And Democratization (Part II)

(Punctuation Pun: Democratizing our foreign policy, not democratization: our foreign policy.)

Another thing I’ve been thinking about is how elite-dominated foreign policy formation tends to be. In international politics, we addressed this a little bit. We talked about the “democracy defecit” and the EU (as well as other international institutions). While the EU has representatives from member countries who get to vote and debate, these representatives aren’t elected, which could serve to make people feel detached from the body or unable to exercise control over its policies. There’s also, of course, “democratic peace theory,” the idea that two democracies never go to war with each other. (You have to define democracy very carefully to make this work, and one of my friends pointed out in study group that a “communist peace theory” worked equally well.) One tenant of this theory is that democracies are less likely to go to war, period, because the leaders who send a country into an unpopular war will be held accountable.

Despite this, it seems like there’s not that much discussion of the fact that fewer and fewer people make foreign policy decisions. This is worsened now that the decision to go to war is the sole purview of the president and doesn’t go through Congress, but I think it’s very applicable to the non-headline-news decisions too. Although international service trips and cultural exchanges remain popular, ‘diplomacy” remains very much in the hands of the elite. I think one reason for this is that there are fewer organized constituencies for foreign policy than domestic policy. The ones that exist (the Israel lobby, forces for and against free trade) get more playing time because there isn’t a market place of ideas.

I’m trying to figure out why this is:

-We’re a big country and so we don’t need to care as much because the international sphere affects us less.
To some extent, this makes sense. It’s frustrating how a lot of people in other countries know more about American politics than most Americans know about the entire rest of the world, but it makes sense because American politics may ultimately have the potential to have a greater impact on their life than domestic politics in their home country. It also can explain the presence of a security-forced constituency—‘we’ll care when it affects us.’

-We’re a nation of immigrants, and thus we should be full of people who have opinions and ties to the rest of the world.
Maybe it’s just that recent immigrants have too hard a time gaining political power or just getting by. It could also be that people don’t want to look like they have contradicting loyalties.

-Compared to foreign media, our own is myopic.
This is sort of a chicken-egg problem.

-It’s hard and complicated and requires too much education.
To me, the best refutation of this is the degree of passion around issues like social security privatization or tax policy. I’ve taken a minor-sized bit of econ and I feel like I can still only grasp the corners of these issues, but people are able to understand enough and develop opinions that shape their vote.

One thing I wonder is whether most foreign policy constitutencies would always vote in self-interest, resulting often in increased isolationism, because money and time spent abroad means less money and time domestically. However, a broad cross-section of Americans don’t vote in favor of their self-interest as is. There’s the whole “What’s the Matter with Kansas” thing and then there are wealthy people who vote in favor of economic justice and equality. I don’t know how value-based constituencies get shaped but it seems possible.

I should probably organize rambles like this one better before I post them. I’m just used to talking about these little thoughts walking back from the dining hall with a friend, or in the hallway outside my room when procrastinating on a problem set.