Our purpose is to examine how societal preferences on foreign policy and
international affairs are ideologically structured. It generally is recognized that, in the
United States, domestic political stances and priorities tend to be shaped by core beliefs
that locate its holders on an ideological continuum, whose ends are anchored by
conservative and liberal convictions. It is less clear how these ideological positions mold
popular beliefs where international affairs and foreign policy are concerned. On one
hand, it sometimes is assumed that very low levels of awareness of international affairs
by the average American make it unlikely that foreign policy preferences could reflect
structured ideological worldviews. On the other hand, it has been thought that a shared
conception of the national interest in a threatening world insulates foreign affairs from
the ideological divisions marking politics and policy in the domestic realm. Both
assumptions are wrong, and we will argue that preferences and priorities in the domestic
and external policy arenas are imbedded in a matrix of ideological referents
characterizing conservative and liberal worldviews and encouraging parallel patterns of
reasoning in both realms.
Foreign policy predilections, like domestic policy preferences, reflect value
orientations held at a rather high level of abstractions, core ideological views that
determine specific policy preferences in both the domestic and external realm. Our goal is
to identify the core components of this ideological matrix, and discover what specific
policy differences follow from differences on these components.
We will begin by addressing a few conceptual issues, moving into a closer
examination of the fundamental dimensions of American political ideology. From there,
we will undertake an empirical examination of the ideological supports on which foreign
policy beliefs rest.
2
Convention