UIVERZA V LJUBLJAI FAKULTETA ZA DRUŽBEE VEDE ina Gorenc PREDSEDIŠKO UTEMELJEVAJE AMERIŠKIH VOJAŠKIH ITERVECIJ V OBDOBJU 1948–2008 (PRESIDETIAL JUSTIFICATIOS FOR AMERICA MILITARY ITERVETIOS FROM 1948 TO 2008) Doktorska disertacija Ljubljana, 2009 UIVERZA V LJUBLJAI FAKULTETA ZA DRUŽBEE VEDE ina Gorenc Mentor: prof. Cornell W. Clayton Somentor: prof. Lance LeLoup PREDSEDIŠKO UTEMELJEVAJE AMERIŠKIH VOJAŠKIH ITERVECIJ V OBDOBJU 1948–2008 (PRESIDETIAL JUSTIFICATIOS FOR AMERICA MILITARY ITERVETIOS FROM 1948 TO 2008) Doktorska disertacija Ljubljana, 2009 This dissertation is dedicated to the memory of the late Prof. Lance LeLoup, a great friend, incessant inspiration and mentor, to whom goes my profound respect and immense gratitude. I take this opportunity to thank my thesis supervisor and advisor, Prof. Cornell W. Clayton, for all his invaluable guidance, help and motivation. He believed in me and in this project. He was there for me whenever I needed his advice, he listened to me, asked questions, challenged and pushed me to do more and to do it better. I am grateful for his editorial suggestions and positive attitude. I am also thankful to my dissertation committee, Prof. Monika Kalin Golob and Prof. Bogomil Ferfila for their advice and support, and to my colleague and friend, Mojca Jarc, for her assistance, criticism and useful insights. Finally, this dissertation would not be possible without the love, support and encouragement of my family. amesto tega lista se vstavi IZJAVA O AVTORSTVU Summary The present dissertation explores the relationship between the verbal behavior of American presidents when authorizing and justifying the use of military force abroad and the various institutional and attitudinal factors that may explain that behavior. It argues that the words presidents chose when explaining such actions reveals more about them than just their lexical tastes and styles. The dissertation covers different, and partly overlapping, fields of study. Thus it adopts an interdisciplinary research approach; research on presidential power pertains to the discipline of political science; presidential skills in public communication are rooted in communication science; while many of the attitudinal variables used in the study are drawn from the field of political psychology. The research draws upon multiple methodological tools to study presidential communication; historical and contextual analysis, simple quantitative and regression analyses, as well as a traditional linguistic method of research - content analysis. Research into presidential rhetoric is not new, and politics has always been closely connected with language. Not only because ideas (and ideologies) are expressed through language, but mostly due to the strength of words in persuasion. For a long time, presidents have been judged by their power to persuade, therefore language and the skills of communication rank very high on the list of characteristics that make a successful president. Indeed, Richard Neustadt (1990) famously argued that presidential power is not a fixed commodity under the Constitution but fluctuates based on the ability of presidents to persuade other important actors. Language is thus not only a vehicle for transportation of politicians’ ideas, but also an active agent in defining the capacity of a president to effect change and to influence how people understand political reality (Ellis 1998). It is also true that presidents in the United States operate in a system of checks and balances, in which they must constantly confront oppositional power from the Congress, from the courts, and other institutional actors. Indeed the American constitution specifically divides the war power between the president and the Congress; giving one the power to declare war while making the other the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. At various times throughout the history, presidents have relied upon different legal authorizations for their decision to deploy American soldiers abroad. The two sources of legal authority most frequently used by presidents are the Constitution’s Commander-in-Chief Clause and congressional joint resolutions. While some experts argue that the constitutional always requires congressional authorization for the use of military force, presidents have often relied upon their exclusive authority under article II alone to order American troops into conflict and 5 left Congress out of the process. Thus, in addition to analyzing the types of rhetoric employed by presidents when justifying the use of military force, this dissertation also seeks to understand the factors that lead presidents to chose one form of legal authority for their actions over another. Numerous factors influence the choice of presidential rhetoric as well as the legal justifications that presidents rely upon to support their actions. In additional to individual psychological and cognitive influences (such as a president’s partisan attachments, the complexity of their thinking, or their background and experiences in foreign affairs), there are also various contextual or institutional factors at work (such as the presence of absence of divided government, the president’s relationship to the political regime and “political time,” as well as international patterns of institutionalized behavior such as the presence of the Cold War for an extended period of time). All of these influences are analyzed in the present work. The time frame of the research begins with the end of World War II, and the first elected term of President Truman in 1948, and it ends in 2008, with the end of President G.W. Bush’s second term of office. Two types of addresses are included in the research; these are state of the union addresses and post military intervention addresses, all together making up the research sample of 43 addresses. Content analysis is used to code the addresses, and justifications for the use of force were grouped in 11 different categories. The main goal of the dissertation is to discern patterns of rhetorical behavior of presidents after a military intervention and to isolate factors that influence it. The research demonstrates that differences between presidents and their verbal behavior following a military intervention are less dependent on party affiliation and other attitudinal factors, than they are on institutional frameworks and social, political and historical context. Presidents of both parties, regardless of their integrative complexity or international experience, have exhibited a surprising degree of rhetorical similarity and choice of legal justification when confronted with similar institutional contexts. This indicates the importance of institutional and contextual restrictions imposed on presidents and teaches us not to expect the impossible when there is a change in presidential administration. 6 Povzetek Avtorica se v disertaciji loti proučevanja vzorcev verbalnega obnašanja ameriških predsednikov in njihove odvisnosti od institucionalnih in/ali vedenjskih dejavnikov. Verjame namreč, da predsedniki z uporabo določenih izrazov in besednih zvez, v utemeljitvah svojih odločitev za vojaško intervencijo v tujini, bodisi javnosti, bodisi kongresu, razkrijejo več kot le osebni stil izražanja. Disertacija posega na vrsto družboslovnih področij, ki se med seboj delno prekrivajo, zaradi česar je tudi pristop k analizi interdisciplinaren. Disertacija vključuje področje političnih ved (analiza institucije predsednika), komunikologije (predsedniška komunikacija), jezikoslovja (vsebinska analiza) in politične psihologije (vedenjski in osebnostni dejavniki). Raziskovanje predsedniške institucije in retorike je v okviru širšega politološkega in družboslovnega raziskovanja dobro uveljavljeno. Pojem retorika se v disertaciji uporablja v ožjem, semantičnem in vsebinskem smislu in ne vključuje diskurzivno stilistične analize. Jezik ne predstavlja zgolj sredstva za prenos političnih vsebin in aktivnega sooblikovalca ideologij, ampak je ključnega pomena v procesu prepričevanja. Ker so bili predsedniki dolgo ocenjevani prav glede na svojo uspešnost prepričevanja, sta bila jezik in spretnost komunikacije umeščena visoko na lestvici lastnosti, ki jih je uspešen predsednik moral imeti. Predsedniška pooblastila ne izvirajo vedno neposredno iz ustave, ampak si jih mora predsednik znati pridobiti in uveljaviti, prav skozi proces prepričevanja (Neustadt 1990). Ameriški politični sistem umešča predsednika v okvir na tri veje deljene oblasti, ki se med seboj vzajemno nadzirajo. Vojna in z vojno povezane aktivnosti prestavljajo zelo občutljivo področje, zaznamovano z večnim bojem za prevlado med predsednikom in kongresom. Ustava deli vojne pristojnosti med izvršno in zakonodajno vejo oblasti. Kongres je pristojen za objavo oziroma razglasitev vojne napovedi, medtem ko predsednik kot vrhovni poveljnik oboroženih sil vojno dejansko vodi; to kaže, da sta v primeru vojne zakonodajna in izvršna oblast soodvisni in bi morali delovati skupaj. V različnih zgodovinskih obdobjih so se predsedniki sklicevali na več oblik pravne podlage za vojaško intervencijo. Najpogostejša je bila ustava in iz nje izhajajoče posebne pravice predsednika, čeprav stroga interpretacije ustave predvideva kot edino ustrezno pravno podlago prav soglasje kongresa. Le to je lahko izraženo v obliki skupne resolucije obeh domov kongresa, ki pa so jo predsedniki le izjemoma pridobili, oziroma zanjo zaprosili, še pred uporabo sile in vojaško intervencijo. Naslednja pomembna tema, ki jo obravnava disertacija, je vpliv notranjih