Contesting the national interest: The partisan politics of humanitarian intervention in Britain, France and Germany

The dissertation is the first systematic analysis of the role of political parties in security affairs. I demonstrate that the ideology that drives parties in the domestic political arena also leads them to define the national interest in different ways critical for understanding major international outcomes. I illustrate this through painstaking case studies of the domestic politics of the humanitarian interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo and the creation of a European Union competence in security affairs. The dissertation integrates diverse strands of theoretical research, including constructivist, cognitivist, and culturalist approaches to international relations.; I make four broad theoretical claims. First, due to the values of equality and liberty that inspire their domestic and foreign policy agenda, leftist parties in all three states, compared to their rightist counterparts, are more antimilitarist, more multilateralist, and have a broader conception of the national interest that includes the promotion of liberal values abroad. This typology offers a comprehensive theory of partisan preferences in international relations that is an improvement upon the usual isolationist-internationalist continuum. Second, in the international arena, parties are policy-seekers rather than office-seekers. I find that parties sometimes seek to reap political gain over their domestic adversaries on foreign policy issues but only when they genuinely disagree with the policies of their opponents. In some cases, opposition parties even come to the aid of their governing opponents when the latter are under attack from their own extremist wings. Parties sometimes change their positions, but reversals are reevaluations aimed at bringing policy better into line with ideological goals and not motivated by winning office. Third, whether these ideological positions are translated into policy depends on the exposure of the executive branch to partisan political pressures. Fourth and finally, political culture does not inhibit partisanship but rather channels it. The specific focus of partisan debate does vary across countries, however, depending on their historical experiences in international affairs and the extent to which particular parties instrumentalize interventions for purposes other than promoting human rights.