Rethinking Public Constraints on Unilateral Action in American Foreign Policy

• In Event: Public Audiences as Constraints on Foreign Policymaking

Abstract

Democratic publics are generally expected to constrain executives from acting unilaterally in foreign affairs. Yet experimental findings on the strength of these public constraints in American foreign policy are mixed. Some scholars find strong public opposition to unilateral action taken by the president (Reeves and Rogowski 2016) while others show public opposition is relatively weak (Christenson and Kriner 2017). To unpack the public constraints on unilateral action, I field a survey experiment directly prior to the 2020 US presidential election to a nationally representative sample of 2000 American adults. The experiment randomizes hypothetical election scenarios in which either Donald Trump or Joe Biden wins the election and asks respondents to consider which foreign policy actions the president should be able to take without Congressional approval. This design allows for more plausible counterfactuals while holding fixed the political context. I show that support for unilateral action is strongly shaped by partisan attitudes. However, public constraints also vary conditional on the type of foreign policy action, including the degree to which it is militarized, whether it involves entry into or withdrawal from an existing agreement, and whether the relevant foreign counterpart is an ally or an adversary.

Author

• Rachel Maureen Myrick, Duke University