Tug Of War For Power: Interaction Between U.S. President And Congress In Crisis Management

sBased on the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Resolution, this thesis presents an introduction of the legal background and evolving process of the roles of the President and Congress in managing international crises and their relations. The author chooses the first Persian Gulf crisis, 9.11 terrorist attacks and the second Persian Gulf crisis as the three cases for in-depth analysis and also makes a comparative study of the three representative resolutions in the three different crises. The length of debating periods and voting results are used as the indicators to analyze the roles of the President and Congress in managing international crises and their relations. In the analysis, party politics and the difference between a unified government and a divided government are also taken into consideration.The author argues that the restricting effects of Congress on the President in the fields of foreign affairs, authorization of war powers and crisis management vary according to the different levels of imminence and seriousness of the crises. And the level of imminence and seriousness of a crisis is assessed by threats the crisis poses to the U.S. national security (such as direct homeland security crises, homeland-related security crises and non-homeland related security crises). Generally speaking, the higher a level of imminence and seriousness of a crisis is, the more easily for the two sides to reach an agreement; otherwise, the divergence between the two sides appears and becomes more prominent in a divided government than in a unified government.