Suchergebnisse

The idea of American exceptionalism has lived a vibrant life in American political discourse, yet little research has focused on the effects that these messages have on U.S. public opinion. To bridge this gap, the present study examines the psychological dynamics that shape how Americans respond to messages that champion the idea of American exceptionalism. Specifically, I draw on scholarship on American exceptionalism in political discourse and on social identity to conduct a message experiment on a nationally sampled population of U.S. adults. The experiment examined the differential impacts of American exceptionalism messages on (a) people's own sense of American exceptionalism, (b) their sense that other countries are inferior by comparison, (c) their attitudes about whether the United States should be exempt from international laws and institutions, and (d) their attitudes about whether the United States should seek to spread its influence and values in the world.

The book investigates US foreign policy in today's process of transformation. It shows how domestic factors determine more and more the superpower's paradigm of foreign policy. On the one hand, the US are the undisputed superpower as far as military, political or economic power are concerned, as well as cultural influence and leadership in interantional relations. On the other hand, the US have in the 90s practiced a rather non-dominant leadership in international relations, contrasting sharply America's potential. What are the reasons for this? Das englischsprachige Buch untersucht die Außenpolitik der USA in der jetzigen grundlegenden Umbruchphase. Es zeigt, wie innenpolitische Determinanten auch bei der Supermacht USA in zunehmendem Maße den außenpolitischen Rahmen bestimmen. Auf der einen Seite sind die USA die unumstrittene Supermacht im Hinblick auf militärische, politische und ökonomische Stärke, aber auch im Hinblick auf den kulturellen Einfluss und die Führungsrolle in den internationalen Beziehungen. Auf der anderen Seite haben die USA in den 90erJahren eine Zurückhaltung als Führungsmacht in den internationalen Beziehungen praktiziert, die ganz im Gegensatz zum Führungspotenzial der einzigen Supermacht standen. Welches sind die Ursachen und Faktoren für diese zurückhaltende Rolle der USA als Welt-Führungsmacht?

To what extent are ethnic minority interest groups able to influence U.S. foreign policy? Current case study research has identified several factors that may condition the ability of diasporic groups to influence foreign policy toward ancestral "homelands." One set of conditions focuses on the ability of ethnic identity groups to mobilize the necessary resources to make significant campaign contributions in the hope of influencing political outcomes. To this point, existing studies have been unable to isolate the Impact of campaign contributions from other factors that may influence U.S: foreign policy decision-making. The current study uses a mixture of statistical techniques in an attempt to determine the impact of ethnic minority interest group and individual campaign contributions on foreign policy decisions in the U.S. House of Representatives. Results from the study indicate that ethnic identity groups do have an impact on U.S. foreign policy. There are, however, significant limits to this influence.