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While there is a long, rich tradition of scholarship on the impact of foreign policy on presidential campaigns and elections, the question of the role of foreign policy concerns in congressional elections has been left largely unexplored. This is particu ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the words of human rights scholar David Forsythe, George H.W. Bush’s foreign policy incorporated “moral impulses as long as they did not prove inconvenient to expediential concerns,” (1995:126). In short, analysts have argued that human rights was approached pragmatically during the first Bush presidency, subordinated in realist fashion to broader strategic concerns and the considerations of post-Cold War power politics. But what of the son? By contrast, the presidency of George W. Bush has seemed to feature a shifting stance on the question of balancing human rights concerns and national security interests. As a candidate and in the first months of his presidency, George W. Bush largely echoed his father’s realist and pragmatic approach. For example, while committed to the promotion of political openness and economic growth abroad, on the question of humanitarian interventions, the initial position of the Bush team was to shun such operations unless larger regional or strategic interests were at stake. Yet by 2006 the Bush administration had embraced an apparent liberal interventionist stance toward the promotion of human rights, declaring in National Security Strategy 2006 that “… the United States seeks to extend freedom across the globe by leading an international effort to end tyranny and to promote effective democracy,” (2006:2). In this paper I will compare the approach to human rights and national security policy during the two Bush presidencies, identifying and accounting for key areas of similarity and difference. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the course of two decades, the term ?rogue state? has become part of the common language of American foreign policy, and the assumptions made by policy makers about the international conduct of these actors ? that they represent aggressive threats to international peace and security ? has since become entrenched at the center of US foreign and defense policies. The central assumption of rogue state aggressiveness, however, has not been empirically tested. This project fills that gap by asking whether the presumed aggressiveness of such states will make them more likely to become involved in militarized interstate disputes and examining their conduct when they do so. We first identify those states that since 1980 have consistently been described as rogues by policy makers, as well as those other states that have not been so branded but do evince the objective characteristics said to qualify a state for rogue status: support for international terrorism and illicit pursuit of weapons of mass destruction. When we examine these states? interstate conflict behavior as a group, we find they are no more likely to become involved in militarized interstate disputes, no more likely to initiate militarized action, and no more likely to use force first, than non-rogue states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the rogue state label is a familiar one in the popular media and the public foreign policy debate, there has been little systematic study of these states’ actual international conduct. In this paper we seek to test one of the fundamental assumptions about so-called ‘rogue states,’ that they are fundamentally aggressive and therefore represent a serious threat to international peace and stability. We will begin by combing through official policy statements, media reports, and the popular and academic foreign policy literatures of the past two decades to create as comprehensive a list as possible of those states that have been branded rogues. Having identified such states, we will test those states’ interstate conflict behavior during the period 1980-2001 using the recently released MID 3 data set. Specifically, we will test whether rogue states are more likely to become involved in militarized interstate disputes than are states that have not been identified as rogues, and whether they are more likely to use force when involved in such disputes than are non-rogues. In short, we seek to test whether the rogue state formula represents reality or, as critics commonly charge, empty rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media coverage before, during and after the 2006 midterm elections portrayed the election as a referendum on Iraq. At the same time, the theory of deliberate priming -- taken from the recent literature on campaign professionals -- suggests that candidates will structure their campaigns around issues that are winners for their candidacies. In 2006 Iraq should have been such an issue for Democrats. Our analysis of 452 candidate TV ads from competitive races shows that Iraq was far less central an issue than the media's portrayal suggests. However, we see significant differences in the way the Iraq issue was used by candidates that supports the overall theory of deliberate priming. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1980s, and particularly since the end of the Cold War, US foreign policy makers have focused on the perceived threat to international peace and stability posed by so-called rogue states. These countries have been characterized as states violating important international norms by illicitly pursuing banned weapons systems and sponsoring terrorism, and were assumed to be conventionally aggressive toward their neighbors and their regions. While other states historically fit the rogue label, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, and North Korea were singled out by policy makers for particular scrutiny. In our own earlier work (Journal of Conflict Resolution 2005), however we found that as a group rogue states, both those named above and those that meet the objective criteria, generally failed to live up to the aggressive stereotype that was applied to them. By contrast, when rogue states are identified as those that systematically violate accepted international human rights norms, we find that such human rights rogues are more likely to constitute conventional military threats to international peace and security (Journal of Peace Research 2006). Our prior work looked exclusively at conflict behavior as captured by behavior in militarized interstate disputes (MIDs). In this project, we seek to expand upon our findings concerning the differences between ?conventional? rogue states, human rights rogues, and non-rogue states by examining rogue state behavior when involved in international crises. Specifically, we are interested in indications that rogue states, whether conventional or human rights rogues, engage in more aggressive behavior when involved in a crisis compared to either each other or non-rogue states. In particular, we are interested in differences in principal crisis management techniques, especially the major response to the crisis trigger and the centrality of violence. We propose a statistical analysis of data taken from the International Crisis Behavior data set along with our own data sets identifying conventional and human rights rogues. The temporal domain for the study would be 1980-2003, representing the beginning of what is considered the ?rogue era? in US foreign policy and the most recent year for which data is available in ICB. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the end of the Cold War American foreign policy analysts and decision makers have stigmatized a small group of countries as rogue states and devised various policies intended to contain and confront them: the two-war doctrine, dual containment, ?rogue state rollback,? and the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive military action. These policies were driven by the assumption that rogue states represent aggressive military threats to their neighbors and their regions. Yet our own earlier research has shown that rogue states, as defined in US foreign policy terms, behave no differently in their international conflict behavior than other states. By contrast, we offer a definition of rogue states that hinges on observance of recognized international human rights norms. In this project we ask whether human rights rogues are more likely to engage in aggressive and/or dangerous international behavior. We seek to determine whether human rights rogues are more likely than other states to use force, and to do so first when involved in militarized interstate disputes, our benchmark for conventional aggressiveness. We also seek to determine whether they are more likely to engage in other dangerous activities, including pursuing weapons of mass destruction, sponsoring or supporting terrorism, and participating in the illicit international narcotics trade. The time frame for our analysis includes the period 1980-2004. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]