Foreign Policymaking in Congress: Issue Ownership vs Against-Type Strategies

• In Event: Elites and Foreign Policymaking in the US

Abstract

Our previous research shows that, since the early 1970s, hawkish members of Congress have enjoyed much greater legislative success in shaping foreign policy than dovish members have. Additionally, our work finds that these results stand whether Republicans or Democrats control Congress, whether Republicans or Democrats hold the White House, and whether the United States is at war or at relative peace. In short, despite fluctuating political and security conditions, hawks in Congress have dominated foreign policymaking for the last five decades. In this paper, and as part of a larger book project, we see whether hawks have a consistent legislative advantage across all foreign policy issues or whether hawks and doves enjoy varying levels of legislative success depending on which issue is under consideration.

Given the broad array of foreign policy issues that Congress handles, it is unlikely that hawks enjoy legislative success across the board. More likely, legislative influence for both hawks and doves varies from issue to issue. But it is unclear which foreign policies favor one side over the other. One possibility is that hawks and doves have issue ownership, and thus considerable legislative influence, over foreign policy concerns that reflect their respective ideological orientations. That is, hawks may enjoy legislative advantages on issues that traditionally reflect hawkish priorities, such as weapons procurements and security assistance, while doves may enjoy legislative advantages on issues that traditionally reflect dovish priorities, such as human rights and international organizations. Voters certainly see hawks and doves as having greater claim over different foreign policy issues (Kertzer et al. 2021).

An alternative possibility is that hawks and doves enjoy the greatest legislative influence on foreign policies that they are least inclined to support. Indeed, the IR literature on hawks and doves suggests that political actors often succeed in international negotiations when they play against type, that is, when hawks advocate dovish positions and doves advocate hawkish ones (Cowen and Sutter, 1998; Mattes and Weeks 2019; Schultz, 2005). Paradoxically, actors are seen as having greater credibility when they pursue goals that they would normally, for ideological reasons, oppose. A similar dynamic may play out in the congressional arena, with hawks and doves enjoying unusual levels of bill success when they legislate against type and offer measures on foreign policy issues that they would typically contest or oppose. Against-type success may be especially evident for doves, who, as noted above, often see their foreign policy measures fail.

To explore these competing expectations, we examine all foreign policy bills and amendments that the two congressional houses considered from 1971 to 2016. Using the coding scheme from the Policy Agendas Project, we categorize each legislative measure by foreign policy type. We then estimate the locations of House and Senate members along a hawk-dove dimension in order to see whether they enjoy greater legislative success when they offer measures that match or diverge from their ideological positions. The analysis in this project will reveal which types of foreign policy measures pass most often and to what degree issue ownership versus against-type strategies affect legislative success.

Author

• Gyung-Ho Jeong, University of British Columbia