Explaining the "capture" of U.S. foreign policy by the Taiwan lobby and Cuban lobby: a synthesis of two-level games and social capital.

Pressure groups have always had a significant impact on U.S. policy, both foreign and domestic. Diasporas constitute a new kind of pressure group with an exclusive focus on foreign and domestic policies that affect the home country. Famous examples include the Israeli lobby, the Armenian lobby, the Cuban Lobby, and the Taiwan lobby. Putnam's concept of the two-level game is useful for explaining the interaction between foreign policy and ethnic lobbies. The concept of social capital is useful for explaining the relative success and failures of different lobbies and getting their preferred policies accepted. Social capital includes bonding, bridging, and linkage social capital. Bonding social capital unites people within a group, bridging social capital unites different groups, and linkage social capital unites government officials with these groups. The Taiwan lobby and the Cuban lobby are analyzed using these concepts to explain their relative success in "capturing" U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba and Taiwan. The Cuba lobby employed the successful strategy of shifting policy from the executive branch to Congress, thereby making U.S. foreign policy toward Cuba more aligned with the interests of Cuban hard-liners, and more difficult to change. The Cuba lobby accomplished this by focusing on U.S. Senators and Representatives who had a large number of Cubans in their states or districts. In contrast, the Taiwan lobby focused on the executive branch, leaving U.S. foreign policy toward Taiwan beholden to the prevailing U.S. policies toward China. Consequently, the Taiwan lobby has not been able to change U.S. policy toward Taiwan since the official recognition of the People's Republic of China in 1978, and the passage of the Taiwan Relations Act in 1979. In contrast, the Cuba lobby has pushed the U.S. government to change its policies toward Cuba by intensifying the trade embargo, despite the fact that the rationale for the embargo no longer exists. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]