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The Politics of United States Foreign Policy. Politics and national interest. Politics: Who gets what, when and how Competition for power and shared meaning
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Politics and national interest • Politics: • Who gets what, when and how • Competition for power and shared meaning • Competition between different individuals and groups for control of government, and for support of the public and influence throughout society, in order to promote certain ends • National interest: • Riason d'état. The goals of politics; what is most beneficial for the state
What is Foreign Policy? • Foreign policy/foreign relations: …the scope of state involvement abroad and the collection of goals, strategies, and instruments that are selected by governmental policymakers • The foreign policy process: How policy decisions are formed, put on the agenda and implemented
The Foreign Policy Process • What forces drive foreign policy? • Political/ideological, moral, economic… • What actors contribute to foreign policy formulation? • The president, Congress, the foreign policy bureaucracy • Advisors, cabinet officials, political parties, courts, etc.
Why we study foreign policy • History • Relevance: • obvious effects • Security, economy • often overlooked effects • Environment, global health initiatives
How we study foreign policy: three levels of analysis • The historical and global power context • The government and policymaking process • Society and domestic politics
How do scholars typically look at foreign policy? • The policyapproach • Emphasize contemporary events. • Policy-prescriptive scholarship. • The historicalapproach • Emphasize historical patterns. • Narrative rather than prescriptive scholarship. • The social-scienceapproach • Identify patterns in specific facets of policy. • Theory-developmental scholarship.
How we study foreign policy:Three central themes • Presidential supremacy in foreign policy • A modern role, often challenged • three patterns over time • Cold War peak • post-Vietnam decline • post-Cold-War tenuous increase • Patterns of continuity and change in U.S. foreign policy • Post-WWII dominance/global presence, Post-Vietnam transitions (decline of presidential power, fall of anti-communist consensus, IPE considerations) • Conflicting tension between democracy and security • Individual rights (transparency, dialogue) versus national security (secrecy, mass support, efficiency)