PDF available here.  

My book-style dissertation aims to explain the origins, contours, and consequences of Congress’s engagement with the American public on US foreign relations.  It presents a novel, top-down theory of congressional expression and public opinion formation on foreign affairs.

The central argument is that the volume, content, and polarization of the collective 'voice' of the modern Congress on foreign relations conforms to one of two ideal-types, that these ideal-types can be predicted, and that they in turn shape the polarization of public opinion on foreign policy.  When presidents implement on-brand foreign policies that align with the ideological tendency of their party, Congress is likely to be Vocal, and display high overall messaging volume, high intra-party homogeneity, and high inter-party polarization.  The public follows, and becomes Polarized.  But when presidents break with party tendencies, Congress is likely to be Equivocal, and characterized by lower messaging volume, low intra-party consistency, and lower polarization between parties.  In these circumstances, the public remains Moderate. 

The project investigates the congressional response and public attitudes towards a novel list of over one hundred major uses of force and diplomatic initiatives from 1945 to 2022.  Its evidentiary basis consists of original interviews with congressional policymakers; over sixty thousand newly compiled and classified legislator statements on foreign relations across a range of channels, including thousands drawn from archives; about seventy historical polls; and novel survey experimentation.   

This study improves our broader theoretical and empirical understanding of the domestic sources and consequences of U.S. foreign policy.  By showing where expressed congressional opinion comes from, it highlights the conditions under which influential IR theories that model congressional expression as a key input to explain other outcomes of importance such as credibility and constraint abroad might operate in the US.  By revealing how predictable patterns of congressional messaging shape the public, it extends foundational models of public opinion formation on foreign policy that point to the importance of expressed congressional opinion, but say little about its politics.  By explaining when and why presidents are likely to face out-party acquiescence and reduced domestic political polarization overall, it informs debates on partisan asymmetries in executive foreign policymaking.  And by highlighting how congressional and public polarization on foreign policy hinge on arbitrary congressional and policy-specific features, the project reinterprets congressional shortcomings in foreign relations, and in turn raises new normative concerns about how elite politics distorts democratic representation and accountability in the United States.  

Abstract: In crisis bargaining scenarios, resolved states send costly signals to demonstrate a willingness to fight.  Yet public signals of resolve are issued by specific leaders, who operate with cognitive limitations in challenging decision environments.  Drawing upon theories of behavioral economics, we develop a series of observable indicators plausibly connected to leader ability and difficulty of decision environment that we expect shape perceived signaler credibility.  Effects, we argue, are due to perceived variation in the signaler’s uncertainty over the future costs at stake.  We find that almost all indicators shape threat credibility, and find suggestive support for the proposed mechanism.  By bridging behavioral economics and foundational scholarship on costly signaling in IR in novel ways, this report shows how individual and environmental decision restrictions set the bounds of observable leader rationality, and in turn shape credibility in IR. 

Status: Early View at Journal of Politics.  PDF available here.

Abstract: This article theoretically clarifies and presents the first large-N empirical support for a centuries-old intuition: that democracies are slow to use violent military force.  It argues that democratic and nondemocratic state leaders managing interstate crises experience tradeoffs over when to respond, and that democratic institutions incentivize democrats that consider violent military force to delay.  The article presents a simplified account of leader choice during crisis and highlights two mechanisms rooted in external and internal politics that may drive delay.  Analyses of nearly 950 states experiencing crisis provide support for expectations.  Democracy is associated with a roughly 40% lower likelihood of responding to a crisis at any given point in time, conditional on responding with violence.  Two illustrative case studies probe the plausibility of the proposed mechanisms.  The article illuminates the processes leaders engage as they consider abandoning negotiating tables at home and abroad for the battlefield.    

Status: Published at Journal of Peace Research.  Paper available here.  PDF available here.

Abstract: How did domestic politics shape President Barack Obama's use of military force during his first term? This article expands and improves upon existing assessments by coupling insights from political science theory with novel evidence from original interviews with administration officials. It systematically analyzes Obama and his administration across three theoretically important dimensions: belief structure, the White House national security advisory apparatus, and decision making in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. It finds that, along each dimension, President Obama appears to display high democratic responsiveness. Findings shed new light on how the administration understood and weighed domestic political considerations and translated these into security policy outcomes.

Status: Published at Presidential Studies Quarterly.  Paper available here.  PDF available here.  

Abstract: What were the contours of U.S. diplomacy to Czechoslovakia in the lead-up to and during its Velvet Revolution of 1989?  How did the U.S. Embassy in Prague, in collaboration with the George H.W. Bush White House and the State Department, calibrate diplomatic strategy and tactics?  Drawing principally upon newly available primary materials (including recently declassified telegrams, Czechoslovak archival documents, unpublished memoirs, and original interviews), this article explains and evaluates Embassy conduct during the period from August to November 1989.  While unpacking intra-and inter-agency disagreements, it shows how individual Embassy officers—including the former child star turned ambassador, Shirley Temple Black—analyzed political developments, assisted Czechoslovak dissidents, and pursued extensive engagement with the Communist Czechoslovak government.  The article provides the first scholarly, granular account of U.S. diplomacy in Czechoslovakia on the eve of democratization, and contributes to the historiography of U.S. foreign policy at the end of the Cold War. 

Status: Published at Journal of Cold War Studies.  (Accepted 2019.)  Paper available here.  PDF available here.  

Abstract: Expressed congressional opinion—the ‘voice’ of Congress—on foreign policy is a central input for influential theories of international relations and American politics that explain democratic constraint, credibility, and public opinion formation, among other phenomena.  Nevertheless, existing scholarship has yet to conceptualize distinctions in the institution’s collective public-facing behavior, and struggles to explain its remarkable observed fluctuations.  This paper introduces a theory that explains the volume, content, and polarization of congressional party messaging on war and diplomacy. 

Drawing upon original interviews with congressional policymakers, the paper argues that individual legislators’ partisan incentives and ideological preferences conditionally shape their public position-taking and, moreover, aggregate in predictable ways.  The voice of Congress predictably conforms to one of two ideal-types, termed Vocal and Equivocal, that differ along three key dimensions.  Vocal congresses follow on-brand foreign policies (when a president implements a policy that adheres to their party’s ideological tendency) and display high overall messaging volume, high intra-party consensus, and high inter-party polarization.  Equivocal congresses follow off-brand foreign policies (when a president breaks from their party’s ideological tendency) and exhibit low messaging volume, low intra-party consensus, and low polarization.  The paper assembles and analyzes over 40,000 archived press releases and floor speeches issued in response to a new case-list of nearly 70 uses of force and diplomatic initiatives over 1965-2022.  Its findings reveal conditions under which we may observe polarization in public opinion, under which democratic advantages may operate and constraints might bind, and highlight the congressional foundations of asymmetric executive foreign policymaking.

Status: Working Paper.

Status: Working Paper.