Hierarchy and Community at Home and Abroad

TLDR

Evidence links domestic and foreign policy attitudes among American elites, but the underlying coherence remains unclear. The study aims to clarify how the concepts of hierarchy and community underlie domestic and foreign policy attitudes among American elites. Using principal components analysis on elite policy attitude data, the authors test the hierarchy–community framework. Attitudes toward domestic and foreign policy share a common structure, with community values most predictive of humanitarian military support and both hierarchy and community influencing strategic mission positions.

Abstract

Although there is increasing evidence of a relationship between domestic and foreign policy attitudes among American elites, we have less of an idea about why these sets of attitudes cohere. The answer lies in a better understanding of what we mean when we talk about “left” and “right” or “liberal” and “conservative.” Drawing on the literature on rights theory, partisan cleavages, and ideological continua, I posit the existence of two core values, hierarchy and community, that should manifest themselves both at home and abroad. I perform a principal components analysis on data capturing both the domestic and foreign policy attitudes of American elites. The results indicate an almost identical structure of attitudes in both domains, indicating that it is generally inappropriate to distinguish between the two. Using factor scores in a series of logistic regressions, I demonstrate that support for community is most important for predicting support for humanitarian military operations, while hierarchy and community both help determine positions on strategic missions.