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Compact and Consensus: American Foreign Policy and the Partisan Tide at the Water's Edge

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract
Since World War II, it has been conventional to claim that the United States maintains a bipartisan foreign policy based on Vandenberg’s famous maxim that “politics stop at the water’s edge.” However, the extent to which the tradition of bipartisanship in foreign affairs holds true today, amidst rampant political polarization, has become the subject of controversy. This thesis introduces new insights from the growing literature on political polarization to bear on a historical analysis of American foreign policy-making, considering the separate impacts of both substantive, ideological polarization and affective, social polarization. In doing so, this thesis makes the case that scholars should pay attention not only to the substantive ideological consensus that developed between both major political parties in the wake of World War II, due to the external pressure of the Cold War, but also recognize the importance of the affective political compact consummated between them that enabled their cooperation in the foreign-policymaking process. Tracing the history of both compact (cooperation) and consensus (agreement) in American foreign policy from their origins through today, this thesis argues that bipartisan compact collapsed as a result of a breakdown in the collaborative process during the Vietnam War, while bipartisan consensus continued to last through the end of the Cold War, after which it gradually eroded in the absence of a clear and significant external threat to compel agreement. As such, American foreign policy has experienced both substantive and affective polarization, resulting in a present period of neither compact nor consensus.

Description

Type of resource text
Date created June 6, 2019

Creators/Contributors

Author Wigler, Matthew
Degree granting institution Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation
Primary advisor Kahl, Colin

Subjects

Subject Center for International Security and Cooperation
Subject Stanford
Subject Honors Program in International Security
Subject Political Science
Subject History
Subject political polarization
Subject U.S. foreign policy
Subject liberal internationalism
Subject bipartisanship
Subject partisanship
Subject World War II
Subject Cold War
Subject Vietnam War
Subject Congress
Subject international institutions
Subject multilateralism
Subject alliances
Subject free trade
Subject foreign aid
Subject military spending
Subject military intervention
Subject substantive polarization
Subject affective polarization
Genre Thesis

Bibliographic information

Location https://purl.stanford.edu/px726vt7643

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License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred citation

Wigler, Matthew. (2019). Compact and Consensus: American Foreign Policy and the Partisan Tide at the Water's Edge. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at: https://purl.stanford.edu/px726vt7643

Collection

Stanford University, Center for International Security and Cooperation, Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies, Theses

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Contact information

mwigler6@gmail.com

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