Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T16:12:34.554Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Whence American Internationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2003

Jeffrey W. Legro
Get access

Abstract

One of the most important puzzles of twentieth-century international relations is why the American conception of security vis-à-vis the European Powers shifted from unilateralism to internationalism after World War II but not after World War I. In this article I document that this shift was measurably one of collective ideas and explain the transformation. Scholarship on the sea change in American global thinking has been hampered by the lack of attention to the broader issues of when and why collective ideas change. To address this gap I offer a general framework to account for ideational change: I highlight the interaction between collective ideas and events that allows individuals and societies to overcome barriers to ideational change in some circumstances but not others. This argument clarifies the otherwise puzzling development of American ideas and offers a template for understanding change in other areas.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Organization , Volume 54 , Issue 2 , Spring 2000 , pp. 253 - 289
Copyright
Copyright © The IO Foundation 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adler, Selig. 1965. Uncertain Giant. New York: MacMillan.Google Scholar
Ambrosius, Lloyd E. 1987. Woodrow Wilson and the Diplomatic Tradition: The Treaty Fight in Perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Arnold, Douglas. 1990. The Logic of Congressional Action. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Berger, Thomas U. 1998. Cultures of Antimilitarism: National Security in Germany and Japan. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boulding, Kenneth. 1967. The Learning and Reality-Testing Process in the International System. In Image and Reality in World Politics, edited by Farrell, John C. and Smith, Asa P., 1–15. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Bruner, Jerome. 1944. Mandate from the People. New York: Duell Sloan Pearce.Google Scholar
Buckley, T. H. and Strong, E. B.. 1987. American Foreign and National Security Policies, 1914–1945. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press.Google Scholar
Burley, Anne-Marie. 1993. Regulating the World: Multilateralism, International Law, and the Projection of the New Deal Regulating State. In Multilateralism Matters, edited by Ruggie, John Gerard, 125–56. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Checkel, Jeffrey T. 1998. The Constructivist Turn in International Relations Theory. World Politics 50(2): 324–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Warren. 1967. The American Revisionists: The Lessons of Intervention in World War I. Chicago: Chicago University Press.Google Scholar
Cole, Wayne S. 1983. Roosevelt and the Isolationists. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, John Milton. 1969. The Vanity of Power: American Isolationism and the First World War, 1914–1917. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Costigliola, Frank. 1984. Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Ideational Relations with Europe, 1919–1933. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Crozier, Michel. 1964. The Bureaucratic Phenomenon. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Dallek, Robert. 1979. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy 1932–1945. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dallek, Robert. 1983. The American Style of Foreign Policy: Cultural Politics and Foreign Affairs. New York: Alfred Knopf.Google Scholar
DeBendetti, Charles. 1972. Alternative Strategies in the American Peace Movement in the 1920s. American Studies 8 (1):69–79.Google Scholar
DeConde, Alexander, ed. 1957. Isolation and Security. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Denzau, Arthur, and North, Douglass. 1994. Shared Mental Models: Ideologies and Institutions. Kyklos 47(1):3–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Divine, Robert A. 1967. Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II. New York: Atheum.Google Scholar
Dobbins, Frank. 1994. Forging Industrial Policy: The United States, Britain, and France in the Railway Age. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dobson, Alan. 1995. Anglo-American Relations in the Twentieth Century. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Doenecke, Justus. 1987. Anti-Interventionism: A Bibliographical Introduction to Isolationism and Pacifism from World War I to the Early Cold War. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Durkheim, Emile. 1964. The Rules of Sociological Method. London: Collier MacMillan.Google Scholar
Eagly, Alice E., and Chaiken, Shelly. 1993. The Psychology of Attitudes. Fort Worth, Tex.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Esthus, Raymond A. 1978. Isolationism and World Power. Diplomatic History 2(2): 117–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farnham, Barbara Reardon. 1997. Roosevelt and the Munich Crisis: A Study of Political Decision Making. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fearon, James. 1995. Rationalist Explanations for War. International Organization 49 (3):379–414.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finnemore, Martha. 1996. National Interests in International Society. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fox, William T. 1985. Geopolitics and International Relations. In On Geopolitics: Classical and Nuclear, edited by Zoppo, Ciro E. and Zorgbibe, Charles, 15–44. Boston: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frieden, Jeffry A. 1988. Sectoral Conflict and U.S. Foreign Economic Policy, 1914–1940. International Organization 42(1):59–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaddis, John Lewis. 1972. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Gallup, George. 1972. The Gallup Polls: Public Opinion 1935–1971. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Margaret. 1996. Living Together: Rationality, Sociality, and Obligation. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Judith. 1993. Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Goldstone, Jack A. 1991. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gourevitch, Peter. 1986. Politics in Hard Times. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Grether, David. 1980. Bayes Rule as a Descriptive Model: The Representativeness Heuristic. Quarterly Journal of Economics 95(3):537–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guinsberg, Thomas N. 1994. The Triumph of Isolationism. In American Foreign Relations Reconsidered, 1890–1993, edited by Martel, Gordon, 90–105. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haas, Peter M. 1992. Introduction: Epistemic Communities and International Policy Coordination. International Organization 46(1):1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Peter A. 1993. Policy Paradigms, Social Learning, and the State. Comparative Politics 25(3):275–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, Peter A., ed. 1989. The Political Power of Economic Ideas. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Higgs, Robert. 1987. Crisis and Leviathan: Critical Episodes in the Growth of American Government. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Howard, Michael. 1972. The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of the Two World Wars. London: Maurice Temple Smith.Google Scholar
Ikenberry, G. John, Lake, David A., and Mastanduno, Michael, eds. 1988. The State and American Foreign Economic Policy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Inaugural Addresses of the American Presidents. 1961. Annotated by Lott, Davis Newton. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.Google Scholar
Isaacson, Walter, and Thomas, Evan. 1986. The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Israel, Fred L., ed. 1966. The State of the Union Messages of the Presidents, 1790–1966. York, New: Chelsea House/Robert Hector Publishers.Google Scholar
Jervis, Robert. 1976. Perception and Misperception. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jonas, Manfred. 1990. Isolationism in America, 1935–1941. Chicago: Imprint Publications.Google Scholar
Johnston, Alastair Iain. 1995. Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnston, Alastair Iain. 1999. Socialization in International Institutions: The ASEAN Way and International Relations Theory. Unpublished manuscript, Harvard University.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, and Tversky, Amos. 1979. Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision Under Risk. Econometrica 47(2):263–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kane, Anne. 1990. Cultural Analysis in Historical Sociology. Sociological Theory 9(1):53–69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kates, Robert W., and Clark, William C.. 1996. Environmental Surprise: Expecting the Unexpected. Environment 38 (March):6–7.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter. 1996a. Cultural Norms and National Security: Police and Military in Postwar Japan. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Katzenstein, Peter, ed. 1996b. The Culture of National Security: Norms, Identity and World Politics. New York: Columbia University.Google Scholar
Keck, Margaret, and Sikkink, Kathryn. 1998. Activists Beyond Borders. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kennan, George. 1967. Memoirs, 1925–1950. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Kennedy, David. 1980. Over Here: The First World War and American Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kennedy, David. 1999. Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University.Google Scholar
Kennedy, Paul. 1987. The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Kier, Elizabeth. 1997. Imagining War: French and British Military Doctrine Between the Wars. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kindleberger, Charles. 1973. The World in Depression. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Klingberg, Frank. 1952. The Historical Alternation of Moods in American Foreign Policy. World Politics 4(2):239–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knock, Thomas. 1992. To End All Wars: Woodrow Wilson and the Quest for a New World Order. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kreps, David M. 1990. Corporate Cultures and Economic Theory. In Perspectives on Positive Political Economy, edited by Alt, James E. and Schepsle, Kenneth A., 90–143. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kuklick, Bruce. 1970. History as a Way of Learning. American Quarterly 22(3):609–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kupchan, Charles. 1994. Vulnerability of Empire. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timor. 1995. Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lake, David A. 1999. Entangling Relations: American Foreign Policy in Its Century. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leffler, Melvyn P. 1979. Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit of European Stability and French Security. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Leffler, Melvyn P. 1992. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Legro, Jeffrey W. 1995. Cooperation Under Fire: Anglo-German Restraint During the Second World War. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Legro, Jeffrey W. Forthcoming. The Transformation of Policy Ideas. American Journal of Political Science.Google Scholar
Leigh, Michael. 1976. Mobilizing Consent: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy, 1937–1947. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Publishing.Google Scholar
Levering, Ralph B. 1978. The Public and American Foreign Policy, 1918–1978. New York: Morrow.Google Scholar
Levy, Jack S. 1994. Learning and Foreign Policy: Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield. International Organization 48(2):279–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Link, Arthur S. 1965. Wilson: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University.Google Scholar
Lundgren, Nils Gustav. 1996. Bulk Trade and Maritime Transport Costs: The Evolution of Global Markets. Resources Policy 22 (1–2):5–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maull, Hanns W. 1995. Germany in the Yugoslav Crisis. Survival 37 (winter):99–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
May, Ernest. 1973. Lessons of the Past: The Use and Misuse of History in American Foreign Policy. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
May, Ernest. 1992. National Security in American History. In Rethinking America's Security, edited by Allison, Graham and Trevertan, Gregory F., 94–114. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
McAdam, Doug, McCarthy, John, and Zald, Mayer, eds. 1996. Comparative Perspectives on Social Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural Framings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNamara, Kathleen R. 1998. The Currency of Ideas: Monetary Politics in the European Union. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Millett, Allan R. 1996. Assault from the Sea: The Development of Amphibious Warfare Between the Wars—The American, British, and Japanese Experiences. In Military Innovation in the Interwar Period, edited by Murray, Williamson and Millett, Allan R., 50–95. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moscovici, Serge. 1998. The History and Actuality of Social Representations. In The Psychology of the Social, edited by Flick, Uwe, 209–47. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Muresianu, John M. 1988. War of Ideas: American Intellectuals and the World Crisis, 1938–1945. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Ninkovich, Frank. 1994. Modernity and Power: A History of the Domino Theory in the 20th Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Olson, Mancur. 1982. The Rise and Decline of Nations. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Osgood, Robert. 1953. Ideals and Self-interest in America's Foreign Relations. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin, and Shapiro, Robert. 1992. The Rational Public. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parrini, Carl. 1969. Heir to Empire: United States Economic Diplomacy, 1916–1923. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson, Thomas G. 1992. On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the Cold War. Rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Perrow, Charles. 1984. Normal Accidents. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Pollard, Robert A. 1985. Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Price, Richard. 1998. Transnational Civil Society Targets Land Mines. International Organization 52(3):613–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Risse, Thomas. 2000. Let's Argue!: Communicative Action in World Politics. International Organization 54(1):1–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roberts, Priscilla. 1997. The Anglo-American Theme: American Visions of an Atlantic Alliance, 1914–1933. Diplomatic History 21(3):333–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rochester, Stuart. 1977. American Liberal Disillusionment in the Wake of World War I. University Park: Penn State Press.Google Scholar
Rohrlich, Paul Egon. 1987. Economic Culture and Foreign Policy. International Organization 41(1): 61–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, Richard. 1991. What is Lesson-Drawing? Journal of Public Policy 2(2):3–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruggie, John Gerard. 1993. Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations. International Organization 47(1):139–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ruggie, John Gerard. 1998. Constructing the World Polity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Russett, Bruce. 1972. No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the U.S. Entry into World War II. New York: Harper Torchbooks.Google Scholar
Sagan, Scott. 1993. The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University PressCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall. 1991. The Return of the Event, Again. In Clio in Oceana: Toward a Historical Anthropology, edited by Biersack, Aletta, 37–93. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas C. 1960. The Strategy of Conflict. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1995. The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Selznick, Phillip. 1949. TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study of Politics and Organization. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sikkink, Kathryn. 1991. Ideas and Institutions: Developmentalism in Brazil and Argentina. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, Charles W. Jr, 1939. Public Opinion in America. New York: Prentice-Hall.Google Scholar
Snyder, Jack. 1991. Myths of Empire. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan. 1996. Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, Inc.Google Scholar
Steel, Ronald. 1980. Walter Lippmann and the American Century. Boston: Little, BrownGoogle Scholar
Stein, Arthur, and Rosecrance, Richard, eds. 1993. The Domestic Bases of Grand Strategy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Swidler, Ann. 1986. Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies. American Sociological Review 51(2): 273–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tetlock, Philip E. 1998a. Social Psychology and World Politics. In The Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th ed., edited by Gilbert, Daniel T., Fiske, Susan T., and Lindsey, Gardner, 868–914. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Tetlock, Philip E. 1998b. Close-Call Counterfactuals and Belief-System Defenses: I Was Not Almost Wrong but I Was Almost Right. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75 (3):639–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, John A. 1992. The Exaggeration of American Vulnerability: The Anatomy of a Tradition. Diplomatic History 13 (3):23–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vandenberg, Arthur H. Jr, 1952. The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Van Evera, Stephen. 1984. The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War. International Security 9 (1):58–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Evera, Stephen. 1999. Causes of War: Power and the Roots of Conflict. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Wagner, R. Harrison 1993. What Was Bipolarity? International Organization 47 (1):77–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walt, Stephen. 1987. The Origins of Alliance. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry. 1996. A Rational Choice Perspective on the Role of Ideas. Politics and Society 23(4):449–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 1987. The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations Theory. International Organization 41 (3):335–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wendt, Alexander. 1999. Social Theory of International Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wildavsky, Aaron. 1979. Speaking Truth to Power. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Wilson, Joan Hoff. 1971. American Business and Foreign Policy, 1920–1933. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Wittkopf, Eugene. 1990. Faces of Internationalism: Public Opinion and American Foreign Policy. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Wohlforth, William. 1993. The Elusive Balance. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar