Issue and Context Variations in Foreign Policy

Abstract

This article explores the effects of variations in types of foreign policy issues and their contexts on the foreign policy-making behavior of American elites. The findings and conclusions are based on an examination of elite responses to 65 cases involving threats to American objectives concerning European integration or the Atlantic alliance during 1949-1968. "Events" data on the elites' behavior are generated by coding entries in the New York Times Index. The cases are classified in terms of the type of issue according to: the degree of threat, decision time, and surprise (after Charles Hermann), the degree of tangibility of ends and means (after James Rosenau), and the impact on the allocation of domestic resources (after Theodore Lowi). As to context, the cases are characterized according to the degree of prior American involvement and the occurrence of concurrent related events. All four typologies reveal predictable patterns in the elites' behavior, but the threat-time- surprise and the context typologies show the strongest effects.