Foreign Policy Issue Coverage in the 1980 Presidential Campaign

1982 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 531-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Glen Stovall
2021 ◽  
pp. 004711782110528
Author(s):  
Rafael D Villa ◽  
Sasikumar S Sundaram

Although the recent advancements in critical constructivist IR on political rhetoric has greatly improved our understanding of linguistic mechanisms of political action, we need a sharp understanding of how rhetoric explains foreign policy change. Here we conceptualize a link between rhetoric and foreign policy change by foregrounding distinct dynamics at the regional and domestic institutional environments. Analytically, at the regional level, we suggest examining whether norms of foreign policy engagement are explicitly coded in treaties and agreements or implicit in conventions and practices of actors. And at the domestic level, we suggest examining whether a particular foreign policy issue area is concurrent or contested among interlocutors. In this constellation, we clarify how four different rhetorical strategies underwrites foreign policy change – persuasion, mediation, explication and reconstruction – how it operates, and the processes through which it unfolds in relation to multiple audiences. Our principal argument is that grand foreign policy change requires continuous rhetorical deployments with varieties of politics to preserve and stabilize the boundaries in the ongoing fluid relations of states. We illustrate our argument with an analysis of Brazil’s South-South grand strategy under the Lula administration and contrast it against the rhetoric of subsequent administrations. Our study has implications for advancing critical foreign policy analysis on foreign policy change and generally for exploring new ways of studying foreign policies of nonwestern postcolonial states in international relations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nora Kirkizh

The expansion of globalization has made a country's prosperity increasingly dependant on foreign politics. This article shows how Russian television's inflammatory coverage of European politics affected the vote during the European Union membership referendum in Latvia. For identification, I use plausibly exogenous variation of the signal from Russian analog TV towers that was available during the referendum to Latvian counties located close to the Russian border. The analysis of the electoral data showed that in counties with the Russian television reception, votes "for" outperformed votes "against" joining the European Union compared to counties without the reception. Moreover, the effect of Russian television persisted even in counties densely populated by ethnic Russians. Contrary to previous experimental studies, the evidence suggests that specifically in the context of foreign politics, foreign biased media increase the salience of foreign policy issue but is unable to shift the direction of the public response.


2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amnon Cavari ◽  
Guy Freedman

How does the extension of party conflict to a foreign policy issue affect the ability of Americans to form an opinion about the issue? We test this using elite references and longitudinal public opinion data about the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, a salient foreign policy issue in the United States that is increasingly characterized by partisan divisions. Our findings demonstrate that since the turn of the 21st century, the availability and clarity of party cues have increased, as well as the share of Americans who hold an opinion about the issue. Applying regression models to individual-level data, we reveal that the extension of party conflict to this issue has made it easier for more Americans to form an opinion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 348-373
Author(s):  
Ana Carolina Marson

This paper seeks to comprehend how a portion of the Brazilian public opinion, specifically the press, understood Brazil’s participation in the Eighth Meeting of Consultation of Ministers of Foreign Affairs, held in Punta del Este, Uruguay, in January 1962 – the Punta del Este Conference. This was a decisive meeting since it culminated in the expulsion of Cuba from the Organization of American States (OAS), because of the pressure exerted by the United States. Brazil distinguished itself for leading a group of countries against Cuba’s expulsion, based on the principle of self-determination and non-intervention. Although some authors believe the Punta del Este Conference to be the first event to massively mobilize the Brazilian public opinion around a foreign policy issue, they are not clear about what they understand as the concept of public opinion or how it positioned itself about Brazil’s participation in the Conference. Thus, this paper focuses on the coverage of three newspapers of national circulation (Jornal do Brasil, O Estado de São Paulo and Última Hora) between November 1961 and March 1962 to understand, through a content analysis method, how the press evaluated Brazil’s participation in the Punta del Este Conference. The results point to a bigger support of the Brazilian position and the Independent Foreign Policy.       Recebido em: Agosto/2019. Aprovado em: julho/2020.


2017 ◽  
Vol 03 (03) ◽  
pp. 411-428
Author(s):  
Paul Antonopoulos

With Australia and Russia increasingly seeing their future in the Asia-Pacific, neither can reach its full economic potential except under the guidance of Beijing’s control of ports on its “Maritime Silk Road.” Cold War clichés of the “Yankee lapdog” and the big bad “Russian bear” continue to dominate how Canberra and Moscow view each other. Yet when it comes to the future of Australia-Russia-China relations, one must look beyond Moscow, Beijing, and Canberra, but rather at Vladivostok and Darwin, symbols of an as-yet unrealized goal to shift emphasis onto each country’s sparsely-populated regions bordering the Asia-Pacific. With the dawning of the “Asian Century,” how does the United States change the geopolitical dynamics of the region, and how do China, Russia, and Australia react to “America’s Pacific Century”? Rather than a capitulation to America’s aggressive posture in the Asia-Pacific, China and Russia have consolidated the integration of their economies and militaries to counter such penetration. This emerging rivalry creates a challenge for Australia to balance its military alliance with the United States and its economic reliance on China. The necessity of finetuning this balance should be Canberra’s primary foreign policy issue.


2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 312-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colton Heffington ◽  
Brandon Beomseob Park ◽  
Laron K Williams

This article introduces the Most Important Problem Dataset (MIPD). The MIPD provides individual-level responses by Americans to “most important problem” questions from 1939 to 2015 coded into 58 different problem categories. The MIPD also contains individual-level information on demographics, economic evaluations, partisan preferences, approval and party competencies. This dataset can help answer questions about how the public prioritizes all problems, domestic and foreign, and we demonstrate how these data can shed light on how circumstances influence foreign policy attentiveness. Our exploratory analysis of foreign policy issue attention reveals some notable patterns about foreign policy public opinion. First, foreign policy issues rarely eclipse economic issues on the public’s problem agenda, so efforts to shift attention from poor economic performance to foreign policy via diversionary maneuvers are unlikely to be successful in the long term. Second, we find no evidence that partisan preferences—whether characterized as partisan identification or ideology—motivate partisans to prioritize different problems owing to perceptions of issue ownership. Instead, Republicans and Democrats, conservatives and liberals, respond in similar fashions to shifting domestic and international conditions.


Nordlit ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alf Håkon Hoel

More than three decades in the making, the 2010 agreement between Norway and Russia on a bounadry in the Barents Sea establishes a boundary, continues cooperation in fisheries, and lays the framework for cooperation on petroleum deposits straddling the boundary. The importance of the boundary goes well beyond the Barents Sea, as it demonstrated the capability of Arctic countries to resolve issues in a peaceful manner on the basis of international law. The agreement settles the most important outstanding foreign policy issue between the two countries and opens up new opportunities for cooperation. The article gives a brief overview of the agreement, the its negotiation and its implications at various levels of governance.


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