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Foreign Policy as an Issue Area: A Roll Call Analysis*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Stephen J. Cimbala
Stephen J. Cimbala*
Affiliation:
The University of Wisconsin
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Extract

James N. Rosenau has elaborated the issue area typology developed by Theodore Lowi in an ambitious attempt to categorize motivations, role structures, and interaction sequences which distinguish “domestic” from “foreign” issues. Lowi classified domestic issues into three areas: distribution of resources, regulation of resources, and redistribution of resources, and he equated interaction sequences in these areas with the coalition (distributive), pluralist (regulatory), and elitist (redistributive) models of the political process. The theoretical underpinning of Lowi's typology was the assumption that stable expectations develop about appropriate patterns of political competition and conflict for issues in each of these three “arenas.”

The internal logic of Lowi's argument is as follows: (1) people's expectations concerning benefits to be derived from relating to others determine their choices of relationships; (2) governmental policies (outputs) determine expectations about questions of politics; (3) ergo, the type of policy at stake determines the patterning of any political relationship; a distinctive type of political relationship should characterize every major type of policy. In these arenas of power, “each arena tends to develop its own characteristic political structure, political process, elites, and group relations.” Distributive policies are easily disaggregable into small units and can be apportioned among participants in relative isolation from one another. Regulatory policies, while specific in their impact, are not so infinitely disaggregable: “regulatory policies are distinguishable from distributive in that in the short run the regulatory decision involves a direct choice as to who will be indulged and who deprived.” Redistributive policies are similar to regulatory policies insofar as individual decisions are interrelated and apply to large categories of participants, but the impact of redistributive policies on these aggregates is much greater.

Type
Research Notes
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , March 1969 , pp. 148 - 156
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1969

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Aage R. Clausen and Richard B. Cheney for assistance during all phases of this research, and to Russell Edgerton and David W. Tarr for comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript. Data were supplied by the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research through the Data Program Library Service, University of Wisconsin. Q-coefficients were computed with the assistance of program Boguetab, written for Professor Allan G. Bogue at the Social Science Research Institute, University of Wisconsin.

References

1 Lowi, Theodore, “American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies, and Political Theory,” World Politics, 16 (07, 1964), 677–715 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Ibid., p. 688.

3 Ibid., p. 690.

4 Ibid., p. 691.

5 Ibid., p. 691.

6 Rosenau, James N., ed., Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy (New York: Free Press, 1967)Google Scholar; Chapter I, Rosenau, “Foreign Policy as an Issue Area.”

7 Huntington, Samuel P., The Common Defense (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 1–10 Google Scholar.

8 Bauer, Raymond, Pool, Ithiel de Sola, and Dexter, Lewis A., American Business and Public Policy: The Politics of Foreign Trade (New York: Atherton Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

9 Summaries of the contributions of these sources may be found in MacRae, Duncan Jr., “A Method for Identifying Issues and Factions from Legislative Votes,” this Review, 59 (12 1965), 909–926 Google Scholar; Bruce M. Russett, “Discovering Voting Groups in the United Nations,” Ibid., 60 (June, 1966), 327–339; and Hayward R. Alker, Jr., “Dimensions of Conflict in the General Assembly,” Ibid., 58 (September, 1964), 642–657. See especially, in addition to the above, Anderson, Lee F. et. al., Legislative Roll-Call Analysis (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1966)Google Scholar; Grumm, John G., “A Factor Analysis of Legislative Behavior,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 7 (11, 1963), 336–356 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rieselbach, L. N., “The Demography of the Congressional Vote on Foreign Aid, 1939–1958,” this Review, 58 (09, 1964), 577–588 Google Scholar; and Clausen, Aage R., Policy Dimensions of Congressional Roll Calls (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan, 1964)Google Scholar. Only results of factor analysis will be reported here. Comparison of results using factor analysis and cluster analysis is proceeding with the assistance of Aage R. Clausen and Richard B. Cheney.

10 Alternative solutions of the correlation matrix according to the factor analytic model are possible. The choice of a principal components solution with orthogonal factors was made to facilitate interpretation, but the disadvantages of such a choice are noted by MacRae, op. cit. The principal components method of factor analysis is derived in Harmon, Harry, Modern Factor Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960)Google Scholar. Orthogonal factors are selected by Russett, op. cit., and Marwell, Gerald, “Party, Region and the Dimensions of Conflict in the House of Representatives, 1949–1954,” this Review, 61 (06, 1967), 380–399 Google Scholar. Mac-Rae discusses Marwell's approach and findings in “Partisanship and Issues in Congressional Voting,” Paper delivered at the 1968 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C., Sept. 2–7. See also Gullahorn, Jeanne E., “Multivariate Approaches in Survey Data Processing: Comparisons of Factor, Cluster, and Guttman Analyses and of Multiple Regression and Canonical Correlation Methods,” in Multivariate Behavioral Research Monographs, No. 67–1, 1967 Google Scholar, and Wilkins, D. M., Factor Analysis and Multiple Scalogram Analysis: A Logical and Empirical Comparison (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Michigan State University, 1962)Google Scholar. For an interesting argument in favor of the use of “elementary” factor analysis, as opposed to standard Q and R analysis, see Chaples, Ernest A. Jr., The Voting Behavior of United States Senators for Four Selected Issues, 1953–1964 (unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Kentucky, 1967)Google Scholar.

11 For an interesting application of factor analysis to a problem involving relatively few variables, which makes clear some of the assumptions and problems associated with use of this technique, see Kahl, Joseph A. and Davis, James A., “A Comparison of Indexes of Socio-Economic Status,” American Sociological Review, 20 (06, 1955), 317–325 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 On this point see Russett, op. cit., p. 329.

13 Russett, op. cit., p. 331.

14 This criterion is incorporated into the program used to perform the factor analysis, Factor 1, of the University of Wisconsin Computing Center.

15 See, for example, the insightful study by O'Leary, Michael Kent, The Politics of American Foreign Aid (New York: Atherton Press, 1967)Google Scholar. O'Leary notes that Congress, pressure groups, and members of the general public often tend to react to foreign aid “in terms of domestic standards and expectations” associated with it, Ibid., p. 123.

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