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12 December 2005

Shapiro on foreign policy polarization today

Not to be last minute or anything, but there's a talk today at the Kennedy School by Robert Shapiro of Columbia. The paper is titled "Partisan Conflict, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy." Here's the abstract:

Since the 1970s American politics has become increasing polarized along partisan and ideological lines. This polarization has been widely observed and debated in the area of domestic economic and social policymaking, and since September 11th and since the war and U.S. occupation of Iraq, there are signs of this in the conflict among political leaders concerning American foreign policy. If partisan and, especially, ideological conflict were to be a persistent characteristic of foreign policy debates, this would be major change in the nature of American politics, in which such conflict thus far has not extended beyond domestic politics. This paper examines the surveys conducted from 1998 to 2004 by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations to see the extent to which, if any, the American public’s as well as leaders’ opinions toward foreign policy issues have become more polarized then in the past along Democratic-Republican partisan and ideological lines. It finds that elite opinions have indeed become more polarized, and there are indications that this may be occurring for the mass public as well, especially in ideological terms. Such increasing divisions in leaders’ opinions on foreign policy issues, if they persist, and the extent to which similar divisions have become more pervasive among the public, would indicate that American partisan politics and the nature of public opinion has changed in profound ways over the last fifty years.

Posted by Barry Burden at December 12, 2005 10:27 AM