Presidential-Congressional Conflict in Domestic and Foreign Policymaking: A Fresh Approach to its Measurement and Explanation
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Date
2004
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
Abstract
Presidential-congressional conflict is the leitmotif of American
government. Historically, however, a congressional tradition of
bipartisanship in foreign policymaking has meant that conflict has
been far more characteristic of domestic policy debate. In the
contemporary era, however, the erosion of bipartisanship, the
prevalence of divided government and the increasing divisiveness
of a number of overseas commitments have meant that foreign
policy decisions in particular have become more controversial in
Washington DC. Surprisingly, however, very little is known about
the short-term dynamics of congressional-presidential conflict in
either policy sphere. A good part of the reason is that nobody has
produced a measure that, one, picks up short-term variation in
the incidence and intensity of conflict between the two branches
of government and, two, that can be used to sketch the pattern
of similarities and differences in the character of foreign as
opposed to domestic policy conflict. Content analyzing newspaper
articles, this project proposes such a measure and investigates
its relationship to, amongst other things, public opinion,
economic performance and overseas involvement.
Description
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Keywords
president, foreign policy, congress