As the Cold War and apartheid ended, so did the forays of most states and local governments into foreign policy. This assertiveness came back beginning in the mid-1990s when China, Burma, Nigeria, North Korea, Cuba, and Switzerland were targeted by state and local sanctions adopted, despite State Department opposition. Many U.S. companies, faced with the choice of abandoning overseas markets or losing lucrative government contracts, successfully challenged the statutes in court.

Except for a few central foreign relations powers—such as declaring war and making treaties—the Constitution does not extinguish state authority to influence foreign affairs. Instead, it gives the president and Congress broad powers to decide when state acts harm the national foreign relations interest and thus must be pre-empted.

States thus can serve as useful “laboratories of experimentation.” As in domestic policy areas such as health, they are experimenting where the federal government is inactive or ideologically opposed to innovative policy steps on issues ranging from importing prescription drugs from Canada to climate change. On trade issues, some municipal governments are using their power of procurement for fair trade ordinances.

Designing a More Democratic Foreign Policymaking Process

A range of proposals for democratizing foreign policy, some more ambitious than others, have emerged. Columnist Eric Alterman has called for elected foreign policy advisory panels. There are a range of proposals for municipal and state-level foreign policies, a host of voices calling for expanding congressional and/or judicial influence, and proposals for expanding citizen participation and access to the foreign policymaking process. 16

There are two main avenues for thinking about democratizing foreign policy: checks and balances and more expansive processes of effective and informed deliberation.

Strengthening Checks and Balances

A first step is to strengthen the checks and balances between Congress and the judiciary on one hand, and the executive on the other. The current period has witnessed a substantial shift in the autonomous exercise of power by the executive branch.

Cass Sunstein at the University of Chicago has noted that “A defining feature of these understandings is a strong commitment to inherent presidential authority over national security, including a belief that in crucial domains the president can act without congressional permission, and indeed cannot be checked by congressional prohibitions.” These efforts can be checked through a combination of intellectual challenges to the efforts to expand the power of the executive in the foreign policy realm (especially security) and strengthening institutional checks and balances to prevent the emergence of an imperial executive. But citizen action will be central to such a process.

Enhancing Effective and Informed Deliberation

There are a few overarching changes that would reinforce both processes. The first involves an expansion of the transparency of foreign policymaking and implementation. This is an essential condition for the effective exercise of informed deliberation and democratic accountability.

The second would be a strengthening of the capacities of political parties as arenas for deliberation. The weakness of political parties in the United States removes a key mediating institution that is the site of extensive discussion and debate in other industrial democracies. There are no illusions here; weak parties have long been bemoaned and little has been done to strengthen them.

The third dimension is for U.S. citizens to place greater demands on their elected officials for accountability as well as to participate in an informed manner. This requires citizens to actually be informed, an area where foreign policy NGOs, think tanks, and the media have largely failed. Greater efforts in these areas are essential.

Some Animating Questions on Democratizing U.S. Foreign Policy

At the level of social foundations, what role do the corporate sector and civil society organizations play in influencing American policy and as international actors in their own right?

Are religious organizations playing a more important role in not just influencing the terms and vocabulary of foreign policy discussion but also in influencing decision making?

What are the pathways for citizens and civil society organizations to influence U.S. policy?

At the level of political philosophy, can and should U.S. foreign policy be formulated in a more democratic manner?

Has congressional and judicial oversight of the executive declined? Would more of it lead to better policy and better democracy?

Are state and local governments of declining or growing importance? Would a greater/lesser role by subnational governments enhance the democratic nature of foreign policymaking? Would it be “better” foreign policy?

Given the recurring evidence that Americans are poorly informed about many aspects of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs, is democratizing foreign policy a sound objective? Why not focus on expanding the role of informed experts?

If expanding informed citizen participation is a goal, what efforts and programs are necessary to make such outcomes possible?

End Notes

1. See also, Zbigniew K. Brzezinski “War and Foreign Policy, American-Style,” Journal of Democracy, Vol. 11, No. 1, January 2000, pp. 172-178.
2. Toqueville noted that in the conduct of foreign affairs “democratic governments do appear decidedly inferior to others” for they found it “difficult to coordinate the details of a great undertaking and to fix on some plan and carry it through with determination” while having “little capacity for combining measures in secret and waiting patiently for the result.” Alexis de Toqueville, Democracy in America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969), pp. 228-229. For a restatement by Walter LaFeber “Democratic republics, whose vitality rests on the pursuit of individual interests with a minimum of central government direction, create the necessary national consensus for the conduct of an effective, and necessarily long-term, foreign policy,” Walter LaFeber, “Jefferson and American Foreign Policy,” in Jeffersonian Legacies, Peter S. Onuf (ed) (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993), pp. 376-377. For further discussion of Toqueville see Melvin Small, “Public Opinion,” in Alexander DeConde (ed), Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, 3 volumes, (NY, 1978): Vol. 3: pp. 844-855. Walter Lippman, Public Opinion (NY, 1922) and George Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 (Chicago, 1951).
3. Walter Lippman, Essays in Public Philosophy (Little Brown: Little Brown, 1955), p. 20.
4. Quoted in Smith (2000, p. 5) op cit.
5. Peter Rodman, The Imperial Congress,” The National Interest, Fall (1985): pp. 26-35, quote at p. 28. He continues to argue that “A strong Congress can block or constrain it; it cannot impose a coherent or vigorous foreign policy of its own,” p. 33.
6. For overall views of the Bush administration's agenda see Jim Mann on The Rise of the Vulcans, and James Lindsay and Ivo Daalder, America Unbound (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2003). On the role of the military as a tool of foreign policy see, Dana Priest, The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace With America's Military (NY: Norton, 2003).
7. While there were clearly threats to U.S. national security prior to the 20th century, U.S. military operations also involved imperial acquisition of territory and subjugation of Native Americans, events which arguably extended beyond the defense of the United States. This is neither to argue that U.S. foreign policy since the 20th century has been defensive in nature, nor that all policies pursued in the name of security of the United States has been conducive to democratic institutions and processes, only that the dominant interpretation of U.S. foreign policy has been in this vein.
8. For an excellent overview of the issue of free speech in conditions of wartime, see Geoffrey R. Stone, Perilous Times: Free Speech in Wartime (NY: Norton, 2004).
9. Constitution Project, Deciding to Use Force Abroad: War Powers in a System of Checks and Balances (Washington, DC, 2005) available at PDF For more background and discussion see Peter Irons, War Powers: How the Imperial Presidency Hijacked the Constitution (NY: Metropolitan, 2005), Eugene B. Kogan, The War Congress: Shouldering the Responsibilities of a U.S. Global Role (Washington, DC: Americans for Democratic Action Education Fund, 2005) at http://www.adaction.org/warcongress.pdf, Michael J. Glennon, “War and the Constitution,” Foreign Affairs, Spring (1991): pp. 84-101, L. Fisher and D. G. Adler (1998) "The War Powers Resolution: Time to Say Goodbye," Political Science Quarterly, 113:1—20, Louis Fisher, Presidential War Power, 2nd edition, revised, (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004) and H. Jefferson Powell, The President's Authority over Foreign Affairs: An Essay in Constitutional Interpretation (Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, 2002).
10. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Benjamin Page, “Who Influences U.S. Foreign Policy,” American Political Science Review, 2005, 99(1): pp. 107-122.
11. See discussion and citations in Task Force on Inequality and American Democracy, American Political Science Association “Memo on Inequality in Public Policy,” www.apsanet.org/imgtest/feedbackmemo.pdf. 
12. For sources and more discussion see Bruce Stokes and Pat Choate, Democratizing U.S. Trade Policy (NY: Council on Foreign Relations, 2001) at http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/DemTrade_TF.pdf and also see Bruce Stokes, C. Fred Bergsten, William A. Niskanen, Jeff Faux, and Pat Choate, Future Visions for U.S. Trade Policy (NY:Council on Foreign Relations, 1998) at http://www.cfr.org/content/publications/attachments/Trade_Policy.pdf. In particular Stokes and Choate (2001: vii) argue that “Gone were the days when a small group of self-selected individuals, no matter how diverse, could agree on a new national trade policy and then simply expect the public to accept it. Trade now affects the lives of an unprecedented number of Americans. They want and deserve a greater say in formulating U.S. trade policy. … We believe that if the trade policymaking process can better reflect the interests of diverse stakeholders—big and small businesses, environmentalists, consumers, organized labor, and others—the trade policy that will flow from that process is likely to have broad public support.”
13. It's also a mistake to think that trade promotion authority is essential for trade agreements. While it's unlikely to see large free trade agreements passed without TPA, it's wrong to believe that no trade agreements would be passed. During the Clinton era, from 1997-2000, when TPA (then called fast track) was not in place, a number of trade agreements were passed as well as PNTR for China, agreements at the WTO, and the unilateral Caribbean Basin Initiative. Certainly, passage of any trade and investment agreement would be more likely if the United States implemented adequate wage, insurance, and other safety net programs to address the costs of adjustment, as well as more effective support for labor and environmental standards.
14. See discussion at http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/ip-health/2005-August/008203.html. Congress could strengthen protections for prescription drug consumers for example, by requiring that each of these committees include public health representation in order to achieve a fair balance of interests as required by law. The USTR could also be required to make all Advisory Committee proceedings publicly available, as opposed to their current confidential status. Finally, the USTR could be required to make public its proposals in trade negotiations. It did so with respect to the General Agreement on Trade in Services in 2003, but declined to do so in 2005. Future legislation could require the USTR to operate in a more transparent and democratic manner. See the Center for Policy Analysis on Trade and Health, www.cpath.org, for other examples.
15. See, also for example, Susan Aaronson, Taking Trade to the Streets: The Lost History of Public Efforts to Shape Globalization (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2001).
16. Eric Alterman, Who Speaks for America? (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998). See back issues of the now defunct Bulletin of Municipal Foreign Policy published by the Center for Innovative Diplomacy for more on municipal and local initiatives.

John Gershman is the Director of the Global Affairs Program of the International Relations center (www.irc-online.org), the Co-Director of Foreign Policy In Focus (www.fpif.org), and an adjunct professor at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. An earlier version of this paper was presented as a concept paper at the Ford Foundation's Laboratory for New Thinking in Foreign Policy, January 17-19, 2006 at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Sincere acknowledgements to Paul Evans for substantive input, analytical insights, and editorial skill. And thanks to the other members of the Laboratory design team—Bonnie Jenkins, Lisa Jordan, Chris Harris, and Meg Gage for their feedback and comments. The usual caveats apply. The opinions in this paper should not be interpreted as reflecting those of the Ford Foundation.

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