Domestic Influences on Foreign Policy Behavior

The Case for Soviet Leadership Style


Chris Campbell and Robert D. Duval

West Virginia University

February 16, 1999


Introduction

Do domestic politics matter in the conduct of foreign policy? In particular, do domestic politics matter in the foreign policy of authoritarian regimes? Questions such as these are of fundamental importance in the study of international relations.

Perhaps the central reason why they are important is because they challenge the principle tennents of neorealism, the dominant paradigm in international relations theory today. The standard neorealist answer to these questions would be that it does not matter what goes on in the domestic politics of any regime. Kenneth Waltz, one of the neorealist pillars, states that "one cannot infer the condition of international politics from the internal composition of states" (Waltz 1986: 51). Waltz goes on to say that it "is not possible to understand world politics simply by looking inside of states" (ibid, 52). For Neorealism, it is the structure of and anarchy in the system that determines how nations conduct their foreign affairs. To try and explain it otherwise is to resort to "reductionist" theories.

For the archetypal realist such as Waltz, it is the structure of the system that explains world politics, not the parts of this system. Waltz states that to

In short, realism argues that states, or the units, do not matter, or at best matter little. For neorealism, it is the structure of the system that matters the most. Thus, this research is a challenge to neorealism by proposing to go inside the "black box" of the nation-state and examine the internal dynamics of the Soviet political system to help explain foreign policy behavior. While there is no doubt that how a state is positioned in the international system has an effect on its foreign policy, it seems intuitively unlikely to be the only explanatory variable in a large and complex political system.

Second, another major body of literature in international relations theory, the democratic peace, largely dismisses authoritarian regimes as inherently aggressive. As John Owen states, "illiberal states…are viewed prima facie as unreasonable, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous" (Owen 1996: 125). Their internal affairs are dismissed as irrelevant, since it is believed aggression is an inherent trait of authoritarian regimes. Bruce Russett, speaking about restraints upon democratic states, turns his attention to authoritarian regimes and states that

Although the traits Russett speaks of in this passage do often apply to authoritarian regimes and they often have fought with democratic countries, it is a hasty generalization that authoritarian regimes are inherently aggressive in their foreign policy. It is contended here that the Soviet Union was capable of peaceful coexistence with the democratic nations of the world, such as the U.S. While it is true that there were crises, these never developed into armed conflicts at any time during the Cold War. In fact, the Soviet Union had armed clashes with its Communist neighbor, China, instead of any of the NATO countries.

It should be pointed out here that this research not directly address questions about the democratic peace. This perspective has demonstrated itself to be robust time and again when looking at whether or not democracies fight one another. The contention is, however, that the democratic peace theorists simply dismiss authoritarian regimes as inherently aggressive and this may actually not be the case.

A third body of literature relevant to this examination of Soviet foreign policy lies in the area of belief systems. This theoretical perspective questions how leaders perceive the international environment when making their foreign policy decisions and further postulates how this may influence foreign policy. Richard Herrmann defines a perception as "the construction of reality regarding the behavior of another nation or nations in which foreign policy decisions are made" (Herrmann 1985, 8). Thus, how leaders perceive their external environment is important. For example, how Khrushchev perceived the balance of power in 1962 with the U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey may have had a lot to do with why he put Soviet missiles in Cuba.

Belief systems offer important explanatory power as to how one nation might respond to the actions of another. For these scholars, the international environment is not enough to explain the behavior of nation-states. Robert Jervis states that to "argue that the international environment determines a state’s behavior is to assert that all states react similarly to the same objective external situation" (Jervis 1976, 18). For Jervis, states respond according to their perceptions of the situation at hand. Charles Kupchan concurs with this. In discussing why states engage in self-defeating behavior, he states that "how elites react to international change is highly dependent on their beliefs about the strategic landscape" (Kupchan 1994, 40). The literature dealing with belief systems and perceptions is important in foreign policy research.

The main theoretical puzzle to be examined here is whether or not domestic political influence mattered in Soviet foreign policy behavior. In particular, this paper seeks to examine continuity and change in Soviet foreign policy. However, doing these tests will also provide insight on the democratic peace as well as significant insight for the role of belief systems.

The central hypothesis is that change, instead of continuity, is inherent in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union as we examine across leaders. Dixon and Gaarder (1994), for example, found that continuity was the norm in American foreign policy as opposed to change. They state that their results

                    suggest that U.S. foreign policy behavior may be better understood in terms of persistence and continuity,
                    rather than in terms of flux and change. Presidential administrations do appear to be associated with periodic
                    shifts in long-term behavioral tendencies toward friendlier or more hostile relations, but there is no evidence
                    of presidency effects on either reactivity or short-term memory (Dixon & Gaarder 1994: 200)

Thus, Dixon and Gaarder found that while there are certain tendencies associated with each President, their overall results show that continuity rather than change has been the pattern in U.S. foreign policy. In essence, their study is a quantitative evaluation of neorealist theory, which shores up neorealist doctrine. However, it is quite plausible to argue that U.S. leaders have different domestic constraints (i.e. elections and re-election concerns) than Soviet leaders did and this may partially explain the continuity in U.S. foreign policy. In addition, if we examine foreign policy behavior on a more discrete event basis we may observe somewhat more demonstrable influence.

In the Soviet Union, it is plausible to hypothesize that the opposite was the case. What is particularly interesting here is that there appeared to be different foreign policy actions from leader to leader in the Soviet Union. There is also the domestic explanation that relates to the domestic political climate a leader faced in the ruling group around them. I would argue that the domestic political climate a Soviet leader faces is different that that of the U.S. leader. Competition within the ruling circle was especially the case in the post-WWII period. This period was characterized by "the growing dispersion of political authority in the post-Stalin era at two interconnected levels: among established bureaucratic actors and within the senior political leadership of the Politburo" (Hagan 1993: 39).

Most notable in this area is the work of Philip Roeder (1984). He divided the Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods into time periods characterized by what he calls the level of "opposition" that each leader faced from elements of his ruling group where he found that opposition influences the foreign policy output of the individual leader.

The purpose of this paper is to fcontinue the tradition of empirically testing whether domestic politics have any bearing on how foreign policy is conducted. It will examine Soviet dyadic relations with the United States during the years 1948-1978. The choice of timeframe is expedient since we will be using the COPDAB data set for the empirical tests, which covers only the years 1948-78. The leaders examined will encompass the post-WWII Soviet periods including Stalin, Khrushchev, and Brezhnev. We will first perform a simple time series analysis on the classic monthly scores and then look at a more discrete version of the analysis.

Discussion of Each Leader

The era after World War II is the most interesting in Soviet foreign policy. First, this period saw the end of the strongly autocratic reime under Stalin. Thus, domestic opposition emerges as a larger factor. Second, internal power struggles became more common. This is how Khrushchev and Brezhnev came to power. Because of this, these leaders were forced to build their authority domestically. This is the "process by which Soviet leaders seek to legitimize their policy programs and demonstrate their competence or indispensability as leaders" (Breslauer 1982: 3). These two features make this period unique.

Stalin (1924-1953). Since this study analyzes the period from 1948-1978, we have been able to include only the last five years of Stalin's period in power (1948-1953). This is relevant to this study because during this time, the Cold War began to heat up. Until this point, Stalin had appeared to be rather pragmatic in his foreign policy. After WWII, the new rivalry with the U.S. seemed to cause him to take a more aggressive stance in his foreign policy.
Stalin is certainly much different from any of the other Soviet leaders in that he was the only true dictator the Soviet Union had. He faced very little opposition. As far is this study goes, which only looks at his last five years in power, one could argue he had very little domestic resistance at that time. After World War II Stalin sensed the challenge from his former Allies. This may have caused Stalin to be the most aggressive of the Soviet leaders. Zubok and Pleshakov argue that

after the end of World War II he did not want another confrontation, but he suspected the worst and tried to grab unilaterally what he could, twisting any understanding or agreement with the Allies to suit his own best interests.

As this quote suggests, Stalin's post-World War II policy may have been the result of his perceptions of Western intentions that led him to pursue a more aggressive foreign policy than other Soviet leaders did.

Khrushchev (1953-64). Khrushchev, like Stalin, ascended via a power struggle. Initially, he ruled in a troika with Malenkov and Molotov. In short, Khrushchev was able to dispense with these rivals and finally consolidate his power by 1958 through political maneuvering. This consolidation began with Khrushchev’s famous anti-Stalin speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956. Carl Linden states that this speech "was the decisive event in his struggle for primacy among Stalin’s heirs" (Linden, 1966: 34). However, as Linden also notes, Khrushchev was never comfortably in power and was always engaged in some form of domestic coalition building. In short, it seems Khrushchev was always looking over his shoulder to see who might be there trying to replace him.

Domestically, Khrushchev sought a break with the Stalinist legacy. As mentioned, he denounced Stalin as a tyrant at the Twentieth Party Congress and began to institute domestic reforms and sought a limited form of détente with the West. Upon completing his accession to power in 1958 (after he ousted Bulganin), he pursued these policies. This sole power enabled Khrushchev to institute new policies in foreign affairs. The foreign policy after Stalin,

                    especially as developed by Khrushchev, also had its more conciliatory side. The new party secretary
                    elevated the fact of coexistence of the two worlds into a dogma and asserted that all problems would be
                    solved without war (Riasanovsky 1984: 557).

This new style of foreign affairs was a break from ideology in that Marxism concluded that war with the capitalist countries was inevitable. According to this Marxist theory, war between communism and capitalism was inevitable if there was to be the worldwide revolution of the proletariat that Marx envisioned. Thus, this was a radical change in Soviet policy.

Domestically, he had to build his authority as Breslauer has noted. To understand his foreign policy actions, we need only look at his domestic authority-building strategy. Breslauer states that

                    In his capacity as a politician, Khrushchev’s authority-building strategy roughly paralleled the pattern
                    of his problem-solving strategy: he first embraced a strategy of confrontation as a means of assuring his
                    ascendancy, and then reverted to a posture of reconciliation (Breslauer 1982: 77).

In dealing with the U.S. in particular, Khrushchev was quite confrontational at times. As Riasanovsky noted above, his overall policy he wanted to follow was conciliatory, however foreign policy debacles such as Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis were hardly conciliatory.

Where all this becomes very interesting is in the examination of his domestic political climate. Khrushchev was inherently a reformer. Linden notes that

                    Political necessity occasionally led Khrushchev to assume the colors of an orthodox militant expediency
                    frequently put him in a centrist position, but personal conviction moved him more and more toward radical
                    reform within the context of the party regime. He took up the latter cause whenever possible and undertook
                    grave risks for its sake (Linden 1966: 23).

When a leader has a policy orientation like this, resistance within his ruling circle is likely to emerge. This caused his policies to be rather erratic.

Roeder divides Khrushchev’s rule into three distinct periods: directive, pluralistic, and primatial. The pluralistic period (1953-57) was characterized by "very high levels of elite competition and wide dispersal of policymaking authority" (Roeder 1984: 174). The directive period (1957-60) featured the "concentration of decision making authority in Khrushchev’s hands and very little opposition" (ibid, 175). The primatial period (1960-64) "prevailed during a period in which the besieged leader increasingly fought for his political survival" (ibid, 175). The first two periods correspond with Khrushchev’s ascendancy to, and consolidation of, power and the third to his decline and fall.

The opposition from 1953-57 came from Malenkov and Molotov. As Roeder notes, from 1957-60 there was not much opposition. From 1960-64 his colleagues in the Presidium (what the Politburo was known as at that time) became increasingly disenchanted with his policies both at home and abroad which led to the coup in October 1964 were Brezhnev replaced him. Thus, Khrushchev’s primary opposition came from his colleagues.

How did these domestic constraints affect Khrushchev’s foreign policy? From 1953-60 he was able to sustain his policy initiatives, both domestic and foreign, as evidenced by the fact that the "height of détente was reached at the summit conference in Geneva in July 1955" (Riasanovsky 1984: 559), which was a policy Khrushchev initiated. During this period Khrushchev was also able to reduce the size of the armed forces to help finance consumer matters domestically.

Where opposition played the largest role was in the 1960-64 period. Roeder hypothesizes that when being in a

                    situation in which a leader has consolidated his authority over foreign policy, but is challenged
                    by others for his power, as in a primatial regime, the leader finds it increasingly expedient to take
                    dramatic initiatives or make sharp changes in the direction of policy in order to keep his opponents
                    politically off balance’ (Roeder, 1984: 180-1).

Thus, these constraints may have forced Khrushchev to undertake irrational foreign policies. Again, Berlin and the Cuban Missile Crisis are the leading examples as they occurred during this time. In conclusion, it appears that Khrushchev was most affected by opposition during the latter part of his regime. His erratic and aggressive policies during this time were a result of the "complex, internal battle he had conducted to sustain his leadership" (Linden, 1966: 207). Eventually, Khrushchev was no longer able to maintain his authority and was deposed in the October 1964. Brezhnev succeeded him.

Brezhnev (1964-82).  As has just been mentioned, Brezhnev came to power via an internal coup. As with Khrushchev, he had to build his authority. As also with Khrushchev, he did not have sole power in the beginning. Unlike Khrushchev, Brezhnev was not given to rapid reform and fits of erratic behavior. Breslauer has observed that Brezhnev’s

                    rejection of radical political transformation, and his greater emphasis on budgetary redistribution
                    and material incentives, were consistent with his embracing a posture as political broker. He eschewed
                    appeals to the masses over the heads of his colleagues, avoided playing too heavily on elite fears of the
                    masses, and avoided raising consumer expectations for personal political gain… Brezhnev’s strategy
                    fostered and built upon elite yearning for stabilization and steady, measured progress, based on growing
                    confidence that problems could be managed, and tensions contained, without a vozhd’ to show them
                    the way (Breslauer, 1982: 12).

After the erratic tenure of Khrushchev, Brezhnev showed himself not to be one to rock the boat. This seems to suggest that Brezhnev was a pragmatic leader. Although he had to overcome the likes of Podgornyy and Shelepin in order to gain absolute control, he worked through the Politburo rather than above it. Only late in his term did Brezhnev undertake mildly militant actions through his adventures in the Third World. And even in doing this he did not openly antagonize the U.S. as Stalin and Khrushchev had done.

Brezhnev’s political environment is interesting in that he had the same constraints Khrushchev had when he came to power. Harry Gelman notes that "Brezhnev was severely hemmed in when he began his struggle to expand his authority after Khrushchev’s fall" (Gelman, 1984: 71). The key figures opposing him were Podgornyy, Shelepin, and Suslov. Through sheer coalition building Brezhnev outmaneuvered Podgornyy and Shelepin. By aligning himself with the military, he was able to win Suslov’s loyalties. However, Breslauer points out that there was a parallel between the administrations of Khrushchev and Brezhnev:

                    A period of political succession was followed in both cases during which the Party leader rose to
                    an ascendant position in the Politburo, outflanking or purging his rivals, and forging a comprehensive
                    program that bore his stamp. In both administrations that program was frustrated rather soon after its
                    promulgation, leading the General Secretary to redefine once again his authority-building strategy
                    (Breslauer, 1982: 13).

Unlike Khrushchev, this produced different foreign policy outputs for Brezhnev. Much has to do with Brezhnev working inside the Politburo as opposed to Khrushchev’s more solo style. But the type of regime Brezhnev had was different from that of Khrushchev. In short, Brezhnev was more likely to play within the system than Khrushchev was. In essence, we are talking about two different personalities here.

To reinforce this, Roeder divides Brezhnev’s term into two distinct periods: oligarchic (1964-1973) and cartelistic (1973-1977). According to Roeder, both these periods contribute to consistent levels of foreign policy. The oligarchic period features "limited competition for power and dispersed authority over policy" and the cartelistic period is where "competition for power within the central elite has been further reduced and elite participation in decisions within each issue area has been narrowed" (Roeder, 1984: 176-77). Thus, during the time period covered in this study, Brezhnev had no real serious challenges to his authority that would have caused him to adjust his foreign policy on a regular basis. In short, Brezhnev appears to have been able to sustain policies that were not aggressive toward the U.S.

As for later in the Brezhnev period it is less clear whether opposition played a role. As Breslauer points out, "we remain in the dark about the precise extent of Brezhnev’s potential power" (Breslauer 1982: 245). Brezhnev remained in power until his death in 1982. The scope of this study only goes through December 1978 because of the limitations of the COPDAB data. It should also be pointed out that the time period in this study does not cover some of Brezhnev’s more militant actions, namely the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979. Needless to say, this action did upset the U.S. However, the preceding discussion suggests that Brezhnev was the classic pragmatic Soviet leader.

Expectations

One key hypothesis results from this discussion for the purposes of this study: the foreign policy output of an authoritarian regime depends on who the leader is. According to this hypothesis, and contrary to realism, domestic politics matter in the foreign policy of authoritarian regimes. In particular, given the discussion of each of these leaders (and what we know of Cold War history) we can expect somewhat of a more conciliatory approach to foreign policy on the part of the Soviets as the time covered in this study goes on.

The reasons for saying this are simply a result of taking a look at the timeline covered in this study. During Khrushchev’s term as Soviet leader, we saw him advocate a "peaceful coexistence" with the West, yet he did involve the Soviets in brinkmanship with the U.S., namely the Berlin and Cuban Missile Crises. In addition to this, there were also the inflammatory remarks he made before the UN as well as the "we will bury you" remark that many Americans viewed as highly antagonistic. In short, Khrushchev’s term was erratic, if anything. However, it is apparent that some of the more serious crises between the U.S. and the Soviets occurred during this time. Thus, we can expect Soviet foreign policy to appear more aggressive during this time.

Brezhnev, by contrast, had a bit of a different political climate, as Roeder has pointed out. While factionalism was a staple of Soviet politics, he was not given to agitating the Politburo like Khrushchev was. This resulted in a bit of a more stable period of Soviet foreign policy. There were no major crises with the U.S. during this time. While Brezhnev did partake of some adventures in the Third World, he did nothing to openly agitate the U.S. In short, we should expect a foreign policy output from Brezhnev that is more conciliatory than that of Khrushchev.

Empirical Tests

Now what is required are the empirical tests to determine if the central hypothesis is valid. As stated, this hypothesis is that the foreign policy output of each regime is dependent on who the leader is, which supports the notion of change as opposed to continuity in Soviet foreign policy. In order to test this, we have taken the Conflict and Peace Data Bank (COPDAB) and used those cases where the Soviet Union is the actor and the U.S. is the target. We believe that Soviet actions toward the U.S. would be indicative of their actions as a whole during this time period since their policy towards the US is the central element of foreign policy in the Post-WWII era.. I also included the data where the U.S. was the actor toward the Soviets because it may reveal responsiveness to U.S. policy by the Soviets. This represents the well supported action-reaction models of many studies of foreign policy behavior.

In this data set, each foreign policy action is listed on a 1-15 scale with 1 being the least severe (or most cooperative) and 15 being the most severe (or most conflictual). For each month, the sum of the scaled events is calculated. We then took the mean of these summed scaled events and created the average monthly score (AvScale). The average scale per month for the Soviets is what constitutes the dependent variable in this study. This is noted as Soviet Foreign Policy (SFP). The same exact procedure was followed for the data where the U.S. was the actor. This variable is knows as U.S. Foreign Policy (USFP). We also added binary variables for the Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods. The purpose of this was to 1) make them variables in the study for the purpose of testing and 2) to denote when they were or were not in power. In doing this, 1 denotes that they were in power and 0 represents when they were not in power.

However, it is important to test for outside influences on Soviet foreign policy as well. Dixon and Gaarder, for example, found that continuity was the norm for the U.S. during roughly this same period. We must consider the possibility that the same could be the case with the Soviets, hence this is standard support for the null hypothesis that there will be no observable change in Soviet foreign policy. In particular, we wanted to test for changes across leadership while also accounting for how responsive the Soviets were to U.S. foreign policy actions. This is the reason for having U.S. foreign policy as a variable. To supplement this, we added two more independent variables - the interaction between leaders and US foreign policy. These interactions are the Khrushchev and Brezhnev dummy variables interacted with the monthly aggregate U.S. foreign policy average scale. The purpose of doing it this way was to see if different leaders are differentially influenced by U.S. actions. If they are, it points to the fact that what the U.S. was doing influenced the Soviets. Ignoring this may have the potential of reducing the significance of the model. Doing this not only tests the responsiveness of Soviet leaders to U.S. actions, but it also serves as a test for whether or not perceptions are important. After all, if Jervis is correct, Soviet responses will offer a glimpse to how the Soviet leaders perceive the world around them.

At the conclusion of this analysis, we will turn and re-examine Soviet Foreign policy in a rather different manner. The aggregate analysis conducted first is a fairly standard way of examining foreign policy behavior using the COPDAB data. After this straightforward empirical examination using the scaled event codes, we undertake to perform a simpler analysis with a much more complex (and richer) variable in the data set - the activity verbs. Each COPDAB event has its 1-15 scaled event code, but also has a simple single verb that describes the basic activity of the event. There is also a text description of each event, which we do not examine, since it would require some form of language processing, a task well beyound the scope of this paper. The activity verbs represent a large set (1500+) verbs which best describe the action taken by the actor. They are thus a nominal variable, and possess no scale information separate from the event code. The interesting feature is that they represent is a much richer description of the foreign policy choices made by each leader. We thus hypothesize here that while the overall tenor of relations may be similar, given the continuity of the system, and historical ties and conflicts, the individual belief systems of each leader will strongly influence the selection of the particular activity. Hence two different verbs may well represent the same scale values, but produce substantially different nuances in actual practise. Given the importance of subtle signalling in diplomacy, significant differences in leadersip style in the selction of foreign policy activity is a strong prima facia finding that leadership style varies greatly across regimes and that this is a significant difference in foreign policy behavior. We will return to these tests later in the discussion.

To begin, we wanted to see if there was a pattern to Soviet foreign policy over the entire time period covered in this study. We have plotted Soviet Foreign Policy across the period of the study in Figure 1. What the plot appears to reveal is an ever-so-slight negative decline over the period under study, indicating some possible difference. However, it does not appear visibly string enough to warrant any a priori expectations about the actual relationships that further analysis would find. However, the initial impression is that there are slight declining scores for Soviet foreign policy over the time period examined. As the graph shows, the scale starts out rather high in 1948 and shows a very slight decline from there with occasional peaks and valleys in between. As stated, this is not really enough to be conclusive in telling us what we want to know, which is basically whether there was continuity or change in Soviet foreign policy from 1948-1978. This graph is shown below in Figure 1. Indeed a quick look at it suggests that while one period may be less conflictual than another, the progression by which it gets there is more of a continuous decline than a discrete or abrupt shift. One cannot look at the graph and say that yes indeed, leadership changes are obvious from this graph of behavior.

Figure 1

To supplement this graph and for descriptive purposes, we have listed below in Table 1 the average scale for each leader when he was in power.

Table 1
 
Leader Soviet Foreign Policy Average Scale (Mean)
Stalin 9.104
Khrushchev 8.502
Brezhnev 8.062

N=372

As can be seen here, the trend, as the line graph showed, is slightly descending. This seems to suggest that as time goes on the severity of foreign policy actions declined, as evidenced by the descending trend in the mean average scales for the three leaders. Thus, there was a large drop between Stalin and Khrushchev even though the decrease from Khrushchev to Brezhnev is slightly less than ½ of a point. I also want to point out that these average scale values fall in just above the middle of the 1-15 scale used here. This suggests that, on the average, Soviet foreign policy was neither overly antagonistic nor conciliatory during this time. Perhaps Stalin is slightly more antagonistic while Breshnev is slightly more conciliatory. The changes appear to be there, but weak.

The Regression Model. The next test to perform was to model the relationship using OLS regression. The dependent variable in this study is Soviet foreign policy output (SFP). The independent variables being examined are Khrushchev (K), Brezhnev (B), U.S. foreign policy output (USFP), the average scale monthly aggregate for the U.S., and the last two independent variables are Khrushchev interacted with U.S. foreign policy (USFP*K) and Brezhnev interacted with U.S. foreign policy (USFP*B). The theoretical reason for doing this is to see if Khrushchev and Brezhnev were responsive to U.S. foreign policy. Not the omission of a Stalin dummy variable. As in standrard dummy variable analysis, one category must be omitted to prevent an overspecified model. Thus the intercept presents the Soviet foreign policy mean for the Stalin era, and the Krushchev and Brezhnev variables indicate changes from this initial period's mean.

The means by which this model will provide a test for our theory is that it will test, first, if each individual leader is statistically significant with regard to the formulation of Soviet foreign policy. Second, it will test the effect of U.S. foreign policy as an external factor on U.S. foreign policy. And lastly, whether that effect differes across leaderships or regimes. The coefficients and T-values for each variable are listed below in Table 2.

Table 2
 
Independent Variable Regression Coefficient T-Value
Intercept 12.1751 14.4696
Khrushchev -5.6054 -4.4147*
Brezhnev -6.0328 -6.0790*
U.S. Foreign Policy (USFP) -0.4867 -4.2474*
USFP * Khrushchev .6381 3.5239*
USFP * Brezhnev .6529 4.8235*

N = 362 Adjusted R-Squared = .3096 p < .05 * = statistically significant. The Burbin-Watson d is not significant.

Table 3 lists the regression coefficients as well as the T-values. At first glance, the most striking result is that all of the t-values are significant. This is very important as it shows that the model itself is statistically significant. First, we see that Khrushchev’s coefficient is –5.6054, which is a downward sloping line and lends credence to the notion that there was a downward trend in Soviet foreign policy during this time. The t-value for Khrushchev is also significant at –4.4147. Brezhnev is also statistically significant. His coefficient is almost ½ a point higher than that of Khrushchev at –6.0328. This suggests that Soviet aggressive actions toward the U.S. decreased during this time at a higher rate than during the Khrushchev years. Brezhnev’s t-value, at –6.0790, is significantly higher than Khrushchev’s. This suggests that Brezhnev may have been more responsive to U.S. actions or it could also be a reflection of Brezhnev’s political climate in that he was not as antagonistic toward his colleagues like Khrushchev was, thus affording him the opportunity to pursue a peaceful coexistence policy with the U.S. at this time. U.S. Foreign Policy is also a significant variable in this model, as shown by its t-value of –4.2474. This tells us that U.S. Foreign Policy was indeed significant with regard to the formulation of Soviet foreign policy. In short, the Soviets apparently paid close attention to what the U.S. was doing when it was formulating its foreign policy.

The interactions of U.S. Foreign Policy with Khrushchev and Brezhnev are also interesting, and significant. While their coefficients are roughly the same (.6381 and .6529), Brezhnev’s t-value is much more significant than Khrushchev’s (4.8235 vs. 3.5239). While both are statistically significant, this seems to suggest that Brezhnev may have been more responsive to U.S. Foreign Policy.

With regard to the OLS assumptions, this model does have a problem with multicollinearity. The fact is that some of the independent variables do appear to be correlated more with one another than with the dependent variable. This is only natural with dummy variable analysis. However, the effect of multicollinearity is often to decrease the significance of the model. If this is the case with this model, then it suggests that the t-values may actually be more significant than they appear to be. Also, when dealing with these particular independent variables, some multicollinearity is to be expected. For example, when interacting the Khrushchev and Brezhnev dummy variables with the U.S. foreign policy variable, it is likely that multicollinearity will occur.

In sum, this model is significant. While we make no claim to it having tremendous explanatory value, we do see it as being able lend some basic support. We will discuss this in the next section.

Analysis

The obvious question is simply what does this say about Soviet foreign policy? We can consider two major questions here. First, what does it say about whether or not leaders matter? Second, what does it say about the implications of neorealist theory? A la Dixon and Gaarder, does it suggest continuity or change in Soviet foreign policy?

In dealing with the first question, we see that the t-values for Khrushchev and Brezhnev were quite significant. This would seem to suggest that leaders do, in fact, make a difference. Brezhnev had a higher increase over the Stalin period than than Khrushchev did. Had these values been insignificant, then we could assume that leaders are not important variables in explaining Soviet foreign policy behavior.

Since they are significant, this suggests that leaders do, in fact, make a difference. What the numbers reported in this study tell us is that Khrushchev and Brezhnev have explanatory value in the formulation of Soviet foreign policy.

In the case of Khrushchev, the negative coefficient and t-value suggest that he was able, to a point, to pursue his policy of peaceful coexistence with the West. While he was erratic and antagonistic at times, scholars such as Linden have noted that Khrushchev genuinely sought to peacefully coexist with the U.S. His methods may not have displayed this, but it was nevertheless there. This erratic behavior can most likely be explained by the domestic political climate Khrushchev faced. As Linden noted, he was able to consolidate his power at a certain point, but he was always engaged in bargaining with his colleagues and was constantly looking over his shoulder as challengers seemed to arise, especially in the latter portion of his term. The theory of scholars such as Roeder would argue that this caused him to pursue antagonistic policies toward the U.S. in order to maintain his hold on power. In short, it could be viewed as the classic manufacturing of an international crisis to shore up support at home. In Khrushchev’s case, however, he did not need this support from the people, but rather from his colleagues.

Brezhnev’s coefficient and t-value are higher than that of Khrushchev, which indicates that he moverd more concilitory than Khrushchev did over Stalin's foreign policy. The consideration of his political environment is important here. As mentioned, Brezhnev did not have to constantly be on the lookout for challengers like Khrushchev was. Of course, early in his term, Brezhnev did have challengers. But once these were overcome, he was able to have a reasonably free hand in the formulation of Soviet foreign policy.

This also indicates that the Politburo may have been willing to go along with what Brezhnev wanted to do. As mentioned by Gelman, Brezhnev was not given to antagonizing his colleagues like Khrushchev was. Brezhnev preferred to operate by consensus and not rock the boat. This most likely contributed to his longevity in power. The importance of this discussion is that this may have enabled Brezhnev to better respond to what the U.S. was doing. We all know that the 1970’s were a period of détente between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This period saw arms treaties such as START get negotiated and ratified by both countries.

U.S. foreign policy also proved itself to be a significant variable in this model. In short, this tells us that what the U.S. was doing was taken into consideration when the Soviets were formulating their foreign policy. A neorealist could claim that this confirms neorealism as the dominant theory. I would disagree. While I have never contended that external influences are unimportant, it is still individual leaders, and their preferences, which respond to external stimuli.

We can see this when looking at the significance of the interactions in the model. When I interacted both Khrushchev and Brezhnev with U.S. Foreign Policy, the t-values were significant. For Khrushchev, the t-value was 3.5239 and for Brezhnev is was 4.8235. What is important here is that it indicates that both Khrushchev and Brezhnev were responsive to what the foreign policy output of the U.S. In looking at these statistics, it appears that Brezhnev may have been more so. This could help explain why average scale of Soviet foreign policy continued to decline during the Brezhnev years.

However, when we return to analyzing how a neorealist might feel about this, they would certainly claim that their assertion of the external environment having explanatory value would be confirmed here. To a point, they may be right. However, as I contended above, it is the individual leader that has to respond to external stimuli. This is especially the case with authoritarian regimes. Scholars such as Jervis would argue that a leader’s perceptions are important here. This may also be the case. However, I believe it may be more appropriate to argue that both are true to a certain extent. There will always be external stimuli for leaders of nations to respond to, however who the leader is may well hold a high level of explanatory value for how that nation responds to this stimuli.

With regard to the democratic peace, this study suggests that the Soviet Union was not as aggressive as democratic peace theorists would have one believe. In fact, the Soviets exhibited a declining aggressiveness in their policy over time. As I stated earlier, I do not seek to refute the main points of democratic peace theory since it is robust. However, this study shows that they may be too hasty in dismissing authoritarian regimes as inherently aggressive.

What is important is that these results indicate that the individual leaders were significant in this regard: these leaders were responsive to U.S. foreign policy. Based on my statistics, it appears that Brezhnev may have been more responsive than Khrushchev. Both, however, prove themselves to be significant in the model. Therein lies the importance of the findings of this study.

Our secondary analysis serves to shore this up rather well. As noted above, we examined the activity verbs for both the Soviet Union and the US, and then we look further at each leader's choice of foreign policy actions. Significant differences across nations (and leaders) will show up on these tallies as significant Chi-squared statistics. The logic in these hypothesis tests is fairly straightforward. A foreign policy elite, when faced with the need to act, is also faced with a wide variety of actions that may serve the purpose, The leader will then select the action that will best suit his (or her) needs providing the requisite nuances and signaling. As a result, differences in belief systems will certainly entail differences in action selection. In other words, faced with similar situations, one leader may feel that a threat is in order, while another may choose to warn - a softer verb with similar scaling. It is anticipated (but untested here) that these nuances will play a significant role in the progression of foreign policy behvavior between nations. Certainly we must observe such differences before we can attribute overall changes to such choice selection.


We provide two tables that are an initial look at this question. The first demonstrates the differences inherent in the US and the Soviet Union in the selection of verbs each nation makes (Table 2). Certain verbs are consistently used by both nations. Agree, meet, protest, deny are all verbs that tend to be selected as often by the US as the Soviet Union. But other actions such as reject, charge, deny, accuse, denounce, and condemn, to name a few, are much different in whether they are part of the standard repetoire of the foreign policy lexicon. These differences across a fairly large number of verbs indicate, as we would expect, that the US and the Sovioet Union have very different styles.

The changes across leadership are, quite interestingly for our purposes, quite dramatic as well (Table 3). Many verbs vary tremendously across regime. Clearly different leaders vary greatly in their approach to action in foreign policy. Perhaps they all move roughly in the same direction, given the larger systemic circumstances they find themselves in, but they get there through somewhat different paths. And in an area where subtle nuances are believed to have major import, this means that the tenor and scope of foreign policy is likely to be influenced in quite important ways by the choice of actions and activity verbs. We find this table to represent significant findings for the influence of leadership upon foreign policy.

Of minor note here we should point out that our analysis required processing the data with specially designed data that uncovered some minor problems with the COPDAB data. Most of these problems are either transparant to the user using a convential statsitical package, or are trivial, but we thought it useful to provide a brief summary of the problems found in processing this widely used data set.

Conclusion

Up to this point, we have provided some positive initial answers to the questions that we set out to examine: was there continuity or change in Soviet foreign policy? The short answer to this question is that our study reveals that change may have been the case in the Soviet Union. This change appears to be both in the form of a gradual, declining trend and in significant differences in the selection of basic foreign policy activity or choices. It seems quite plausible to conjecture that the gradual decline in hostility may well be driven by the subtle nuances in responses selcted by different regimes. This is intuitively appealing, supports basic expectations and reconciles the neorealist view with a larger more complex view of teh international system that provides room for domestic influence on foreign policy as well. When we go back to Table 1, we see a declining level of hostility in the average scales of both Khrushchev and Brezhnev. While there is nothing exact about this (we are working with monthly aggregates) it is telling.

What also leads us to contend that change is apparent in Soviet foreign policy is the fact that the leaders themselves are significant in the model. This statistical significance increased as we move from the Khrushchev to the Brezhnev era. This also provides some statistical evidence of change. The increase in coefficient value from Khrushchev to Brezhnev also serves to suggest this as well. In short, this suggests that personalities and perceptions may make a difference.

It should not be ignored that U.S. foreign policy was quite significant in this model. Also, the interactions of Khrushchev and Brezhnev with U.S. foreign policy were quite significant as well. This does serve to validate the effects of external stimuli on Soviet foreign policy, but the interaction variables also suggest that how the individual leaders choose to respond to these variables is just as important.

To recap, this study suggests some strong evidence for change in Soviet foreign policy. We do not pretend that this study is perfect in any way. It is simply our first attempt to test the phenomena of continuity and change in Soviet foreign policy. As mentioned, Dixon and Gaarder found continuity in American foreign policy. We do not posit our study is a refutation of theirs. Rather, we suggest that Soviet leaders operated in different political environment than U.S. presidents do. This environment (e.g., elite political competition, level of power consolidation) seems to lend itself more to changing foreign policies. In the U.S., the president is accountable to the general electorate to a certain point. This may produce continuity, as the American electorate is likely to not respond well to radical changes in foreign policy. As long as things are going well internationally, American presidents may be given to pursuing the status quo regardless of their political ideology.

As for future research, it would be interesting to see how this model would unfold over the remainder of the Soviet era. In particular, we would be interested to see if there are updated versions of the COPDAB data set in order to apply this model through the demise of the Soviet Union. We would expect a continued decline in aggressive Soviet behavior and it would be interesting to see if this is the case. However, as we can see, it appears that the period of 1953-1978 in Soviet foreign policy was marked by change. This change was in the form of a foreign policy that became less antagonistic over time.

References