Summary
By Conrad Haessler
“The Influence of Domestic and International Politics on the President’s Use
of Force” - by Patrick James and John R. Oneal
James and Oneal’s 1991 essay is based on an earlier writing by Charles Ostrom and Brian Job
(1986) who sought to demonstrate a correlation between domestic politics and the foreign policy
choices of U.S. Presidents. Using regression analysis, Ostrom and Job intended to challenge the
realist mantra of the independence of foreign policy from domestic influences.
James and Oneal’s contribution is a refinement of the model due to the inclusion of an
additional variable reflecting the specific nature of situations relevant to foreign policy analysis.
They depart from the assumption that the President considers only a limited number of critical
factors before taking a decision on the use of force. The total amount of those factors equals
eleven. James and Oneal group them in three major clusters: international, domestic, and political
environment.
Under the first category the President is likely to take into account the level of tension between
the U.S. and the USSR, the balance of nuclear power as well as the number of ongoing wars with
U.S. involvement. The second group of variables contains domestic factors: the public perception
of superpower tensions, the public perception of the nuclear balance, the public aversion toward
war and a misery index representing unemployment and inflation. Finally, there is a cluster
composed of political features such as the level of the President’s public support, his overall
political success and the electoral cycle.
Criticizing Ostrom and Job for inflating factors in the domestic and political data segment,
James and Oneal introduce a novel indicator which falls under the first category. They refer to it
as “severity”, i.e. a measure of seriousness of ongoing international events.
Running the regression, James and Oneal find that the greatest impact on the President’s
decision to use force is derived from his popularity followed by his overall success and the
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Summary
By Conrad Haessler
misery index – all factors which belong to the political and domestic category. Their severity
indicator proves to have a bigger effect than Ostrom and Job’s variables describing the
international environment, yet, it is inferior to the ones just mentioned.
In terms of contributions to foreign policy analysis, this article can be regarded as very
relevant. It successfully challenges the rational actor approach propounded by the realist school
while presenting a new cybernetic model of decision making. At the same time it valorizes the
state-level of analysis due to the importance of values from inside the black box. Rather troubling
are the ethical implications of this study. Those in power and responsible for weapons of
unprecedented destructiveness might be motivated to use force primarily by the hope of partisan
gain.
“Political Opposition and Foreign Policy in Comparative Perspective” – by
Joe D. Hagan
The central idea of Hagan’s book is to show the influence of domestic opposition on the foreign
policy of the ruling regime. Not only does the author compare the emergence of foreign policy
decisions in different non-U.S. settings, i.e. in Western parliamentary democracies, authoritarian
systems or third world polities, he also distinguishes between various forms of opposition, such
as resistance from within the regime or opposition operating outside the regime.
At the heart of Hagan’s argument for the usefulness of a comparative approach in foreign
policy analysis is his attempt to conceptualize political opposition and its cross-national linkage
to foreign policy as presented in chapter three of his book. He examines three variables: the
degree of regime fragmentation, opposition from outside the government and the general political
context. Let us turn to the first scenario.
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Summary
By Conrad Haessler
Hagan measures the fragmentation of a regime along several indicators. First, he considers the
group composition of the ruling regime, determining whether a government consists of a
cohesive single party, a factionalized single party or a coalition of multiple groups. Canada and
Britain are examples for the first, Japan and the fragmented liberal democratic party fits well into
the second, while France and Italy represent the third category. The significance of regime
fragmentation lies in the fact that it encompasses the opposition most immediate to the policy
maker. Hence, the greater the internal division of a government, the greater the constraints on
foreign policy decisions.
Apart from those groupings, Hagan adds two more variables to the scenario: the presence of a
predominant political actor and the extent of polarization over foreign policy issues. The absence
of a predominant leader combined with sharp polarization is bound to enhance the constraints
inherent in the political division of a regime. The opposite outcome applies to cases where there
is a dominant political actor and only little polarization as was true for De Gaulle’s leadership in
the 1960s.
The second scenario looks into the possibility of opposition from outside the government.
Four types of resistance are feasible: dissenting actors in the regime’s ruling group, other political
parties, military and paramilitary factions and regionally based actors. Their influence is gauged
by the strength and intensity of their political struggle.
The third set of political phenomena reflect aspects of the political context, namely
institutionalization and vulnerability. Well institutionalized regimes receive wider acceptance and
are consequently less prone to opposition. Regime vulnerability depends on the internal stability
of arrangements within the regime as well as on the historical competitiveness of the political
system. A polity with quickly changing governments such as Italy is a good example for a high
vulnerability.
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