Grabbing attention: An experimental investigation of headlines during campaigns

In this article, we review two research programs that could benefit from a more extensive dialogue: media and policy studies of agenda setting. We focus on three key distinctions that divide these two robust research programs: the agenda(s) under investigation (public versus policymaking), the typical level of analysis (individual versus systemic), and framing effects (individual versus macro level). We map out these differences and their impacts on understanding the policy process. There is often a policy disconnect in the agenda-setting studies that emanate from the media tradition. Though interested in the effects of political communication, scholars from this tradition often fail to link the media to policy outcomes, policy change, or agenda change. Policy process scholars have increasingly rejected simple linear models in favor of models emphasizing complex feedback effects. This suggests a different role for the media—one of highlighting attributes in a multifaceted political reality and involvement in positive feedback cycles. Yet, political communication scholars have for the most part been insensitive to these potentials. We advocate a shared agenda centering on the role of the media in the political system from an information processing framework, emphasizing the reciprocal effects of each on the other.     

Scary Pictures: How Terrorism Imagery Affects Voter Evaluations

Journalists, candidates, and scholars believe that images, particularly images of war, affect the way that the public evaluates political leaders and foreign policy itself, but there is little direct evidence on the circumstances under which political elites can use imagery to enhance their electoral chances. Using National Election Studies (NES) panel data as well as two experiments, this article shows that, contrary to concerns about the manipulative power of imagery, the effect of evocative imagery can enhance candidate evaluations across partisan lines when they originate from the news but are more limited when they are used for persuasive purposes. By looking over time, the three data sets demonstrate different circumstances in which terrorism images have different effects on candidate evaluations—crisis versus non-crisis times and through news exposure versus direct use by a candidate. The NES data reveal that exposure to watching the World Trade Center fall on television increased positive evaluations of George W. Bush and the Republican party across partisan boundaries in 2002 and 2004. The news experiment that exposed subjects to graphic terrorism news in a lab in 2005/2006 increased approval of Bush’s handling of terrorism among Democrats. Lastly, an experiment where hypothetical candidates utilized terrorism images in campaign communication in 2008 demonstrates that both parties’ candidates can improve evaluations of their foreign policy statements by linking those statements to evocative imagery, but it is more effective among their own party members.     

Book Review

During George Bush's presidency the Cold War drew to a close and his administration triumphed in the Gulf War. Some viewed these events as a harbinger of a new world order. Basking in the success of the Gulf War, Bush's approval ratings soared, and prominent Democrats reconsidered challenging him in 1992. Foreign policy themes might have seemed a natural emphasis in campaign rhetoric. Yet, on the eve of the election, Bush abandoned efforts to rally the public with such appeals.

This article identifies primary metaphorical themes employed by Bush to define foreign policy reality. Bush's rhetoric was fundamentally ordered by the orientational metaphor of war. Other themes reinforced central premises of the war metaphor and reflected enduring premises of American exceptional ism. However, critical constraints blunted Bush's rhetorical intentions, and perhaps nullified constraints presidents traditionally have harnessed to define rhetorical situations to fit a preferred world view.

A disjuncture between rhetorical expectations and intentions beset the administration as the 1992 election approached. The electorate turned an anxious gaze to domestic politics and the condition of the economy. Furthermore, the war metaphor met a public demonstrably leery of U.S. meddling in the internal politics of other countries. Preference for the war metaphor, finally, represented a significant challenge to the political identity of Bush and the Republican Party.     

A Faustian bargain or just a good bargain? Chinese foreign direct investment and politics in Europe

This article explores the political challenges posed by the recent influx of Chinese outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) into the European Union (EU), which has become in 2011 the top destination for Chinese investment in the world. The central political question facing European states welcoming the influx of Chinese capital is whether this is a good bargain—a positive-sum game where both investor and investee benefit—or instead a Faustian bargain—a zero-sum game in the long term where capital is accompanied by implicit conditionality affecting European norms and policies, from human rights to labor laws. The novelty of Chinese FDI has the potential to affect politics in Europe in three different venues: inside European countries, between European countries, and between Europe and third countries. This article, whose main goal is to launch a research agenda on the political implications of Chinese FDI, explores in turn its potential impact on foreign and domestic policy, institutional process within the EU, and transatlantic relations.     

Advances and Opportunities in the Study of Political Communication,Foreign Policy,and Public Opinion

We review contemporary research at the intersection of political communication and foreign policy, highlighting four themes: 1) new, more realistic and psychologically-nuanced approaches that account for limited information and issue framing; 2) the question of whether the flow of communication between the state and the public is best conceived as a closed system, or one that is open to outside influences such as foreign elites; 3) how variations in political or governmental structures, patterns of media access or ownership, and other institutional factors can alter the relationships between foreign policy and communication processes; and 4) whether or not it is useful to distinguish between foreign and domestic policymaking when analyzing the role of political communication. We also suggest avenues for further research in each section and conclude by summarizing these opportunities for continued theoretical development.     

An unwilling client: how Hosni Mubarak's Egypt defied the Bush administration's ‘freedom agenda’

When the George W Bush administration announced the ‘freedom agenda’ in the Middle East, officials claimed it marked a major break in United States (US) foreign policy. In 2005, the administration intensified efforts pressuring Egypt, a client state, to democratize. However, the US continued pursuing security cooperation with and providing military aid to Egypt. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak repelled US reform efforts by exploiting the normative inconsistency between democratization and security in the war on terror. This paper reviews Mubarak's ‘balking’ strategy (Stephen Walt, Taming American power, New York: WW Norton, 2005), including feigning compliance through nominal legal changes and counter-arguments to buy time until the inconsistencies in US policy came to a head. By 2006, the US had abandoned the freedom agenda and the Egyptian regime had embarked on a repression campaign. As I argue, the implications of the contradictions in US policy towards Egypt demonstrate that weaker client states may enjoy increased agency vis-à-vis a weakly committed patron hegemon.     

George H.W. Bush: Conservative Realist as President

This article explores George H.W. Bush's foreign policy in order to examine what it can tell us about the successes and weaknesses of conservative internationalism as a world view and as an analytic construct for scholars of international relations. First, to what extent, if any, did the Bush administration's foreign policy reflect the course and logic of conservative internationalism? Second, what can the Bush administration's foreign policy tell us about the utility of conservative internationalism as a foreign policy approach relative to alternative approaches?     

New version of the Kirkpatrick doctrine in the post-Soviet space

A growing number of political scientists notice worrying deficiencies of new democracies in Georgia and Ukraine. Looking for possible reasons they usually focus on internal factors. However, external factors may have also played their part. This article draws attention to the US foreign policy which, it is argued, did not further democratic consolidation goals in post-revolutionary Georgia and Ukraine. The Bush administration's policy towards these two countries is described as a manifestation of a new version of the Kirkpatrick doctrine which instructed US foreign-policy makers to choose the lesser evil of the two: unconsolidated, yet pro-American, democracies in the post-Soviet space.     

Filling the Void of Meaning: Identity Construction in U.S. Foreign Policy After September 11, 2001

The paper aims to shed light on the conceptual link between international crises such as the one following September 11, 2001, and processes of identity construction through foreign policy. Crisis and identity construction are conceptualized as constant political phenomena. The political process is constituted by meaningful acts of social agents, and can thus only be grasped by analyzing meaning. Meaning is transmitted by language. Meaningful language is never reducible to individual speakers; it is a social act. The sum of articulatory practices in a social field is called discourse. Linking Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) with the theory of hegemony developed by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, I will be able to show how hegemonic discourses serve as the nexus between the discursive construction of crises and identity change. A number of problems will be acknowledged when linking these two strands of thinking, as CDA and Laclauian theory work with tentatively different conceptions of discourse. The construction of the "war on terror" by the Bush administration between September 2001 and May 2003 is used as a case to illustrate the theoretical argument.     

Fixing the Meaning of 9/11: Hegemony,Coercion, and the Road to War in Iraq

As the costs of the invasion and occupation of Iraq mount, scholars have sought to explain how the United States came to launch this war in the first place. Many have focused on the “inflation” of the Iraq threat, and indeed the Bush administration did frame the national dialogue on Iraq. We maintain, however, that the failure of most leading Democrats to challenge the administration's case for war in 2002–2003 cannot be explained fully by the bully pulpit, Democrats' reputation for dovishness, or administration misrepresentations. Rather, we argue that leading Democrats were relatively silent in the run-up to war because they had been “rhetorically coerced”, unable to advance a politically sustainable set of arguments with which to oppose the war. The effective fixing of the meaning of the September 11 attacks in terms of the “War on Terror” substantially circumscribed political debate, and we explain why this discourse became dominant. The Bush administration then capitalized on the existing portrait of Saddam Hussein to bind Iraq tightly into the War on Terror and thereby silence leading Democrats and legitimate the war. The story of the road to war in Iraq is not only one of neoconservative hubris and manipulated intelligence. It is also the story of how political actors strove effectively after 9/11 to shape the nation's discourse of foreign affairs and of how the resulting dominant narratives structured foreign policy debate. Behind the seemingly natural War on Terror lurk political processes of meaning-making that narrowed the space for contestation over Iraq.     

The Impact of Institutionalized Ideas in Coalition Foreign Policy Making: Turkey as an Example, 1991–2002

This study is an attempt to fill an important gap in three distinct yet closely related fields: international relations (IR), comparative politics (CP), and foreign policy analysis (FPA). On a more general level, the study examines the conditions under which domestic ideas influence foreign policy. More specifically, it investigates the role of institutionalized ideas that are represented at the highest levels of the decision-making structure in foreign policy decision outcomes. The theoretical framework advanced in this study calls for three interrelated steps to be taken in examining the relationship between ideas and state action: (1) a clear conceptualization of ideas, (2) a careful analysis of the institutionalization of these ideas, and (3) a methodological exploration of the discord among political actors who represent them. The framework proposes that coalition governments present a potential venue for analyzing and operationalizing how the "battles of ideas" at the decision-making level affect foreign policy choices. The study finds that institutionalized ideas are highly influential in shaping foreign policy choices in coalition government settings when several conditions are fulfilled. These conditions are categorized into three subheadings: (1) reasons to enter into coalition governments, (2) nature of coalition governments, and (3) characteristics of parties. The findings of this study contribute to general IR, CP, and FPA literatures on the role of ideas, coalition government foreign policy making, and comparative foreign policy. The study also contributes to the literature on Turkish politics by entering coalition policy making in Turkish Foreign Policy and showing that Turkish political parties are important actors in foreign policy making.     

‘It’s not just the economy,stupid’. The multi-directional security effects of the private sector in post-conflict reconstruction

Using a human security lens, this article explores the interface between transnational corporations (TNCs) and post-conflict, post-crisis societies. It demonstrates how TNCs influence political and economic transition, through impacting the everyday experience of security, creating multiple and ambiguous effects on individuals and communities. Examples of two foreign corporate engagements: carmaker Fiat’s investment in Serbia and steelmaker ArcelorMittal’s takeover in Zenica in Bosnia-Herzegovina are used to illustrate the density of relationships between global companies, host governments, civil society and local communities whose effects extend beyond economics to broader aspects of the conflict space, and have a bearing on the transition and reconstruction agenda. Our findings question the quality of development and industrialisation policies championed by post-conflict reconstruction approaches, and challenge the assumption that economic growth and investment, by foreign companies in particular, will necessarily deliver peaceful transition. The article contributes to the scholarly debate about the connection between security and development, and to policy discussions about appropriate means for reviving economies within externally led peace-building and conflict prevention initiatives.     

The EU and the Gulf monarchies: normative power Europe in search of a strategy for engagement

The Persian Gulf region is of strategic importance to the European Union (EU). Yet, different political realities of authoritarian government in the Gulf challenge crucial parts of EU foreign policy that are based on normative power Europe concepts. Cooperation with the ruling dynasties appears beneficial for EU decision-makers if one looks at the comprehensive agenda of common interests in the Gulf region. In 2004, the EU aimed to build a strategic partnership with the Mediterranean and the Middle East; in this the EU emphasized its commitment to advancing its partnership with the Gulf countries. Yet, from the perspective of 2012 the results are bleak. Despite some signs of improvement in deepening the political, economic and security interactions with the region, there is still no concerted EU policy in the Gulf beyond the thriving bilateral activities of some EU member states. The events of the Arab Spring have increased the challenges even further. The EU, on the one hand, is trying to support forces of liberal and democratic reform in some neighbouring countries. On the other hand, it seeks close partnerships with authoritarian family dynasties in those Gulf countries in which a democratic opening is not around the corner. This article suggests an alternative explanation for this dichotomy. While there is an inherent tension between the EU's reformist agenda and its own interests, whether security or trade interests, this article argues that much of the EU's relationship with the Gulf countries can be explained through a misperception of the specific settings of government in the region. Despite a substantial agenda of interests on both sides in areas such as trade, energy, regional security, terrorism and irregular migration, the EU's foreign policy outputs remain rather limited.     

International law and hegemony: a reconfiguration

Instead of appearing as a stable set of normative demands opposed to international politics, international law is better understood as an aspect of hegemonic contestation, a technique of articulating political claims in terms of legal rights and duties. The controversies in the law concerning the use of force, the law of peace, human rights, trade and globalisation reflect strategies through which political actors seek to make their preferences appear to be universal ones. But the legal idiom also contains a utopian aspect: it distances political actors from their idiosyncratic preferences and thus creates the international world as a legal community in the act of invoking it.     

The Effect of Age Structure on the Abrogation of Military Alliances

Scholars of alliance politics have ignored a potentially important factor that shapes foreign policy: the age structure of a state. In this article, we argue that an alliance member is more likely to terminate the alliance in violation of the terms when the state’s youth ratio is high. The demographic pressure of a high youth ratio raises potential for political instability domestically, which in turn increases the risk of radical foreign policy changes. We demonstrate the effects of a state’s age structure on its alliance policy by examining alliance termination by violation from 1950 to 2000. Through quantitative analysis, we find that youth ratio is a strong and significant predictor of alliance abrogation. A brief examination of several examples illustrates two paths by which the pressure created by a high youth ratio contributes to political instability and results in alliance abrogation—leadership change that brings about a new foreign policy and appeasement of the population through abrogation of an unpopular alliance.     

Origins of Regime Change: “Ideapolitik” on the Long Road to Baghdad, 1993–2000

How was the ouster of Saddam Hussein defined as the solution to America's Iraq problem? Current scholarship on the U.S. invasion of Iraq tends to focus on the post-9/11 road to war, promoting models of policy capture, intelligence manipulation, threat-inflation, or rhetorical coercion of Bush administration opponents. In this essay, I trace the “Ideapolitik” of regime change in the 1990s and show that Bush's post-9/11 rhetoric was firmly embedded in a preexisting foreign policy consensus defining Saddam Hussein as the “problem” and his overthrow as its “solution.” Drawing upon recent research in international relations and public policy, I show how the idea of regime change prevailed in redefining American strategy for Iraq. While the September 11, 2001 attacks had important effects on the Bush administration's willingness to use force, the basic idea that ousting Saddam Hussein would solve the Iraq problem was already embedded in elite discourse. Saddam Hussein's ouster was not simply the result of idiosyncratic or nefarious decision-making processes within the Bush administration, but was instead the realization of a social choice made by U.S. foreign policy elites well before George W. Bush came to power.     

Going Public as Political Strategy: The Bush Administration,an Echoing Press,and Passage of the Patriot Act

Research suggests that political elites excel at controlling political and media information environments, particularly in times of national crisis, such as the events and aftermath of September 11. This study examines the creation and passage of the Patriot Act, which was proposed by the Bush administration following the terrorist attacks and quickly passed with strong support by the U.S. Congress. We argue that (a) the public communications of the Bush administration, particularly those by George W. Bush and John Ashcroft, and (b) news coverage about the legislation were instrumental in this outcome. Public communications by Bush and Ashcroft and news coverage about the Act were content analyzed to identify the timing of the messages and the themes and perspectives emphasized, and congressional debates and activities were examined for insight into their relation with administration and press discourse. Findings suggest that Bush and Ashcroft's communications, in combination with a press that largely echoed the administration's messages, created an environment in which Congress faced significant pressure to pass the legislation with remarkable speed.     

Through the Looking Glass: The Helsinki Final Act and the 1976 Election for President

The controversy surrounding the 1975 Helsinki Final Act made it an enduring issue in the 1976 campaign, and the political backlash against President Gerald R. Ford damaged his electoral chances. Ford's signature of the agreement, his continuation of détente, and his foreign policy more broadly may not have been decisive issues in his contests with Ronald Reagan and then Jimmy Carter, but they certainly were prominent throughout the election. Examining the influence of the Final Act on Ford's election campaign illuminates the extent to which a number of candidates sought to use popular opposition to the agreement to their advantage. Furthermore, it reveals how the 1976 presidential candidates, and Ford in particular, struggled to address growing questions about détente, human rights, and morality in foreign policy. Ford's failure to defend his signature of the Final Act adequately raised concerns about his foreign policy and personal leadership with the electorate.     

Selling perestroika and new thinking to Southeast Asia: Gorbachev at his persuasive best

This article examines the Gorbachev regime's strategies in reorienting Soviet foreign policy toward the nations of Southeast Asia. It reviews and evaluates the tactics of public diplomacy and persuasion which Gorbachev and his advisers utilized extensively in their attempt to construct a new Soviet agenda toward Southeast Asia.     

The “Culture Wars” go global: Three cases of religious conflict in foreign policy

Religious identities based on both religious tradition and religious commitment have been increasingly influential in domestic U.S. politics for several decades, but the assumption remains that such identities are mostly unrelated to foreign policy. The authors suggest that domestic political incentives to expand the culture wars have combined with other trends, including the increasing use of unilateral executive power in foreign policy, to create an environment in which policymakers increasingly are tempted to make foreign policy based on domestic political incentives. Three case studies are highlighted: the “Mexico City” policy requiring foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs) receiving U.S. aid money to pledge not to provide or educate about abortion, moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and efforts in the Trump administration to ban travel to the United States from majority-Muslim nations.