Mueller's Definition
Political scientist John Mueller wrote his landmark paper Presidential Popularity from Truman to Johnson in 1970, where he conceived the idea of the effect. Mueller defined the effect as coming from an event with three qualities:
- "Is international"
- "Involves the United States and particularly the President directly"
- "Specific, dramatic, and sharply focused"
In addition, Mueller created five categories of rallies. These categories are considered dated by modern political scientists, as they rely heavily on Cold War events. Mueller's five categories are:
- "Sudden US military intervention" (e.g., Korean War, Bay of Pigs Invasion)
- "Major diplomatic actions" (e.g., Truman Doctrine)
- "Dramatic technological developments" (e.g., Sputnik)
- "US-Soviet summit meetings" (e.g., Potsdam Conference)
- "Major military developments in ongoing wars" (e.g., Tet Offensive)
Read more about this topic: Rally 'round The Flag Effect
Famous quotes containing the words mueller and/or definition:
“I want to celebrate these elms which have been spared by the plague, these survivors of a once flourishing tribe commemorated by all the Elm Streets in America. But to celebrate them is to be silent about the people who sit and sleep underneath them, the homeless poor who are hauled away by the city like trash, except it has no place to dump them. To speak of one thing is to suppress another.”
—Lisel Mueller (b. 1924)
“Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)