Taking Ideational Preferences Seriously: Liberal Theory and Trump Foreign Policy

• In Event: Foreign Policy in the Age of Trump

Abstract

Explaining the transformation of US foreign policy under Trump has challenged IR theory. Trump's foreign policy has been variously described as realist, or a product of individual idiosyncrasies warranting a return to first-image theorizing, or as heralding the demise of liberal internationalism. This paper argues that Trump foreign policy to date is largely consistent with the expectations of Andrew Moravcsik’s analytical liberal IR theory, a perspective which has been almost entirely neglected in scholarly discussion of the Trump presidency. Analytical liberalism holds that state preferences on specific issues are determined through domestic political competition, leading to strategic interaction between states reflecting the (in)compatibility of interdependent state preferences. State preferences reflect the interests of influential societal groups, mediated by the biases of domestic political institutions. Crucially, analytical liberalism accommodates ideational as well as material preferences, incorporating factors commonly associated with constructivism in a variant of the theory known as ideational liberalism. While some scholars have considered Trump foreign policy from commercial liberal perspectives, this paper argues that ideational liberalism offers a better explanation accounting for the prominence Trump administration policy of concerns about the implications of immigration and demographic change for US national identity.

Author

• Michael L. Lipson, Concordia University