Refine
Year of publication
- 2023 (3)
Document Type
- Article (2)
- Part of a Book (1)
Language
- English (3)
Has Fulltext
- no (3)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (3)
Why do some immigrant diasporas in the United States (U.S.) establish foreign policy interest groups while others do not? While scholars have demonstrated that diasporic interest groups often successfully influence U.S. foreign policy, we take a step back to ask why only certain diasporas attempt to do so in the first place. We argue that two factors increase the likelihood of diaspora mobilization: a community’s experience with democratic governance and conflict in its country of origin. We posit that these conditions make it more likely that political entrepreneurs emerge to serve as catalysts for top-down mobilization. To test our hypotheses, we collect and analyze novel data on diasporic interest groups as well as the characteristics of their respective countries of origin. In turn, we conduct the first in-depth case studies of the historical and contemporary Indian-American lobbies, using original archival and interview evidence.
How do conflicts within a country's borders affect its behavior beyond them? We argue that fighting insurgencies at home shapes a country's human rights posture at the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). States often suppress insurgencies using methods that violate their international human rights commitments. They are therefore hesitant to condemn other countries’ alleged violations for fear of reciprocal condemnation of their own actions. This is especially true in countries with greater media freedom where the media is more likely to hold the state accountable for human rights violations, and to highlight its apparent hypocrisy internationally. Such states, we argue, are more likely to vote against or abstain from resolutions that target individual states for human rights transgressions. We test this claim with a global statistical analysis of country voting patterns at the UNHRC from 1973 to 2017. Our results yield new insights into the determinants of countries’ voting behavior in multilateral human rights fora.
Diaspora communities are not homogeneous entities even if they are characterized as such for analytical convenience. Often, members of the diaspora carry their political attitudes from their country of origin, which the next generation might also inherit. Given that political preferences in the country of origin might vary significantly, members of the diaspora should also have different political preferences. To test this variation, we explore the internal cleavages of the Indian-American community using a national sample of 1,003 members of this community. We find significant differences by political identity, religion, age, and state of origin in India on evaluations of politicians and policy in India. Moreover, we find that Indian-Americans are not only divided in their attitudes towards politics in India, but that the same factors predict differences in evaluating both politicians and policy in the United States (US). Our results contribute to our understanding of Indian American attitudes, and also offer clues to how diaspora communities carry their political predispositions with them to their destination country, as well as how the diaspora remains as a vital element in – and stimulus on – Indian foreign policy.