This article applies recent work on social cognition to examine the impact of foreign policy on presidential elections, particularly on the evaluation of incumbent candidates. The authors propose that specific issue evaluations shape the public's overall evaluation of candidates and that the overall evaluation in turn shapes the public's voting decision. This two-step hypothesis is tested with aggregate and individual-level data for both foreign policy and economic evaluations of incumbent performance and for the very different elections of 1980 and 1984. The results support the hypothesized two-step process at both aggregate and individual levels of analysis and for all categories of party identifiers. Foreign policy issues not only shape public evaluation of candidates but their influence does not compare unfavorably with that of economic circumstances. The results provide new evidence that the outcome of presidential elections is influenced, albeit indirectly, by foreign policy.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Aldrich, John , John L. Sullivan, and Eugene Borgida. 1989. Foreign affairs and issue voting: Do presidential candidates waltz before a blind audience?American Political Science Review83:123-142.
2.
Brody, Richard , and Lee Sigelman. 1983. Presidential popularity and presidential elections: An update and extension. Public Opinion Quarterly47:325-328.
3.
Conover, Pamela , and Stanley Feldman. 1984. How people organize the political world. American Journal of Political Science28:95-126.
4.
Conover, Pamela , and Stanley Feldman. 1986. Candidate perception in an ambiguous world: Campaigns, cues, and inference processes. American Journal of Political Science33:912-940.
5.
Converse, Philip . 1964. Electoral myth and reality: The 1964 election. American Political Science Review59:321-336.
6.
Converse, Philip . 1975. Public opinion and voting behavior. In Handbook of political science, edited by Fred Greenstein and Nelson Polsby. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
7.
Edwards, George III . 1981. The public presidency. New York: St. Martin's.
8.
Economic report of the president. 1989. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
9.
Haberman, Shelby . 1982. Analysis of dispersion of multinomial responses. Journal of the American Statistical Associationvol. 77.
10.
Hastie, Reid . 1986. A primer of information processing theory for political scientists. In Political cognition, edited by Richard Lau and David Sears, 11-39. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
11.
Hess, Stephen . 1972. Foreign policy and presidential campaigns. Foreign Policy (Fall): 3-22.
12.
Hess, Stephen , and Michael Nelson. 1985. Foreign policy: Dominance and decisiveness in presidential elections. In The election of 1984, edited by Michael Nelson. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press.
13.
Hibbs, Douglas, Jr.1982. President Reagan's mandate from the 1980 election. American Politics Quarterly10:387-420.
Hurwitz, John , and Mark Peffley. 1987a. The means and ends of foreign policy as determinants of presidential support. American Journal of Political Science31:236-258.
16.
Hurwitz, John , and Mark Peffley. 1987b. How are foreign policy attitudes structured? A hierarchical model. American Political Science Review81:1099-1120.
17.
Iyengar, Shanto , D. R. Kinder, M. D. Peters, and J. A. Krosnick. 1984. The evening news and presidential evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology46:778-787.
18.
Kessel, John . 1988. Presidential campaign politics: Coalition strategies and citizen response. 3d ed.Homewood, IL.: Dorsey.
19.
Kinder, Donald , and D. Roderick Kiewit. 1979. Economic discontent and political behavior. American Journal of Political Science23:495-527.
20.
Krosnick, Jon , and Donald Kinder. 1990. Altering the foundations of support for the president through priming. American Political Science Review84:497-512.
21.
Lewis-Beck, Michael , and Tom Rice. 1982. Presidential popularity and presidential votes. Public Opinion Quarterly46:535-537.
22.
Lowi, Theodore . 1985. The personal president: Power invested, promises unfulfilled. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
23.
MacKuen, Michael . 1983. Political drama, economic conditions, and the dynamics of presidential popularity. American Journal of Political Science27:165-192.
24.
Mueller, John . 1970. Presidential popularity from Truman to Johnson. American Political Science Review64:18-34.
25.
Nincic, Miroslav . 1988. The United States, the Soviet Union, and the politics of opposites. World Politics40:452-475.
26.
Nincic, Miroslav . 1990. America's Soviet policy and the electoral connection. World Politics42:37-396.
27.
Nincic, Miroslav . Forthcoming. Democracy and foreign policy. New York: Columbia University Press.
28.
Ostrom, Charles , and Dennis Simon. 1985. Promise and performance: A dynamic model of presidential popularity. American Political Science Review79:334-378.
29.
Ostrom, Charles , and Dennis Simon. 1988. The president's public. American Journal of Political Science32:1096-1119.
30.
Rosenberg, Shawn . 1988. The structure of political thinking. American Journal of Political Science32:539-566.
31.
Sigelman, Lee . 1979. Presidential popularity and presidential elections. Public Opinion Quarterly43:532-534.
32.
Tufte, Edward R. 1978. Political control of the economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
33.
Waltz, Kenneth . 1967. Electoral punishment and foreign policy crisis. In Domestic sources of foreign policy, edited by James Rosenau, 263-294. New York: Free Press.
