Economic Interests and Congressional Voting on Security Issues

Benjamin O. Fordham
Additional contact information
Benjamin O. Fordham: Department of Political Science, Binghamton University (SUNY)

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2008, vol. 52, issue 5, 623-640

Abstract: Most research on congressional consideration of foreign and defense policy concludes that ideology is the most important influence on roll-call voting and that constituent economic interests are not very important. This article challenges this conclusion on two grounds. First, most previous research conceives of constituent economic interests on these issues very narrowly, examining only the benefits constituents obtain from providing military goods and services rather than their economic stakes in the broader goals of national security policy. Second, the effect of ideology on congressional voting has changed enormously over time, a fact that poses difficulties for research that has stressed this consideration. The effects of broader economic interests and the changing implications of ideology are tested using a sample of key Senate votes on military resource allocation, intervention, and foreign aid from 1947 through 2000.

Keywords: Congress; roll-call voting; U.S. national security policy; economic interests; ideology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022002708320542 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:52:y:2008:i:5:p:623-640

DOI: 10.1177/0022002708320542

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().