The impact of party conflict on executive ascendancy and congressional abdication in US foreign policy

The Constitution’s division of powers from which E. Corwin famously asserted an “invitation to struggle” in the making of US foreign policy (1957, 171) has become overshadowed by partisan conflict in the contemporary era. Although much of the extant literature points to Congress’s subsidiary role in foreign policy relative to the presidency-centered model, the appeal of partisanship has worked to further deepen congressional abrogation and extend presidential unilateralism (Lindsay in Congress and the politics of U.S. Foreign Policy. The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1994; Kriner in After the rubicon: congress, presidents, and the politics of waging war. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2010; Potter in Pres Stud Quart 46(4):849–867, 2016). Our analysis illustrates a puzzle. On one hand, there are growing levels of majority support in the USA for political leadership on the world stage. But on the other hand, our analysis of congressional behavior such as voting, lawmaking, and oversight shows relatively clear patterns of congressional decline—Congress no longer exercises much of its power in foreign affairs, neither in form or substance. Partisan incentives for congressional abdication to the presidency carry at least one additional risk we point to: Congressional capitulation from its constitutional duty places democracy in the jeopardy that the Framers’ design was intended to prevent.