The Domestic Politics of World Power, 1890-1945

该项目将研究在美国崛起为世界强国期间，对美国外交政策的支持和反对的来源。从1890年到1945年，美国从世界政治的边缘角色转变为拥有全球利益的超级大国。这条道路上的关键步骤沿着激起了相当大的国内政治争议。解释这些辩论的原因不仅是历史原因，而且还因为它关系到为什么在国家安全问题上存在分歧的更广泛问题。由于这些问题表面上涉及到所有人共同的国家利益，因此解释这些问题上的政治冲突比解释对外经济政策上的分歧更困难。该项目将带来对经济利益与外交政策决策之间关系的理解的新数据和最新发展，以影响1890-1945年期间美国外交政策的长期经济解释。早期的研究强调了寻求海外市场对美国外交政策形成的重要性，但在很大程度上忽视了美国国内市场上针对外国竞争的关税保护需求的作用。最近的政治学研究表明，贸易保护可以帮助解释一些在对美国外交政策的旧经济解释中没有回答的长期问题。要求保护的主要是担心欧洲竞争的美国制造商。这一事实有助于解释为什么寻求外国市场的倡导者主要来自工业化的东北地区，他们把重点放在世界上欠发达地区，尽管这些地区在美国贸易中所占的份额很小。同样，这也有助于解释为什么来自美国最依赖出口的南部地区的美国人对寻找海外市场和它所暗示的更积极的外交政策的热情要低得多。他们更喜欢与欧洲进行贸易，因为这需要降低美国的关税。很大程度上，由于现有数据的局限性，即使是关于这一时期美国外交政策的政治经济学的旧主张也没有得到严格的检验。有必要的数据，但不是以随时可查的形式。这项提案中要求的资金将使收集国际贸易、美国各州内的工业和农业生产数据以及这些实证检验所需的国会外交政策辩论数据成为可能。在呈现这种定量研究的结果时，至关重要的是要对美国外交政策进行更传统的描述，这些描述几乎完全依赖于通过档案研究收集的定性证据。因此，除了收集和分析定量数据外，研究者还将审查定性来源。本研究的成果，包括定量部分的介绍，将旨在吸引尽可能广泛的受众，而不仅仅是那些精通定量研究方法的人。本项目将揭示关于美国崛起为世界强国的历史性重要辩论。正如西奥多·罗斯福、伍德罗·威尔逊和这一时期其他杰出人物的著作所显示的那样，这个话题继续引起广大受过教育的公众的兴趣。为这个项目收集的数据也将有助于对美国政治和经济发展的其他方面感兴趣的学者。该项目将为宾厄姆顿大学的研究生提供宝贵的研究经验，并为美国外交政策和国际关系本科课程的教学提供更广泛的信息。

The project will study the sources of support and opposition to American foreign policy during the nation's rise as a world power. Between 1890 and 1945, the United States transformed itself from a marginal player in world politics into a superpower with global interests. The key steps along the way provoked considerable domestic political controversy. Explaining the reasons for these debates is important not only for historical reasons but also because it bears on the broader question of why divisions over national security issues exist. Because these issues ostensibly involve national interests that everyone shares, explaining political conflict over them has proven more difficult than explaining differences over foreign economic policy.The project will bring new data and recent developments in the understanding of the relationship between economic interests and foreign policy decisions to bear on longstanding economic interpretations of American foreign policy during the 1890-1945 period. Earlier work stresses the importance of the search for overseas markets in shaping American foreign policy but largely ignores the role of demands for tariff protection against foreign competition in the American domestic market. More recent research in political science suggests that trade protection can help explain some persistent questions unanswered in older economic interpretations of American foreign policy. Demands for protection came mainly from American manufacturers concerned about European competition. This fact helps explain why advocates of the search for foreign markets, who came mainly from the industrial Northeast, focused on less developed areas of the world, even though these areas received a small share of American trade. Similarly, it helps explain why the Americans from the most export-dependent region of the country, the South, were far less enthusiastic about this search for overseas markets and the more activist foreign policy that it implied. They preferred trade with Europe, something that required lower American tariffs. Largely because of the limitations of the available data, even the older claims about the political economy of American foreign policy during this period have not been rigorously tested. The necessary data exist but not in a readily accessible form. The funds requested in this proposal will make it possible to gather the data on international trade, industrial and agricultural production within American states, and congressional foreign policy debates needed for these empirical tests. In presenting the results of this quantitative research, it is critically important to engage more conventional accounts of American foreign policy, which rely almost exclusively on qualitative evidence gathered through archival research. The investigator will thus review the qualitative sources in addition to collecting and analyzing quantitative data. Presentations of the results of this research, including the quantitative portions of it, will be designed to engage the broadest possible audience, not just those versed in quantitative research methods.This project will shed light on historically important debates about the rise of the United States as a world power. As the popularity of works on Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and other prominent figures from this period suggests, the topic continues to interest a broad section of the educated public. The data gathered for this project will also be useful to scholars interested in other aspects of the political and economic development of the United States. The project will provide valuable research experience to graduate students at Binghamton University, as well as informing the teaching of undergraduate classes on US foreign policy and international relations more generally.