Timeless Principles or Today's Fashion? Testing the Stability of the Linkage between Ideology and Foreign Policy in the Senate

Cronin, Patrick M.; Fordham, Benjamin O.

doi:10.2307/2647550

Cited by 31 publications

(32 citation statements)

References 34 publications

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“…They find that ideology is strongly related to the foreign policy stances senators take, but that this relationship is unstable over time. Liberals vote in a manner consistent with the backing of “internationalist” policies (increasing the strength of the U.S. military, enlarging or maintaining the international influence of the United States, or expanding involvement in international trade or investment) until 1965, while conservatives back “nationalist” policies (opposition to these goals and support for trade protection) until 1963 (Cronin and Fordham 1999:974). After these years, the patterns reverse: conservatives become staunch supporters of “internationalist” policies, while liberals back “nationalist” policies.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Presidents, Public Opinion, and Diversionary Behavior: The Role of Partisan Support Reconsidered

Foster

Palmer

2006

Foreign Policy Analysis

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Numerous works have studied the relationship between public approval and the propensity of United States presidents to use force abroad. One of these (Morgan and Bickers 1992) relies upon a refined view of internalization–externalization processes to reformulate the diversionary theory of conflict. The authors postulate that, as presidents are concerned with maintaining popularity among individuals upon whose support their continued power rests, they are more inclined to use diversionary force when approval among members of their party declines. Using more extensive and comprehensive measures of militarized actions, we find no support for Morgan and Bickers' original hypothesis, indicating that the results of one of the very few works that finds any evidence of diversion from low public approval may not be valid. In fact, event count analyses reveal that precisely the opposite relationship is operative. Additionally, Morgan and Bickers' formulation fails to account for potential differences in conflict propensity stemming from differences in political parties. We hypothesize that presidents whose partisan supporters are expected to react favorably to “hawkish” actions (Republicans) are more likely to use force abroad when faced with declining partisan support than those leaders whose partisan supporters are generally “dovish” (Democrats). Our results yield little support for this hypothesis. We conclude the article by exploring some possible explanations for our findings.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Presidents, Public Opinion, and Diversionary Behavior: The Role of Partisan Support Reconsidered

Foster

Palmer

2006

Foreign Policy Analysis

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“…Moving from the low end of the spectrum (senators Russ Feingold, Paul Wellstone, and Barbara Boxer in 1999) to the high end (Jim Inhofe, Bob Smith, and Jesse Helms) tracks closely what observers would expect without the benefit of the statistical techniques used to construct it. Given the nature of humanitarian intervention and its departure from traditional conservative realpolitik tenets, we should see noticeable drops in pro‐intervention voting as we move from the liberal to the conservative end of that linear dimension, although recent work has suggested that this dynamic has changed over time (Cronin and Fordham ).…”

Section: Modeling Congressional Votes On Humanitarian Interventionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Domestic Politics of Humanitarian Intervention: Public Opinion, Partisanship, and Ideology

Hildebrandt

Hillebrecht

Holm

et al. 2012

Foreign Policy Anal

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The debate around humanitarian intervention and the responsibility to protect generally concerns a collective action problem on the international level: motivating states to participate in a multilateral coalition to stop a mass atrocity. This debate presupposes that states enjoy a domestic consensus about their rights and responsibilities to intervene. This article reconsiders this assumption and examines the sources of domestic political will for intervention, particularly the role of partisanship, ideology, and public opinion on Congressional members' willingness to support US intervention for humanitarian purposes. We analyze several Congressional votes relevant to four episodes of US humanitarian intervention: Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. We find that public support for humanitarian intervention increases Congressional support and that other political demands, primarily partisanship and ideological distance from the president, often trump the normative exigencies of intervention. Our findings shed light on the domestic political dynamics behind humanitarian intervention and can help explain why some recent humanitarian missions have proceeded without seeking Congressional approval.

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“…With their statewide constituencies, senators may be more insulated from anti-globalization pressures and thereby more able than representatives to take an internationalist outlook on the IMF, as they do on other foreign policy issues (Meernik and Oldmixon 2004;Cronin and Fordham 1999). If senators represent more populous and industrially diversified political units than House members, it is less likely that the proportion of workers and firms that are negatively affected by import competition will be so high that a senator is forced to adopt an anti-IMF posture.…”

Section: Congress and Imf Funding Increasesmentioning

confidence: 99%

The United States Congress and IMF financing, 1944–2009

Broz

2011

Rev Int Organ

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Since 1944, United States financing of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been appropriated and approved in Congress by roll-call vote. If voting to increase funds to the IMF is viewed as an observable signal of "support" for the IMF, these votes provide a historical record of legislative support for the IMF in the United States. I analyze roll-call voting on IMF financing from 1944 to 2009 at both the aggregate (congressional) and the micro (legislator) levels. At the aggregate level, I show that support for the IMF has fallen over time in the House of Representatives but not in the Senate. In the micro-analysis, I use a "natural experiment" to establish that this intercameral difference is the result of the Senate's larger and more heterogeneous constituencies, as opposed to other modeled and unmodeled factors. I also find that legislator support for the IMF is shaped strongly by ideology: regardless of chamber, left-wing legislators are as much as 31 percentage points more likely to support the IMF than right-wing legislators. Yet controlling for ideology, senators are more likely to support the IMF than representatives, and representatives are more sensitive to constituency pressures than senators. I attribute these differences to chamber-specific rules governing the size of constituencies.

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Timeless Principles or Today's Fashion? Testing the Stability of the Linkage between Ideology and Foreign Policy in the Senate

Cited by 31 publications

References 34 publications

Presidents, Public Opinion, and Diversionary Behavior: The Role of Partisan Support Reconsidered

Presidents, Public Opinion, and Diversionary Behavior: The Role of Partisan Support Reconsidered

The Domestic Politics of Humanitarian Intervention: Public Opinion, Partisanship, and Ideology

The United States Congress and IMF financing, 1944–2009

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