New Directions in International Relations and American Political Development

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Recent political developments in the United States highlight opportunities for deeper conversation between scholars of American Politics and International Relations. Papers in this panel take as a point of departure the belief that domestic political processes can be studied productively as both a determinant and consequence of international forces. For example, the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act were justified by lawmakers and Administration officials on the grounds that they better position the U.S. to compete against China. A wave of state legislatures, moreover, have in recent years adopted legislation aimed at restricting foreign ownership of land by adversarial states. These and related events evoke an earlier research tradition explicitly dedicated to theorizing and tracing the relationship between international and domestic political developments (IR-APD). This panel revisits the promise of an earlier wave of IR-APD scholarship, represented by the 2002 edited volume Shaped by War and Trade, to make sense of linkages between international and domestic forces. In what ways do international forces like foreign conflicts, trade patterns, immigration, and U.S. foreign policy more broadly impact domestic political interests, processes, and institutional dynamics? How have domestic and foreign policies interacted in ways that shape the development of the American state? Papers will bring new insights into the historical and theoretical processes that showcase connections between American political development and international politics. Renewing the IR-APD research tradition is promising for two reasons. First, these papers will contribute to making sense of the turbulence in present-day U.S. politics where intra and interparty cleavages increasingly revolve around foreign policy issues. Second, an intentional IR-APD sensibility can generate greater theoretical understanding of the ways internal politics both shape and are shaped by external forces.

Sub Unit

• Division 7: Politics and History

Individual Presentations

• Race, Ethnicity and Support for War: From WWII to the Post-GWOT Era - Douglas L. Kriner, Cornell University; Aaron Childree, Cornell University

• The Designs of John Tyler: Ambition in Antebellum Foreign Policy - Paul Musgrave, University of Massachusetts

• How US Legislators Respond to Chinese Ownership of American Land - Ze Han, Princeton University

• Beyond Domestic and International: The Imperial Roots of the US FP Establishment - David Kenneth Johnson, London School of Economics

• “Order Maker and Order Taker”: Renewing the IR-APD Research Tradition - Samuel Gerstle, Boston University; Matthew Conklin, University of Chicago

Chair

• Bartholomew H. Sparrow The University of Texas at Austin

Discussants

• Maye Henning University of Portland

• Bartholomew H. Sparrow The University of Texas at Austin