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What has happened to establishment internationalism in U.S. foreign policy? Conventional wisdom is rapidly becoming that generational, demographic, and cultural changes within the United States are inexorably leading to the decline of the broad, post-war internationalist consensus that dominated American foreign policy since 1945. Despite considerable diversity, this new cohort of foreign policy types is thought to be more unilateralist and America-first oriented than the preceding generation, and its rise is thought to be a product of both the death of the World War II generation of diplomats and the ascension of new groups and individuals as the political center of gravity in the US has shifted South and West. Despite the frequent assertion that this change has taken place, however, no study has analyzed whether or not in representation or belief if the foreign policy establishment that has emerged is qualitatively or compositionally different. To measure whether or not internationalist representation and thought has experienced a secular decline, this paper identifies a set of empirical indicators to track (1) changes in foreign policy voting patterns by members of Congress (2) changes in representation in the foreign policy elite and (3) changes of beliefs of the main foreign policy players in the Executive Branch and the U.S. Congress. First, we track the voting scores of members of Congress for their “conservative” or “liberal” character using the foreign policy votes from the American Conservative Union (1970-2004) and Americans for Democratic Action (1948-2004). Our second set of indicators track the state of birth, educational profile, and formative international experience of a cross-section of the U.S. foreign policy-making elite, including congressional chairmen and appointed positions in the Department of State, Department of Defense, and the National Security Council. Our third and fourth sets of indicators seek to track the ideational patterns of elite thought as represented by Presidential State of the Union addresses and party platform manifestos. While we find support for increasing partisan polarization in Congress on foreign policy, there is only mixed evidence to suggest that internationalism has experienced a secular decline. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the response by rich industrialized countries to a subset of primarily moral and humanitarian issues that emanate from or disproportionately affect developing countries including debt relief, climate change, HIV/AIDS, and the International Criminal Court. Why were some of these issues—climate change, the ICC—so contentious while debt relief and HIV/AIDS were not? The basic argument of the paper is that where the U.S. fails to advance a constructive plan to address an issue and proves unwilling to bear the costs of leadership, this creates opportunities and incentives for European political grandstanding to placate domestic public opinion and buttress the institutional project of the European Union. Where the U.S. leads and does not abdicate in this class of issue areas, there are fewer opportunities and pressures for grandstanding, leading to less contention and politicization of the issue. The article also distinguishes grandstands from true moral stands, drawing on the literature on costly signaling, suggesting that the former involve cheap expressions of political outrage whereas the latter imply more substantial investments of political and physical capital. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]