Existing narratives of the effects of partisan polarization in Congress on foreign policy issues are too simplistic

Abstract

Contemporary politics in America have become riven by the high level of partisan polarization between the Republican and Democratic parties. But has this polarization had an impact on foreign policy? In new research that analysis votes in the U.S. House of Representatives over the past 40 years, Steven Hurst and Andrew Wroe find that while the House was polarized on foreign policy issues after the 1970s, this largely disappeared by the early 2000s, only to reappear more recently. With this in mind, they argue that more sophisticated models are needed to capture the effects of partisan polarization on foreign policy