Foreign Policy and Political Style

Abstract

An explanation of the peculiarities of United States foreign policy must be based upon its systematic descrip tion and comparison. American domestic and international politics have tended toward the pragmatic and, until very re cently, away from the ideological. Even legalism and violence have been pragmatically motivated. This peculiarity cannot be explained by socioeconomic factors like industrialization and urbanization. Social mobility and the American educational system can provide road signs toward a more adequate explana tion, to which three primarily political factors can contribute: the break with time executed by the makers of the American Revolution; the adversary method of pleading of the retained Common Law; and the constitutional environment created by the Founding Fathers. Only in the last decade has American foreign policy moved toward an incongruous ideologism.