Presidential Effort And International Outcomes: Evidence For An Executive Bottleneck

In this article, 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 nonsubstitutable, 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.