Prather, L. 2016. International Organization
This article examines the effects of party poritics 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.