This project is designed to measure the influence of domestic politics on foreign policy in the United States and Great Britain, and on the bilateral relationship. It analyses the role of national parliaments in shaping external decisions, and demonstrates how interest groups, partisan politics and electoral strategizing influence foreign policy. The ‘transnational turn’ in history has produced some excellent international studies, expanding our knowledge of how actors, state and non-state, influenced the Cold War. Yet lost in the discourse, amid the global tide, has been the role of domestic politics. Increasingly, politics and policy are treated as separate entities, with little apparent interaction. The result is a distorted portrayal of the context in which decisions were reached. Studies which privilege the foreign over the domestic run the risk of becoming ahistorical, by granting greater importance to various overseas actors than they in fact warrant. Too much agency becomes assigned to international circumstances, without a corresponding examination of domestic forces, and the parameters they set for foreign policy. What is lost, as Fredrik Logevall (Harvard) argues, is the ‘intermestic’ dimension of policy, where the international and domestic agendas become entwined. This project analyses international-domestic nexus during the late Cold War, and explains how it shaped external policy.
My research covers an era in which the executive-legislative relationship was transformed. The 1970s saw the rising influence of pressure groups and parliaments, which restricted the executive’s room for manoeuvre. The project shows how domestic variables influenced the foreign policymaking process, and how decisionmakers attempted to reconcile strategy overseas with the quest to attain political legitimacy at home. Case studies include the policy shifts by Carter and Reagan towards the Soviet Union (in 1980 and 1984); the nuclear weapons debates in Britain and America (which spanned elections in both nations); and the role of the British Parliament in the Falklands dispute.
My work examines the impact of parliamentarians, and how the legislative and executive branches cooperate, and dissent, on policy. It demonstrates how the more ‘base’ domestic variables can determine policy positions and impact bilateral relations. The international-domestic nexus is at the forefront of politics today. With the recent rise in populism, partisan politics, and the 'nation-state', the key themes of my project are applicable to current affairs. National parliaments have been increasingly assertive in the shaping of foreign policy (e.g. the Brexit debate; military involvement in Syria; sanctions against Russia). In an era of populist movements, illiberal democracies, and extreme partisanship, my work can teach us about the importance of mutual compromise, flexibility, and help us to understand the vital functions of parliamentary democracies, such as the importance of a system which provides ‘checks and balances’ on the power of the executive branch.
