My research examines how international politics and domestic politics shape one another. I explore this relationship through questions of national security, U.S. foreign policy, and grand strategy. Much of my work takes a historical perspective, bringing together archival research, historical public opinion surveys, microlevel conflict data, and fieldwork.
A second thread running through my research concerns the role of history in political science and international relations. I am interested in how policymakers and citizens draw lessons from history, as well as how historians’ interpretations influence the theories scholars develop about war and grand strategy. This informs my interest in questions about the historiography of U.S. foreign relations and the role of historical evidence in security studies.
Book Project
Learning from War: Managing Grand Strategy in the Wake of War
My book project, Learning from War, asks how wartime experiences shape the domestic political foundations of grand strategy after the fighting ends. International relations scholarship often treats major wars as moments that transform states’ strategic commitments or reinforce existing ones. It is also the case that wars are experienced unevenly across society and remain politically contested long after they end. The book brings these perspectives together to explain how wartime experiences shape public support for the strategic aims fought over in war and how policymakers seek to sustain that support afterward. It examines these questions through a systematic reexamination of the American experience in the Second World War, a canonical case often credited with forging the postwar international order and the domestic political consensus that sustained it.
While centered on the American experience, the book treats this focus as part of a broader historical and comparative phenomenon, asking how wars come to be understood as the sources of postwar political consensus and what that process reveals about the domestic politics of grand strategy. Drawing on mixed methods and multiple forms of historical evidence—including public opinion surveys of citizens and soldiers, microlevel data on military service and wartime casualties, congressional behavior, archival research in historians’ personal papers, and fieldwork—the project offers a new account of how wars shape the domestic politics of grand strategy and the political foundations of states’ roles in world affairs after war. The images below illustrate a few of the sources and forms of evidence that underpin the project.
Top: Article by Hadley Cantril, President Roosevelt’s pollster, published in the New York Times, April 29, 1945. Bottom left: Cover of the World War II Honor List of Dead and Missing for the state of Texas, available from the National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/research/military/ww2/army-casualties. Bottom right: The inside cover of the “The Men and Women in World War II from Douglas County, KS.” County memorial books like this were common in the early postwar years. They were often the result of coordination between the local American Legion or VFW, the local newspaper, and families of service members. This album is held by the Watkins Museum of History in Lawrence, KS. Scanned albums from various states can be browsed on https://worldwartwoveterans.org/.
Publications
“Co-Optation at the Creation: Leaders, Elite Consensus, and Postwar International Order.” 2022. Security Studies. (with Austin Carson)
Abstract
This article analyzes how democratic leaders cultivate an elite consensus in favor of participating in international institutions. We theorize two tactics to prevent elite dissent. Delegating early policy development to technocratic and nonpartisan experts can set a depoliticized tone. Later integration of opposition elites into the process can create powerful advocates that expand support to a consensus. We assess contrasting fates of the United Nations (UN) and International Trade Organization (ITO). Haunted by Woodrow Wilson’s failure to win approval for the League of Nations, leaders outsourced early planning for a UN to the Council on Foreign Relations. Later, Franklin D. Roosevelt and top aides tapped moderate Republicans for the US delegation to San Francisco, creating powerful Republican advocates. In contrast, leaders developed the ITO in-house and excluded legislative elites in final negotiations, provoking elite dissent. These tactics shed new light on leaders, elites, and the domestic politics of international order and hegemony.
Working Papers
“From ‘Good War’ to Grand Strategy: Wartime Coercion and the Domestic Politics of U.S. Post-WWII Grand Strategy”
“Power and Public Hawkishness: Domestic Support for Conflict Escalation amid Great Power Competition.” (with Eddy S.F. Yeung)
“Hawks, Doves, and Rapprochement in the South China Sea: Evidence from Mirror Experiments in China and the United States.” (with Eddy S.F. Yeung)
“Order Maker, Taker, and Breaker: Renewing the International Relations-American Political Development Research Tradition.” (with Samuel Gerstle)
“A Gift, Not a Trade: Think Tanks, Extra-Governmental Expertise, and the Elite Politics of National Security.” (with Adam Saxton)
“How Leaders Use the Past: Rethinking the Strategic Logic of History in U.S. and Chinese Foreign Policy.” (with Wendy He)
“‘Memories Still Linger’: The Practice and Politics of American War Commemoration.”
In Progress
“The Phantom Menace: Rethinking Foreign Influence and the Strategic Logic of U.S. Information Dominance”
“The Smith-Mundt Act, the Domestic Dissemination Ban, and the Evolution of America’s Propaganda Anxieties.”
For more on my policy research and writing, including works in progress, please see my Policy page.
Matthew J. Conklin 