Dissertation Project
PDF available here.
Abstract: This book-style dissertation examines the politics of congressional expression and public opinion formation on foreign relations across post-World War II American history. Introducing a novel, top-down theory of the ‘voice’ of Congress and the people, the project’s primary argument is that the content and polarization of collective congressional expression and public attitudes on foreign policy depend on the connection between the substantive content of a foreign policy and the president’s party affiliation. On-brand foreign policies lead to Vocal Congresses and a Polarized public; off-brand policies lead to Equivocal Congresses and a Moderate public. Such distinctions in Congress and the public emerge because typical legislators have incentives to speak up and take a stance or to equivocate based on policy type, and these incentives aggregate in predictable ways. The project investigates the congressional response and public attitudes towards a novel caselist of over 100 major uses of force and diplomatic initiatives from 1945 to 2022, drawing upon: 35 original interviews with congressional policymakers; over 60,000 newly compiled legislator statements on foreign relations, including thousands collected from archives; new data on legislator backgrounds; about 70 historical polls; and novel survey experimentation.
This work improves scholarly understanding of the domestic sources and consequences of U.S. foreign policy. By showing where expressed congressional opinion comes from, it reveals the conditions under which influential IR theories that explain credibility and constraint may operate in the United States. By explaining how recurring patterns of congressional messaging shape the public, it advances foundational models of foreign policy opinion formation that point to the importance of elite opinion but say little about its politics. By highlighting when and why presidents are likely to face out-party acquiescence and reduced domestic political polarization overall, it informs ongoing debates over partisan advantages and disadvantages as leaders sail the water’s edge. And by showing how executive choice shapes domestic polarization, the project uncovers how elite politics distorts democratic representation on foreign relations in the United States.
Published Papers
(with Trent Ollerenshaw and So Jin Lee)
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: Published 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.
Reviewed in H-Diplo|Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum here.
Working Papers
Abstract: This paper explains the origins of congressional messaging on war and diplomacy. It introduces a typology of the modern ‘voice’ of Congress, and argues that the congressional reaction to presidential foreign policy predictably conforms to one of two ideal-types. Vocal congresses follow on-brand foreign policies (which adhere to the presidential party’s ideological tendency) and display high messaging volume, high intra-party consensus, and high inter-party polarization. Equivocal congresses follow off-brand foreign policies and are low across dimensions. The paper probes the typology with novel data including over 40,000 archived press releases and floor speeches issued about a new case-list of nearly 70 uses of force and diplomatic initiatives spanning 1965-2022. It assesses the ‘mechanism’—legislator position-taking—with quantitative analyses and qualitative evidence from 35 original interviews. Findings reveal when democratic advantages abroad may operate and constraints might bind, when public opinion might polarize, and highlight foundations of asymmetric presidential foreign policymaking.
Status: Working Paper. Co-winner of the 2025 Best Graduate Student Paper Award from the American Political Science Association, Foreign Policy Section.
(with Patrick Hulme)
Abstract: This article explains how Congress influences crisis bargaining. It argues that legislators can manipulate four costs to which presidents are exposed—inaction, belligerence, audience, and fighting—in ways that rearrange executive incentives throughout crisis. It assesses expectations with three distinct sets of evidence. Observational data on tens of thousands of congressional messages and hundreds of historical polls spanning 1945-2022 validates that legislators express opinions throughout crises, and that these views associate with public opinion. A novel survey experiment provides causal evidence that congressional position-taking manipulates each cost as expected; the best choice in public opinion is always whatever Congress prefers. And two case studies of the Cuban Missile and Syrian Chemical Weapons Crises that draw upon archival materials and original interviews show that presidents are sensitive to this capacity in the ways the theory anticipates.
Findings imply that congressional control over escalation, credibility, and constraint is both more flexible and more coercive than existing accounts presume; bridge a disconnect between IR models that rely on public evaluations of executive behavior and American politics scholarship that assigns Congress a central role in their formation; and reveal high democratic accountability in American statecraft that is nevertheless vulnerable to increasing partisan polarization.
Status: Working Paper.
Abstract: Congressional opinion leadership on foreign affairs drives influential theories of international relations and American politics. How do legislators design the foreign policy opinions they express? This article explains when legislators invoke the president in their foreign policy position-taking, and clarifies its consequences in public opinion. Contrary to a conventional wisdom that presidential naming is an out-party strategy, the paper argues that partisan incentives hinge on expressed stance. Analyses of over 60,000 archived legislator press releases and speeches about 101 U.S. foreign policies spanning 1945-2022 find that co-partisans increasingly cue the president when they express support, while out-partisans increasingly name when they express opposition. A survey experiment on a CES sample shows how naming shapes the public, and 35 interviews illustrate how congressional policymakers understand these incentives. Findings modify an orthodox view, and shed light on the mechanism of congressional influence and sources of opinion polarization in American foreign relations.
Status: Working Paper.
(with Trent Ollerenshaw)
Abstract: This paper introduces American Guilt, clarifies its sources, and specifies its connection to support for foreign aid. American guilt, we contend, is a politically consequential feeling of national responsibility for global inequality. Drawing upon literatures spanning redistributive preferences and social psychology, we argue that three beliefs undergird guilt—perceptions of global inequality, U.S. culpability, and (absence of) U.S. reparative behaviors—and that guilt, in turn, shapes support for foreign aid. Using three novel surveys and replications of existing literature, we explain why and how some Americans experience guilt, and demonstrate that guilt is a uniquely powerful predictor of foreign aid preferences. A larger proposed experiment designed to induce guilt stands to establish the emotion as a causal driver of foreign aid support; a null would affirm internal resistance to the feeling.
Our findings: bridge classical accounts of foreign policy that conceive of an emotionally motivated public with a newer consensus that emphasizes public reason; help resolve a gap between predictions of dominant elite-cue theories and the foreign aid attitudes we historically observe; and define a bottom-up opinion determinant that plausibly connects to other foreign policy domains and travels across national contexts.
Status: Working Paper.
Selected in Progress
(with Andy Payne)