Finding the Water’s Edge: When Partisanship Influences Foreign Policy Attitudes

• In Event: Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy

Abstract

Increasing partisan conflict represents “one of the most striking developments” in U.S. domestic politics (Lee 2009, 68), but what does heightened polarization mean for American foreign policy? On the one hand, partisan affiliations influence attitudes towards issues ranging from torture to international organizations to refugee policy (Berinsky 2007; Grieco et al. 2011; Wallace 2013) and may create domestic obstacles to the development and implementation of foreign policy. Alternatively, public opinion polls report bipartisan concern about ISIS, nuclear development, and cyber security (Pew 2017), consistent with evidence that national identities matter more than partisan identities in the face of security threats (Gadarian 2014; Kam and Ramos 2008; Levendusky and Horowitz 2012). From this view, polarization’s effect on foreign policy is likely muted in the context of international crises.

Divergent findings and ongoing debates obscure the foreign policy implications of polarization. At what threshold does national identity supersede partisan identity, allowing presidents to build bipartisan support for military action? To what extent does polarization limit opportunities for generating this support? Through a series of ten survey experiments that vary the intervention’s objective—foreign policy restraint, counterterrorism, or humanitarian—I exploit the period surrounding the 2016 presidential election to examine changes in foreign policy attitudes in the face of growing polarization. These experiments demonstrate surprising consistency and amplified support for military action as partisan identities become salient. Follow-up experiments prime partisanship directly and vary the president’s party affiliation to illustrate the robustness of the findings.

Taken as a whole, the results indicate that even during periods of growing polarization and strongly primed partisan identities, presidents maintain the ability to generate unified support for military action. While existing scholarship focuses on security threats, this analysis demonstrates that humanitarian interventions also provide opportunities for bipartisan consensus. These operations increase support among Democrats while maintaining a majority of support among Republicans.

Author

• Sarah Maxey, Loyola University Chicago