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Despite the fact that the Constitution assigns to Congress the power to declare war, Congress has not done so since World War II. In place of a declaration, the Congress has produced a series of authorization of force resolutions, the most famous of which is the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, the most recent, against Iraq. This paper will argue that authorization of force resolutions are unconstitutional, since they do not provide a means for the people’s representatives of decide the question of war or peace. To make this point, the paper analyzes the way in which the term, "authorization," is used in the debate over the respective war power of the Congress and the Commander-in-Chief. The paper then concludes with practical suggestions on how the Congress might declare war in the future. Specifically, the Declaration of Independence and the 1898 declarations against Spain are analyzed for guidance on the form, content categories, and sequencing of conditional and absolute declarations of war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key question in political psychology is how political actors update their expectations on policy outcomes and how they attribute blame, both publicly and privately, for bad outcomes. The US invasion of Iraq, now generally but not universally considered a mistake, provides an opportunity to explore this question. The paper will track the publicly stated expectations of the members of Congress who voted in the fall of 2002 in favor of authorizing the use of force in Iraq. It will focus on expectations on such issues as the likelihood of finding WMDs in Iraq, the likelihood of ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the likely aftermath of the initial intervention (the prospects for peace, democracy, or civil conflict), the expected costs and duration of the conflict, and judgments on whether the 2002 vote was a mistake. Using both qualitative and quantitative analysis, the paper will assess why some members of Congress updated their public expectations more rapidly and radically than others, looking at such factors as party affiliation, margin of victory in the member's last election, prior military service, foreign policy experience, and professional training prior to entering Congress. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What accounts for congressional assertion or lack thereof in national security policy after World War II? The author argues assertion is a function of the degree of congressional access to critical intelligence. Two case studies have been chosen to illuminate this poorly theorized issue area: The covert CIA operation in Angola which Congress shut down in 1975 and the 2002 Resolution authorizing President Bush to use force against Iraq. Furthermore, this paper seeks to test the waters for a more encompassing theory of Congress and national security policy that looks at presidential prestige and its consequences for the legislative-executive power-ratio in foreign and defense policy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. government often creates ad hoc advisory commissions on national security issues. Recent examples include the 9/11 Commission and Iraq Study Group. Yet few scholars have examined the impact of commissions. I argue that commissions can help increase support for a presidential, congressional, or partisan agenda, and can help policymakers overcome collective action problems by providing a focal point for debate. I test hypotheses about the sources of commission influence with an original data set of 39 national security commissions that reported between 1981 and 2005. I find that commissions are likely to have greater impact when they are established after a national security disaster or scandal—a finding that challenges the conventional view that such commissions only perform symbolic damage control. I also find that the recommendations of presidential commissions are adopted more often than those of agency or statutory commissions, and that, absent a crisis, commissions addressing highly salient issues are not more likely than those addressing less salient issues to influence policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I elaborate and extend Jeffrey Legro’s dynamic model of ideational change to show how the idea of regime change as a solution to the Iraq problem competed in the marketplace of ideas in American foreign policy-making. I show how a new, collectively held belief in regime change enabled Congress to gain political traction in foreign policy, particularly after the “Republican Revolution” of 1994. Ideational competition centered on two belief systems; one, a traditionally Realist understanding of containment held by the Clinton administration, and the other, a generally Wilsonian understanding of regime ouster and democratization held by an “epistemic community” of national security intellectuals, like-minded conservative ideologues, and ranking members of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill. Ideas, I argue, are essential variables for understanding the linkage between interests and foreign policy choice and for understanding Congressional activism in what the Supreme Court famously termed the “zone of twilight” between the executive and legislative branches. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]