Congress, Foreign Policy, and the New Institutionalism

Abstract

New institutionalists argue that analysts are mistaken to separate process from policy in studying Congress's role in policy making. Rather, Congress changes the structure and procedures of decision making in the executive branch in order to influence the content of policy. Attempts to substantiate this claim have examined procedural changes in domestic affairs. This paper extends the argument by assessing the impact of five procedural changes in the area of defense and foreign policy: the Office of the Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, the legislative veto on arms sales, legislative participation in trade negotiations, the conditions attached to U.S. security assistance, and the reporting requirements imposed on the intelligence community. The five case studies suggest that procedural changes do at times enable Congress to build its preferences into U.S. foreign policy, but the successes are partial rather than total. Procedural changes meet only partial success because of executive branch opposition and the cost of monitoring and punishing noncompliance. The findings point to the need to incorporate more sophisticated assumptions about Congress and the bureaucracy into future research.