Less than Meets the Eye: Foreign Policy Making and the Myth of the Assertive Congress (Twentieth Century Fund Book) - Softcover

Hinckley, Barbara

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226341445 ISBN 13: 9780226341446

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1994

Synopsis

Focusing on cases involving major military action, foreign aid authorization, and key controversial votes in both legislative branches, Hinckley shows that—appearances to the contrary—Congress more often than not votes with the President, and has done so for the last few decades. Despite occasional flurries of activity on carefully chosen symbolic issues, most foreign policy issues never even make the Congressional agenda. Those that do are often dispatched with demands for reports that are left unread or with tough restrictions having built-in "escape provisions." Both branches, Hinckley argues, encourage this image of conflict and profit from the symbolic political capital it produces. This process comes to light in her analysis of aid to Nicaragua.

What Hinckley reveals is sharply at odds with conventional wisdom and unflattering to both the executive and the legislative branches of government. More than a critical reassessment, this book also proposes reforms than might result in real congressional participation in the making of foreign policy. With its insight into how our system of checks and balances works—and doesn't—this book takes a first step toward making the peoples' representatives accountable for crucial American interests in foreign matters.

About this title

From the Back Cover

In this first full-scale account of congressional responses to foreign policy over the last thirty years, Hinckley reveals congressional assertiveness to be a much a myth as the struggle between the elected branches is an illusion.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0226341445
• ISBN 13: 9780226341446
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 259