Securing Approval: Domestic Politics and Multilateral Authorization for War. By Terrence L. Chapman. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011. 189p. $27.50.

Why do states go through the trouble of seeking authorization from multilateral institutions to use military force when they are not required to do so? How do states choose the international organization through which to work? Why do citizens sometimes demand a multilateral response to an international crisis, yet at other times seem content when their leaders act unilaterally? Terrence Chapman takes up these questions in his persuasive and important book Securing Approval. The answer, he says, is domestic politics. Using a game-theoretic approach supported by a wealth of empirical evidence, Chapman shows that international organizations (IOs) provide important information to domestic publics. This information can affect public opinion and, by extension, foreign policy. A short review does not do justice to this nuanced and smart book. Nevertheless, I will outline the author's central argument before discussing the book's contribution to the literature. I conclude by raising three issues that might serve as avenues for future research.

The model starts with assumptions that democratic leaders need public support for their foreign policies, and citizens, who generally have little knowledge of international affairs, are searching for cues that can tell them whether to offer that support. International organizations, like the United Nations and NATO, can provide cues to citizens on whether they should support their leader's foreign policy. Chapman argues that it is not simply approval or disapproval from an IO that informs citizens; rather, it is the perceived bias of the organization that shapes the message. For instance, when a conservative IO (i.e., an organization that, by virtue of its membership and voting rules, usually opposes military action) authorizes the use of force, the public receives a strong cue that the use of force is warranted. Similarly, when a revisionist IO with a reputation for saying “yes” to military interventions suddenly says “no,” the public receives a strong cue that the use of force is inappropriate. However, when IOs act predictably—that is, when conservative IOs oppose the use of force and revisionist IOs support the use of force—this deprives the public of good information. During the Cold War, for example, most Americans took a UN Security Council (UNSC) veto from the Soviet Union or China as a given, not necessarily as a comment on the wisdom of U.S. policy. In short, when IOs break character, citizens take notice and react accordingly.

The “informational bias” model creates incentives for political leaders that are rather counterintuitive. Chapman contends that leaders who desire public support should actually seek out those IOs least likely to give their consent. Why? If a conservative IO (e.g., UNSC) offers its consent for the use of force, it sends a strong signal to the domestic public that the situation indeed warrants military force, which, in turn, increases the probability of a broad public rally. Conversely (and here is the ace in the hole for political leaders), if a conservative IO denies a leader's request to use war as a means of policy, there is little effect on domestic opinion since the public will have, ex ante, expected at least one member of the UNSC to veto the use of force. The result is that political leaders have a lot to gain and little to lose by appealing to a conservative IO to sanction military force. On the other hand, a political leader who takes his case to a revisionist organization gains little additional public support if the IO says “yes” (we expect the IO to say “yes”), but runs the risk of a huge drop in public support if the organization says “no.” Again, the risk–reward analysis tilts heavily in favor of seeking authorization through the IO least likely to sanction the use of force.

Chapman supports his theory with a number of empirical tests. Chapter 3 examines whether political leaders shop for the more conservative IO when requesting authorization for military force. The analysis shows that from 1946 to 2003, political leaders appealed to the UNSC more frequently as the Council moved farther away in ideological space (p. 86). In other words, American presidents were more likely to take their case to the UNSC in years when the Council was relatively hostile to U.S. interests than in years when the Council was relatively friendly. Chapter 4 uses two methods to assess the claim that the public reacts to informational cues given by IOs. The first examines determinants of political rallies in the United States from 1946 to 2001 and finds that “rallies with UN authorization are only larger than average when the pivotal member is ideologically distant from the United States” (p. 117). The second test uses a vignette experiment to explore the influence of IO bias on citizen judgment of foreign policy. Unfortunately, experimentally manipulating the bias of the UNSC, the key explanatory variable in Chapman's model, had little effect on respondents' attitudes. (Nevertheless, I appreciated Chapman's willingness to discuss this piece of disconfirming evidence.) Chapter 5 examines how appealing to an international organization influences coalition building. Chapman finds that “while positive decisions [by the UNSC] exert a strong pull on potential joiners, the effect is much stronger if the decision is issued from an ideologically distant Council” (p. 143). The book concludes with an interesting discussion of how the institutional design (i.e., membership and voting rules) of IOs can affect state behavior and offers a clear road map for future research.

This is an outstanding piece of scholarship that will no doubt make a splash in the field. Chapman does an admirable job of situating his theory in the literature, he discusses game theory in a manner rigorous enough to satisfy the experts while remaining accessible to the uninitiated, and he provides a wealth of empirical evidence to support his hypotheses. I am especially grateful that he provides an answer to a puzzle that has troubled me for some time. I have always believed that the process of gaining UNSC approval to liberate Kuwait was instrumental in George H. W. Bush's securing public support in the run-up to the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Accordingly, I had expected that the inability of the United States to get a second UNSC resolution authorizing war with Iraq in 2003 would dampen Americans' enthusiasm for war. It did not. Chapman's information-bias model provides an answer to this apparent discrepancy: While support from the UNSC often boosts public support, opposition from the UNSC usually has little effect on mass opinion.

Although the book is generally quite persuasive, three issues deserve a second look. First, I question the relative importance of IOs as a cognitive heuristic given the wealth of alternative, and possibly more easily accessible, cues. For instance, I expect that low-information rational individuals would rely on partisan identification, media coverage, cues from the president, and the tenor of elite debate before turning to IOs for information about foreign policy. Chapman controls for some but not all of these variables in his statistical tests. Moreover, in his vignette experiment, he finds that individuals' perception of the hawkishness/dovishness of presidential candidates provides a more salient cue for respondents to evaluate policy than does perceptions of IO bias. In short, more work is needed in examining the relative importance of IOs as a cognitive heuristic.

Second, although Chapman stresses that most citizens do not make sophisticated judgments about foreign policy, I still believe that his theory demands too much of the public. For the model to work, citizens must be able to identify both the pivotal member of an IO (i.e., the state that casts the deciding vote in the organization) and that member's political bias (i.e., whether the pivotal member generally supports or opposes the policies of the initiating state). I am not convinced that the average citizen can make these judgments. Consider, for instance, a 2003 TransAtlantic Trends Survey that asked citizens of eight democracies to name the five permanent members (P-5) of the UNSC. With the exception of France, a plurality of respondents in each country failed to name any of the permanent five of the UNSC. For the United States, which had the fourth most knowledgeable citizens in the eight-country sample, only 18% of Americans could recall all five members, while 41% could not recall any members of the P-5. In light of these results, it seems a bit of a stretch to assume that the public can identify the preferences and biases of members of the UNSC if they have no idea who even sits on the P-5.

Finally, the UNSC occupies an important yet somewhat ambiguous role as the conservative IO in the analysis. Chapman argues that democratic states seek out the UNSC because the membership of the P-5, coupled with each member's absolute veto, makes it difficult to pass resolutions (thus making it a conservative organization). And, by the logic of the model, conservative IOs offer considerable upside and little downside to political leaders. An alternative, constructivist explanation of the UNSC's importance suggests that states appeal to the UN because both citizens and leaders see it as the most legitimate and most appropriate IO to deal with issues of international security. At first blush, both arguments appear quite similar: Political leaders go to the UN because they want to influence their domestic publics. However, it is important to note the subtle distinction: Chapman's theory suggests that political leaders appeal to the UNSC because it is conservative; the constructivist account suggests that presidents go to the UN because it is legitimate. If the constructivist perspective is correct, then the informational bias of the organization really does not matter in approval seeking and venue shopping. Instead, citizens simply view the UN as the gold standard of international organizations. Although he attempts to sort out these alternatives through a probit analysis of U.S. appeals to the UNSC, perhaps the best way to deal with the causal ambiguity is through intensive case studies that explore why presidents appealed to the UN. Of course, this does not mean that Chapman is wrong; it simply means that more evidence is needed to establish causality.

In sum, Securing Approval is a significant book that advances our understanding of the link between domestic politics and international behavior. The critiques outlined in this review are not damning, but rather reflect some potentially interesting avenues for future research. Indeed, Chapman's theory is novel, interesting, and quite persuasive.