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Explaining U.S. Support for the Creation of Israel: An Advocacy Coalition Framework Approach
Abstract
The Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) is applied to understand and simplify policy creation and change within the dynamics of a policy subsystem. The policy subsystem examined here is the U.S. decision to support the creation of Israel. The ACF is applied to identify the policy core beliefs, coalition members, coalitions and their relative stability within the subsystem from 1922 to 1944. 1922 marks the first U.S. policy on the issue of support for Israel, and 1944 is the last time a resolution concerning the creation of Israel was debated by Congress publicly before 1948. To determine the policy beliefs and coalition membership, qualitative content analysis was conducted of statements made during U.S. Congressional hearings held in 1922 and 1944. These statements were then analyzed using Euclidian distance measures to create clusters of members of coalitions based on their policy core beliefs. Both coalitions and the policy core beliefs were tested for stability over time. The results found that within the policy subsystem the lineup of allies and adversaries was relatively stable over two decades. In addition, the pro-Zionist coalition became dominant over time and had an increase in policy core belief agreement, while the level of agreement in the pro-Arab coalition decreased. This research provides us a new level of analysis of the coalitions that lobbied Congress both in favor of and opposed to the creation of Israel, as well as applying this policy theory for the first time to a historical foreign policy case.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Israel
Sub Area
Public Policy