Presidential Influence in U.S. Foreign Policy

Session Submission Type: Virtual Created Panel

Session Description

Many scholars argue that presidents have considerably more leeway in foreign policy than in the domestic arena. Yet, the question remains: How do presidents exercise their power in the crafting of U.S. foreign policy? Quirk explores the challenges that new presidents encounter on the global arena and how their prior foreign policy experience impact their decisions. Combining both qualitative and quantitative methods, Quirk examines the presidencies of Carter through Biden and shows that while some presidents entered office with more experience and/or were able to choose their foreign policy focus, others seem less capable from the outset to handle foreign policy challenges, with early successes or failures having lasting consequences for the administration. Assessing how the individual in office affect decision-making, Menton theorizes that the plurality of political voices at the domestic level affect the president’s ability to achieve foreign policy outcomes. Focusing on the Obama administration and the Iran Nuclear Deal, Menton shows that Congress, the media, and public opinion thwarted responsibility attribution by upholding the narrative status quo, leaving the JCPOA vulnerable to political transition. Also focusing on the Iran Nuclear Deal, Soeker analyzes how leadership style affect compliance with multilateral agreements. Applying leadership trait analysis to Obama, Trump, and Biden, Soeker finds that the differences in how each administration approached the Iran Nuclear Deal are explained best by interpersonal differences within the leadership traits. Wiedekind examines presidential influence in shaping the final content of foreign policy bills in Congress. Assessing presidential policy positions in statements of administration policy documents and the policy outcomes in National Defense Authorization Acts from 1985 through 2020, Wiedekind shows that a range of contextual factors moderates presidential success in Congress on foreign policy bills.

Sub Unit

• Division 23: Presidents and Executive Politics

Cosponsor

• Division 20: Foreign Policy

Individual Presentations

• Tested: The Difficulty of Foreign Policy for New Presidents - James M. Quirk, American University

• The Story vs. the Storyteller: Rhetoric, Representation, and the JCPOA - Jane Darby Menton

• How Presidents Shape US Foreign Policy: Evidence from the Iran Nuclear Deal - Philipp Soeker

• Preemptive Challenges: Measuring Executive Power in Legislating Foreign Policy - Jakob Wiedekind, Leibniz Universität Hannover

Chair

• Zak Taylor Georgia Institute of Technology

Discussant

• Zak Taylor Georgia Institute of Technology