Why Do Democracies Have More Stable Foreign Policies?

• In Event: Regime Type and Foreign Policy

Abstract

Our recent research has demonstrated a strong and consistent effect of democracy on foreign policy change. Democracies exhibit more consistent foreign policies across a number of different issue areas, both with and without partisan changes in leadership. Our own work and that of others has proposed two different causal mechanisms for this observed outcome—one based on the incentives of leaders created through selection processes and one based on the constraints faced by leaders operating in systems of shared power and authority. These two mechanisms tend to occur together empirically and may be mutually reinforcing. While separating the two causal mechanisms is challenging, we pursue several different approaches in this paper to attempt to distinguish between the two causal mechanisms to understand the relationship between democracy and foreign policy stability better. First, we consider differences across issue areas. If areas in which domestic policymaking constraints are more present show less foreign policy change than areas in which there are fewer domestic policymaking constraints, then this would be some evidence that the need for policymaking cooperation is important in understanding foreign policy consistency. Second, we attempt to operationalize policymaking constraints and the size of a leader’s winning coalition across a broad range of cases and compare their impact on foreign policy. Third, we isolate the democratic cases, and consider variance in selection and constraint within democracies. Whether in fact democracy is related to foreign policy stability has been a major area of debate in international relations. Our research provides convincing evidence that democratic foreign policies are more stable, even in the face of partisan turnover. In this paper, we seek to dig deeper and understand why this is the case, which should be particularly useful information for those interested in constitutional design.

Authors

• Brett Ashley Leeds, Rice University

• Michaela Mattes, UC-Berkeley