UC San Diego

In virtually every military crisis encountered by the United States, questions of the authorityunder which the president is acting (and whether the legislature should grant some kind of authorization) are heavily debated in Congress and in the press. Despite this, political science has given little attention to the war powers debate in domestic politics and even less to the effect such internal discussion has on perceived American credibility internationally. This project proposes a theory of how the war powers have worked in actual practice since the end of the Second World War, and then demonstrates the explanatory value of the theory through both quantitative and qualitative evidence. In contrast to the conventional wisdom of an “Imperial Presidency” and the irrelevance of congressional war powers since 1945, this project suggests questions of war powers have consistently featured prominently in both executive branch decision-making and in the perceived credibility of American threats in the eyes of U.S. allies and adversaries.