Sailing the water's edge: the domestic politics of American foreign policy

Abstract

SAILING THE WATER'S EDGE: THE DOMESTIC POLITICS OF AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY. By Helen V. Milner and Dustin Tingley. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015. xv + 352 pp.Times of uncertainty in US foreign relations seem to produce shelves of new books prescribing a for the nation. This moment is no exception. The numerous challenges facing the country, from the rise of China to the barbarism of ISIS to a newly assertive Russia, have inspired many experts to suggest in print that American foreign policy is in need of a course correction.The upcoming presidential election has no doubt contributed to this mood, as candidates and their advisors spar over the best direction for future American engagement with the world. Should the nation adopt a more realist posture, eschewing any international actions not in direct support of America's material interests? Should it withdraw from the Middle East and pivot to Asia? Should the United States rely more on diplomatic tools in its foreign policy, recalibrating the relative power of the state and defense departments? Should foreign aid programs be eliminated as worthless or even perverse, or does expanding American generosity hold the key to the future stability of developing nations? Should high politics take a back seat to emerging transnational problems such as climate change and terrorism? Is it finally time to abandon America's postwar internationalist consensus?The new book by Helen Milner and Dustin Tingley, two highly regarded scholars at Princeton and Harvard respectively, provides some much needed clear thinking during this time of flux. Unlike most recent publications on the subject, Sailing the Water's Edge: The Domestic Politics of American Foreign Policy advocates for no new grand strategy to solve all of America's challenges abroad. Instead, it is a cautionary tale about how America's unique political institutions limit the foreign policy choices available to the president.Rather than taking a conventional approach by tracing foreign policy doctrines across time or reviewing the international challenges of today, Milner and Tingley analyze the various policy instruments available to the United States. When will US policy-makers choose military intervention to achieve their goals, and when will they make use of other tools such as aid, sanctions, trade, or immigration? Milner and Tingley argue that presidents will have the maximum freedom of maneuver over instruments, like military intervention, associated with few distributive effects and low levels of ideological conflict. By contrast, presidential influence will be limited over areas of policy with strong distributive implications, like trade policy or foreign aid, or those where political actors are strongly polarized, like immigration policy. This differential level of presidential influence is, of course, a function of Congressional influence. Congress, Milner and Tingley argue, will be most involved (and by consequence, best informed) about policies that are materially or ideologically salient.The authors trace this straightforward hypothesis through a series of very impressive empirical tests, all of which come at their question from different angles. Indeed, Milner and Tingley's book is likely to become a model for mixed-method empirical research both within international relations and beyond.For their first empirical test, the authors exploit an enormous dataset on lobbying activities to show that interest groups are more likely to lobby Congress on issues with distributional and ideological resonance, such as foreign aid and immigration. This finding supports one of the key foundations of Milner and Tingley's argument, as it shows why Congress might be more interested in some policy instruments than in others.Next, Milner and Tingley use another large dataset-this time of Congressional votes-to show that presidents are able to secure their foreign policy goals from the legislature more readily in less distributive areas such as military intervention. …