How America’s Allies View Our Polarized Politics
About the author: Rachel Myrick is a Stanford Ph.D. Candidate in political science and recipient of an FSI Conference Grant, which she used in support of her travel to present her research at the 2019 International Studies Association Conference in Toronto, Canada.
During the last week of March 2019, I attended the International Studies Association Conference in Toronto, Canada. ISA hosts a major interdisciplinary conference annually for roughly 6,000 academics working on issues related to international politics. At the conference, I presented a component of my dissertation research, which looks at how extreme partisan polarization affects foreign policymaking in democratic states with a particular emphasis on U.S. national security policy.
The panel I was presenting on at the conference was called “Foreign Policy Attitudes: Experimental Approaches,” and my paper was a chapter of my dissertation about the consequences of partisan polarization for America’s relationship with its allies. The overarching research question was: How does partisan polarization in the United States affect foreign perceptions of U.S. security commitments and global leadership? Using a survey experiment fielded to 2000 British adults, I demonstrated that priming respondents to think about U.S. polarization negatively impacts their evaluations of the U.S.-U.K. bilateral relationship and U.S. foreign policy. I showed that these impacts were stronger for the long-term, reputational consequences of polarization than for immediate security concerns. In other words, while foreign allies may not necessarily believe a polarized America will renege on existing security commitments, perceptions of extreme polarization make other countries less willing to engage in future partnerships with the United States and more skeptical of its global leadership in the long run.
I received great feedback on the paper from my discussant, the audience, and other panelists, which will be helpful in revising my dissertation chapter. Thanks to the FSI Conference Grant, I had enough funding to stay through the full conference, which meant I got the opportunity to attend eight different panels and multiple business meetings and receptions. These events were great places to meet peers and professors with similar research interests; this photo, for example, was taken at a reception for women studying conflict and security issues (I’m on the left!). In the business meeting of the Foreign Policy Analysis Section, I received the Alexander George Award for a best graduate student paper presented at last year’s ISA conference. Overall, it was a fun and productive trip to Toronto, and I look forward to attending next year’s annual conference!
