The Center Still Holds: Liberal Internationalism Survives

Abstract

Recent research, including an article by Charles Kupchan and Peter Trubowitz in this journal, has argued that the United States' long-standing foreign policy orientation of liberal internationalism has been in serious decline because of rising domestic partisan divisions. A reanalysis of the theoretical logic driving these arguments and the empirical evidence used to support them suggests a different conclusion. Extant evidence on congressional roll call voting and public opinion surveys, which is often used to support the claim that liberal internationalism has declined, as well as new evidence about partisan divisions in Congress using policy gridlock and cosponsorship data from other studies of American politics do not demonstrate the decline in bipartisanship in foreign policy that conventional wisdom suggests. The data also do not show evidence of a Vietnam War or a post–Cold War effect on domestic partisan divisions on foreign policy. Contrary to the claims of recent literature, the data show that growing domestic political divisions over foreign policy have not made liberal internationalism impossible. It persists as a possible grand strategy for the United States in part because of globalization pressures.

A Bottom‐Up Theory of Public Opinion about Foreign Policy

“…In reaction to the postwar cynics (and more methodologically sophisticated counterparts, like Converse 1964) have come a series of optimistic rejoinders showing that foreign policy attitudes indeed have structure (Holsti 1992;Hurwitz and Peffley 1987), and that the public reacts predictably and prudently to world events (Jentleson 1992;Kertzer 2013;Page and Shapiro 1992), most notably casualties (Gartner 2008;Mueller 1971). The public has principles when it comes to foreign policy: it likes victory (Eichenberg 2005) and success (Gelpi, Feaver, and Reifler 2009), dislikes inconsistency (Tomz 2007), likes multilateralism (Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley 2010), and has stable and well-structured foreign policy orientations (Herrmann, Tetlock, and Visser 1999;Holsti 1979;Rathbun 2007;Wittkopf 1990) rooted in core values Rathbun et al 2016) and encoded into our genes (Hatemi and McDermott 2016). Although these approaches are remarkably varied, what they share is a sense that public opinion about foreign policy is characterized by order rather than chaos, and that the sources of this order can be derived from within the public itself.…”

Who Supports Global Economic Engagement? The Sources of Preferences in American Foreign Economic Policy

“… 54 One difference between these aid votes and the trade votes is that many of the aid ones were amendment votes that tend to be more partisan on average (Chaudoin, Milner, and Tingley 2010). This is less of a concern when we analyze other types of aid votes, such as final-passage votes, later in the article.…”

Liberal peace and peacebuilding: global and local debates in the context of Sri Lanka

“…Since the end of the cold war, liberal peace has become the main policy framework that has been used by the International Community (IC) 4 to engage with and intervene in conflict ridden states as a means for creating global peace by stabilising states and strengthening global markets (Chaudoin et al, 2010;Ikenberry, 2009;Mac Ginty, 2011: p. 5;Sabaratnam, 2011: p. 13). The process of this interventionist engagement is termed liberal peacebuilding:…”