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Criticizing US neglect of Latin America has become a popular exercise in US journals and newspapers. Indeed, when reviewing the recent political crises throughout the region as well as the ‘turn to the left’ that has taken place at least in South America, US actions and reactions may seem erratic or entirely ignorant. By analyzing the US role during recent political turbulences in South America, the paper takes issue with this attempt to explain US behavior by simply pointing towards some general stance of neglect. In contrast, it is argued that the complex processes of crisis, continuity and change in South America imply contradictory incentives and limits to a US government that frames its activities as guided by the democratic ideal and yet cannot renounce its specific national preferences in the name of democracy’s intrinsic value. The frame constituted by democratic rhetoric appears as, at the same time, constraining and enabling US policies towards South America: While the dual goal ‘democracy promotion and protection’ clearly constrains the range of justifiable (re-) actions, its normative indecisiveness opens important margins for the pursuit of particularistic prefer-ences. When taking into account the concrete settings in the different ‘target’ countries, US actions, reactions and inactions can be explained quite well without assuming some general inattention that proves overly simplifying. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of whether policy makers learn from past experience is both a central and a vexing to students of foreign policy analysis. As Levy (1994) has noted, it is the latter because it is fraught with conceptual and methodological problems, but it is central because establishing the presence of learning would legitimate the idea that leadersÂ’ beliefs, cognitions and attitudes mattered when predicting the behavior of states in the international system. While some attempts have been made to systematically assess the impact of prior success or failure on foreign policy choices, most of these have focused on behavioral indicators of learning (i.e. change in strategy over time) rather than systematically assessing changes in the mental states of the decision makers. This analysis of the belief systems of US Presidents in response to crisis outcomes attempts to fill this void. The International Crisis Behavior project dataset provides a subset of crises for which we examine US behavior, target behavior and crisis outcomes. We use using the Verbs in Context system of content analysis to generate operational code indicators for the relevant US President before and after the crisis in order to establish whether congruence or disparity between each PresidentsÂ’ subjective representation of the situation and his anticipated behavior of the opponent interacts with outcome quality to reinforce or change his belief structures. We then determine whether Presidents exhibiting belief change are more likely to demonstrate learning by acting differently in the next crisis. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]