Suchergebnisse

Polarization has been a prevalent phenomenon in US politics, yet its foreign policy implications remain understudied. A common assumption is that polarization undermines the utilization of United States' material power via a coherent grand strategy. In this article, I argue that polarization does not make the United States incapable of enacting a foreign policy per se but instead affects US foreign policy conduct, power, and strategy toward international negotiations. The effects of domestic polarization for US foreign policy behavior in international negotiations are best understood via an advanced application of the "two-level game" model, which conceptualizes a state's domestic politics as a determinant factor for the executive branch's approach toward foreign affairs. I identify three effects polarization has on US foreign policy: (1) a sorting effect, which produces homogenous partisan coalitions with divergent foreign policy preferences and inclines the executive to pursue an obstinate international negotiation conduct; (2) a partisan conflict effect, which weakens Congress as a veto player and reduces United States' bargaining power; and, finally, (3) an institutional corrosion effect, which inclines the executive branch to manipulate domestic support and to politicize international negotiations at home. In sum, domestic polarization increases the opportunity costs for US foreign policy toward international negotiations and contributes to global instability. Anecdotal evidence from US foreign policy over the last decade offers support for these effects, but further empirical research is needed to better understand when they are most impactful and in which combination these effects appear.

The global wave of populism has recently drawn the attention of foreign policy analysts. Despite significant contributions, we still know little about populist leaders' conceptions of their nation's identity and how these inform foreign policy preferences. What understanding do populists have regarding what their nation stands for and how high it stands in comparison to others? In this article, I introduce a theoretical model of identity-driven foreign policymaking that examines the national identity conceptions of six populist leaders and their non-populist predecessors via an original quantitative content analysis of foreign policy speeches. The article further assesses whether this identity conception translates into foreign policy preferences for revisionism toward the liberal international order by examining voting behavior in the UN General Assembly. The article contributes to conceptual and methodological approaches in foreign policy analysis to study individuals, as well as provides comparative empirical evidence for what drives populists' foreign policy thinking.

AbstractResearch indicates that polarization has led to an increasing dispersion between moderate and more extreme voters within both parties. Intraparty polarization supposedly affects the nature of interparty competition as it creates political space for new political realignments and the rise of anti-establishment candidates. This article examines the extent and impact of intraparty polarization in Congress on US trade policy. Specifically, the article examines whether (and which) trade policy preferences are distributed within and between both parties, as well as how intraparty polarization has influenced the outcome of US trade negotiations. It is theorized that intraparty polarization causes crosscutting legislative coalitions around specific trade policies and political realignments around ideological factions, with consequences for the outcome of trade negotiations. By relying on a unique dataset of congressional letters and co-sponsorship legislation, the article first derives trade policy preferences from members of Congress and computes their ideological means. Two contemporary cases of US trade policy are examined: The Transpacific Partnership Agreement and the US–Mexico–Canada Agreement. Via a structured-focused comparison of both cases, the paper finally assesses under which combinations of preference-based and ideology-based intraparty polarization Congress manages to ratify trade agreements. Findings suggest that both parties are intrinsically polarized between free trade and fair trade preferences yet show variance in their degree of ideology-based intraparty polarization. These findings contribute to existing work on bipartisanship as well as factions in the foreign policy realm, as it shows under which circumstances legislators can build crosscutting coalitions around foreign policies.

The Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is an important milestone in reducing the illicit trade of arms but was highly unlikely to be negotiated and passed. Major powers and states exporting and importing arms were not keen on universally binding regulations, leading to political stalemate in the initial negotiation arena, the Conference on Disarmament. This article investigates under which conditions regime complexity had a positive influence on the ATT negotiation dynamics and result. We distinguish between two types of regime complexity, each providing states with a distinct window of opportunity during international negotiations: horizontal regime complexity can allow states to overcome negotiation gridlock by changing the institutional conditions for passing an agreement. Vertical regime complexity can allow regional organizations to turn into agents of change by bringing in experiences gained on the regional level to the international negotiation table. Our empirical analysis of the ATT negotiations revealed critical scope conditions under which both forms of regime complexity function properly, allowing the negotiations to overcome negotiation gridlock and resulting in the passing of the accord beyond a lowest common denominator. The article contributes to the rich and vibrant scholarship in regime complexity and global governance complexes by making a novel analytical distinction between horizontal and vertical regime complexity and by identifying the opportunity structures under which regime complexity can have positive effects on the negotiation and outcome of international treaties.

The phrase "unintended consequences" is often used in the political (science) discourse, yet it still remains theoretically underspecified. We conceptualize unintended consequences in role theoretical terms in three steps, and then apply it to the United States' policy vis-a-vis the Asia-Pacific region under the Obama administration - the so-called "Pivot to Asia." First, we model unintended consequences as a gap be-tween the initial role-taking of an actor and the deviant but commensurate counter-role taking of an Other. Second, we examine the Obama administration's initial role-taking in the diplomatic, security, and economic realms, under the assumption that domestic contestation in the US may lead to unclear signaling about the Pivot's intentions. Third, we investigate counter-role taking by Japan, the Philippines, and Indonesia in order to draw conclusions about their interpretation of US role-taking and its consequences for the region's social structure. Our analysis exposes differentiated patterns of unintended consequences due to deviant counter-role taking by these nations vis-a-vis the US, China, and other actors in the region along all three dimensions of the Pivot. (Asien/GIGA)

International leadership failure by states is an underdeveloped concept in International Relations. Existing approaches commonly equate leadership with hegemony, arguing that leadership success and failure are contingent on primacy or shared material interests among states. In this article, we introduce a role theoretical approach, which defines international leadership as a social role that emerges from shared expectations among states pertaining to leadership purpose, group cohesion and time horizon. Accordingly, leadership failure occurs when role expectations between states diverge and states are unable to generate commensurate role-taking via alter-casting. Four leader-follower constellations can be distinguished: leadership enactment, denial, rejection and vacuum. The paper utilizes this theoretical heuristic to understand two cases of leadership failure. The first case involves Brazil's attempted leadership role in response to the Latin American migration crisis following the political crisis in Venezuela. The second case examines Indonesia's attempted leadership role in the South China Sea dispute. The empirical findings contribute to existing work on hegemony and leadership in international relations theory by showing that leadership failure comes in different variants and these variants are contingent on shared role expectations and alter-casting capacity of states involved.

AbstractThe Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) is an important milestone in reducing the illicit trade of arms but was highly unlikely to be negotiated and passed. Major powers and states exporting and importing arms were not keen on universally binding regulations, leading to political stalemate in the initial negotiation arena, the Conference on Disarmament. This article investigates under which conditions regime complexity had a positive influence on the ATT negotiation dynamics and result. We distinguish between two types of regime complexity, each providing states with a distinct window of opportunity during international negotiations: horizontal regime complexity can allow states to overcome negotiation gridlock by changing the institutional conditions for passing an agreement. Vertical regime complexity can allow regional organizations to turn into agents of change by bringing in experiences gained on the regional level to the international negotiation table. Our empirical analysis of the ATT negotiations revealed critical scope conditions under which both forms of regime complexity function properly, allowing the negotiations to overcome negotiation gridlock and resulting in the passing of the accord beyond a lowest common denominator. The article contributes to the rich and vibrant scholarship in regime complexity and global governance complexes by making a novel analytical distinction between horizontal and vertical regime complexity and by identifying the opportunity structures under which regime complexity can have positive effects on the negotiation and outcome of international treaties.

Nicht erst seit der Präsidentschaft und Außenpolitik von Donald Trump gibt es gute Gründe zu vermuten, dass die Kontestation innerstaatlicher Ordnung in den USA im Zeitverlauf so stark variieren kann, dass ihre (zeitweilige) Illiberalität die Stabilität einer liberalen internationalen Ordnung untergraben kann. Die in diesem Literaturreview diskutierten Werke deuten auf einen Wandel von formalen und informellen Institutionen und deren Interaktion im (außen-)politischen Prozess der USA hin. Es werden gezielt Monographien und Sammelbände in den Blick genommen, welche die Innenpolitik der amerikanischen Außenpolitik adressieren und die US- Politik daraufhin untersuchen, inwiefern die parteipolitische Polarisierung und die populistische Außenpolitik der Trump-Administration, die Beziehungen zu zentralen Partnern und Kontrahenten in zwei zentralen Weltregionen (Europa und Asien) verändern. Das Literaturreview bietet erste Bausteine für ein Forschungsprogramm an, welches die innenpolitischen Veränderungen in den USA systematisch mit der Rolle der USA gegenüber anderen Staaten und nichtstaatlichen Akteuren verbindet.