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Hierarchy and Community at Home and Abroad

Evidence of a Common Structure of Domestic and Foreign Policy Beliefs in American Elites

Department of Political Science Indiana University, Bloomington

Although there is increasing evidence of a relationship between domestic and foreign policy attitudes among American elites, we have less of an idea about why these sets of attitudes cohere. The answer lies in a better understanding of what we mean when we talk about "left" and "right" or "liberal" and "conservative." Drawing on the literature on rights theory, partisan cleavages, and ideological continua, I posit the existence of two core values, hierarchy and community, that should manifest themselves both at home and abroad. I perform a principal components analysis on data capturing both the domestic and foreign policy attitudes of American elites. The results indicate an almost identical structure of attitudes in both domains, indicating that it is generally inappropriate to distinguish between the two. Using factor scores in a series of logistic regressions, I demonstrate that support for community is most important for predicting support for humanitarian military operations, while hierarchy and community both help determine positions on strategic missions.

Key Words: American foreign policy • partisan cleavages • belief structure • elites

Journal of Conflict Resolution, Vol. 51, No. 3, 379-407 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0022002707300842


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