Performative Partisan Federalism: Symbolic Opposition in Sub-National Foreign Policy

Research into the politics of American foreign policy is rich with conflicting findings as to themanner and degree to which partisan politics impacts foreign policymaking. However, extantwork fails to take into account the ways in which political institutions below the national levelinfluence debate about international issues. This work presents a novel theory of PerformativePartisan Federalism, which helps explain the use of national-level policy issues as tools forpartisan signaling by sub-national political organizations. It applies this theory to understandthe role of foreign policy positioning by state political parties. Using a historical database ofstate and national party platforms, it presents evidence that state political parties selectivelyadopt positions on a limited number of international issues in a manner more extreme thantheir national party counterparts. Results suggest that this trend increases when parties arein political misalignment with the President, but it does not appear to be impacted by factorsrelated to electoral competition. Taken together, this work provides a novel conceptualizationof the role of national-level policy issues in state politics, and presents unique insight into thepolitics of American foreign policy below the national level.