US Foreign Policy
PhD Comprehensive Exam Reading list
The following readings are in addition to those required by the core concentration courses.
FOREIGN POLICY DECISION MAKING
Individual/Psychological Approaches:
Evans, Peter B, et.al., (Eds.). (1993). Double-edged Diplomacy: International Bargaining
and Domestic Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press. Chapter 1 (Introduction:
Integrating International and Domestic Theories of International Bargaining), chapter 2
(Dual Track and Double Trouble), chapter 3 (The Political Economy of Security
Agreements), and chapter 13 (Building an Integrative Approach to International and
Domestic Politics).
Jervis, Robert. (1976). Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Levy, Jack. (Spring 1994). Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual
Minefield. International Organization, 48:2, pp. 279-312.
Levy, Jack. (2003). Political Psychology and Foreign Policy. In Sears, David, et al.,
(Eds.). Oxford Handbook of Political Psychology. Oxford University Press.
Organizational Approaches:
Clapp, Priscilla, et. al. (2006). Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy. Washington,
DC: The Brookings Institution.
Krasner, Stephen. (1989). Are Bureaucracies Important? (Or Allison Wonderland). In
John Ikenberry, (Ed.), American Foreign Policy: Theoretical Essays. New York:
Longman.
Amy B. Zegart. (Spring 2005). September 11 and the Adaption Failure of U.S.
Intelligence Agencies. International Security, 29:4, pp. 78-111.
(Spring 2009). Looking out, looking in: competing organizational interests & the
proliferation of Soviet WMD expertise. Daedalus, pp. 105-114.
Ideology, Economics, Culture, Identity:
Campbell, David. (1992). Writing Security: United States Foreign Policy and the Politics
of Identity. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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Destler, I.M. (2005). American Trade Politics, Fourth Edition. Washington, DC: Institute
for International Economics.
Doty, Roxanne. (1993). Foreign Policy as Social Construction: A Post-positivist Analysis
of U.S. Counterinsurgency Policy in the Philippines. International Studies Quarterly,
37:3, pp. 297- 320.
Dueck, Colin. (2006). Reluctant Crusaders: Power, Culture, and Change in American
Grand Strategy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hunt, Michael. (1987). Ideology and US Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Lieven, Anatol. (2004). America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
ACTORS AND PROCESSES
Congress and the President:
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Dodd, Lawrence & Oppenheimer, Bruce. (2013). Congress Reconsidered 10 Edition.
Washington, DC: CQ Press. chapter 1 (Sinclair), chapter 2 (Dodd and Oppenheimer),
chapter 13 (Thurber), and chapter 15 (Kringer and Howell).
Fisher, Louis. (2013). Presidential War Power 3rd Edition. Lawrence, Kansas:
University Press of Kansas.
Howell, William G. & Pevehouse, Jon C. (Winter 2005). Presidents, Congress, and the
Use of Force. International Organization. 59:1, pp. 209-232.
Neustadt, Richard E. (1991). Presidential Power and the Modern Presidents: The Politics
of Leadership from Roosevelt to Reagan (chapters 1-6). New York: Free Press.
Ripley, Randall B. & Lindsay, James M. (1993). Congress Resurgent: Foreign and
Defense Policy on Capitol Hill (chapter 2, How Congress influences Foreign and Defense
Policy). Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Wildavsky, Aaron. (December 1966). The Two Presidencies. Trans-Action, 4, pp. 7-14.
Public Opinion:
Baum, Mathew & Groeling, Tim. (2009). War Stories: The Causes and Consequences of
Public Views of War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Edwards, George C. III. (2003). On Deaf Ears: The Limits of the Bully Pulpit (chaps. 1-3,
pp 1-75). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
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Holsti, Ole. (1992). Public Opinion and Foreign Policy: Challenges to the AlmondLippmann Consensus. International Studies Quarterly, 36, pp. 439-466.
Paige, Benjamin & Shapiro, Robert. (1992). The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends
in Americans’ Policy Preferences (chaps 1-2). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Interest and Ethnic Groups and Identity:
Brenner, Philip et. al. (May 2002). The Confluence of Domestic and International
Interests: US Policy Toward Cuba, 1998-2001. International Studies Perspectives, 3, pp.
192-208.
Lieberman, Robert C. (June 2009). The “Israel Lobby” and American Politics.
Perspectives on Politics, 7:2, pp. 235-257.
Mearsheimer, John & Walt, Stephen. (June 2009). The Blind Man and the Elephant in the
Room: Robert Lieberman and the Israel lobby. Perspectives on Politics, 7:2, pp. 259-273.
Lieberman, Robert C. (June 2009). Rejoinder to Mearsheimer and Walt. Perspectives on
Politics, 7:2, pp. 275-281.
Mearsheimer, John & Walt, Stephen. (March 23, 2006). The Israel Lobby. London
Review of Books, 28:6, pp. 3-12.
Smith, Tony. (2000). Foreign Attachments: The Power of Ethnic Groups in the Making of
American Foreign Policy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Institutions:
Adams, Gordon & Williams, Cindy. (2010). Buying National Security. New York,
Routledge.
Bamford, James. (2009). The Shadow Factory: The NSA from 9/11 to the Eavesdropping
on America. New York: Anchor.
Destler, I.M. & Daalder, Ivo. (2009). In the Shadow of the Oval Office: Profiles of the
National Security Advisers and the Presidents They Serve - From John F. Kennedy to
George W. Bush. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Katznelson, Ira. (2013). Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time (chapters
4-12). New York: Norton.
Neu, Charles E. (1987). The Rise of the National Security Bureaucracy. In Louis
Galambos, (Ed.), The New American State: Bureaucracies and Policies since World War
II (pp. 85-108). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Schilling, Warner R. (1962). The Politics of National Defense: Fiscal 1950. In Warner R.
Schilling et. al., (Eds.), Strategy, Politics and Defense Budgets (pp. 5-27). New York:
Columbia University Press.
DIPLOMATIC HISTORY
Blight, James & Brenner, Philip. (2002). Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with
the Superpowers After the Missile Crisis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield
Publishers, Inc.
Friedman, Max Paul. (2012). ReThinking Anti-Americanism: The History of an
Exceptional Concept in American Foreign Relations. New York: Cambridge.
Gaddis, John Lewis. (2005). Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American
National Security Policy during the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press.
Ikenberry, G. John. (2012). Liberal Leviathan: The Origins, Crisis, and Transformation
of the American World Order (chaps 5-8). Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Kennan, George. (1985). American Diplomacy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
LaFeber, Walter. (1994). The American Age: United States Foreign Policy at Home and
Abroad Since 1750 (chaps 1-13). New York: Norton.
Williams, William Appleman. (1988). Tragedy of American Diplomacy. New York:
W.W. Norton.
NATIONAL SECURITY
DiPrizio, Robert C. (2002). Armed Humanitarians: U.S. Interventions from Northern
Iraq to Kosovo. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Cohen, Eliot A. (January/February 1994). The Mystique of U.S. Air Power. Foreign
Affairs, 73:1, pp. 109-124.
George, Alexander L. & Simon, William E., (Eds.). (1994). The Limits of Coercive
Diplomacy 2nd Edition. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. (1961). The Common Defense (pp. 1-24). New York: Columbia
University Press.
Huntington, Samuel P. (March 1961). Interservice Competition and the Political Roles of
the Armed Services. American Political Science Review, 55:1, pp. 40-52.
Kissinger, Henry A. (April 1956). Force and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age. Foreign
Affairs, 34:3, pp. 249-366.
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Katzenbach, Edward L. (1973). The Horse Cavalry in the Twentieth Century: A Study in
Policy
Response. In Morton H. Halperin and Arnold Kanter, (Eds.), Readings in
American Foreign Policy: A Bureaucratic Perspective (pp. 172-190). Boston: Little
Brown.
Lowenthal, Marc. (2011). Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy. Washington: CQ Press.
Mueller, John. (Fall 1988). The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons. International
Security, 13:2, pp. 55-79.
Posen, Barry R. & Ross, Andrew L. (1997). Competing Visions of U.S. Grand Strategy.
International Security, 21:3, pp. 5-49.
Priest, Dana & Arkin, William M. (2011). Top Secret America: The Rise of the New
American Security State (chaps 1-6). Boston: Little Brown.
Stein, Arthur A. (1993). Domestic Constraints, Extended Deterrence, and the Incoherence
of Grand Strategy: The United States, 1938-1950. In Richard Rosecrance and Arthur A.
Stein, (Eds.), The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy (pp. 96-123). Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Zelizer, Julian. (2010). Arsenal of Democracy: The Politics of National Security – From
World War II to the War on Terrorism. New York: Basic Books.
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