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Individual Preference versus Role-Constraint in Policy-Making: Senatorial Response to Secretaries Acheson and Dulles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Glen H. Stassen
Glen H. Stassen
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Frequently debated, infrequently resolved, but crucial to the study of international relations is the issue of the relative influence of personal factors and role factors in decision-making. Are national decision-makers so constrained by their roles that they have little individual freedom? Or, conversely, are their policies shaped in major ways by their own individual preferences

Type
Research Note
Information
World Politics , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , October 1972 , pp. 96 - 119
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1972

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References

1 See Hoffmann, Stanley, Gulliver's Troubles, or The Setting of American Foreign Policy (New York 1968), xiiiff.Google Scholar and passim; Hoffmann, , “Restraints and Choices in American Foreign Policy,” Daedalus, XCI (Fall 1962), 668ff.Google Scholar; David Singer, J., “The Level-of-Analysis Problem in International Relations,” World Politics, XVI (October 1961), 77–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greenstein, Fred, “The Impact of Personality on Politics,” American Political Science Review, LXI (September 1967), 629–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Rosenau, James, “Private Preferences and Political Responsibilities: The Relative Potency of Individual and Role Variables in the Behavior of U. S. Senators,” in David Singer, J., ed., Quantitative International Politics (New York 1968), 17–50.Google Scholar

3 Holsti, Ole, “The 'Operational Code' Approach to the Study of Political Leaders: John Foster Dulles' Philosophical and Instrumental Beliefs,” Canadian Journal of Political Science, 111 (March 1970), 157n.Google Scholar See also Lijphart, Arend, “Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method,” American Political Science Review, LXV (September 1971), 690–91Google Scholar; Lijphart singles out Rosenau's study as “a particularly instructive example… It is one of very many ways in which an imaginative investigator can devise fruitful applications of the comparative method.”

4 Too seldom does one researcher respond to another's work on the same issue and with the same ground rules so that the research meets head-on. That is the goal I am seeking. It may be of interest that Rosenau has responded with full open-mindedness and in friendly fashion, writing that the effort “excites me considerably, as that is how the game of science ought to be played and so rarely is.” I agree. Moreover, he has gone the second mile, lending his original data and encouraging my dissent.

5 John Steinbruner, draft of forthcoming book tentatively titled Decision Processes Under Complexity; Jervis, Robert, “Hypodieses on Misperception,” World Politics, XX (April 1968), 454–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; chap. 2, by Holsti, Ole, in Finlay, Holsti, , and Fagen, , Enemies in Politics (Chicago 1967)Google Scholar; and Deutsch, Karl, Nerves of Government (New York 1966)Google Scholar, chaps. 1, 5, 6, 13, and 14. See also the operational code studies of George, Holsti, and McLellan discussed below.

6 The Guttman procedure is described by George Belknap and Charles Farris in Wahlke, John C. and Eulau, Heinz, eds., Legislative Behavior (Glencoe 1959), 388–413.Google Scholar

The following votes scaled on the cold-war dimension:

(1) Oppose new draft law with deferrals for most students and eighteen-year-olds, Congressional Quarterly Almanac (1951), 314, vote No. 4.

(2) Oppose merging military and economic aid under Mutual Security Administration, ibid. (1951), 265, vote No. 8.

(3) Cut MSA funds by $1 billion, ibid. (1952), 182, vote No. 8.

(4) Terminate aid to any country shipping to Soviet bloc, ibid. (1951), 266, vote No. 3.

(5) Oppose Act making termination of aid discretionary, ibid. (1951), 266, vote No. 2.

(6) Cut MSA funds by $500 million, ibid. (1952), 183, vote No. 1.

(7) Cut MSA funds by $200 million, ibid. (1952), 183, vote No. 6.

(8) Terminate aid to any country shipping to Soviet bloc, ibid. (1952), 183, vote No. 7.

(9) No MSA funds may be used for publicity in the U.S., ibid. (1952), 183, vote No. 5.

The following votes scaled on the isolationism dimension:

(1) Oppose convention on relations with West Germany, ibid. (1952), 182, vote No. 4.

(2) Oppose security pact with Japan, ibid. (1952), 182, vote No. 2.

(3–6) Oppose peace treaty with Japan favoring the United Nations and limiting U.S. sovereignty over its foreign policy, ibid. (1952), 177, votes No. 1, 5, 6, 7.

(7) Cut European economic aid by $500 million, ibid. (1951), 264, vote No. 1.

(8) Cut European economic aid by $250 million, ibid. (1951), 264, vote No. 4.

(9) Oppose sending troops to Europe without congressional approval, ibid. (1951), 63, vote No. 1.

(10) Require all aid to India be a loan, not grant, and require India to provide strategic materials for the U.S., ibid. (1951), 259, vote No. 5.

(11) Oppose restoring foreign aid to full $8.5 billion requested by President, ibid. (1951), 264, vote No. 2.

7 Senators Cooper, Mansfield, Vandenberg, and Richard Neuberger were not in the 82nd Congress, and therefore could not be ranked by their votes. However, the positions of Senators Cooper and Mansfield were well known. They already had deep commitments to a moderate and alliance-supporting policy. Therefore they could be ranked with some confidence as alliance-supporting moderates before John Foster Dulles became Secretary of State. Senator Vandenberg was clearly an alliance-supporter. His cold-war attitudes were sometimes moderate and sometimes rigid. Senator Neuberger's earlier foreign policy views were less well known; he is therefore left unranked. He contributed fewer references to the Secretary than any other articulate Senator, and thus should not skew the distribution. An independent test, using informed observers, was made as described below. The observers unanimously ranked Senators Cooper, Mansfield, and Neuberger as alliance-supporting moderates in 1952.

8 See Farris's contribution to Wahlke and Eulau (fn. 6); Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald, “Constituency Influence in Congress,” American Political Science Review, LVII (March 1963), 48–49Google Scholar; Rieselbach, Leroy, “The Demography of the Congressional Vote on Foreign Aid, 1939–1958,” American Political Science Review, LVIII (September 1964), 577–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacRae, Duncan, Dimensions of Congressional Voting (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1958), 232–37Google Scholar; Anderson, Lee F., “Variability in Unidimensionality of Legislative Voting,” Journal of Politics, XXVI (August 1964), 568–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Douglas Price, H., “Are Southern Democrats Different?” in Polsby, , Dentier, , and Smith, , eds., Politics and Social Life (Boston 1963), 751–56Google Scholar; Gray, Charles H., “A Scale Analysis of the Voting Records of Senators Kennedy, Johnson, and Goldwater, 1957–1960,” American Political Science Review, LIX (September 1965), 615 and 620.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Gray, ibid., 615 and 619; Cobb, Stephen A., “Defense Spending and Foreign Policy in the House of Representatives,” Journal of Conflict Resolution, XIII (September 1959), 360–61Google Scholar; and Cimbala, Stephen J., “Foreign Policy as an Issue Area: A Roll Call Analysis,” American Political Science Review, LXIII (March 1969), 148–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Miller and Stokes (fn. 8). Nevertheless, one may still suspect that organized groups (if not popular attitudes) in a Senator's constituency, as well as his party membership, are among the influences mat help him shape his attitudes, which in turn guide his foreign policy voting. Compare Boynton, George Robert, “Southern Conservatism: Constituency Opinion and Congressional Voting,” Public Opinion Quarterly, XXIV (Summer 1965), 259–69Google Scholar; Cnudde, Charles and McCrone, Donald, “The Linkage Between Constituency Attitudes and Congressional Voting Behavior: A Causal Model,” American Political Science Review, LX (March 1966), 69–70Google Scholar, and the responses, American Political Science Review, LXII (December 1968), 1258–64 and 1269–71 ; Rieselbach (fn. 8); Cobb (fn. 9), 358–69.

11 McLellan, , “Comparative Operational Codes' of Recent U.S. Secretaries of State: Dean Acheson,” paper presented at annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, September 2–6, 1969.Google Scholar

12 For comparisons between two means, one can compensate for the permissiveness of the t test by estimated w 2, the amount of variance accounted for by the independent variable. Here we have a highly satisfactory 24%, 50%, and 42% of the variance explained. See Hays, William, Statistics for Psychologists (New York 1963), 323–29.Google Scholar

13 Holsti, (fn. 3), 129–30, 132, 145–53.Google Scholar

14 The six traditionally isolationist states in senatorial representation were North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Idaho, and Nevada, according to Smucker, Ralph H., “The Region of Isolationism,” American Political Science Review, XLVII (June 1953), 386–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15 The data are from the Congressional Record for the years 1937–1952. There are several probable explanations for this selection process. One is self-selection: internationalists have a greater interest in foreign relations and are more likely to choose this committee rather than Armed Services or Agriculture. A second is the almost one-party character, during this period, of New England for Republicans and the Southeast for Democrats: high seniority came more easily for Senators from the eastern seaboard. Appointment to the Foreign Relations Committee requires a higher seniority than any other committee. A third explanation is leadership persuasion: Senate leaders, concerned about internationalist foreign policy, can persuade isolationists with seniority to choose other committees and, when that fails, can persuade internationalists with higher seniority to choose the committee, thus bumping the application of an isolationist. See Polsby, Nelson W., Congress and the Presidency (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1964), 34nGoogle Scholar, 40, 43, and 45; Matthews, Donald R., U. S. Senators and Their World (Chapel Hill 1960), 127–28.Google Scholar Matthews found that the Foreign Relations Committee was more like-minded on roll call votes than any other committee (ibid., 168).

16 Rosenau, (fn. 2), 42.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., 38–39.

18 Rosenau, in our correspondence, has suggested that the hypothesized cognitive mechanism—the Senator's perception of Dulles as an alliance-supporting cold-warrior—would be an interesting point for furdier testing by examining the Senators' remarks to determine whether they do speak of him in mose categories. My unsystematic impression is that they do, but a more sdentine examination might be fruitful.

19 Huntington, Samuel, The Common Defense (New York and London 1961), 123–96Google Scholar; Hilsman, Roger, To Move a Nation (New York 1968), 3ff.Google Scholar, and his articles footnoted therein; Neustadt, Richard, Presidential Power (New York 1960)Google Scholar, chap. 3 and passim; Allison, Graham, “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis,” American Political Science Review, LXIII (September 1969), 687–718Google Scholar; and Sorenson, Theodore, Decision-Making in the White House (New York 1962), 25–26, 81.Google Scholar

20 See Greenstein (fn. 1); March, James and Simon, Herbert, Organizations (New York 1958), 137–41Google Scholar, 148ff., 173–89; Arnold Kantor, “Presidential Power and Bureaucratic Compliance,” paper presented at annual meeting of the American Political Science Association (September 7–11, 1971), 39–41.

21 See Farris's contribution to Wahlke and Eulau (fn. 6), for an interesting scalogram confirmation of the usefulness of a belief-set typology for large numbers of legislators across different issue-dimensions.

22 J. David Singer warns of the danger of the operational code method. The danger lies in confusing official ideology with actual operational code. The danger increases “as me time lag since the articulation or revision of the official ideology increases.” Singer, , “Man and World Politics: The Psycho-Cultural Interface,” Journal of Social issues, XXIV (July 1968), 145.Google Scholar The first attempt at a code probably succumbed to this danger. But, like ideologies, the method has changed with time. A link in its evolution is George, Alexander, “The Operational Code,'” International Studies Quarterly, XIII (June 1969), 192–222.Google Scholar Both McLellan and Holsti used interviews, the Secretaries' decisions, and other data to check their understanding of me speeches or writings. The metliod is likely to continue to improve as it is tested in application.