Hawks and Doves Reconsidered: Parties, Leaders, and Foreign Policy in Democracies

Article Abstract:
What are the domestic determinants of international conflict? I employ elements of salience theory to build an issue emphasis approach to foreign policy. I argue that parties and candidates in democracies credibly signal their foreign policy position prior to their election and that leaders live up to their foreign policy position. Significant research explains how both the behavior of other states and domestic political institutions may constrain leaders, so there are reasons to doubt leaders may be able to match deeds with words. Some scholars have integrated measurements of partisanship into their theoretical explanations, but extant scholarship has not effectively introduced the foreign policy position of the executive into the equation. Using this approach, we can connect competing foreign policy platforms to conflict behavior in a new way. I estimate initiation of militarized interstate disputes by democracies from 1951–2000 in the empirical test, and the results provide support for the hypothesis.