Presidential Effort and International Outcomes: Evidence for an Executive Bottleneck

In this paper, we identify and test an implication of the claim that chief executives are uniquely effective diplomatic actors. To the extent that a leader’s time is valuable and non-substitutable, there will always be more diplomatic problems that could benefit from a leader’s scarce time than he or she can possibly address. This executive bottleneck should tighten when the opportunity cost of spending time on diplomacy rises, leading to decreased time spent on diplomacy and a consequent reduction in outcome quality. Using newly-collected data, we test for the existence of this bottleneck in American foreign policy. We demonstrate a large, persistent decrease in presidential time spent on foreign policy immediately prior to presidential elections and show that this corresponds to a substantial increase in the level of conflict within the American bloc, where our framework predicts an indicative effect. We rule out prominent competing explanations for this distraction-conflict link. Forthcoming, Journal of Politics Replication files are available in the JOP Data Archive on Dataverse (http://thedata.harvard.edu/dvn/dv/jop). Supplementary material for this article is available in an online appendix. A recent body of research investigates the influence of individual leaders on foreign policy both directly, through the selection of particular policies, and indirectly, through influence over the bureaucracy and the national agenda (Downs and Rocke, 1994; Wood and Peake, 1998; Edwards and Wood, 1999; Peake, 2001; Byman and Pollack, 2001; Cohen, 2002; Darden, 2010; Chiozza and Goemans, 2011; Jervis, 2013). Within this tradition, scholars have established that leaders have some ability to bend foreign policy towards their preferences. In general, this work focuses on characteristics that vary across leaders, such as beliefs, personality, or priorities, and the way that these characteristics lead to different policy outcomes depending on who is in power. Here, in a different but related direction, we examine variation in a given leader’s diplomatic effectiveness at different points in his or her tenure. In particular, we examine how time spent and effort exerted affect an American president’s effectiveness in international diplomacy. Our overarching theoretical claim is simple and generic – if the president is a uniquely effective diplomatic actor, then, whatever the president’s diplomatic goals, he or she can more effectively accomplish them through a greater exertion of time and effort. We begin by identifying three non-substitutable roles for the president in diplomacy: his unique skills in personal diplomacy, his importance as a manager and coordinator of the bureaucracy, and his status as the ultimate decision-maker. All of these roles can not easily be filled by other actors and require substantial presidential time and attention. Next, we identify a theoretical consequence of the president’s unique capabilities, which we label the executive bottleneck: a great number of diplomatic problems could benefit from the president’s direct involvement, but the president’s time is scarce, so he cannot address all of them. When the president has more time available, he will be more able to address these