Democracy and Foreign Policy

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

How does regime type affect states’ foreign policy choices? This panel examines how democracies conduct foreign policy and how interacting with a democracy affects a state’s policy choices. Cases range from the Middle East and South Africa during the Cold War to contemporary Turkey, India, and the United States. The multiple methods employed include archival research, interviews, and discourse analysis. The tools of state and non-state power considered include military force, terrorism, diplomacy, the rallying of domestic opinion, and narrative about democratic trust. One paper analyzes how the democratic United Kingdom solved its grand strategic problem of imperial overstretch in the 1970s by using geography as a force multiplier in a sultanistic Middle Eastern state’s campaign against an insurgency demanding greater political rights. Another, looking at South Africa and the African National Congress, asks under what conditions a non-democratic state is likely to make concessions to an insurgency demanding democracy. The third paper examines the critical case of contemporary Turkey to ask how a democracy’s domestic appeals to populism affect its foreign policy choices. Finally, the fourth paper asks to what degree India’s democratic status affected the democratic United States’ acceptance of India as a nuclear power.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 20: Foreign Policy

Individual Presentations

• Negotiation and Violence: The ANC, War Termination, and South African Democracy - Timothy D. Hoyt, Naval War College

• Between Populism and Realpolitik: The Case of Turkish Foreign Policy, 2002-2018 - C. Burak Kadercan, US Naval War College

• The Role of Regime Type in the India-U.S. Nuclear Cooperation Agreement - Karthika Sasikumar

Chair

• Jacqueline L. Hazelton Naval War College

Discussant

• Jennifer L. Erickson Boston College