The “rally-round-the-flag effect” sparked by the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington and by President George W. Bush's prompt launching of the War on Terrorism cries out for the kind of timely analysis that political scientists sometimes can provide. A rally effect is the sudden and substantial increase in public approval of the president that occurs in response to certain kinds of dramatic international events involving the United States. The September 11 rally effect is distinctive for at least three reasons. First, of all the recorded rally effects, it is the largest. Bush's approval rating soared in the Gallup Poll from 51% on September 10 to 86% on September 15.The president's approval rating is the percentage of survey respondents who answer “approve” to the question: “Do you approve or disapprove of the job [name] is doing as president?” This 35-point increase nearly doubles the previous record, the 18-point boost triggered by his father's launch of Operation Desert Storm in January 1991. Second, the further increase in Bush's approval rating to 90% on September 22 represents the highest rating ever recorded for a president (Morin 2001). Third, the September 11 rally effect has lasted longer than any in the history of polling. As of November 10, 2002, Bush's approval rating was 68%—22 points below its peak but still much higher than his rating 13 months earlier.

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Anatomy of a rally effect: George W. Bush and the war on terrorism

In this study, the “rally effect”—the propensity for the American public to put aside political differences and support the president during international crises—is measured by considering the chan...

Patriotism or Opinion Leadership? The Nature and Origins of the “Rally 'Round the Flag” Effect

We calculate the rally 'round the flag effect (Mueller, 1970, 1973) for all 41 U.S. foreign policy crises, 1950–1985, identified by the International Crisis Behavior Project (Wilkenfeld, Brecher, and Moser, 1988). The mean change in the president's approval rating is surprisingly small: 1.4 percent among all respondents. The greatest influences on the rallying effect of a crisis are whether or not the United States is involved in an ongoing war and, especially, theNew York Times's coverage of the president's major response to a crisis. When a major response is reported in the headlines, the rally is more than 8 percentage points greater,ceteris paribus, than when it is not reported on the front page. TheNew York Times's reporting is influenced by the nature of the president's response, the efforts of his administration to publicize his actions, the degree of Soviet involvement, the location of the crisis, and the willingness of opposition leaders to take a newsworthy position regarding the president's performance.

The rally 'round the flag effect in U.S. foreign policy crises, 1950–1985

This article examines the effects of party politics and presidential election cycles on U.S. recourse to force abroad. I analyze a game-theoretic model to generate predictions about these effects. In the unique time-consistent equilibrium outcome of the one-shot game, policy varies across political parties. In a subgame–perfect equilibrium outcome of the repeated game, the use of force is invariant to the partisan composition of government. In neither case does policy respond to the electoral cycle.An empirical analysis supports the predictions of the repeated game. Between 1870 and 1992, U.S. recourse to force abroad responds neither to partisan politics nor to the domestic political calendar. It responds only to changes in U.S. power status and to the advent of general wars.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/info/2601277

Politics at the Water's Edge: Parties, Voters, and the Use of Force Abroad

Rally ‘Round the Union Jack? Public Opinion and the Use of Force in the United Kingdom, 1948-1994

This research note reports an examination of presidential approval ratings during the Iran hostage crisis. Models of intervention and transfer function are estimated by way of Box-Jenkins and Box-Tiao analysis using Gallup opinion data from January 1976 to December 1979. Although it is fairly well accepted that the hostage crisis precipitated a "rally-round-the-flag" effect for President Carter, an examination of popularity dynamics reveals the unique influence of the crisis on Independents, a finding that suggests the need to revise the traditional view of the rally phenomenon.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2131999.pdf

Simo Virtanen

Papers

Revised Models of the "Rally Phenomenon": The Case of the Carter Presidency