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The argument made in this paper is that there are multiple forces that shape U.S. foreign policy to Cuba. Some of these are inconsistent although many of the paradoxes are subtle and relegated to the background in the face of continuing and prominent debates on the critical role of ethnic group interests and domestic politics on U.S. foreign policy to Cuba. Indeed, of the multifarious approaches in the literary oeuvre on foreign policy, ethnic group interests and their influence on domestic politics provide some of the best explanations for U.S./Cuban relations in the post-Cold War era (Haney, Vanderbush, Walt, 1999). But beneath the iceberg of American Cuba policy, there is considerable movement. There are other forces at play which are not often highlighted in the literature and which suggest that inconsistencies may be more prevalent in U.S. foreign policy to Cuba than the theorists acknowledge. Indeed, even while arguing the predominant domestic politics explanation, U.S. policy to Cuba can be viewed a as a multi-level game. This is the position taken in this paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The shift in U.S.-Indian relations around the turn of the twenty-first century provides an ideal opportunity to test competing explanations of global power relations. Through examination of primary and secondary source materials, this paper investigates the timing of and justifications for the rapid changes in the relationship between the United States and India. This evidence is used to test the utility of explanations based on political regime type, extent of economic liberalization, global and local balance of power considerations, and nuclear proliferation concerns in light of changes in U.S.-Indian relations. Although the United States currently has friendly relations with China, this paper finds that the U.S. government is engaging India as a balancer against Chinese power. This suggests that the United States' role as a regional hegemon encourages it to promote a balance of power in Asia, even if the immediate threat of China is arguably minimal, implying that U.S. foreign policy decision-makers feel compelled to intervene in order to remain the sole regional hegemon. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purchasing PowerThe Effectiveness of Economic Statecraft in American Foreign Policy This paper will examine the use of economic influence strategies in United States foreign policy; a practice commonly referred to as economic statecraft. The conventional wisdom on economic statecraft asserts that it is an ineffectual, even futile, foreign policy approach. This paradigmatic view is a product, however, of Cold War-era empirical research. Scant contemporary research has been conducted in the intervening two-decades since the dissolution of the Cold War to determine if the dominant assessment on economic statecraft remains accurate. This paper will attempt to redress this lacuna in the literature. It proposes to update the economic statecraft corpus, by analyzing U.S. economic sanctions and incentive measures in the post-Cold War era. The efficacy of contemporary economic statecraft measures will be compared against those applied by the U.S. in the Cold War to determine if the prevailing negative assessment of economic statecraft remains accurate, or if it is an anachronism. The central hypothesis of my work is that the efficacy of great power economic statecraft is not fixed; it is not an inherently effective or ineffective practice of foreign policy. Rather, fluctuations in the potency of economic instruments of statecraft occur in response to changes in the structural attributes of the international political system. The most significant causal attribute is polarity -- the polar distribution of power in the international system. I posit that economic statecraft is more effective in unipolar systems than other configurations of power, and especially in comparison to bipolar systems. Consequently, it is likely that the effectiveness of U.S. economic statecraft has increased significantly upon the demise of the bipolar era. This study will test whether this hypothesis has empirical support. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How will the current financial crisis affect American foreign policy? Reviewing the literature, it is initially unclear how domestic events can systematically affect foreign policy. Examining the role of public opinion, threat of electoral punishment and interest groups offer unsatisfactory explanations as to why domestic politics matters to foreign policy. Moving beyond these alternative explanations, careful examination of psychological factors, mainly risk expectations derived from prospect theory, provide a compelling explanatory narrative. This paper asserts that the financial crisis will eventually drive the US towards higher levels of engagement in international crises. Case studies of the 1930s and 1970s substantiate this hypothesis. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses how and under what conditions ideas coming from International Relations (IR) scholarship are used in foreign policy. We argue that the focus on policy relevance, which dominates the IR literature on the research-policy interface, is limited. Focusing instead on political utilization highlights types and mechanisms of political impact, which are overlooked in studies on policy relevance. The fruitfulness of this change in focus is showed in an analysis of how Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" and Joseph Nye's "soft power" concept have been used in US foreign policy. George W. Bush's explicit critique of "the clash" thesis should not be interpreted as absence of impact, but as a significant symbolic utilization, which has helped legitimate US foreign policy. The notion of "soft power" has very rarely been used explicitly in foreign policy statements, although the liberal optimism underlying this concept is expressed in other ways by the US government. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past decade, multiple attempts have been made to curb North Korea's development of a nuclear program. As such, main powers such as the United States and China have reached out to Pyongyang through bilateral as well as multilateral negotiation processes. The Six-Party Talks, the current mechanism used to discuss options for a potential denuclearization of the Korea peninsula, has brought back hope that a potential deal might, one day, be reached. What type of framework is the Six-Party Talks? Can it be considered a true neo-liberal institution? And how have parties' negotiation behaviors been influence by, and have influenced the process? This paper looks at the Six-Party Talks' previous and current rounds, and argues that though the process has not yet emerged as a successful example of an institution that can influence North Korea's determination to be a nuclear power, it has however left its embryonic stage to now be able to be considered a viable process that parties have used as an integral part of their foreign policy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Idealism and Realism are often depicted as caricatures of a foreign policy philosophy. Idealism considers broader international concerns and universal standards. Realism holds that serving the self-interest of the state provides the highest promise for providing international order. Yet this tendency to over-generalize the schools of thought provides the false impression that U.S. policy is guided by homogenous forms of each tradition and under-appreciates the subtle role that both ideals and self-interest simultaneously play in foreign policy design, articulation, and implementation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the core motivations of ideals and self-interest that define these respective schools of thought. Ideals and self-interest serve different yet interlocking functions for policymakers. Ideals provide for policymakers both a unifying vision and short-term political capital that influences public receptivity of policy. Self-interest guides the construction of pragmatic policies that serve the sustained health of state and society. Policymakers succeed most effectively when they combine ideals with self-interest in conducting policy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why does the United States operate outside international organizations when projecting military force in some instances but request international authorization for others? I compare three cases that exhibit variation in their outcomes: Operation Desert Fox (1998), the Iraq War (2003), and Libya (2011). I assess the competing explanations for these different decisions. I find that the U.S. decision makers sought to conform to the normative standard of international authorization but only sought international authorization when they thought they could secure the sanction from an IO. This explanation is compared to explanations which emphasize the role of the informational properties of UN Security Council decisions and spreading the costs of military force. This research makes a theoretical contribution by demonstrating how state leaders behave under circumstances where they do not expect to secure international authorization. This is demonstrated in the empirical cases which present a strong test for the influence of international norms on the decision making of states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the assumption that U.S. foreign policy is ruled by an imperial president, two recent cases show Congress can act by consensus and pass foreign policy legislation against the wishes of the executive. The Goldwater-Nichols act restructured the Defense Department, while the Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998 was used by a future administration to press support for invasion. What international, domestic, and local conditions and interests are necessary for Congress to act against the president and create foreign policy? Further, how do such interventions affect presidential predominance in foreign policy? This study focuses on the two cases cited above, where Congress initiated foreign policy in opposition to the executive. It examines the parochial interests that may (or may not) have led key lawmakers to act; the intrainstitutional factors allowing the legislation to develop; the interinstitutional factors that led lawmakers into conflict with the president; and the international system at the time of the legislation. It finds that the key factor in congressionally led foreign policy is the executive-legislative cleavage, as well as the blunting of divisions within the legislature. At the same time, it finds that these congressional initiatives at best maintained or even increased executive authority, and further marginalized Congress's role. Presidential weakness is not enough to overturn the imperial presidency, which will require presidential action. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the rhetorical relationship between Washington and Pyongyang since 1994, and focuses on specific cases in which North Korea has reacted, and not reacted to American vocal stimuli. Many political analysts have compared how the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration have both dealt with North Korea, and the difficulties encountered by the Bush Administration in interacting with North Korea after the infamous Axis of Evil speech has led to the birth of a urban legend: the Bush Administration's vehement language regarding North Korea has played an extremely important role in North Korea's foreign policy, and might have even pushed North Korea to jump into the pool of declared nuclear power by going ahead with its first nuclear test last October. Is this a myth or the reality? In other words, did negative words used by the Bush Administration create an entrenched relationship with North Korea that led to that fateful nuclear test? Or has negative rhetoric always been used by American administrations and especially by the Clinton administration? There is an interesting conundrum lying here: on one hand, the Clinton Administration was able to negotiate the 1994 Agreed Framework and sustain some primitive relationship with North Korea and on the other hand, the Bush Administration has had a very tense and unsuccessful record of negotiation with North Korea. If only the Bush Administration used negative language, then such choice of rhetoric could potentially be strong variable in derailing the relationship between North Korea and the United States. The aim of this paper is to determine whether of not negative rhetoric has affected North Korea from the signature of the 1994 Agreed Framework providing for a nuclear-free Korean peninsula to the October 2006 North Korea nuclear weapons' test. Such a study is important in order to learn more about North Korea's behavior and evaluate potential strategy options for the United States in light of finding out how North Korea is being engaged in the international system as well as when it is being alienated. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. governors lead overseas missions seeking investment and promoting trade, establish international offices, meet with heads of government, receive ambassadors and take positions on foreign policy. This paper attempts to describe how governors are involved in participating in U.S. foreign policy and explain why governors seek to voice their views and play an active role in working with leaders and issues beyond their state's borders. The paper draws upon theories of international relations, federalism and foreign policy analysis and argues that U.S. states and governors need to be better conceptualized and considered in each. Analysis reveals that U.S. states with higher levels of foreign investment and lower unemployment rates as well as governors with greater degrees of institutional and personal powers and prior jobs such as a member of Congress, U.S. Senator, or Ambassador are more likely to have higher degrees of foreign policy activity. Findings also indicate that governors are more likely to participate in foreign policy during wartime and more likely to be Republicans. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines public and leader opinion of American foreign policy in the context of multilateralism. In general, historically the public is strongly supportive of the UN while policy leaders are not. This study aims to determine the reasons for this disconnect between policy leaders and the public. This is an important topic given the recent failure to find a multilateral diplomatic solution in the case of Iraq, leading some to question the purpose, structure, and effectiveness of UN, and the place of multilateralism in contemporary international relations. Based on previous findings two hypotheses emerge. H1: the public will support multilateral organizations, goals that rationally relate to multilateralism, and show greater support for multilateral policies to a greater extent than leaders. H2: Differences in policy preferences between foreign policy leaders and the general public are due to differences in the influence of foreign policy goals, values, and attitudes, and not to differences between leaders and the public in terms of demographic variables such as age, gender, party identification, and political ideology. This study employs data from the 2004 Chicago Council on Foreign Relations (CCFR) survey of foreign policy attitudes. The benefit of this dataset is that many of the same questions fare asked for both the public and leaders. Leaders include Congressional members and senior staff, university administrators and professors specializing in international relations, journalists and editors of international news, administration officials involved in foreign policy, religious leaders, labor leaders, business leaders, presidents of major private foreign policy organizations, and presidents of major interests groups in foreign policy. All dependent variables are dichotomous (i.e., support/do not support U.S. participation in the Kyoto Treaty) and thus logit regression models are used to determine the likelihood of policy support based on relevant demographic and attitudinal independent variables. All of the demographic variables are included in each model and goals, values, and other attitudes are included in each model depending on relevance. Overall, there are more similarities than differences between leaders and the public. On fewer than half of the policies do leaders and the general public demonstrate a difference in policy support greater than 10%. In 17 of the 29 policies, including support for international treaties, ways to strengthen the UN, World Court compliance, multilateral solutions for international terrorism, the use of force by the UN, and UN and U.S. allies' approval before attacking Iraq, leaders and the general public show roughly the same levels of support for multilateral policies. Leaders actually support multilateralism to a greater extent when on the policies where there is a large difference (i.e., specific and general U.S. participation in multilateral peacekeeping missions, World Court compliance, both multilateral and unilateral use of force to defend another country, and South Korean approval to attack North Korea). In fact, of the three policies where the public shows a greater level of support, two are support for the unilateral use of force. Three explanations are possible for this finding. First, the result could be due to the unique leader sample of the CCFR survey. However, a cursory examination shows no support (although this is not formally tested). Another explanation for the difference is that the CCFR survey provides a direct comparison of leaders and the public with same questions, whereas other surveys usually do not (but Page (2006) found greater support for multilateralism in public with old CCFR datasets). It could also be that the results are time bound and that there has been a shift in opinion in the post 9/11 or post-Iraq invasion tine periods... ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that Indian-American citizens' groups in the United States, and the efforts of an increasingly professionalized and well-funded "India lobby" on Capitol Hill, were critical in rallying congressional support around a significant and controversial bilateral nuclear trade and cooperation agreement between India and the United States in 2006. This episode may represent the consolidation of the "India lobby" and portend its emergence as of the most important ethnic communities seeking influence over US foreign policy in the 21st Century. Existing scholarly literature on ethnic lobbies and American foreign policy typically focuses on communities such as Jewish and Cuban Americans (the "Israel lobby," in particular has been the subject of recent contentious academic and policy debates ), and argues that wealth, geographic concentration, and group cohesion are important factors explaining ethnic lobby influence in the US foreign policy process. Indian-Americans as a community broadly fit the first two criteria, but until very recently were highly segmented into particular professional and Indian language/regional associations, and received scant attention in the ethnic lobby literature. Recently, though, the community has become more unified and politically mobilized, with potentially important implications for US policy in South Asia, the broader Asian region, and the world. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Years ago, Immanuel Kant wrote that one reason democracies would be more pacific was because those who decided to wage war were the same who would bear the costs and miseries of war. If Kant is right about this, then we should expect less beligerence when re-election pressures are high. This paper presents evidence from the United States to suggest Kant was not right about this aspect of democratic peace. When re-election pressures in the U.S. were highest, U.S. foreign policy became highly beligerent, a finding that is difficult to understand if Kant were correct. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Idealism and Realism are often depicted as caricatures of a foreign policy philosophy. Idealism considers broader international concerns and universal standards. Realism holds that serving the self-interest of the state provides the highest promise for providing international order. Idealism considers absolute gains; Realism privileges relative gains. Yet this tendency to over-generalize the schools of thought provides the false impression that U.S. policy is guided by homogenous forms of each tradition and under-appreciates the subtle role that both ideals and self-interest simultaneously play in foreign policy design, articulation, and implementation. A segment of the scholarly and policymaking communities insist on setting ideals and self-interest as contending concepts and mutually exclusive motivations. The purpose of this paper will be to examine the core motivations of ideals and self-interest that define these respective schools of thought, both of which have a long legacy of influencing the character of U.S. foreign policy. My argument will have two parts. First, I will suggest that ideals and self-interest serve different yet interlocking functions for policymakers. Ideals provide for policymakers both a unifying vision and short-term political capital that influences public receptivity of policy. Self-interest guides the construction of pragmatic policies that serve the long-term interest and well-being of state and society. Second, I will argue that policymakers succeed most effectively when they combine ideals with self-interest in conducting policy. In brief, the combination of ideals and self-interest breeds success.I will test my hypotheses by examining three cases of recent U.S. foreign policy?the fall of the Soviet Union and the Reagan era, the 1991 Gulf War, and the 1999 NATO war against Serb forces in Kosovo. I will test the degree to which both ideals and self-interest interact in dynamic fashion in the service of the state, and whether idealism and realism divorced from each other invites the failure of U.S. foreign policy. Through my cases, I aim to test whether it is true that when ideals and self-interest align, policymakers have the greatest possibility of establishing clear objectives and enhancing resolve, public support, and overall policy effectiveness. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 revealed to many Americans the unsettling truth that national power does not necessarily produce security--that the United States’ technological sophistication and dependence on global trade made it simultaneously more powerful and more vulnerable. As it was shaped by U.S. political leaders, this sudden, shocking consciousness of insecurity led to a profound change in U.S. political culture, as international terrorism quickly came to occupy a place in the American psyche akin to the monolithic global threats of the Soviet and Nazi eras. The social context created by 9/11 and the Bush administration’s framing of the new reality facing American foreign policy are critical variables in understanding the course of American foreign relations since then. From the days immediately following the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration presented a clear, coherent vision of the world in its public pronouncements, constructing an image of reality which defined the identity of the United States, its enemies, and the rest of the world in ways which served to enable subsequent foreign policy. Realist analyses which describe the evolution of U.S. foreign policy in this era in terms of material capabilities and interests alone are not sufficient in understanding the process. Constructivist perspectives which acknowledge the role of ideology and identity construction in the years since 9/11 era are necessary for a full understanding of this change. This paper will assert that a set of core assumptions were the critical ingredients in the Bush administration’s construction of the post-9/11 world: that the promotion of democracy and peace were central goals of American identity and foreign policy; that America itself was profoundly vulnerable to extant but invisible threats, both internationally and domestically; that the world was divided into two camps, loosely defined as “civilization” versus “terrorism” or barbarism; that individuals and groups in the “terrorist” camp were irrational and, by virtue of their rejection of civilized norms, not fully human; that opposition to terrorism and undemocratic governments was a continuation of the United States historic opposition to fascism and other forms of totalitarianism; and that other states which ought to be in the U.S. camp might or might recognize their duty to defend freedom, imposing a moral obligation on the United States to act whether or not international consensus could be reached. The Bush administration’s successful assertion of this vision of reality created the political environment which allowed post-9/11 American foreign policy in general, and the war in Iraq in particular, to be carried out. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do states create security? The US faces just such quandary today, a hegemon actively engaged in critical regions of the world. Foreign policy analysis might suggest why the US chooses the course of action it does, while security studies might describe the current security dilemmas in a region, but there remains a gap between the articulation of a policy and the production of international security. This project aims to bridge this gap by offering an account of the process through which foreign policy decisions and agreements come to define a regional security regime. I will first discuss the theoretical sources of the gap between unit and system level approaches that produced the quandary articulated above. Next, I will examine the FPA approach to foreign policy, criticizing its exclusive focus on decision-making. Then, I will offer an analytical lens to bridge this gap. This new lens builds on constructivist insights that security regimes are sets of rules. By studying foreign policy as a process that adds implementation to the insights of FPA, it becomes possible to study the production of rules and the creation of a new security regime. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I elaborate and extend Jeffrey Legro’s dynamic model of ideational change to show how the idea of regime change as a solution to the Iraq problem competed in the marketplace of ideas in American foreign policy-making. I show how a new, collectively held belief in regime change enabled Congress to gain political traction in foreign policy, particularly after the “Republican Revolution” of 1994. Ideational competition centered on two belief systems; one, a traditionally Realist understanding of containment held by the Clinton administration, and the other, a generally Wilsonian understanding of regime ouster and democratization held by an “epistemic community” of national security intellectuals, like-minded conservative ideologues, and ranking members of the Republican Party on Capitol Hill. Ideas, I argue, are essential variables for understanding the linkage between interests and foreign policy choice and for understanding Congressional activism in what the Supreme Court famously termed the “zone of twilight” between the executive and legislative branches. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]