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Trump-ing Foreign Affairs: Status Threat and Foreign Policy Preferences on the Right

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2019

Rachel Marie Blum Open the ORCID record for Rachel Marie Blum [Opens in a new window]  and
Christopher Sebastian Parker
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Abstract

President Trump is often at odds with the conservative establishment over a range of issues, not least of which is foreign policy. Yet it remains unclear whether supporting “Trumpism” is commensurate with coherent foreign policy views that are distinct from conventionally conservative positions. We evaluate whether the foreign policy views of Trump’s supporters, both in the voting public and among activists, differ from those of other Republicans. We use the 2016 ANES to examine Republican primary voters and the new 2016 State Convention Delegate Study to assess Republican activists. In doing so, we reveal systematic differences in foreign policy preferences between Trump supporters and more establishment conservatives. We demonstrate that the status-threat model need not be confined to domestic politics. Indeed, it may be extended to explain foreign policy preferences on the political right, that of Trump’s supporters in the present case. In doing so, we also find evidence that status threat may well be the source of fracture in the Republican Party.

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Special Section: Consequences
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Perspectives on Politics , Volume 17 , Issue 3 , September 2019 , pp. 737 - 755
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Copyright © American Political Science Association 2019 

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Footnotes

A list of permanent links to Supplemental Materials provided by the authors precedes the References section.

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Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/GNCDZR

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