No Love for Doves? Foreign Policy and Candidate Appeal

In: Social science quarterly, Band 98, Heft 5, S. 1659-1676

Abstract

Objectives"Issue ownership" of foreign policy, it is widely believed, gives an electoral advantage to the Republican Party, which generally adopts a hawkish posture. We test the popular proposition that Democrats should adopt more hawkish stances in order to offset this advantage.MethodsWe conducted experiments in which (fictional) candidates take hawkish or dovish positions in response to a real‐world threat to the United States. We complemented these studies with analyses of national survey data for the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections.ResultsOur results consistently refute the popular proposition that Democrats stand to benefit from adopting more hawkish foreign policy stances.ConclusionWhile ownership of foreign policy may bestow a trust on the Republican Party to handle foreign policy, this is not necessarily a mandate for hawkish policies. We highlight the importance of the present political context, wherein the American public exhibits a marked weariness of U.S. military intervention overseas.