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ListsSchwab, Bailey Uwe (2025) ‘The use of the word “doctrine” is intentional’: Presidential Doctrines and the Legitimation of Foreign Policy Choices, 1981 – 2009. Doctoral thesis, York St John University.
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Text (Doctoral thesis)
The use of the word doctrine is intentional Presidential Doctrines and the Legitimation of Foreign Policy Choices, 1981 - 2009..pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike. | Preview |
Abstract
This thesis explores how the rhetorical use of presidential doctrines has facilitated and undermined the legitimation of presidential policy choices. Through the interrogation of the historical record and the author’s conduct of oral history interviews with former administration officials, political commentators, and journalists this thesis reveals they do so in the following ways. Doctrines can sustain the effort to legitimize policy choices by being characterized, explicitly or implicitly, as necessary repudiations of purportedly redundant frameworks for American foreign policy. Doctrines can undermine the effort to legitimize
policy choices by being characterized as inconsistently executed in practice or as being based upon morally and/or strategically fallacious assumptions. By tracing how doctrines were conferred upon statements and policy choices, were demanded by actors in media and politics to be clearly defined, and why certain administrations were associated or dissociated with doctrines during the presidencies of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, the study sheds new light on the legitimizing and delegitimizing functions of presidential doctrines in the national debate about presidential leadership in American
foreign policy.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Status: | Published |
| Subjects: | E History America > E151 United States (General) J Political Science > JK Political institutions (United States) |
| School/Department: | School of Humanities |
| URI: | https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/12076 |
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