustration, Australias participation in Vietnam
was on a much smaller scale. Australia had no territorial ambitions, nor
was her territory directly threatened. Despite these relatively low stakes,
however, the first five leaders were willing to defy public opinion and stay
in the conflict. This reluctance to leave a conflict does not square with
the existing literatures expectations for democratic leaders, but aligns
perfectly with my predictions for how culpable leaders should behave.
Chapter 5 served as the final substantive chapter and represented a

shift from the focus on interactions between the executive and the citizens
to another relevant political actor:the legislature. The goal of this chap-
ter was to determine whether culpability had an effect on the behavior of
political elites outside of the executive branch. While the executive is of
obvious importance to any discussion of war termination, scholars have
made the case for the relevance of the legislature, especially in terms of
its ability to check the executive and curtail funding for the conflict. With
this in mind, Iexamined how members of Congress voted on bills that
attempted to curtail the war in Iraq over several congressional sessions.
Using the legislature as a testing ground also allowed me to revisit the
question of whether leaders who had supported the war would behave
the same way as those who were culpable for the conflict by political
association. I first mentioned this possibility in Chapter 3, but when
I explored it empirically in that chapters Appendix, I found that sup-
porters were not as likely to be punished for losing as associates or first
leaders. The possibility remained, however, that a track record of support
would matter more in Congress because voting is seen as the legislators
primary function and the votes would leave a very clear paper trail that
would make it easy to identify the legislator as a supporter.
The chapter unfolded over three parts. The first part focused on voting
behavior. After specifying a model that included variables for associates
(i.e., Republicans) and supporters (i.e., those who had voted for the war
when it began) along with several known predictors of legislator vote
choice, Ifound that the effect of being an associate dominates the effect
of being a supporter. Republicans across the board were nearly uniform
in their unwillingness to vote for antiwar bills. Democratic legislators
who had supported the war were also less likely to support such pieces
of legislation, but this effect was far smaller than the effect for associates.
Having considered the effects of culpability on the behavior of polit-
ical elites, Inext turned to an investigation of how culpability affected
citizens willingness to remove leaders from office. Once again, being cul-
pable for the war through a political connection to the first leader was a
strong predictor of punishment. During the midterm elections of 2006,
Republicans were pummeled at the polls because of their ties to George
W.Bush and the war. Democrats who had supported the war, by contrast,
escaped relatively unscathed.
Chapter 5 closed with a discussion of what these legislature results
mean in terms of how we think about the relationship between wars and
the domestic political structures of democratic states. My central point
Conclusion 173
was that if there is any legislative action taken to try to rein in the exec-
utive, it will most likely start with members who have no ties to the war.
Unfortunately, as Idemonstrated in the chapter, it often takes a very long
time for a sizeable bloc of such legislators to emerge. This makes it dif-
ficult to pass strong antiwar bills, which in turn limits the ability of the
legislature to act as an effective counterweight to a culpable executive.
Culpability and Recent U.S. ForeignPolicy

The conclusions I discuss in this book are based on analyses of hun-
dreds of warring leaders spanning nearly two hundred years of history.
How well, though, do these explanations fare when trying account for
the behavior of leaders (and citizens) in the two wars that dominated
American foreign policy for the first part of the twenty-first century? As
Inoted in the introduction, George W.Bushs behavior in the war in Iraq
epitomized the theorys expectations for a culpable leader. His unwaver-
ing commitment to the conflicts (especially the war in Iraq), his will-
ingness to double-down and deepen American involvement by adding
more troops with the surge, and his refusal to acknowledge, much less
respond to, public dissent, are precisely what we would expect from a
leader whom the public sees as responsible for the states involvement in
thewar.
Although it is true that Bush signed the status of forces agreement
(SOFA) in December 2008 that codified American intentions to leave Iraq
by December 2011, it is important to understand both his position on
this matter in the months leading up to the agreement and the larger
political context of the time. To say Bush was reluctant to implement
the SOFA would be an understatement. For years he had refused to even
consider timelines for withdrawal calling them dangerous.1 It was only
when the UN mandate was drawing to a close and the nascent Iraqi gov-
ernment made it clear it was growing tired of the American militarys
presence that he agreed to discuss a general time horizon that eventu-
ally produced the agreement.2
Indeed, even after he left office, Bush continued to remind people that
he did not see the SOFA as a definitive end to the war. In his recounting
of the events surrounding the agreement in his memoirs, for instance, he
emphasized the conditional nature of it and his lingering skepticism. As
1 Myers (2008).
2 Ibid.
he notes:For years Ihad refused to set an arbitrary timetable for leaving

Iraq. Iwas still hesitant. . . . If conditions changed and Iraqis requested a
continued American presence in the country, we could amend the SOFA
and keep the troops in the country.3 While it is impossible to know what
Bush was thinking at the time, all available evidence suggests that the
SOFA was not his preferred policy. It was not, in other words, a politi-
cal escape hatch purposely created by a leader trying to end a war he no
longer wanted tofight.
Bushs behavior during the war and the manner in which he handled
the SOFA are consistent with what we would expect from a culpable
leader. He continued to fight the war, despite growing public dissent
and mounting costs, and agreed to a draw down only reluctantly. These
actions stand in sharp contrast to those of his successor, Barack Obama,
who was not culpable for this conflict. Instead, Obama took care to
emphasize his opposition to the war repeatedly and, vowed to pursue a
strict phased timetable for withdrawing most combat troops from Iraq.4
Statements like these, coupled with Obamas lack of political ties to Bush,
distanced Obama from the war in the eyes of Americans and interna-
tional observersalike.
In the wake of the 2008 presidential election, for instance, the Iraqis
were quick to recognize the significance of the fact that a nonculpable
leader would soon be living in the White House. On November 7, a mere
three days after Obama beat Republican John McCain, there was already
evidence of a marked shift in how confident Iraqi politicians were that the
SOFA would be observed. According to Hadi al-Ameri, a member of the
Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, a major Shiite party, Before, the Iraqis
were thinking that if they sign the pact, there [would] be no respect for the
schedule of troop withdrawal by Dec. 31, 2011. If Republicans were still
there, there would be no respect for this timetable.5 The Iraqis, in other
words, assumed McCain would have similar incentives to Bush regarding
the war based solely on the fact that the two belonged to the same party.
Even though McCain publically supported the terms outlined in the SOFA,
the fact that he was an associate of Bushs, and the culpability this implied,
made him less credible than Obama on the issue of ending thewar.
Once in office, Obama continued to act like a leader unencumbered by
the bonds of culpability with respect to the war in Iraq. On his first day
3 Bush (2010:390).
4 Myers (2008).
5 Rubin (2008). Emphasismine.
Conclusion 175
on the job he had his national security team perform a comprehensive

review of our strategy in Iraq.6 Over the next few months he gave sev-
eral speeches reminding the public that he planned on bringing the war
to a close.7 Then, on August 31, 2010, he declared, the combat mission
in Iraq has ended. Some commentators did not know what to make of
this. As Washington Post staff writer Anne Kornblut opined, The speech
came at a seemingly arbitrary moment, on a deadline set by Obama him-
self and unrelated to any progress on the ground in Iraq, where a govern-
ment has not been formed and deadly violence shatters daily life.8
While Kornblut characterizes the timing of the speech as arbitrary,
the fact that it was not tied to what was happening on the ground in
Iraq makes perfect sense given Obamas lack of culpability. Unlike Bush,
who was careful to justify any move toward withdrawing with evidence
of improvement in Iraq to ensure it did not come across as a retreat,
Obama did not need to worry as much about potentially coming across
as someone who was losing a war. His lack of association with Bushs
war gave him the freedom to end the conflict quickly. This is not to
say that Obama was completely immune from the pressures to make the
withdrawal responsibly and to convey to the public that he was doing so.
While he moved quickly, he consulted the military leaders about how best
to execute the draw down.9 He also made sure to underscore the progress
U.S.forces had made toward making Iraq more secure.
The point remains, however, that large differences likely exist between
how Obama handled of the draw down of American forces out of Iraq
and how John McCain would have handled matters had he won in 2008.
Indeed, throughout the campaign McCain made a point of distinguish-
ing his position on the future of Iraq from Obamas, noting multiple
times that he would not tie himself to a deadline for withdrawing forces
from the region.10 All in all, the expectations for culpable leaders, be they
first leaders (like Bush) or associates (like McCain) are evident in the
American experience in the war inIraq.
But what happens when we consider the war in Afghanistan? As with
the war in Iraq, Bush serves as a textbook case he stayed in the war,
despite bleak prospects of victory, for many years. Obamas approach to
6 Obama (2009).
7 E.g., see speeches made on February 24, February 27, and March 16,2009.
8 Kornblut (2010).
9 Baker (2010).
10 McCain Says He Could Support 16-Month Iraq Timetable (July 29, 2008)and Bacon
(2008).
the war, however, cannot be classified as simplistically. Although his lack

of a partisan connection to Bush makes him a nonculpable leader, Obama
did not leave the war soon after taking office, which is what we would we
expect a nonculpable leader to do. Instead, Obama stayed in the conflict,
and even increased the number of American troops in his own version of
the surge. Moreover, he did all of this against the backdrop of decreasing
public support for the conflict and calls to end the war from members of
his ownparty.
Obamas actions raise an important question for the theory:if he was
not culpable for the war in Afghanistan, why did he behave this way?
Why not cut his losses and move on to other items on his agenda, as he
did with Iraq? The answer, Iargue, speaks to a possibility Iraised ear-
lier in the book:namely, that other factors might condition the effect of
a leaders lack of culpability. Idiscussed four factors. The first two are
contextual (the leader has a history of support for the conflict or the state
is facing an aggressive adversary), while the latter two pertain to choices
the leader makes once she takes office (escalating the war or staying in
the conflict for a long time after taking power).11 All four together have
the potential to make a nonculpable leader act more like a culpable one.
While Ifound scant empirical evidence that any of these factors increased
a nonculpable leaders chances of punishment in a systematic or signifi-
cant way, it is possible that the presences of multiple factors might create
pressure for the leader to succeed.
This possibility bears repeating because all four factors are present
in Obamas case. As Imentioned previously, he had a long track record
of supporting the war in Afghanistan. During his first presidential cam-
paign in 2008, he frequently drew a comparison between the two wars,
taking care to emphasize that the conflict in Afghanistan was the more
worthy of the two. This tactic almost certainly had political motivations.
Framing Afghanistan as the good war allowed Obama to create the
narrative that Bush and, by implication, Bushs fellow Republican (and
Obamas opponent) John McCain had mistakenly redirected resources
11 The presence of the first two factors has the potential to increase the likelihood that the
leader will engage in the second two, but this is not always the case. Of the fifteen non-
culpable leaders who supported the war, only four go on to escalate once taking office
and less than half stay in for more than a year. Likewise, of the twenty-two nonculpable
leaders who inherit a war against an aggressive adversary, there are five instances of lead-
ers escalating and five leaders who stay in more than a year (Van Thieu of Vietnam is the
only one who doesboth).
Conclusion 177
away from it in favor of Iraq, which at that point the public largely
perceived as a debacle. This strategy had the perhaps-unintended side
effect, however, of giving Obama a great deal of airtime on the subject
of Afghanistan. This may have made it more difficult for Obama to end
the war in Afghanistan immediately upon coming to office, as he did
with the war inIraq.
Obama may have also felt like he needed to stay in the war because of
the nature of the adversary. While Al Qaeda was not an aggressive adver-
sary in the traditional sense because they were not seeking to overthrow
the government or annex a large piece of territory, it was still responsi-
ble for carrying out a terrorist attack that killed thousands of U.S.citi-
zens on American soil. This forced the U.S.government to take Al Qaeda
just as seriously as it would a more conventional, aggressive opponent.
Indeed, Al Qaedas unconventional (i.e., nonstate actor) nature poten-
tially made it even more threatening because the nebulous structure of
a terrorist group meant it was difficult to find and neutralize the orga-
nization. Moreover, the fact that the victims of Al Qaedas attacks were
citizens, as opposed to military personnel, made the salience of the con-
flict and Americans desires for retribution skyrocket. These aspects of Al
Qaeda, taken together with his earlier endorsement of the war, may have
prompted Obama to bring the other two factors into play when he came
to power. As Inoted previously, he stayed in the war for years after taking
office, and sent more troops to the region in2009.
In sum, while Obamas actions initially appear to run counter to
the theorys predictions, his decision to stay in the war makes sense
given the circumstances surrounding the conflict. It is also worth noting
that Obamas situation in Afghanistan is unique in that he is the only
leader to have all four factors that could potentially make a noncul-
pable leader seem like a culpable one.12 No other leader has inherited a
war they supported against an aggressive adversary and then gone on
not only to escalate but also stay in the conflict for a prolonged period
12 Of the 396 leaders in the data set, only six nonculpable leaders faced an aggressive adver-
sary in a war they had a record of supporting. Three of these leaders fought in the War
of the Pacific. The remaining three leaders were involved in world wars. Of these, only
three stayed in the war for more than a year after taking office (all three were in the War
of the Pacific). None of the six escalated. The unwillingness of these leaders to stay in the
wars or take actions that would bring them ownership of them demonstrates the point
Imade in earlier chapters about how nonculpable leaders should try to get out of wars
quickly and do nothing to make people associate them with the conflicts. The fact that
Obama engaged in both behaviors points to the exceptional nature of thiscase.
of time. Given this, we should not be surprised that his behavior does
not align precisely with the general patterns of leader behavior in the
larger dataset.
All that being said, the American publics reaction to Obamas perfor-
mance on the Afghanistan issue does follow the theorys predictions. That
is to say, while he may be behaving like a culpable leader, the public does
not treat him like one. As Scott Clement of The Washington Post noted
in mid-2011, even though many Democrats would like to see the war in
Afghanistan end, Obamas approval for handling Afghanistan has never
fallen below 60 percent among Democrats since he entered office, and
stands at 71 percent in [a]recent poll.13 Obama also won reelection
in 2012. This is hardly the outcome we would expect if the public was
upset with him over how he was handling the war they thought he was
responsible for. Other factors, of course, contributed to Obamas win-
ning a second term. The death of Al Qaedas leader, Osama bin Laden, in
May 2011, for instance, gave Obamas popularity a significant bump,14
and provided him with an example of a foreign policy success in the
war.15 But the fact remains that by November 2012, Obama had kept the
United States in an increasingly unpopular war for more than four years
after taking office. This decision had cost him some political capital, to be
sure, but he did not lose power for it. Indeed, foreign policy was widely
considered one of his strongest areas.16
Refraining from punishment is the exact reaction we would expect
the public to have to a leader they regarded as nonculpable. Even though
Obama was not winning in Afghanistan, his position was safe because
people still associated the war with Bush. Indeed, even as late as July
2010, a poll of Americans had, 60percent say Bush is primarily respon-
sible for the current situation in Afghanistan. Just 10 percent point to
Obama, who has ordered 51,000 additional troops to that country since
taking office, doubling the number deployed by Bush.17 As these num-
bers make clear, culpability is a characteristic that is hard for leaders to
not only shed but to also acquire if they lack the necessary political asso-
ciations. Obama did everything in his power to own the war, yet in the
eyes of the American public it still belonged toBush.
13 Clement (2011).
14 Good (2011).
15 How Obama Won Re-election (November 7,2012).
16 Lichtman and Schmemann (2012).
17 McCormick and Dodge (2010). Emphasisadded.
Conclusion 179
Implications forTheory
The theory of leader culpability and the associated empirical findings
have several implications for how scholars think about international
conflict. First, it tells us that we simply cannot continue to classify lead-
ers by regime type alone. Instead, we need to consider also whether a
leader is culpable for the war if we want to understand his or her behav-
ior. As Chapter2 argued, and Chapter3 demonstrated, culpable leaders
will have much stronger incentives than nonculpable leaders to continue
prosecuting a war until they achieve victory, regardless of their regime
type. Recognizing this fact allows us to make much more nuanced predic-
tions about different types of leaders. Knowing a leaders regime type and
culpability tells us far more than regime typealone.
Thinking beyond regime type also helps us see that we need to be con-
cerned both with the static political structures that define a regime as well
as the domestic political wartime dynamics that unfold during the war.
Changes in leadership that take place during the conflict can have dra-
matic effects on the states participation in the war if the change brings
a nonculpable leader to power. Ignoring these changes is tantamount to
assuming that all leaders of the same regime type will have the same
incentives with respect to the war. We know, however, that this is not
the case. Culpable leaders will behave very differently than nonculpable
ones, even if they operate within the same set of domestic institutions.
Recognizing that otherwise-similar leaders will have different incen-
tives regarding the conflict is also useful in helping us to understand why
some leaders gamble for resurrection while others accept the loss in the
current time period. The extant literature acknowledges that not all lead-
ers will choose to stay in wars when victory looks unlikely, but explana-
tions for the variation fall short. Some, for instance, argue that leaders
who inherit wars should feel less pressure to gamble than their predeces-
sors who started the conflict. Others suggest that leaders of a certain type
(mixed regimes) will be more prone to gambling. Explanations like this
are incomplete. The first (correctly) posits that first leaders will feel the
need to win, but misses the fact that a subset of successor leaders will
also feel this same pressure. The second can account for some leaders of
mixed regimes who engaged in risky behaviors to try to win a war, but
cannot explain why some mixed regime leaders choose not to gamble
or why leaders of other types of polities choose to roll the dice on their
citizens lives by staying in thewar.
Culpability circumvents problems like these because it is leader specific
instead of being dependent on characteristics of the state or the war. This
allows the theory to be flexible enough to make predictions about a wide

variety of leader types. This innovation is consequential because it provides
us with a way to predict which leaders will gamble ex ante. We can know
which leaders will gamble, and why they will do so, before the war even
begins. All we have to know is whether the leader is culpable. Appreciating
a leaders culpability also helps us know when the incentive to gamble
will pass from one leader to the next, which sets it apart from extant the-
ories. If a political connection exists between a replacement leader and the
leader who was in charge when the war began, that replacement will have
strong incentives to devote more resources to the war in an attempt to win.
The findings Ipresented in Chapter4 illustrate this point precisely. Even
when all first leaders are excluded from the sample, culpable replacements
behave very differently from their nonculpable counterparts.
Understanding the pressures created by culpability also shed consid-
erable light on how leaders interact with their opponents. As I noted
in Chapters1 and 2, scholars in recent years have become increasingly
interested in how information and commitment problems hinder leaders
ability to reach a settlement and end wars. The theory offered here pro-
vides insight on both issues. With regard to the first, culpable leaders may
appear as though they are suffering from an information problem; that is,
refusing to recognize that they are going to lose and continuing to fight.
In fact, they may be fully aware that victory is unlikely, but they will stay
in the war because winning is the only way to redeem themselves in the
eyes of the domestic audience.
A similar story exists for commitment problems. Leaders may be
especially unwilling to trust their opponent to honor the terms of a
war-ending agreement if the opponent is culpable.18 The leader knows
the opponent will have strong incentives to renege if the settlement
forced them to accept unfavorable terms. Consequently, they may be
more inclined to fight until the opponent is completely defeated to
18 This represents an opportunity to build on important work by Fortna (2004, 2008).

Fortna (2004), for instance, examines how characteristics of the conflict, state, and agree-
ment affect both the likelihood and durability of cease-fires in conflicts between states.
Incorporating the culpability of the leaders of the warring states might make an already
strong model even stronger because we have reason to expect nonculpable leaders to be
more willing to adhere to agreements. Their lack of a connection to the conflict means
that they will not be blamed for whatever stipulations the peace agreement requires (e.g.,
losing a portion of disputed territory). One could also explore whether culpability has
the same effect on leader behavior in civil wars (see Prorok 2013 for a discussion of this
possibility). If a parallel story exists, we might also expect nonculpable leaders to be
more amenable to third-party peacekeeping operations.
Conclusion 181
ensure the settlement will stick. The flipside of this is that nonculpable
leaders may be more attractive as opponents because they should be
more willing to settle and adhere to the agreement. This has several
implications for both scholars interested in studying peacekeeping and
conflict resolution and for policy makers, as well. Peace agreements, for
instance, may be easier to broker if a nonculpable leader is in charge of
at least one of the states.
Turning to domestic interactions, the theory also gives us the ability
to predict when a principal agent problem will develop between leaders
and citizens. Culpable leaders should be far more likely than nonculpable
ones to be unfaithful agents when the war is going poorly. As the preced-
ing discussion (and earlier chapters) has made clear, culpable leaders sim-
ply have stronger incentives to win the war, regardless of the costs that
might be inflicted on citizens in pursuit of victory. Hence, they are less
likely to prioritize the welfare of their citizens when their future tenure in
office is on theline.
This ability to anticipate this leader-citizen conflict of interests is
important in its own right, but it is also valuable because it helps us
understand the motivation behind citizens desire to punish some lead-
ers who lose and spare others who preside over equally bad outcomes.
As Iargued in Chapter2, if citizens are in a position to determine who
is responsible for involving the state in a war that turns out poorly, they
will want to limit their punishment to those responsible parties. Citizens
will have incentives to target punishment in this way because removing
culpable leaders who lose eliminates leaders who are likely incompetent
and unfaithful agents.
This motive does not apply to nonculpable leaders because, by defini-
tion, they had nothing to do with what ultimately proved to be a poor
decision to go to war. Moreover, nonculpable leaders have no incentives
to deviate from the citizens preference to end a war that is going badly.
Hence, citizens will have very little reason to punish them. This insight
stands in contrast to the position held by much of the responsibility attri-
bution literature:namely, that citizens will punish whichever leader is in
charge when the bad outcome transpires. The takeaway point from this
book is not that the notion of blind retrospection is wrong. Examples
abound in the literature of citizens acting in this manner, so the idea cer-
tainly has merit. Instead, the point of this book is to caution scholars
from applying this assumption too widely. If citizens have the ability to
determine the locus of responsibility, they will utilize that knowledge in
their decision of whether to sanction the leader.
This condition does not always hold. In matters of economics, for

instance, pinpointing which leader made the critical decision that made
things go awry is often beyond the ken of trained economists, to say
nothing of ordinary citizens. In situations like this, the knee-jerk reaction
of punishing the incumbent makes more sense. In situations like war,
however, where identifying the responsible parties is much more straight-
forward, citizens should condition their desire to punish a leader on the
leaders role in creating the bad policy outcome.
Finally, recognizing the importance of leader culpability also highlights
an underappreciated aspect of democracies during times of war. Scholars
often portray democratic leaders as being sensitive to public consent for
the war because their continued tenure in office depends on winning
reelection. With this end in mind, leaders will take steps to stay in the
publics good graces. This claim has become a truism in the literature
and serves as an assumption in several key theories about democracies
behavior during wars. Democratic leaders, for instance, will pick wars
they have a high probability of winning and take steps to avoid civilian
casualties to avoid angering the public. As with the assumption about cit-
izens defaulting to punishing the incumbent, this notion that democratic
leaders will be responsive to (and act in anticipation of) public opinion
is not wholly incorrect. Given that the domestic political structures that
define democracies (e.g., regular elections) were created explicitly to bind
a leader to the will of the people, we should expect responsive leaders to
be thenorm.
This does not mean, however, that it is safe to assume all democratic
leaders will act this way. As the preceding discussion about the principal
agent problem described, and as the findings from Chapter4 made clear,
democratic leaders do not always act in the best interests of their citizens.
Recognizing that this dynamic exists is important because it illustrates
that the very institutions that were created to protect citizens in democra-
cies have the potential to backfire. If a culpable democratic leader knows
he will have to stand for reelection in the not too distant future, this will
incentivize him to stay in a war, even if it is costly and even if the public
does not wantit.
This claim jars with the conventional wisdom that democratic leaders
will back down in a war if the conflict becomes unpopular.19 But upon
further reflection, it is evident that retreating would not be the rational
course of action for a democratic leader who is also culpable. Admitting
19 Bennett and Stam (1998) and Reiter and Stam (2002).

Conclusion 183
defeat would leave him open to attacks from the opposition, weakening
his hold on power. Consequently, we should expect this type of leader to
stay in. This insight calls for a revision of the existing beliefs about the
relationship between democratic leaders and public opinion during times
of war: we should expect all democratic leaders to be aware of public
opinion, but only those who are nonculpable will be responsivetoit.
Implications forPolicy
The preceding discussion raises questions related to policy as well. First,
do any policy remedies exist that might help democratic citizens over-
come this problem of culpable leaders who have incentives to put their
own needs above those of the masses? Second, is there any way for culpa-
ble leaders to bow out of a war gracefully, thus allowing the war to end
without increasing their risk of punishment?
Effective Accountability?
Turning to the first question, what, if anything, can be done to increase
citizens ability to hold culpable leaders accountable? Any remedy would
have to resolve a difficult trade-off: citizens want a means for holding
these leaders accountable, but the threat of removal is what fuels a lead-
ers desire to gamble for resurrection.20 Existing policies that try to create
links between the public and elites during times of war also fail to resolve
problems associated with culpability. Programs such as the National
Guard or instituting a draft may make legislators more careful about get-
ting into wars, but, as the evidence from Chapter5 demonstrates, it will
not necessarily make them more likely to stop the conflict. The push
effect of rising casualties will have to compete against the strong pull
effect associated with culpability.
A separation of powers between the branches of government paints
an equally gloomy picture for similar reasons. While scholars have made
the case that the legislature has the power to put checks on the execu-
tive in theory,21 stopping a war when members of the legislature are also
20 It would also have to provide a way for citizens to credibly commit to refrain from pun-
ishing the culpable leader if he follows their wishes and ends a war that is going badly. As
Idiscussed in earlier chapters, however, citizens will have very little incentive to agree to
such an arrangement because they would have no desire to keep a leader who exhibited
incompetence in starting a war he could notwin.
21 Howell and Pevehouse (2007) and Kriner (2010).
operating under the pressures of culpability is a tall order. Part of this

stems from the difficulty in voting against a war when it starts. As Inoted
earlier, democratic executives typically only start wars they predict a large
subset of the legislatures will support, thereby creating a culpable major-
ity. In practice, this means they fight wars in response to being attacked
(e.g., declaring war on Japan after the bombing of Pearl Harbor) or wars
they can work hard to frame as necessary.
In the first scenario, very few legislators would want to be on record as
being against the war. In the latter, legislators may disagree with the con-
flict, but might find themselves in an uphill battle against the executives
bully pulpit. The executives role as the chief foreign policy actor means
his statements and actions receive the lions share of attention. This makes
it difficult for antiwar legislators from the opposition to turn the tide of
public opinion in the run up to the war. They may also be reluctant to
openly challenge the executive for fear of coming across as being against
the troops, unpatriotic or lacking faith in the countrys ability to win.
Moreover, because there are a great number of unknowns when a war is
beginning, they may choose to avoid these potential short-term costs and
vote for the war, hedging on the idea that the state will likely win.22 They
will not reap the benefits of a victory, should one come to pass, as those
would be conferred upon the executive and his fellow partisans, but a yes
vote would allow them to sidestep the difficult task of defending their
antiwar position earlyon.
It is also worth noting that voting against the war also only has the
potential to pay off if the war goes badly. If this transpires, the legislator
can tout her long track record of being against what was ultimately a bad
idea, which may earn her the respect of voters and an electoral advantage.
But this would come at the cost of having to justify her antiwar position
in the early stages of the war. Depending on the safety of her seat, she
may not want to take this risk. On a similar note, the only scenario where
a yes vote harms the legislator is if the war goes badly and a credible
challenger exists. As Inoted in Chapter5, Democrats who voted for the
war in Iraq did not see a significant loss in vote share; most citizens will
want to reserve their anger for associates of the executive who started the
war. Although there are certainly cases of Democrats who were taken to
task for their earlier support of the war, it is notable that two of the most
prominent cases were elections involving someone trying to move from
22 This is often a safe bet because democracies tend to win the wars they fight (Reiter and
Stam2002).
Conclusion 185
the legislature to the executive position John Kerrys failed bid for the
presidency in 2004 and Hillary Clintons loss in the 2008 Democratic
primaries. Because most legislators will only be concerned about main-
taining their current position, they need only fear a challenger in the pri-
mary round of elections. This should not prove to be a problem in most
instances because the challenger will have a difficult time mounting an
effective campaign against an incumbent who has more experience and
resources at his disposal.
Taken together, this means that, on balance, there is less risk for politi-
cal costs for opposition members to vote yes than to vote no. As Iargued
in Chapter 5, these supporter legislators will likely trod a middling,
safe path during the war:voting for it to avoid controversy early on and
only taking action against it if the state fares very poorly for a long time.
They will, therefore, contribute to the overall culpability of the chamber
leaving it to their fellow opposition members who did not vote for the
war, or those who join the legislature after the war started, to lead the
charge on antiwar bills. As Inoted in Chapter5, the completely noncul-
pable group is often a minority for much of the war because it takes a
long time for culpability to erode out of the legislature.
Attempts to improve the functionality of democracys institutions
through individual acts of legislation have also fallen short. In 1935
Congressman Louis Ludlow of Indiana, for instance, tried to institute a
law that said the country could not go to war unless the citizens wanted
it. As the laws first provision states, war shall not become effective until
confirmed by a majority of all votes cast thereon in a Nation-wide refer-
endum.23 Members of Congress have tried to pass other laws over the
years that attempt to limit the executive, such as the War Powers Act of
1973, which requires the president seek the approval of Congress for
military action.24 None of these proposed laws addresses the problem of
culpability, however, because they are primarily designed to limit a lead-
ers power to start a war. This is a fine goal and was the primary intent
of Ludlow, who was an isolationist25 but does not do anything to mit-
igate the problems of culpability, which only materialize once the war is
in progress and goingbadly.
There is also the problem of whether the public is even in a position
to judge if a war should continue. The executive, especially, and members
23 Griffin (1968:273). The idea received a surprising amount of support in the interwar era,
but never passed.
24 Howell and Pevehouse (2007:4).
25 Griffin (1968).
of the legislature will not only have greater access to information about
the how the war is going but also have a better understanding of the
consequences if the state were to stop fighting (e.g., loss of strategic ter-
ritory, betraying an ally), This speaks to the classic debate over whether
democracy should be truly representative, where leaders simply carry
out the peoples wishes, or a system based on delegation, where citizens
grant leaders the power to make decisions on their behalf without direct
input from the masses at every turn. Neither extreme is ideal. A truly
representative system would be extremely cumbersome for reasons given
previously and would give everyday citizens decision-making power over
matters they know littleabout.
A polity where all authority is delegated, however, is equally subop-
timal. If there was ever a situation where citizens should have a say, it
is in times of war where their lives are on the line. Putting their fates in
the hands of culpable leaders creates the possibility for the conflict of
interests Imentioned throughout the book:leaders may want to do what
is best for the public, but this desire must contend with the leaders own
wish to stay in office. Sadly, this leaves us back at square one in terms
of resolving the problem. Democratic citizens may be better off than
their counterparts in nondemocratic polities on many dimensions, but
democratic institutions are not capable of resolving all tensions between
citizens and culpable leaders in times of war. It sum, it seems the best con-
sequence we could hope for from culpability is that the fear of becoming
entrapped by it encourages leaders to refrain from starting wars in the
firstplace.
A GracefulExit?
With regard to the second question, Dominic Tierney discusses how a
leader ends a war that has turned out poorly in his book, The Right Way
to Lose a War (forthcoming). The book centers on the American war
experience, focusing on several major losses the country sustained since
World War II, and prescribes the how the United States can avoid such
quagmires in the future. It also serves as a fine illustration of why the
problems inherent in leader culpability are so difficult for leaders to over-
come and, by extension, why citizens will have a difficult time escaping
their repercussions.
Tierney does not discuss the implications of culpability explicitly, as
it outside the scope of his book. His perspective is more on what poli-
cies should work, in general, not how these policies might interact with
Conclusion 187
specific characteristics of the leaders trying to use them. Because this

book, however, is all about the effects of a particular leader character-
istic culpability it is worth considering how effectively culpable and
nonculpable leaders could implement the strategies Tierney proposes.
His central policy prescription is to follow the surge, talk and leave
approach. The basic plan is as follows: Once a campaign becomes a
fiasco, Washington should temporarily increase U.S. capabilities, nego-
tiate with the opponent, and find a responsible way to withdraw most
American soldiers.26 This is a sound idea. It should, however, be easier
for nonculpable leaders to implement than culpable ones. This is good
news for a nonculpable executives looking for a way out of a nasty war
she inherited, but it offers little to a culpable leader because many of the
policies Tierney recommends will be difficult for him to use. To illustrate
why this is the case, Iwill briefly walk through the first two steps and
explain how a leaders culpability will either enable or hamper their polit-
ical feasibility.27
Once a leader finds himself in a quagmire, Tierney would recommend
implementing a surge. The precursor to this first step is to reduce the
ambition of the goals . . . to bring the ends and means more closely into
alignment.28 This makes perfect sense, strategically, but it will be much
easier for a nonculpable leader to propose than a culpable one. Anoncul-
pable leader can credibly frame the revisions to the war aims as a correc-
tion without having to also admit to making the mistake in the first place.
Aculpable leader, by contrast, as Iargued in Chapters2 and 4, will not
be able to do so without either begging the question of why he did not set
those aims in the first place or looking like a failure, like Italys Orlando
in WorldWarI.
Tierney also stresses the need to secure the support of domestic oppo-
nents to lend credibility to the exit strategy. Doing so also serves as means
to attempt to spread responsibility to other domestic actors, which, as
I noted in Chapter 2, is something culpable leaders should aim to do.
As Tierney explains, When the United States pursues the surge, talk,
26 This formula works, Tierney argues, because the individual elements of surge, talk, and
leave are designed to be mutually reinforcing. A surge averts an immediate battlefield
crisis and provides room for a negotiated deal. Peace talks in turn smooth Americas
departure. Leaving in the right way protects the core gains of the mission.
27 I do not discuss the third step leaving here because it primarily involves interactions
between the leader and the international adversary (e.g., how to transition power, leaving
troops behind), not the leader and the domestic audience, which has been the focus of
thisbook.
28 Tierney (forthcoming:Chapter4). Emphasis in original.
and leave exit strategy, the president must boldly reach out to opponents
through appointments and personal engagement. It shouldnt be Trumans
war, LBJs war, Nixons war, Bushs War, or Obamas war it should be
Americas war.29 The more the choice to leave is portrayed as a collective
decision, the better off the leader is, especially if he is culpable.
This is both a rational strategy and one that will be more easily uti-
lized by nonculpable leaders.30 A culpable leader looking to bail him-
self out of a losing war will strike many would-be domestic allies as a
political sinking ship. Anonculpable leader, by contrast, does not have
the political baggage of being responsible for the war. She may, there-
fore, come across as the proverbial star to which others will want to
hitch their wagons. This is certainly the case for her associates who had
a track record of supporting the war they are trying to shake, but polit-
ical opponents may be willing to sign on to her strategy to appear open
minded and committed to ending the problematic conflict.31 It also has
advantages for the new leader trying to end the war. As Tierney notes in
his discussion of Obamas retention of Bushs secretary of defense, Gates
shielded the president from domestic hawks as the White House tried to
extricate the country from both Iraq and Afghanistan.32
Having a broad base of support can also help with the surge, which
Tierney points out is both a strategic necessity on the battlefield after
a major setback, as well as a means to mollify unrest about the war at
home.33 Although this is true in a theoretical sense, in practice, it may
be hard for the public to distinguish a leader who is surging in order to
leave from one who is gambling for resurrection by putting even more
of the nations soldiers in harms way in what may be a vain attempt to
win the conflict. Because the culpable leaders personal stake in the war is
public knowledge, citizens (and the domestic opposition) may be quick to
assume (and, in the case of the opposition, declare) that any surge on his
29 Tierney (forthcoming:Chapter4). Emphasis in original.

30 As with any general claim, there are exceptions. In this case, the War of 1812 serves as
a great example of a culpable leader (James Madison) who was able to leverage his sig-
nificant political skill to build a diverse coalition of domestic elites. This, in combination
with a persuasive postwar narrative, allowed him to turn what was objectively a loss into
a perceived win for his citizens (forthcoming:Chapter4).
31 The number of domestic elites of the latter type will almost certainly be smaller than the
former group, but their endorsement of the nonculpable leaders plan will carry more
weight.
32 Tierney (forthcoming:Chapter4).
33 Ibid., Chapter5. In addition to allowing the state to regroup on the battlefield, it also can
help with storytelling by diminishing the sense that the [state] is cutting and running.
Conclusion 189
part is a gamble and that citizens lives are the poker chips the leader
is proposing throwing into the pot. Of course, such attacks may not dis-
suade a culpable leader from pursuing this strategy indeed, it may be his
best and only option but it will not be an easy one for him to execute
without political costs. Even if it is ultimately successful, the fact that
he had to do it in the first place implies he was in over his head. Asurge
will also not be a nonculpable leaders most preferred strategy because it
could make citizens think she is investing in the conflict, thereby risking
increasing her own culpability. This is not to say that no nonculpable
leaders will surge after all, twelve of the nonculpable replacements
engage in escalatory behavior but rather that many prefer other less
costly options if given the choice.
The second step is talking. Here, Tierney lays out several specific strat-
egies leaders can use to soften the blow of defeat, both in terms of their
interactions with the adversary and their domestic audience. All of them
are possibilities for a nonculpable leader. Culpable leaders, by contrast,
may be able to employ only two with some success.34 Both of these strat-
egies involve foisting the decision to leave the conflict on other inter-
national actors, either by blaming them for the failure, and by leaving
from behind and claiming the withdrawal was the allys idea. As Tierney
explains:
A particular peace plan, for example, may be unacceptable if suggested
by the enemy, but tolerable if recommended by an ally, a neutral coun-
try, or the United Nations, because saying yes doesnt imply weakness
to the same extent. . . . Its also much less painful to yield as part of a
group than on our own. Concessions dont cause the same loss of face if
allies share responsibility because theres uncertainty about which coun-
try was pushing a conciliatory line.35
34 Other strategies include pivoting to a different conflict (e.g., Obama redirecting the focus
from Iraq to Afghanistan); plutoing the mission by making the objective seem less
important; acting on principle by offering a concession based on a rule rather than
the adversarys coercion; or keeping control . . . claiming that retreat was the plan all
along (forthcoming:Chapter7). All of these strategies are far easier for a nonculpable
leader to pull off. Any pivot by a culpable leader would be suspicious (and seized upon
by domestic opponents), and attempting to pluto the conflict may lead citizens to ques-
tion his judgment about the decision to go in initially. The latter two are also unattractive
to a culpable leader because they do not reduce his perceived role in the conflict. (The
final solution Tierney mentions involves waiting for success in which ending the war is
delayed until the state begins to fare better. This tactic would be unattractive to noncul-
pable leaders, who would rather end the war quickly. It also does nothing for a culpable
leader trying to end a war because it, by definition, extends it. It may, however, as Tierney
points out, increase the leaders bargaining leverage (forthcoming:Chapter7).
35 Ibid.
Both of these tactics have the potential to work for a culpable leader
because it transfers the culpability away from him. This option may not
be available, however, if there is no coalition to blame, or if his state
was clearly the lead state in the operation. Put differently, unless a cul-
pable leader has an international third party that can serve as a credible
patsy, leaving may also be difficult to do without significant repercussions
athome.
In sum while Tierneys policy recommendations are very solid, in gen-
eral, and may work well for nonculpable leaders, the recommendations
may be harder for culpable leaders to implement. Aculpable leader can-
not easily reduce his war aims, nor can he attract a diverse set of political
allies who might help sell the idea of a nondefeat with the public. Any
attempt to surge may be interpreted as the leader foolishly throwing
more resources into a losing cause, and pinning the loss on an outside
actor may be a stretch if no credible third party exists. All in all, a grace-
ful exit for a culpable leader has a small chance of materializing, which is
bad news for both the leader and the citizens of the state he presidesover.
Appendix to Chapter 3
This appendix contains information on several supplemental tests that

Idescribed briefly in the text or in footnotes in Chapter3. Ialso include
discussion of how Icoded my variables1 and perform a test at the end that
examines the circumstances surrounding wartime leadership changes.
Other Paths to Culpability:War Supporters

As Imentioned in the main text, another type of leader exists who may
be vulnerable to charges of culpability during the war:namely, a replace-
ment leader who was an active supporter of the war when it began but
who is not also an associate. How, though, does a supporter compare
to first leaders and associates in terms of his ability to distance himself
from previous culpable leaders and the war in general? On the one hand,
the act of publicly supporting the war paints this leader into a corner.
Their earlier position leaves them open to attacks from opponents eager
to capitalize on citizens distaste for inconsistent behavior, as Idiscussed
previously.
On the other hand, supporters are better off than associates for at least
three reasons. First, they have the significant advantage of not being tied
to the first leader through a shared partisan link. As Imentioned in the
chapter, the shared party cue is a difficult one for leaders to overcome.
This makes it difficult for associates to distance themselves from the
incumbent. Second, supporters can more credibly claim that they were
not privy to vital information about the war either when it began or as
1 This discussion draws on Croco (2011).
191
192 Appendix to Chapter3
it unfolded over time because they are not political associates of the first
leader. Third, they also have the option of claiming that they may have
supported the war when it started, but disagreed with how the leader
went about prosecuting it. Supporters enjoy a more tenuous connection
to the war because they are not involved with the day-to-day conduct of
the conflict given their distance from the first leader. This affords them
considerable wiggle-room in circumstances where they may want to chal-
lenge the incumbent.
Eisenhower in the Korean War provides a nice example of a supporter
who was able to walk this line with considerable acumen. Although he
was behind the war in principle,2 he was not shy with his criticism once
it became clear the war was not going well. During his campaign for the
presidency in 1952 in an election where the war in Korea was what
worried most voters3 he described the war as one that:we were fum-
bled into without any plan for winning.4 One month later, in June, he
went one step further in his critique of Trumans handling of the war,
positing that, If we had been less trusting, if we had been less soft and
weak there would probably have been no war in Korea.5 Ultimately,
Eisenhower won the presidency, crushing his opponent, Stevenson, by an
eleven-point margin. His earlier statements, and others like them, were
vague enough to give him flexibility in terms of what he would do regard-
ing the war should he be elected (his oft-quoted claim that he would go
to Korea is a classic example of this tactic), but still allowed him to dif-
ferentiate himself from Truman and his associates. Indeed, as Stephen
Ambrose notes, in 1950 when the war began, Eisenhower was in the
happy position of being able to give advice without having to make deci-
sions. . . . Thus he could argue as he did, later, when it became an issue
that he had advised the government to do more in Korea, but had been
ignored (1990:249).
This is not to say that this strategy will always work. Supporters
may not be able to execute their change in position without looking
wishy-washy or opportunistic. Avoiding the latter is especially difficult
in very costly wars where any supporter-turned-antiwar candidate may
look as though he is simply trying to ride the wave of shifting public
2 According to his biographer, he told Truman that he earnestly supported his decision
(Ambrose 1990:248).
3 McCullough (1992:912).
4 Eisenhower Invades Home State of Rival, Los Angeles Times, September 16,1952.
5 Eisenhower Says Democrats Failed at Home and Abroad, New York Times, June
27,1952.
TABLE3A.1. Recoding Culpability to Include Supporters/

Looking at Different Culpable LeaderTypes
Model A1 Model A2
Culpable Loser 1.419**

(0.44)
(1.23) (1.24)
First Leader Loser 1.664**
(0.55)
Associate Loser 1.393*
(0.58)
Supporter Loser 0.101
(0.90)
(0.46) (0.47)
(1.54) (1.53)
(0.06) (0.08)
Constant 2.540*** 2.353***
(0.52) (0.51)
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
opinion into office. In this scenario, a nonculpable leader, who never sup-
ported the war, will have an advantage. The larger point remains, how-
ever, that supporters, when compared to associates or first leaders, will
have a relatively easier time distancing themselves from thewar.
To test this idea, Ilooked through the set of replacement leaders cur-
rently classified as nonculpable (i.e., those who were not associates)
and identified any supporters. I consider a replacement leader to be a
supporter if he made a public display of approval for the war when the
first leader decided to wage it. To determine this Ilooked through a large
set of newspapers using the Public Newspapers Database for the year
surrounding the start of the war for any instances of the leader voicing
support for the conflict in a public forum (e.g., in a speech on the floor
of the legislature or in a quote to a journalist). Fifteen leaders fell into
this category. Ithen recoded the culpable leader variable to include these
supporters and re-estimated Model 1 from Chapter 3 (see Model A1,
Table3A.1).
.2
.1
1
Losing Leader Types
First Leader Associate

Supporter Nonculpable
FIGURE3A.1. The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of Punishment Given

a Poor Outcome.
As is evident from the positive and highly significant coefficient on

the culpable loser variable (see the bolded coefficient), the results remain
unchanged. Culpable losers are still more likely to be punished than non-
culpable losers. The results become more nuanced, however, if we break
the culpable leader variable out into the three different types (see the
bolded coefficients in Model A2). Now, we see that supporters are actu-
ally much closer to nonculpable losers in terms of their likelihood of
punishment. Figure3A.1 illustrates this graphically.
As is evident from the picture, supporters are indistinguishable from non-
culpable leaders in terms of their likelihood of being punished in the event
of a loss compared to the baseline (p-value < 0.6491). Moreover, both are
indistinguishable, in a statistical sense, from winners. The effect for being
a first leader or an associate, by contrast, is much larger. Given the small
sample size, this result should be interpreted with caution. Still, the finding
provides, at minimum, prima facie evidence in favor of the idea that sup-
porters will have a relatively easy time escaping the pressures of culpability.
Other Paths to Culpability:War Escalation

An additional way for a nonculpable leader to potentially take on the
burden of culpability is for her to escalate the war upon taking office. If
a nonculpable leader were to launch a major offensive or order a signifi-

cant number of additional troops into the fray, she would lose the ability
to credibly say that the war (and its outcome) was solely the product of
her predecessors decisions. Taking an active role in shaping the course of
the conflict could imply ownership of the war for the leader, regardless
of their culpability.6
To test this idea, Ilooked at the behavior of the fifty nonculpable lead-
ers. Of these fifty, only twelve engaged in any kind of escalatory behavior.7
That only a small number did so is not surprising. As Iargued in the main
text, nonculpable leaders should not hesitate to leave the war quickly.
Iconsidered a leader to be an escalator if they initiated battles with the
enemy, tried to claim additional ground on the battlefield, increased con-
scription (implying they were looking to expand the war), or took other
similar actions. Inukai Tsuyoshi, for instance, who was the prime minister
of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese war, kept his country firmly on
the warpath upon taking office in late 1931 despite having no ties to his
predecessors. As the Los Angeles Times reported, the Japanese invaders
of Shanghai today tramped down the authority of the supposedly neutral
international settlement by occupying a great slice within its boundaries
which they used as a base for operations to clear the army of China from
6 Indeed, Richard Nixon may have been thinking along these lines when he delivered his
Silent Majority speech in November 1969. His apparent awareness of how his behav-
ior vis--vis the war (e.g., invading Cambodia) affected his perceived culpability with the
public is striking. [T]here were some who urged that Iend the war at once by order-
ing the immediate withdrawal of all American forces. From a political standpoint this
would have been a popular and easy course to follow. After all, we became involved in
the war while my predecessor was in office. I could blame the defeat which would be
the result of my action on him and come out as a peacemaker. Some put it to me quite
bluntly:This was the only way to avoid allowing Johnsons war to become Nixons war.
(Nixon 1969:emphasismine).
7 Three additional leaders engaged in behaviors that were borderline escalatory. Sidonio
Pais of Portugal in World War I, e.g., sent men to assist the American forces. According
to the NewYork Tribune, Men from Portugal will Work for Pershing, September 14,
1918, The Portuguese government has promptly answered General Pershings call and
thousands of workmen are being recruited in Portugal for the American forces in France.
General Pershing, through Thomas H.Birch, American Minister at Lisbon, requested per-
mission of the Portuguese government to recruit in Portugal skilled and unskilled work-
men in order to release American soldiers now doing that work in France. The Portuguese
government promptly consented and, as a result, thousands of laborers who are enthusi-
astic to enlist are being recruited throughout the country under the supervision of Captain
W.W. Dyer and his staff. It is unclear what capacity these men were operating in, how-
ever, or if they were ever intended to serve a combat role because Portugal had been
largely out of the war since being pushed back by the Germans in earlier that same year.
Treating these leaders as escalators does not affect the results.
TABLE3A.2. Recoding Culpability to Include Escalators/

Looking at Different Culpable LeaderTypes
Model A3 Model A4
Culpable Loser 1.497***

(0.43)
(0.83) (0.84)
First Leader Loser 1.661**
(0.55)
Associate Loser 1.392*
(0.58)
Escalator Loser 0.420
(1.23)
(0.47) (0.47)
(1.52) (1.53)
(0.07) (0.08)
Constant 2.490*** 2.359***
(0.51) (0.51)
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
the city.8 Later that year, Japan brought in 5,000 more troops today to
bolster its long defense line northwest of Shanghai.9
As previously, I estimated two models. The first, presented in
Table 3A.2, recodes the culpable loser variable to include nonculpable
leaders who escalated. The second breaks out the different leadertypes.
As Model A3 demonstrates, adding these escalating leaders does not
change the results. Moreover, as is evident from the results in Model A4,
escalating leaders are not held to a higher standard than their noncul-
pable counterparts who do not escalate. When these escalators go on to
lose the war, their likelihood of punishment is no different from other
nonculpable leaders who lose (p-value < 0.4030) or winners. Figure3A.2
illustrates this graphically.
8 China to Declare War; Japan Invades Pact Zone, The Lost Angeles Times, January 31,
1932,1.
9 Increasing Force at Shanghai, The Sun, March 7, 1932,1.
.3
.2
.1
1
Losing Leader Types
First Leader Associate

Escalator Nonculpable

a Poor Outcome.
Voluntary Participation
As Inoted elsewhere, it is not immediately apparent how forgiving citi-
zens should be of leaders who lose wars that began when their states were
attacked. On the one hand, because these leaders have significantly less
freedom in choosing when and where the conflict started (two aspects of
warfare that have a significant effect on the conflicts final outcome), it
is conceivable that they could deflect the blame for a loss with relative
ease. On the other hand, as Idiscussed in my rationale for considering
all first leaders culpable, reasons exist for why these leaders might still
be held accountable. First, true surprise attacks (i.e., those that come in
the absence of preexisting tensions) are exceedingly rare. Second, even if
the attack was without warning, the leader always has the option to not
resist. No leader, in other words, is completely without choice when it
comes to involving their state in a conflict.
This question is relevant to the investigation here because it could
be that the first leaders who actively chose to participate in wars are
driving the culpability findings while first leaders who are attacked actu-
ally face a smaller likelihood of being punished. To determine if this is
the case, Iestimated a model on a subset of observations that consisted
solely of first leaders. Because all of these leaders are culpable by defi-
nition, the key independent variables of interest are those that highlight
TABLE3A.3. The Effect of Being an

Initiating Loser vs. a Targeted Loser on the
Likelihood of Domestic Punishment
Model A5
Voluntary Participant Loser 1.752***

(0.45)
Target Loser 0.804
(0.45)
Aggressive Adversary 0.893*
(0.37)
Casualties Per Capita 1.270
(1.44)
Prewar Tenure (logged) 0.254**
(0.08)
Constant 1.044
(0.56)
Observations 275
p < 0.10, * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
leaders who lost after involving their state in the war voluntarily and
those who lost a war in which their state was the target of an attack (see
Equation3A.1).
Pr(Leader Punishment) =
+ Losing Voluntary
Participant + Losing Target +
Casualties + Prewar Tenure
Length+(3A.1)
If citizens are less forgiving of those leaders that elected to participate

and more forgiving of leaders who are attacked, the coefficient on the
voluntary participant variable should be positive and significant while
the coefficient for targeted losers should be insignificant. As the results in
Table3A.3, indicate, however, this is not thecase.
Instead, both coefficients are positive and significant, suggesting that
first leaders who lose face significant likelihood of punishment compared
to winners, regardless of whether they chose to participate in the war by
choice. This suggests the decision to consider all first leaders as culpable
is a justified one. It also provides, as Inoted in Chapter2 the harder test
for the theory. If citizens see targeted leaders as victims of the adversary
instead of willing conflict participants, counting them as culpable leaders
TABLE3A.4. The Effect of Losing on the Likelihood of

Domestic Punishment Among First Leaders and Final Leaders
Model A6 Model A7
First Leaders Final Leaders
Loser 1.703 ***

0.782
(0.52) (0.56)
Aggressive Adversary 1.002* 1.260*
(0.46) (0.59)
(3.59) (5.08)
Prewar Tenure (logged) 0.250* 0.084
(0.11) (0.07)
Constant 1.589* 3.068***
(0.76) (0.63)
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
should make it more difficult to find a relationship between culpable los-

ers and punishment.10
Understanding the Bias of One-Leader Designs

In the main body of the chapter Iargued that that it is essential to con-
sider all leaders who participate in conflicts instead of selecting only one
leader per war. Now that we know culpability matters, failing to include
all leaders necessarily creates a sampling bias that can lead to misleading
or even contradictory findings. Importantly, this is the case regardless
of which leader first or final we choose to include. Demonstrating
this empirically is straightforward. In Table3A.4, Ive estimated Model 1
again, but did not include any variables that distinguish culpable leaders
from nonculpable ones. Instead, the models only include variable mark-
ing leaders who lose (leaving the baseline category as winners, just like
the models in the main text of the chapter). For Model A6 I only use
first leaders, while Model A7 only looks at final leaders, or those who
10 This is a possibility. The effect for being an initiator who loses is significantly larger
than that of a target who loses (p-value:0.06). The larger point remains, however, that
both targets and initiators who lose are significantly more likely to be punished than the
baseline.
preside over the end of the war. As Table3A.4 makes clear, the results
are striking.
If we used Model A6 to try and understand the relationship between
punishment and war performance, we could tell a story similar to the one
found in the existing literature:leaders who fare poorly in war are more
likely to be punished than leaders who win. The coefficients for losers are
positive and significant. This story loses steam, however, when applied
to Model A7; the coefficient for losers is considerably smaller and insig-
nificant, implying that war performance has very little effect on how the
domestic audience treats the leader after thewar.
Culpability helps us make sense of these seemingly contradictory find-
ings. The leaders who lose in Model A6 are all culpable and, therefore,
have a high likelihood of being removed when they lose. The leaders in
Model A7, by contrast, are a mixed set comprised of culpable leaders
who have been able to stay in power for the entire war and nonculpable
leaders who were brought to power to replace them. The addition of
this latter group depresses the effect of the loser variable because the
domestic audience will have less of an incentive to remove them from
power if the war ends badly. Taken together, these results underscore the
need to consider all of the leaders who participate in wars and the conse-
quences of the different roles theyplay.
Measurement of Control Variables and Associated

RobustnessChecks
Adversary WarAims
I based this variable on the following broad classification of possible war
aims:(1)achieving the prewar status quo; (2)extracting a policy change
from the targeted state; (3)taking a portion of an allys homeland ter-
ritory; (4) taking a portion of the targeted states homeland territory;
(5)regime change in the targeted state; and (6)total conquest of the tar-
geted state. Icoded adversaries as having aggressive war aims if they
received a coding of four or higher on this scale. Roughly 116 states (or
40percent) have aggressive war aims.11
Importantly, I based the states war aims on the concrete objectives
pertaining to the conflict at hand. Some leaders may couch an individual
11 The discussion of how Icoded many of the variables discussed in this section draws on
Croco (2011).
war in a larger foreign policy context, with longer and broader objec-
tives (e.g., a democratic Middle East). Ichose to use the war-specific
aims instead of the larger goals because members of the domestic oppo-
sition will be able to hold the leader more accountable for the former if
he fails to achieve them. The long time horizon of the latter set of goals
allows the leader time beyond the conflict at hand to achieve them and
their nebulous nature provides the leader with more flexibility in defining
victory.
Casualties
This variable is simply a count of the number of military fatalities suffered
by a state divided by the population of the state. Irelied on Clodfelter
(1992), Valentino etal. (2006), and Phillips and Axelrod (2004) for fatal-
ity data and EUGene for information on population. If a leader presided
over the entire war, Iallotted him 100percent of the casualties. In states
with at least one wartime leadership transition, each leaders share of the
casualties was weighted to reflect his personal share of the war (e.g., if a
leader was in power for 25percent of the wars duration, Iallotted him
25percent of the wars total casualties).
This, of course, assumes that casualties occur at a uniform rate, which
is unlikely to be true across all conflicts. This is a concern, but, critically,
it is not one that is likely to threaten any conclusions we might draw
about culpability. If we assume that instead of a uniform rate of casualty
accumulation that losses occur randomly, there is no reason to think that
these losses will vary systematically with the culpability of the leader.
Put differently, the assumption of a uniform distribution is just as likely
to misattribute casualties to a culpable leader as it is a nonculpableone.
As two robustness checks, I reestimated the models using the full
amount of casualties (per capita) for each leader, regardless of how much
of the war they presided over and then reestimated dropping the variable
entirely. My results remained unchanged and, as in the analyses presented
in the chapter, the casualties variable is never significant.
Prewar TenureLength
This variable counts the number of days from the day the leader took
office to the day the war began. For leaders who take office during the
war, the value of this variable is zero. Ilogged the variable to account for
a skewed distribution. To investigate the potential for prewar tenure to
have a positive effect on a democratic leaders losing power, Isplit the sam-
ple by regime type and reestimated the punishment models. As expected,
the coefficient on the prewar tenure variable is negative (0.212) and
significant (p-value:0.009) for nondemocratic leaders and positive (0.05)
and insignificant (p-value: 0.716) for democratic leaders. Not inciden-
tally, culpable, losing leaders were still significantly likely to be punished
in both subsets, while nonculpable, losing leaders remained indistinguish-
able from winners. Indeed, in the model estimated on democracies, none
of the nonculpable, losing leaders are punished, so the variable drops
entirely.
One alternative approach for democratic leaders would be to count
the length of time left until the leader has to be replaced. If, however, we
assume that leaders in systems with endogenous election timing grow
less secure over time, higher values on the prewar tenure variable should
work as a suitable proxy for a relatively insecure leader and should pre-
dict punishment. As Inoted previously, however, at least for the sample of
democratic leaders that fight wars, this is not the case. As an additional
robustness check, and to ensure the nonfinding for democratic leaders
was not driven by replacement leaders whose prewar tenure values Icode
as zero, Ireplaced the tenure values for leaders who came to power dur-
ing the war with the length of time they served in the war. The results
remained unchanged.
Wartime Performance
For the punishment models Ineeded a variable that could measure the
war performance of leaders regardless of whether they oversaw the end
of the war. For leaders who left power while the war was still going on,
Iconstructed a variable that captures how the state was progressing dur-
ing the war. This variable took a value of1 if the state had suffered a
major setback (e.g., a failure to repel a major offensive, loss of ground)
during (roughly) the year preceding the leader change; a 0 if the state
had made no progress without a setback (i.e., a stalemate); and a 1 if the
state had made progress. Iam interested in major setbacks and victories
as opposed to minor ones because the domestic audience will likely only
be privy to the former. Idrew primarily on Clodfelter (1992), Phillips and
Axelrod (2004), and Brecher and Wilkenfeld (2000), but consulted sev-
eral war-specific volumes aswell.
I chose the year time frame for two reasons. First, it is long enough
to provide a rough approximation of how the war was going, while
avoiding any timing issues a shorter time span might have introduced.
Looking at progress in the month before the leader left, for instance,
might misclassify a leader as winning when he actually left on an
unexpected high note after months of stalemates or setbacks. Second,
a year is not an unreasonable amount of time to expect domestic audi-
ences to remember, especially if we are only interested in major setbacks
or accomplishments.
For leaders who left power after the war ended, Iused the wars final
outcome. As Idiscuss in greater detail elsewhere, the outcome is based
on the degree to which the leader achieved the states maximum war
aims. Iused the maximum war aims for two reasons. First, because war
aims can change over the course of the war (Goemans 2000; Reiter
2009), relying on the original war aims would miss important changes in
the states goals. The UN coalitions decision to pursue the Communist
forces across the 38th parallel, instead of simply expelling them from
South Korea serves as a good illustration of this type of war aims revi-
sion. Second, using the maximum war aims is important because they
provide the baseline against which citizens and, importantly, members
of the domestic opposition will assess a leaders degree of accomplish-
ment. Although a leader may want to revise his war aims downward to
minimize the appearance of failure when he predicts he will lose, the
opposition will have strong incentives to remind citizens of the earlier,
higheraims.
Coding a wars outcome with respect to the states maximum war
aims produced the following six-point scale: 2: total victory (accom-
plish all war aims, no losses); 1: partial victory (achieve most, but not
all war aims, no losses); 0:prewar status quo (accomplish no war aims,
no losses);1:partial loss (accomplish no war aims, make minor conces-
sions, ally suffers major loss);2:major loss (accomplish no war aims,
make major concessions); and3:total loss (i.e., loss of sovereignty).
RegimeType
I determined a states regime type using the Polity IV data set, drawing the
information from the last year the leader was in power while the war was
in progress (Marshall and Jaggers 2000). For example, in the two cases
that represent U.S.participation the Vietnam War, the polity information
for the observation representing Lyndon Johnson is from 1969, while the
information for Richard Nixon comes from 1973. Following standard
practice, I subtracted the democracy and autocracy scores for the
state for each observation and created a scale in which10 represents the
most autocratic states and 10 represents the states that are most demo-
cratic. Iconsidered states with a score of10 to 5 as nondemocracies, and
states that scored between 6 and 10 democracies.
Using Three Regime Types InsteadofTwo

In the main text of the chapter Iconceptualized regime type as a dichoto-
mous variable; states were either democracies or nondemocracies. While
this is a common classification method in the conflict literature, it is
not the only one.12 As work by Goemans (2000) has demonstrated, it
is also useful to break the nondemocracy category into two further
groups:autocracies and mixed regimes. Autocracies refer to highly cen-
tralized regimes where political power rests with stereotypical dictator.
Leaders such as Stalin, Kim Jong Il, and mixed regimes (or anocracies),
by contrast, are hybrid regimes taking elements from authoritarian states
as well as democratic ones; Milosevics Yugoslavia is a good example
(Goemans 2000:41). It is important to recognize this alternate classifica-
tion scheme because, as Goemans (2000) demonstrates, leaders of mixed
regimes face different incentives than their autocratic and democratic
counterparts. Because leaders of mixed regime face the highest risk of
punishment in the event of a loss, regardless of its magnitude, they will
be the most likely of the three leader types to gamble for resurrection.
In his work, Goemans does not consider culpability, but his argument
implies that leaders of mixed regimes should be the most susceptible to
punishment, all else equal. To account for this possibility, Ireestimated the
basic punishment model (Model 1)from the main chapter and included
variables for identifying the culpable leaders who lost from each of the
three different regime types and one for all of the nonculpable leaders
who lost (see Model A8, Table3A.5).
Based on the results in Model A8, it appears as though culpable demo-
crats are worse off than culpable leaders of mixed regimes in the event of
a loss, though this relationship just misses standard levels of significance
(p-value < 0.12). Unsurprisingly, culpable democrats are far more likely
to be punished than culpable autocrats for losing when compared to the
baseline (p-value < 0.0039). Not incidentally, the coefficient for culpable
autocratic loser just misses the standard cutoff for significance (p-value
< 0.122). Their relative ability to weather a loss makes sense given the
means of suppressing domestic dissent at their disposal; Croco and Weeks
12 For another classification scheme, see Weeks (2012).

TABLE3A.5. The Effect of Losing, Culpability, and RegimeType

Model A8
Culpable, Democratic Loser 3.067***

(0.80)
Culpable, Autocratic Loser 0.810
(0.52)
Culpable, Mixed Regime Loser 1.859***
(0.54)
(0.89)
Aggressive Adversary 1.273**
(0.48)
(1.61)
Prewar Tenure (logged) 0.150*
(0.07)
Constant 2.393***
(0.51)
Observations 289
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
(2014) reach a similar conclusion when looking at the fates of culpable per-
sonalist leaders who lose. Culpability has a much smaller effect in regimes
of this nature because the executive has such tight control over so many
aspects of the state. Figure3A.3 displays this set of findings graphically.
This specification, though, pools nonculpable losers of all regime
types. It could be the case that losers in mixed regimes are worse off
than losers from other regime types, regardless of their culpability. To test
this idea, Icreated a new variable that highlights nonculpable leaders of
mixed regimes who lose and included it in the model. Ialso dropped all
of the observations of nonculpable, democratic losers and nonculpable,
autocratic losers.13 Ifind that nonculpable leaders of mixed regimes who
lose are no more likely to be punished than leaders who win (p-value <
0.872). Moreover, the coefficient on this variable is significantly differ-
ent from those associated with culpable democrats and culpable leaders
of mixed regimes who lose (p-values: 0.008 and 0.086, respectively).14
13 Dropping these leaders or pooling them with winners does not affect the results.
14 They are not significantly different from autocratic, culpable leaders who lose (p-value <
0.488). This is not surprising, however, given the relatively low likelihood of punishment
these leadersface.
.6
.4
.2
Losing Leader Types
Democratic Mixed Regime

Autocratic Nonculpable

a Poor Outcome.
Taken together, these findings suggest that it is very useful to account for
a leaders culpability when modeling the likelihood of leader punishment.
Regardless of the number of categories we consider, regime type alone
does not account for the variation we see across (and within) states.
Circumstances Surrounding Leader Changes

Having established that culpability for a conflict plays a large role in
determining whether a leader is punished because of the war in the main
text, I now turn to a final set of empirical analyses that center on the
conditions under which nonculpable replacement leaders come to power.
Doing so is important because, as Inoted in Chapter1, it could be the
case that nonculpable leaders are only brought to power when the war
is going badly and the domestic audience wants it to end. If this were the
case, both the punishment findings Ihave presented in this chapter (and
the outcome results Ipresent in Chapter4) could be accounted for with
a different causal story. Namely, that nonculpable leaders escape punish-
ment for bad outcomes not because of their distance from the decision to
go to war, but because the citizens felt the state was faring poorly and put
the nonculpable leader in power specifically to end the war. Because the
domestic audience expects a bad outcome, they refrain from punishing
the leader when the loss materializes.
TABLE3A.6. Determinants of a Replacement Leaders Culpability

Model A9 Model A10 Model A11
Previous Leader Out 0.083 0.190

Because of War (0.48) (0.52)
State Faring Poorly on 0.650 0.725
Battlefield in Recent Past (0.53) (0.59)
Constant 0.129 0.331 0.281
(0.36) (0.34) (0.39)
Observations 105 105 105
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001
If this causal story were true, we would expect nonculpable leaders

to be more likely to come to power when at least one of two conditions
holds:(1)the state has suffered a major setback in the war, or (2)the pre-
vious leader was removed because of the war. Recall that in the main text
of Chapter3 Iused a leaders own culpability to predict his likelihood
of punishment in the event of a loss. In this model, a leaders culpability
is the dependent variable, but Iuse the previous leaders fate (punished/
not punished) as the independent variable. This allows me to determine
if a war-related removal increases the likelihood of the next leader being
nonculpable. This suggests the followingmodel:
Pr(Replacement Leader is Culpable)=

+ Previous Leader
Removed Because
of the War+ State
Faring Poorly +(3A.2)
The dependent variable is a dummy variable, coded as a 1 if the replace-

ment is culpable and 0 if she is nonculpable. Given this coding, the coef-
ficients on both independent variables should be negative and significant
(if the alternative causal story is true). The first independent variable is
the dependent variable in all of the previous models. The second inde-
pendent variable is the same one I used to identify losing leaders who left
before the war ended.
Interestingly, as the results in Table3A.6 demonstrate, neither variable
is a significant predictor of the new leaders culpability, regardless of if
I estimate their effects individually or simultaneously. While this null
result may seem puzzling or unexpected, a review of the raw data sheds
some light on why there is no relationship between these variables and
the replacement leaders culpability. With regard to the first predictor

variable, of the 105 replacement leaders in the dataset, only thirty-eight
come to power when the state has suffered a series of recent failures. Of
these thirty-eight, a slight majority (twenty-two leaders, or 58percent)
are nonculpable, but a full 42percent (sixteen leaders) share a connec-
tion with the previous leader. If conventional intuition were correct, we
would expect more nonculpable leaders than culpable ones to come to
power under these circumstances. Instead, the distribution is fairly close
to an evensplit.
Turning to the second variable, as I noted in the preceding text, 63
of the 396 leaders are removed because of the war. Of these sixty-three,
forty-three (68percent) have a replacement leader who follows them. (The
remaining twenty leaders who are punished because of the war oversaw
the end of the conflict and are removed afterward.) Of these forty-three
replacement leaders, more than half (twenty-two) are culpable. Although
conventional wisdom might suggest that a nonculpable leader should
follow a leader who was punished because of the war, this is not the
case. Once again, nonculpable and culpable leaders have roughly equal
chances of coming to power. This finding is important because it suggests
that the causal story Iadvanced in Chapter3 has merit. The relationship
Ifind between culpability and punishment is not simply a function of the
circumstances under which nonculpable leaders come to power. Instead,
attributes of the individual leader matter.
Recoding Nonculpable Leaders Who Stay in the War

for More Than a Year after Coming toOffice
TABLE3A.7. Reestimating the Model After

Recoding Nonculpable Leaders Who Stay in the
War for More Than a Year After Coming toOffice
Model A12
Culpable Loser 1.535***

(0.44)
(1.20)
Aggressive Adversary 1.421**
(0.46)
(1.51)
Prewar Tenure (logged) 0.155*
(0.06)
Constant 2.451***
(0.51)
Observations 289
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001

Appendix to Chapter4
TABLE A4.1. War Outcomes by LeaderType

Leader Type Culpable Nonculpable
Specific Outcome
Total Victory 114 (96%) 5 (4%)
Partial Victory 17 (89%) 2 (11%)
Prewar Status Quo 35 (83%) 7 (19%)
Partial Loss 53 (87%) 8 (13%)
Major Loss 12 (75%) 4 (25%)
Total Loss 30 (88%) 4 (12%)
War Outcome Classification

As Inoted previously, the coding scheme Iuse for war outcomes differs
from the standard win, lose, or draw approach associated with the
Correlates of War Project (COW) scholars typically employ. In practice,
the size of the differences between my scheme and the traditional one
varies across the different outcomes. For example, when Ilook at leaders
who preside over the wars final outcome, nearly 80percent of the out-
comes in my data set that Iconsider losses are also considered losses by
COW. The interesting differences arise when we consider leaders that are
traditionally classified as drawers or winners. Of the forty-two cases
Iconsider draws, COW and Iare in agreement on twenty-one cases. This
difference is largely a product of the fact that COW considers an out-
come a draw if the war ends with the prewar status quo. I, however, only
code a state as drawing if it fails to accomplish war aims but does not
210
lose anything. The main place we disagree is on twenty cases that Icon-
sider losses, but COW considers wins. Of these cases, fourteen are smaller
states from the world wars that were conquered early on but were on the
side that eventually won. As Inoted previously, for my purposes it would
be incorrect to consider these states winners because their leaders would
have had a hard time convincing the domestic audiences that the out-
come was anything but a totalloss.
Tables from the Chapter with Cutpoints Included
TABLE4A.2. The Effect of Culpability on War Outcomes

Model A1 Model A2 (Dropping
First Leaders)

(0.33) (0.47)
Military Capabilities 1.345** 0.896
(0.44) (0.90)
Voluntary Participant 0.526 2.994***
(0.39) (0.88)
(0.42) (0.63)
(0.39) (0.59)
Cutpoint 1
Constant 2.284*** 7.237***
(0.58) (1.80)
Cutpoint 2
Constant 1.675** 5.979***
(0.56) (1.33)
Cutpoint 3
Constant 0.142 3.503**
(0.63) (1.31)
Cutpoint 4
Constant 0.613 2.328*
(0.61) (1.01)
Cutpoint 5
(0.61) (0.98)
Observations 291 56
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001

TABLE4A.3. The Effect of Culpability and Regime Type

on War Outcomes
Model A3 Model A4
Democracy 1.065*
(0.48)
Military Capabilities 1.630*** 0.887
(0.48) (0.99)
(0.42) (0.83)
(0.44) (0.70)
Culpable Leader 1.537
(0.81)
Cutpoint 1
Constant 2.883*** 2.761**
(0.44) (1.07)
Cutpoint 2
Constant 2.365*** 1.535
(0.45) (1.04)
Cutpoint 3
(0.49) (1.07)
Cutpoint 4
(0.49) (1.08)
Cutpoint 5
Constant 0.107
(0.50)
Observations 261 70
* p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p <0.001

Appendix to Chapter5
Understanding How Culpability Attenuates the

Response of Legislators
In Chapter 5 I discussed how culpability muted the responsiveness of
legislators to their constituents concerns. More specifically, culpable leg-
islators were less likely to vote for antiwar bills even if Bush received a
low percentage of the vote share in 2004, a rough proxy for war support
among the local electorate.
Figure5A.1 demonstrates that, as with all the results in the main text
of the chapter, this effect is especially pronounced among associates,
which in this context means Republican. The graphs are of the first
differences that obtain when Ihold party at a given value (Republican
or Democrat), vote at another (yes or no on Iraq war) and then move
Bushs vote share in 2004 from its maximum observed value to its min-
imum for each party.15 This is a clear and straightforward way to get a
sense of the effect one variable has on the dependent variable in different
contexts (i.e., combinations of other independent variables).16
Figure5A.1 depicts the effect of moving Bushs vote share in the 2004
election from its highest observed value to its lowest. As Inoted previ-
ously, Iam using this as a rough proxy for the local popularity of the Iraq
war once it was underway. All else equal, Bush should have fared better in
2004 in states/districts where people agreed with the war. Hence, places
15 To create these graphs, I dropped the vote that occurred before 2004 because Bushs
2000 vote share would not be a good proxy for approval of the war, which would not
start for another three years. The results do not change if it is included.
16 Note:the y-axes are of slightly different heights to improve readability.
213
Change in Pr (Voting for an Antiwar Bill) .6
.5
.4
.3
.2
.1
0
Voted No Voted Yes Voted No Voted Yes
Democrat Republican
.6
Change in Pr (Voting for an Antiwar Bill)
.5
.4
.3
.2
.1
0
Voted No Voted Yes Voted No Voted Yes
Democrat Republican
FIGURE 5A.1.The Effect of Moving Bush's 2004 Vote Share (Max to Min)
(House of Representatives/Senate).
where Bushs vote share is low could be thought of as being more antiwar.
This measure is not without its flaws as not all of the antiwar votes were
equally distant from the 2004 election.
Still, the effect for both chambers of Congress is in the right direction
(as Bushs vote share goes down, the probability of voting for an antiwar
bill goes up) and none of their confidence intervals include zero. We also
see that the effect for nonassociates is clearly much larger than the effect
for associates, which aligns with the theorys expectations for respon-
siveness.17 Indeed, there is almost no overlap in the confidence intervals
of Republicans and Democrats, suggesting the differences in this regard
between associates and nonassociates are significant. The one exception
to this is the Republican Senator who voted no on the Iraq war; the
confidence interval for this effect overlaps by a minuscule amount with
the Senate Democrat who voted yes.18 In general, though, these findings
lend credence to the notion that associates will be less responsive to pub-
lic dissent. This adds to the evidence in support of the books larger claim
that culpable leaders will have a more difficult time being faithful agents
for their citizens.
List of Bills Used in Roll Call Analysis

Table5A.1 lists all of the bills used in the roll call analysis in Chapter5.
All summaries are taken from the Congressional Quarterly Press
Congressional Collection website.
17 A legislators earlier vote on the Iraq war does not have any significant effect within
eitherparty.
18 The Republicans highest possible value for the change in voting for an antiwar bill is
26percent while the lowest possible value in the 95percent confidence interval for the
Democrat who voted yes is 25.9percent. It is important to note, however, that this group
of Republican senators who voted no is predictably small (only twenty such senators
exist in the data set), so the confidence interval will also be large to account for the uncer-
tainty surrounding the estimated effect.
TABLE5A.1. List of Bills Used in Roll Call Analysis

Chamber/Date Bill Information Summary
1. House: Fiscal 2004 Amendment introduced by Waxman

10/16/2003 Supplemental (D-CA) that would reduce Iraq
for Iraq and reconstruction funds in the bill by
Afghanistan/ $250million.
Reconstruction
Funds (HR 3289)
2. House: Fiscal 2006 Amendment introduced by Woolsey
5/25/2005 Defense (D-CA) that would express the
Authorization sense of Congress that the president
U.S. Withdrawal should develop a plan for the
from Iraq withdrawal of U.S.military forces
(HR1815) from Iraq and submit the plan
to the appropriate congressional
committees
3. House: Immediate Iraq Adoption of the resolution that would
11/18/2005 Withdrawal express the sense of the House of
(HRES571) Representatives that deployment
of U.S.forces in Iraq should be
terminated immediately.
4. Senate: Fiscal 2007 Amendment no.4442 put forward by
6/22/2006 Defense Kerry (D-MA) that would require
Authorization the president to begin redeploying
Iraq Troop U.S.troops from Iraq this year
Withdrawal and to complete the withdrawal
(S2766) by July 1, 2007, according to a
schedule coordinated with the Iraqi
government. It would stipulate that
only the minimal number of forces
needed to train Iraqi security forces,
launch targeted counterterrorism
attacks and protect the forces could
remain in Iraq.
5. Senate: Fiscal 2007 Amendment no.4320 put forward by
6/22/2006 Defense Levin (D-MI) that would express
Authorization the sense of Congress urging
Iraq Troop the president to begin phased
Withdrawal redeployment of U.S.troops from
(S2766) Iraq starting in 2006 and to submit
to Congress by the end of 2006
a plan with estimated dates for
continued phased withdrawal.
TABLE5A.1 (cont.)

6. House: Iraq War Adoption of the concurrent resolution
2/16/2007 (HCONRES63) that would express support for
U.S.military personnel serving
in Iraq, while disapproving of
President Bushs decision to deploy
more than 20,000 additional
U.S.combat troops to that country.
7. House: Iraq Troop Passage of the bill that would
5/10/2007 Withdrawal require the withdrawal U.S.troops
(HR2237) and contractors in Iraq with
funds provided by the Defense
Department within 90days of the
bills enactment. The withdrawal
would have to be completed within
180days. The bill would prohibit
any funds made available to the
Defense Department from being
used to increase the number of
U.S.troops serving in Iraq in excess
of the number serving there as of
January 1, 2007, unless the increase
has been specifically authorized in
advance by Congress.
8. House: Iraq Redeployment Passage of the bill that would
7/12/2007 (HR2956) require the defense secretary to
begin redeploying U.S.troops and
contractors out of Iraq within
120days of the bills enactment.
The redeployment, except for
a limited presence, would
have to be completed by April
1, 2008. It would require the
president, no later than January
1, 2008, to transmit to Congress
a comprehensive U.S.strategy for
Iraq that includes a justification of
the minimum force levels required
to protect U.S.national security
interests in Iraq after April 1,
2008, a description of the specific
missions of U.S.forces to be
undertaken, the cost of maintaining
such a force and the expected
duration of the missions.
TABLE5A.1 (cont.)

9. Senate: Fiscal 2008 Amendment no.3164 put forward
10/3/2007 Defense by Feingold (D-WI) that would bar
Appropriations the use of funds for deployment
Troop in Iraq of members of the
Withdrawal U.S.armed forces after June 30,
(HR3222) 2008, with limited exceptions,
including providing security for
U.S.government personnel and
infrastructure, training the Iraqi
security forces and conducting
limited targeted operations
against members of al Qaeda
and other international terrorist
organizations.
10. Senate: Iraq Mission Passage of the joint resolution that
3/15/2007 Passage SJRES9 would establish a more limited
mission for U.S.forces in Iraq
and set a nonbinding goal of
withdrawing most combat troops
by March 2008. Within four
months of enactment, the measure
would require the president
to limit the U.S.mission to
counterterrorism efforts, train Iraqi
forces, and protect U.S.assets.
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Index
accountability, for leaders, 183186 by Republican Party members,

adversaries, war aimsof 145146
culpability of leaders and,87 by supporters, 134,143
as methodological variable, ANZUS Treaty,119
200201 Argentina
under punishment hypotheses, Falklands War and, 115118
74,8688 UK conflict with, 116118
war outcomes influenced by, Aritomo, Yamagata,64
104105 al-Assad, Bashar,38
Afghanistan, U.S. war with, 175178 assassination, of leaders,68
history in armed service as influence associate leaders
on,177 culpability of,5659
McCain strategy for, 176177 defined,54
The Age, 125126,129 during Iraq War,6263
Ambrose, Stephen,192 political factions and,56
al-Ameri, Hadi,174 associates
anti-war support. Seealsowar anti-war votes by, 134, 142,143
supporters costs of anti-war legislation
by associates, 134, 142,143 support, 156157
costs of, for associates, 156157 punishment of, 147153
costs of, for supporters, 158162 as supporters,133
by Democratic Party members, Australia
144145 under ANZUS Treaty,119
flip-flopping accusations with, in First Gulf War,118
159161 Johnson visit to,120
by Kerry,159 during Korean War, 119120
length of war as influence on,146 Liberal Party in,122
Obama and, 159161 in Vietnam War, 118130
position switches for,161 Austria, conflict with Italy,9192
231
232 Index
authoritarian regimes, political Chaco War,64,80

factionsin,56 Chaffee, Lincoln, 151153,156
Axelrod, David,37 political disagreements with Bush,
Ayala, Eusebio,80 G. W.,151
Azeri-Armenian War,80 Republican Party affiliation and,
punishment for, 151153
Barrios, Justo Ruffino,68 chain-ganging,89
behavior, of leaders. Seeleader Chiang Kai-shek,69
behavior, culpability and; Leader Churchill, Winston,60
Behavior Hypothesis citizens, 5. Seealsoculpability, of
bin Laden, Osama,178 citizens
Bonilla, Manuel,71 attribution of leader culpability
Boselli, Paolo, 89,9293 by,2933
Boyda, Nancy,148 culpability and, relationship with
Brown, Sherrod, 150151 leaders, 1114,114118
Bush, George H.W.,26 inability to monitor leader
Bush, George W.,168 actions,2223
legislature culpability under, information access for, 2223,43
138,146 leaders relationship with, 6,1114
political costs of Iraq War for,23 measurement of leader
political disagreements with culpability,5363
Chaffee,151 non-culpable leaders and, 1114,46
public disapproval ratingsfor,3 preferences of, leader culpability
SOFA and, 173174 influenced by,40,42
theory of leader culpability and, punishment of leadersby,40
173174 removal of leaders by, 12,16,42
troop surge under, during role in leader culpability,1314
IraqWar,1 theoretical assumptions
2004 election of,159 about,2529
Bushs war,173 tolerance of war casualties
by,2627
Calwell, Arthur,127 Clinton, Bill,26
Cameron, Clyde,129 Clinton, Hillary, 60,185
Cameron, David,36,37 flip-flopping accusations against,
Carnahan, Mel,148 159161
Carville, James,26 in 2008 presidential election,
casualties, of war,2829 159161
citizens tolerance of,2627 coattails effect,2122
civilian awarenessof,29 commitment, of leaders, 910,
of civilians,28 180181
conflict outcome relatedto,28 competence, of leaders,42,43
for IraqWar,2 for democratic leaders,26
for Italy, during World WarI,95 in non-democratic states,25
leaders tolerance for,27 by regime type,25,26
as methodological variable,201 Congress, U.S. Seealsoculpability, of
partisanship as influenceon,29 legislature
in punishment hypotheses,75 co-ownership of war for,37
Index 233
culpability for military action local cost of war and, 140141

against Syria,3738 margin of victory and,138
Corker, Bob,37 methodology for, 132133
Correlates of War (COW) Project, political party as influence on,135
210212 power of the purse and,132
Crimean War,77 punishment as result of, 147155
culpability, of citizens, 114118. responsiveness of legislators and,
SeealsoFalklandsWar 213215
with extreme outcomes,115 by roll call votes, 136137,
for wars,38 215218
culpability, of executives,155 Southern state representation as
culpability, of leaders, 3844. factor in, 139140
Seealsoleader behavior, supportive non-associates and,
culpabilityand 132,136
for associate leaders,5659 turnover rates for incumbents
citizens preferences and,40,42 and,134
competence as criteria for,42,43 through voting behavior, 135147
consequences of, 114118 culpable leaders. Seealsoleader
domestic politics as influence culpability, theoryof
on,4849 benefitsof,34
history in armed service as influence characteristicsof,41
on,177 Falklands War and, 115118
individual leader characteristics history in armed service as influence
and,41 on,177
measurement of,5363 incentives for,168
under parliamentary systems,15,49 Leader Behavior Hypothesis and,109
in punishment hypotheses,78 replacement,32
by regime type,41 as unfaithful agent,11,43
for replacement leaders, 53,207 war outcomes and,102
state performance and,39 Curtin, John,67
war aims of adversaries and,87
war outcomes and, 108, democracies
110114,211 coattails effect in,2122
as war supporters, 191194 culpability during wartime,
culpability, of legislature 1417,4950
under Bush, G. W., 138,146 domestic politics in,4849
as check against executive power, impeachment process within,14
133134 removal of leaders within,1415
entry into congress as influence theory of leader culpability and,
on,137 182183
history in armed service as influence war outcomes for, 105106
on, 138139 during wartime,7
during Iraq War, 162167 democratic leaders
legislative committee involvement competencyof,26
as influence on,139 principal-agent problem and,23
in Legislator Hypotheses, 141144 under punishment hypotheses,75
length of tenure and, 137138 trade agreements by,2425
234 Index
DemocraticParty likelihood of losing wars for,

anti-war support by, 144145 199200
rate of punishment for, during Iraq during wartime,5456
War, 153154 flip-flopping accusations, anti-war
DeWine, Mike, 150151 supportand
Di Scala, Spencer,91 for Clinton, H., 159161
Al-Din, Yahya Ibn Muhammad Ibn for Kerry,159
Hamid,68 during 1952 presidential election,
domestic audience, 5. 161162
Seealsocitizens political costs for, 161162
Duncan, John,151 Forde, Frank,67
Dupuy, Charles Alexandre,70 foreign policy, U.S., culpability of,
173178
Ecuadorian-Colombian War,67 Fourteen Points, under Treaty of
Eden, Anthony,65 Versailles,95
Eisenhower, Dwight, 63, 66,168 Franco-Prussian War,6364
escalation, of war, 194196 Fraser, Malcolm,126
by leader type,196
by Nixon,195 Galtieri, Leopoldo, 116118
exit strategies, for war, 186190 The Gamble (Ricks),3
communication of,189 Game Change (Heilemann and
involvement in alternative conflicts Halperin),160
as,189 Giolitti, Giovani,9091
military surges as,187 Gorton, John, 124126
plutoing the conflict as,189 no confidence vote against,126
Guam Doctrine,125
Fadden, Arthur,70 The Guardian, 126127
Faisal II (King),67,68 Gutknecht, Gil,149
faithfulness, of leaders.
Seealsounfaithfulagents Haig, Alexander, 117118
of culpable leaders,11,43 Hatch, Orrin,34
of non-culpable leaders,1112 Hitler, Adolf,6667
by political regime,1112 Holt, Harold, 121, 122124
during successful wars,11 disappearance of,124
Falklands War, 115118 Hostettler, John,151
cause of,116 Hussein, Saddam, 1, 26, 106,150
UK involvement in, 116118
Ferry, Jules,73 al-Ilah, Abd,67
final leaders, likelihood of losing wars impeachment, of leaders,14
for, 199200 incompetence, of leaders,4243
First Gulf War, Australia in,118 information, accessto
First Kashmir War,64 for citizens, 2223,43
first leaders,53 for leaders,2224
defined,54 symmetry of,2324
during Iraq War,6263 IraqWar
Leader Behavior Hypothesis associate leaders during,6263
and,109 Bush, G. W., and,1,23
Index 235
as Bushs war,173 Klein, Joe, 150151

casualties of,2,152 Korean War, 4, 60,63,65
congressional culpability and, Australian participation in,
162167 119120
Democratic Party punishment war supporters during, 191194
during, 153154 Korizis, Alexandros, 6667,85
expected length of,12 Kuang-Hsu,68
financial costsof,1
first leaders during,6263 lame duck leaders,22
non-culpable leaders during,6263 Lamont, Ned, 154,157
Obama opposition to, 174175 Leach, James,151
public disapprovalof,3 leader behavior, culpability and,
punishment of legislators for, 101110
148153 Leader Behavior Hypothesis,
Republican Party punishment 106110
during, 153154 culpable leaders and,109
Rhode Island and, specific casualties first leaders in,109
from,152 non-culpable leaders and,109
SOFA and, 173174 regime type and, 110114
troop surge strategies under,1 replacement leaders under,115
irrational leaders,4748 selection effects in, 106107
Italy, during World War I,8898 leader culpability, theory of, 168169.
casualty losses for,95 Seealsonon-culpable leaders
chain-ganging and,89 academic implications for, 179183
collective disappointment accountability in, 183186
over,9798 with aggressive adversaries,13
conflict with Austria,9192 attribution of culpability
declaration of war for,9192 in,2933
military strategy for,91 bargaining attempts under,9,10
as mixed regime,8889 benefitsin,5
under Treaty of London,90,95 for Bush, G. W., foreign policy
Treaty of Versailles and,9497 implications, 173174
Triple Alliance and,89 citizens and leaders relationship
in Triple Entente,8990 under, 1114, 114118
citizens role in,1314
Jeffords, Jim,137 commitment issues in, 910,
Jinnah, Muhammad Ali,64 180181
Johnson, Lyndon Baines, 120, conflict type as factor,180
124125 criteriafor,5
democratic states and, 182183
Kelly, Sue,150 economic crises and,31
Kerry, John, 60, 185. etymologyof,4
Seealsopresidential incentives to gamble for
elections,U.S. resurrection,79
cost of anti-war support,159 for inherited wars,8
King, Peter,37 interaction with opponents in,180
Kissinger, Henry,128 as leader-specific, 179180
236 Index
leader culpability, theory of (cont.) lame duck,22

literature on,67 in non-democratic states,
with mixed regime leaders,8 removalof,15
natural disasters and,31 punishment hypotheses for,4546
Obama under,10 reaction to own culpability,3438
under parliamentary systems,15 removal of, by citizens, 12,16,42
policy implications for, 183190 replacement, 53,207
predictive strategies within,6 by state regimes,21
principal-agent problem in,181 support of faction members,2122
public opinion and,16 as temporary regents, under
reactions to information in,910 monarchies,67
regime type and,179 term limits for,67
shedding of culpability,35 theoretical assumptions
spreading of culpability,35 about,2025
U.S. foreign policy and, 173178 tolerance for war casualties,27
war and,46 type of, during wartime,5354
war outcomes and, 108, war outcomes by,210
110114,211 as war supporters, by type,193
during war with Afghanistan, wartime performance of, 202203
175178 Legislator Hypotheses, for legislative
wartime leadership changes culpability, 141144
and,1417 legislators. Seeculpability, of
with weak adversaries,4950 legislature
leaders. Seealsoassociate leaders; Lenin, Vladimir,69
culpability, of leaders; democratic Liberal Party,122
leaders; first leaders; non-culpable Lieberman, Joseph, 154,157
leaders; punishment, of leaders; Loebsack, David,151
punishment hypotheses Lpez, Francisco Solano,26,68
behavior hypotheses for,4445 Ludlow, Louis,185
citizens punishmentof,40 Lugar, Richard,34
citizens relationship with, 6,1114
coattails effect for,2122 Madison, James,188
commitment of, 910, 180181 Makoto, Saito,70
competency of, by type of Masaryk, Tom,69
regime,25,26 McCain, John, 175, 176177
conflict of interest for,24 McCaskill, Claire, 148149
culpability and, relationship with McCullough, David,66
citizens, 1114, 114118 McEwen, John,124
distribution of public and private McKinney, Cynthia,148
goodsby,21 McMahon, William, 126127
ending of wars by, 186190 Menzies, Robert, 70, 121122
escalation of war by,196 Millerand, tienne-Alexandre,70
impeachmentof,14 mixed regime, Italy as,8889
incentives to continue wars,39 monarchies
incompetence of,4243 political factionsin,56
informational access for,2224 temporary leaders under,67
irrational,4748 Moreno, Gabriel,67
Index 237
Mosquero, Toms Ciprianode,67 reelection of,178

under theory of leader
Napoleon III,6364 culpability,10
natural disasters, attribution of blame during 2008 presidential election,
for,31 159161
New York Times,92 war with Afghanistan and, 175178
The New York Tribune, 92,195 Orlando, Vittorio, 80, 89, 94,170
1952 election. Seepresidential
elections,U.S. Pais, Sidonio,195
Nixon, Richard, 3, 124125 Park, Hee,68
escalation of Vietnam War,195 parliamentary systems
Guam Doctrine under,125 leader culpability under,15,49
Whitlam and,129 replacement leaders under,5759
Nixon Doctrine. SeeGuam Doctrine resignations under,66
non-culpable leaders. Paul, Ron,151
SeealsoObama,Barack Penn, Mark,160
cabinet members and,5960 Persian Gulf War (19901991),165
defined, 54,5963 plutoing of conflicts,189
escalation of war for, 194196 political factions
incentives for,181 associate leaders and,56
incompetence of,4243 in authoritarian regimes,56
during Iraq War,6263 under monarchies,56
lack of political connectedness during wartime,57
for,6163 political regimes. Seeregimes, political
Leader Behavior Hypothesis and,109 position switches, for war support,
length of participation in war,209 161. Seealsoflip-flopping
lock-in costs for,60 accusations, anti-war supportand
non-political outsiders and,6263 political costs of, 161162
opposition to war by,6061 Posner, Eric,38
relationship between citizens and, Powell, Colin,3
1114,46 power of the purse,132
state performance and,39 Prado, Mariano Ignacio,73
as unfaithful agent,1112 presidential elections,U.S.
war outcomes and,103 1952, 161162
as war supporters,60 2004,159
non-democratic states. 2008, 159161
Seealsoauthoritarian regimes, principal-agent problem
political factionsin for democratic leaders,23
competency of leadersin,25 monitoringin,33
punishment hypothesesin,46 in theory of leader culpability,181
removal of leadersin,15 public opinion, in theory of leader
non-supportive associates, legislature culpability,16
culpability and, 132,133 punishment, of leaders.
Seealsoremoval of leaders
Obama, Barack,168 through assassination,68
military action against Syria,3538 change circumstances as factor in,
opposition to Iraq War, 174175 206208
238 Index
punishment, of leaders (cont.) removal of leaders

as coordinated move by domestic through assassination,68
actors,6667 by citizens, 12,16,42
criteria for,65 for domestic reasons,70
culpability effects for,78 through health-related issues,6869
in Democratic Party, 153154 through retirement,6970
for Iraq War support, 148154 Renouf, Alan, 120121
in legislature, 147155 replacement leaders
measurement of,6371 associate leaders and,53
in Republican Party, 153154 cabinet members and,5759
punishment hypotheses,4546 culpability of, 53,207
conditional factors in,8188 under parliamentary
cost of victory as variablein,80 systems,5759
culpability effectsin,78 under punishment hypotheses,85
democratic leaders under,75 support of warby,58
leader performance during war,76 war outcomes for,115
leader positionin,72 RepublicanParty
length of conflict as variable anti-war support by, 145146
for,8486 associate supporters in,133
across non-democratic states,46 Chaffee and, 151153
quantitative methodology rate of punishment for, during Iraq
for,7188 War, 153154
regime type and,8184 Rhode Island, during Iraq War, 152.
replacement leaders under,85 SeealsoChaffee, Lincoln
war aims of adversaries under, The Right Way to Lose a War
74,8688 (Tierney),186
war casualties as influenceon,75 roll call votes, 136137, 215218
Roosevelt, FranklinD.,64
Al Qaeda,177 Rumsfeld, Donald, 12,149
Quirino, Elpido,65 Ryun, Jim,148
recessions, economic,31 Sagasta, Prxedes,6364

regimes, political. Al Said, Qaboos bin Said,71
Seealsoauthoritarian regimes Salandra, Antonio, 89, 9092,170
competency of leaders and,25,26 Sanders, Bernie,137
faithfulness of leaders and,1112 Silent Majority speech,195
Leader Behavior Hypothesis and, Simmons, Rob,150
110114 Sino-French War,73
leader culpability and,41 Six Day War,5556
leaders and,21 Slate,38
as methodological variable, Smith, Dennis Mack,90
203206 SOFA. Seestatus of forces agreement
punishment hypotheses and,8184 Sonnino, Giorgio Sidney,90
in theory of leader Sorzano, Tejada,64
culpability,8,179 status of forces agreement (SOFA),
war outcomes influenced by, 173174
105106, 110114,212 Stevenson, Adlai,66
Index 239
supporters recent foreign policy for, culpability

anti-war votes by, 134, 142,143 of, 173178
as associates,133 war with Afghanistan, 175178
costs of anti-war support for,
158162 Victor Emmanuel II (King),67,94
non-culpable leadersas,60 VietnamWar
punishment of, 153155 Australian participation in,
in Republican Party,133 118130
supportive non-associates, legislature Guam Doctrine and,125
culpability and, 132, 133,136 Nixons escalation of,195
Syria, military action against,3538 voting behavior, legislature culpability
congressional culpability for, and, 135147
3738
Walz, Tim,149
Talent, Jim, 148149 War of 1812,188
term limits, for leaders,67 War of the Pacific,73
Ter-Petrosyan, Levon,80 War of the Triple Alliance,26,68
Thatcher, Margaret, 116118 war outcomes
theory of leader culpability. Seeleader classification of, 210212
culpability, theoryof coding schemes for, 104103
Tierney, Dominic,186 culpable leaders and,102
Treaty of London,90,95 for democratic states, 105106
Treaty of Versailles factors for entrance into conflict,
Fourteen Points under,95 103104
Italian gains under,9497 leader behavior and, 101110
Wilsons influence on,9597 leader culpability and, 108,
Triple Alliance,89 110114,211
Triple Entente,8990 by leader type,210
Truman, Harry, 4, 6566,168 non-culpable leaders and,103
1952 presidential election and, regime type as influence on,
161162 105106, 110114,212
Tsuyoshi, Inukai,195 for replacement leaders,115
2004 election. Seepresidential state capabilities and, relative to
elections,U.S. adversary,103
2008 presidential election. variables for, 102103
Seepresidential elections,U.S. war aims as influence on, 102103
war aims of adversaries as influence
UK. SeeUnited Kingdom on, 104105
unfaithful agents War Powers Act of 1973,185
culpable leaders as,11,43 war selection hypothesis,50
non-culpable leaders as,1112 war supporters
United Kingdom (UK),77 culpability of leaders as, 191194
in Falklands War, 116118 for Iraq War, punishment of,
United States (U.S.) 148154
Seealsopresidential elections; during Korean War, 191194
specific presidents by leader type,193
under ANZUS Treaty,119 position switches for, 161162
240 Index
wars. Seealsocasualties, of war; exit one-leader designs for, 199200

strategies, for war; specificwars political actorsin,33
with aggressive adversaries,13 political backlash for,10
causal pathways for,3233 political factions during,57
causes of,5556 political rhetoric during,3132
culpability during,1417 as public good,2
culpability of citizens for,38 replacement leaders supportof,58
democracies during,7 targeted loser in, 198199
democratic states and, culpability timelines for,31
during,4950 types of leaders during,5354
as escalation from crisis,32 universal disapproval of, under
escalation of, by non-culpable democratic leadership,4
leaders, 194196 voluntary participation in,
faithfulness of leaders during,11 197199
financingof,31 The Washington Post, 97, 175,178
first leaders during,5456 Whitehouse, Sheldon, 152153
inherited,8 Whitlam, Gough, 118119,
initiating loser in, 198199 127130,171
initiation of,5556 Nixon and,129
irrational leaders and,4748 Wilson, Woodrow,9597
leader culpability theory and,46 World War I. SeealsoItaly, during
leadership changes during,1417 WorldWarI
length of leader tenure before, chain-ganging and,89
201202 Treaty of London during,90,95
military surge in, as exit Treaty of Versailles and,94, 97
strategy,187
non-culpable leaders and,6061 Zelaya, Jos, 71

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Sarah E.Croco is Assistant Professor of Government and Politics at the

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

List of Tables page viii

Appendix to Chapter3 191

2.1 Possible Wartime Scenarios:State Performance and

3A.4 The Effect of Losing on the Likelihood of Domestic

3.1 The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of

3A.1 The Effect of Culpability on the Probability of

Having now completed my first book, Ihave a newfound appreciation

Antoine Banks, Jhanna Birnir, Kanisha Bond, Jennifer Hadden, Mike

In January 2007, President George W.Bush ordered an additional twenty

4 Rumsfeld Foresees Swift Iraq War (2003).

at 90percent in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, by the time

because of their proximity to the decision to go to war. The leaders prox-

Lacunae the Existing Literature

Fourth and finally, we need to develop a more nuanced understanding of

Culpability and Leaders Incentives to Gamble for Resurrection

harder than their successors but it is inherently limited because it assumes

Knowing a leaders culpability improves our predictive abilities.

Culpability and Leaders Reactions to Information and

their nonculpable counterparts to succumb to success bias (i.e., being overly

Culpability and the Relationship between Leaders and Citizens

26 Croco and Weeks (2014).

29 Discussing the notion of leader faithfulness in terms of citizens suggests a democratic

in Chapter3, conditions exist that would motivate a nonculpable leader

Culpability and Wartime Leadership Changes in Democracies

33 Gelpi etal. (2005/2006) and Gelpi et al. (2009).

A Theory of Leader Culpability

Chapter1 established two puzzles. First, why do some leaders continue

this assumption of blind retrospection makes sense in many policy areas

Part1:Theoretical Assumptions about

1 Bueno de Mesquita etal. (2003).

instance, this coattails effect can allow members of an executives

effectively. Members of the relevant domestic audience will typically have

key aspect] is whether an individual can personalize a conflict victim

This difference is important to recognize because casualties are a fact

Part2:Attributing Culpability in TimesofWar

This claim differs from a common assumption in the literature that

problems.13 Although the economy is a logical place to start, it presents

well-established, easily observable steps. Acts like declaring war, mobiliz-

Leaders Reactions to Their Own Culpability

25 Transcript of President Bushs Address to the Nation on Iraq (2007).

As for the remaining two options shedding or spreading culpability

1,400 people were killed by an alleged chemical attack in Damascus.28

noted that by turning to Congress at this juncture, Obama was creating

on the line. The international communitys credibility is on the line. And

Part3:The Importance of Leader Culpability

Table2.1. Possible Wartime Scenarios:State Performance and Leader

conflict as well. Indeed, as Idiscuss in Chapter3, a large percentage of

culpable leader, having to resort to either of these options will imply he

domestic audience labeling her incompetent because of events in the war,

52 As Imentioned in Chapter1, the use of feminine pronouns to discuss nonculpable lead-

Part4:Hypotheses for Citizen and Leader Behavior

Leader Behavior Hypotheses

Furthermore, given the advantage democratic domestic audiences have

Leader Behavior Hypothesis 2: Among culpable leaders, democratic

Of course, as I noted previously, simply having stronger incentives to

Importantly, this hypothesis is only about the frequency with which

56 Bueno de Mesquita etal. (2003).

Part5:Implications from theTheory

A Rationale for Irrational Leaders

The Importance of Domestic Politics

Culpable Loser 1.569* 1.618*

* p < 0.05, p < 0.01, * p <0.001

* p < 0.05, p < 0.01, * p <0.001