Browsing by Subject "Foreign Policy"
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Item Gentlemen's diplomacy: the foreign policy of Lord Lansdowne, 1845-1927(2009-05-15) Winters, Frank Winfield, IVAs British Foreign Secretary from November 1900 to December 1905, Lord Lansdowne operated on a long-held coherent body of principles on which he based his foreign policy. Throughout his political life, in fact, he pressed for the renewal of an enlightened?if informal??Concert of Europe? which he hoped could be implemented worldwide. His ?policy of the entente,? which reflected his belief in the efficacy of reasonable and ?gentlemanly? diplomacy to settle outstanding disputes, left him illsuited, however, to manage Britain?s position as a world power during this period of perceived relative decline. If Lansdowne did indeed have some innate talent for diplomacy, he aspired not to be the next Talleyrand, of whom he was reputedly a descendant, but to become an appropriately detached liberal-minded arbiter. He was the true gentleman-diplomat who, as enlightened reason dictated, always wished to play cartes sur table. In these waning years of the supremacy of British power, the marquis believed in an empire forged no longer through fire and sword, but through the example of free institutions, just administration, and the influence of English culture. He certainly believed that foremost it was these aspects of Western civilization that brought Pax Britannica to the Khyber Pass. In pursuing his ?policy of the entente,? Lansdowne presumed initially at least that his fellow European gentlemen would aid him in the higher mission of preserving civilization, and consequently, although secondarily to the Foreign Secretary, the status quo. This, however, proved not to be the case. Lansdowne was perhaps the right man to administer the empire, in much the same manner he dutifully tried to look after and maintain his great estates and care for his many tenants and servants. He was, however, not the right man to charge with its preservation and defense. Fortunately, his policy proved impossible to carry out fully. He received little cooperation from the leadership of other great powers, and in the end the path of British foreign policy was impossible to guide or engineer in the direction he wished.Item Public Support for Military Interventions across Levels of Political Information and Phases of Intervention(2010-07-14) Sirin Villalobos, CigdemScholars widely acknowledge that democratic political leaders seek public support for their policy endeavors, particularly when conducting costly policies as in the case of military interventions. A deeper understanding of the factors that affect public support for military interventions is crucial to explaining more definitively the determinants of foreign policy decisions regarding military interventions. However, most studies in this area of research examine the public as an undifferentiated mass that reacts uniformly to changes in the course of an intervention. In addition, scholars often overlook the varying dynamics of public support across different phases of a military intervention. Given these shortcomings in the literature, the objective of this dissertation is to examine the formation of public support as a function of political information levels and intervention stages. This dissertation is important in both methodological and theoretical terms. Methodologically, the major contribution of my dissertation is the adoption of a multimethod approach that is almost non-existent in this line of research. By bringing together a formal framework, experimentation, and statistical analyses of public opinion survey data, I develop a more refined theory and attain more robust empirical results. Theoretically, the study challenges the dominant mode of research on military interventions in which public opinion is treated as a homogenous mass. Specifically, I explore how major factors related to public support for military interventions (such as casualty rates) play different roles and weigh differently in their impact on the opinions of politically informed versus less informed individuals across stages of an intervention. The results of the experiments and survey data analyses demonstrate that politically informed individuals express less support for a military intervention at the starting (rally) phase of that intervention compared to the less informed. That said, as the intervention proceeds and casualties are incurred, support of politically uninformed individuals decreases at higher rates than does support of politically informed ones. In other words, politically informed individuals demonstrate more stable levels of support across intervention stages. In addition, both experimental and survey data analyses show that policy-specific information is generally a more influential factor on public support for military interventions compared to general political information.Item The Best Foreign Policy Money Can Buy? An Investigation of Foreign Lobbying and U.S. Foreign Policy(2010-07-14) Freeman, Benjamin J.Does foreign lobbying affect foreign aid? In this dissertation I provide compelling evidence the answer is yes. Prior scholarship has almost unequivocally focused on international bargaining as an exchange of public goods such as military, economic, or political concessions. Foreign lobbying represents a fundamentally different form of international bargaining. It is the exchange of a private good for an international policy concession. I develop a theory of foreign lobbying and foreign policy that views foreign policy formation as a function of political actors weighing public goods alongside the benefits they receive from foreign lobbyist contributions. I utilize a Heckman selection model to test this theory and find compelling evidence that foreign lobbying influences U.S. foreign aid allocations.