Constructed Success: How Leaders Manage Perceptions of Intervention Outcomes

• In Event: War, Leaders, and Public Opinion

Abstract

Public perceptions of success in military interventions carry high stakes for democratic governance. Expectations of success can mobilize domestic support for military action, while political punishment for failure helps deter leaders from starting wars they cannot win. Despite the many, well-documented ways that perceptions of intervention success matter, how public perceptions are formed and how easily they can be altered by leaders remain open questions with critical implications for democracy. To answer these questions, the paper treats public perceptions of success as dependent variables in their own right, arguing that the public’s view of intervention success is multifaceted and thus sensitive to priming by strategic leaders.
Using a combination of survey experiments, speech data, and archival materials, I test this argument in two steps. First, survey evidence demonstrates that the public’s metrics for intervention success are dynamic and respond to elite primes. Second, I analyze presidential speeches and corresponding communications memos, showing that leaders recognize the importance of public perceptions of success and work to manage expectations. Counterintuitively, they do so by foreshadowing the risk of high costs and casualties, which is otherwise expected to weaken public support for military action. Taken as a whole, the findings highlight success as a dynamic concept that can vary across time and interventions. The ability of public perceptions of success to constrain elected leaders is thus also variable. When new technologies increase the distance between the public and war outcomes, or interventions pursue broad, open-ended goals, leaders’ power to construct definitions of success is amplified.

Author

• Sarah Maxey, Loyola University Chicago