Voting Against Cooperation: Congressional Opposition to the League of Nations

• In Event: US Bureaucratic and Legislative Politics in International Organizations

Abstract

What determines Congressional support for international cooperation, and how do partisan positions evolve? The Senate record on WWI-era proposals for international organizations provides a particularly interesting case. Public support for the League of Nations was extremely high, and the proposal initially bore the fingerprint of both parties as well as considerable US influence in its design. Despite initial bipartisan support, over a series of votes, the Senate voted these proposals down, and position-switching from both parties was common. We use original data capturing state-level interests -- including civil society activities from the League to Enforce Peace, a central advocacy group -- to test hypotheses on whether senators' changing positions reflected constituent pressure, compared with hypotheses about party unity or increasing Congressional power. Better understanding the historical relationship between ideology, constituency preferences, and support for international cooperation could shed light on contemporary challenges to the international order.

Authors

• Julia Gray, London School of Economics

• Sabrina Beth Arias, University of Pennsylvania