ADVISE AND IMPLEMENT: THE CHANGING ROLE OF THE U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS IN PRESIDENTIAL POLICY MAKING.

This paper examines how presidents work with the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (U.N.) to build support at the U.N. for American foreign policy. Despite the clear importance of personality and individual relationships in establishing the Ambassador’s power, an examination of the post’s evolution in the past fifty-plus years reveals some common features across administrations. This paper finds that a U.S. Ambassador to the U.N.’s influence on foreign policy making depends primarily on the president’s view of the Ambassador’s role in the policy-making process and the Ambassador’s own aspirations. To examine these factors systematically, the paper identifies four, sometimes overlapping, roles for U.S. Ambassadors to the U.N.: independent spokesperson, personal adviser to the president, professional diplomat, and policy maker. For Ambassadors who occupied the position long enough to become involved in the policy-making process, this classification is useful in identifying their role in the president’s foreign policy advisory team. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]