| This project focuses on examining the alleged rise and fall of the Eastern Establishment in American foreign policymaking. The Establishment narrative traditionally holds that a group of businessmen, bankers, and lawyers from the Northeastern United States dominated the foreign policymaking process in the aftermath of World War II. Tradition has it that this group crafted a bipartisan consensus that provided the basis for America's liberal internationalist foreign policy throughout the Cold War. This propensity toward bipartisanship has allegedly deteriorated, having suffered particularly sharp breaks after Vietnam and end of the Cold War. Arguments have also been advanced which claim that the actual conduct of American foreign policy has also been altered by these changes. To date, however, very little research has looked at these issues in a systematic fashion, and no studies have focused exclusively on the foreign policy bureaucracy itself, which many political scientists, historians, journalists, and former policymakers emphasize in their accounts. I conduct an empirical evaluation of these claims by gathering biographical data on members of the foreign policy bureaucracy. I also use this data to examine the potential policy implications of such changes by looking at the impact of partisan shifts within the executive bureaucracy on relations between the United States and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).;The results of this project fail to support some of the core claims of the Establishment narrative. Bipartisanship appears to have converged over time, rather than diverging as the literature predicts. There is also little indication that Vietnam or the end of the Cold War led to a structural shift in the types of professional background traits held by appointees to the foreign policy bureaucracy. What changes we do observe in these traits appear to unfold gradually over time. However, some partisan differences to emerge---Republicans coming to embrace military experience more than Democratic administrations, for example. The results do provide some evidence that relations between the US and its NATO allies have deteriorated over time, indicating that partisan differences have grown in this particular issue area. |
