Foreign Policy and Presidential Voting

• In Event: Public Opinion and U.S. Foreign Policy

Abstract

Scholars generally study the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy through the lens of “issue voting,” which assumes that voters examine leaders’ policy positions and support elected officials whose views lie closest to their own. By contrast, this paper argues that voters prioritize selecting leaders who appear competent at foreign policy decision-making writ large. From this perspective, the primary political value of foreign policy position-taking lies with crafting a leader’s personal image rather than with satisfying voters’ policy preferences. The paper supports its argument with a pre-registered survey experiment and archival case studies that explain how presidential candidates deliberately took unpopular policy positions on the Vietnam War during the 1964 and 1968 elections in order to cultivate impressions of competent leadership. The paper’s theory and evidence indicate that existing scholarship understates the degree to which public opinion shapes U.S. foreign policy, while showing that this relationship is not as straightforward as leaders giving voters what they want.

Author

• Jeffrey A. Friedman, Dartmouth College