Jordan Tama
Biographic Data
| ID | 273849 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jordan Tama |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jordan |
| FAMILY NAME | Tama |
| SIGNATURE | TAMA J |
| AFFILIATIONS | American University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-4571-1351 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 70 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Elite Misperceptions in Foreign Policy
Many models of domestic politics in international relations presume that political elites correctly perceive public preferences, even as a growing body of research in political behavior calls this assumption into question. Leveraging seven paired surveys of 4,852 foreign policy elites and 13,687 members of the American public from 2004–24 on twenty-four different questions, we show elites systematically misperceive public opinion in foreign polic…
The Impact of Professional Training in Public and Policy Engagement
Engaging with audiences and communities beyond academia is now a common practice for political scientists. Yet, political scientists rarely are trained in how to conduct public or policy engagement, and we know little about the impact that training programs have on their preparedness to communicate with the public and policy makers. In this study, we evaluate whether professional training equips scholars with the skills needed to perform public a…
Bipartisanship and US Foreign Policy: Cooperation in a Polarized Age
Bridging the Gap in a Changing World: New Opportunities and Challenges for Engaging Practitioners and the Public
In recent years, an array of initiatives has sought to bridge widely recognized gaps separating international studies scholars from policymakers and the public. While such gaps persist, changes in society, the media, and academia have altered the context for scholars seeking to make their research known to public and policy communities. On the one hand, the emergence on the public agenda of new policy concerns, proliferation of public-facing outl…
Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, 2020. Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights. Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy
Polarization and US foreign policy: Key debates and new findings
Polarization in the USA has been on the rise for several decades. In this context, few observers expect politics today to stop "at the water's edge," as the old cliché goes. But key questions about the relationship between polarization and US foreign policy remain to be fully answered. To what extent are American ideas about foreign policy now polarized along partisan lines? How is polarization changing the foreign policy behavior of the US Congr…
Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation
Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation." Congress & the Presidency, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
Sascat: Natural language processing approach to the study of economic sanctions
Existing datasets of economic sanctions rely primarily on secondary sources and do not tend to take full advantage of government documents related to economic coercion. Such data may miss sanctions, and do not capture important details in how coercive measures are threatened, imposed and removed. The latter processes often have much to do with the domestic politics in sender countries. Understanding these processes may be necessary in order to fu…
Anti-Presidential Bipartisanship in Foreign Policy in the Trump Era
The prevalence of bipartisanship in U.S. foreign policy: An analysis of important congressional votes
Foreign Policy Advocacy and Entrepreneurship: How a New Generation in Congress Is Shaping U.S. Engagement with the World
Multilateralism and the Use of Force: Experimental Evidence on the Views of Foreign Policy Elites
International relations scholars have found that multilateral approval increases public support for the use of military force and have developed competing explanations for this phenomenon. However, this literature has given little attention to the attitudes of individuals who participate directly in the foreign policy process or shape foreign policy debates. In this research note, we administer a survey experiment to both a cross-section of US fo…
Forcing the President's Hand: How the US Congress Shapes Foreign Policy through Sanctions Legislation
Given the US president's leading role in many areas of American foreign policy, one might expect the president to prevail in executive-legislative clashes over economic sanctions. In this paper, I show that, with surprising frequency, US legislators overcome presidential opposition to their sanctions proposals and induce the president to take foreign policy actions that he or she would not otherwise take. My argument explains why the president of…
Tradeoffs in defense strategic planning: Lessons from the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review
Defense ministries conduct strategic planning in various ways. In this article I outline tradeoffs in the design of strategic planning processes, and consider the implications of these tradeoffs for choices about the conduct of defense planning in different circumstances. Whereas an inclusive and transparent planning process is well-suited to building internal and external buy-in for a defense strategy, a more exclusive and opaque process is more…
Jim Thurber: A Model of a Publicly-Oriented Scholar
The way I first came to know Jim Thurber is symptomatic of what may be his most impressive achievement – his ability to produce important scholarship about American politics while engaging extensiv
Independent Commissions as Settings for Civil-Military Deliberation: The Case of Women in the Military
US combat operations involving women and revelations of sexual abuse in the US military have periodically sparked intense political debates about women's military roles. In the midst of these debates, US policy makers have repeatedly created independent advisory commissions on issues concerning women in the military. This article uses qualitative case studies of three such commissions to evaluate whether commissions can foster meaningful civil-mi…
The politics of strategy: Why government agencies conduct major strategic reviews
In recent years, United States (US) policymakers have instituted quadrennial strategy reviews in several major policy areas. In this article, I examine why policymakers have initiated these large strategic reviews, and why a particular model for them has diffused from the US Defense Department to other government agencies. I find that policymakers have initiated the reviews principally to spur organisational change in agencies and influence the r…
Does Strategic Planning Matter? The Outcomes of U.S. National Security Reviews
Journal Article Does Strategic Planning Matter? The Outcomes of U.S. National Security Reviews Get access Jordan Tama Jordan Tama JORDAN TAMA is assistant professor of international relations at American University's School of International Service. He is the author of Terrorism and National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises and of a variety of articles on the politics, processes, and institutions of foreign policy a…
Crises, Commissions, and Reform: The Impact of Blue-Ribbon Panels
Scholars have found that, even when a crisis creates demand for reform, a focal point is often necessary to overcome obstacles to change. I argue that, with surprising frequency, U.S. blue-ribbon commissions use their bipartisan political credibility to provide this focal point and thereby catalyze postcrisis government reform. Since commission-inspired reform is often designed to integrate or centralize policy making, I further explain that comm…
From Private Consultation to Public Crusade: Assessing Eisenhower's Legislative Strategies on Foreign Policy
Existing scholarship describes Congress as deferring to Dwight Eisenhower on foreign policy during the majority of his presidency. In this article, I demonstrate that Congress resisted key elements of Eisenhower's foreign policy agenda throughout his presidency, and that Eisenhower needed to employ a variety of sophisticated strategies to obtain congressional backing. On foreign aid—one of his top presidential priorities—Eisenhower launched a mul…
Terrorism and National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises
Terrorism and National Security Reform demonstrates that blue-ribbon commissions can be powerful vehicles for policy change, overturning the conventional wisdom that views them only as devices for passing the buck. Jordan Tama explains how the unique political credibility of commissions can enable them to forge bipartisan consensus on tough policy challenges. He also shows that commissions are most valuable during a crisis, when policymakers face…
The Contemporary Presidency: The Power and Limitations of Commissions: The Iraq Study Group, Bush, Obama, and Congress
This article uses a case study of the 2006 Iraq Study Group to illustrate the policy‐making power and limitations of blue‐ribbon commissions. I argue that the distinct political credibility of commissions can enable them to shape public opinion and drive policy change, but that commissions usually cannot bridge partisan divides on highly salient issues marked by intense polarization. The case study reveals that the Iraq Study Group influenced pub…
Is Europe Too Cautious
The U.S. Congress and North Korea during the Clinton Years: Talk Tough, Carry a Small Stick
This essay explores the striking gap between Republican rhetoric and congressional action on North Korea between 1995 and 2001, when the GOP held majorities in both houses of Congress. While historical in nature, this inquiry offers lessons for President Bush—or, if elected president, John Kerry—as he struggles to meet the North Korea challenge
Le Monde diplomatique: August 1999, Paris
Multilateralism and the Use of Force: Experimental Evidence on the Views of Foreign Policy Elites
International relations scholars have found that multilateral approval increases public support for the use of military force and have developed competing explanations for this phenomenon. However, this literature has given little attention to the attitudes of individuals who participate directly in the foreign policy process or shape foreign policy debates. In this research note, we administer a survey experiment to both a cross-section of US fo…
Polarization and US foreign policy: Key debates and new findings
Polarization in the USA has been on the rise for several decades. In this context, few observers expect politics today to stop "at the water's edge," as the old cliché goes. But key questions about the relationship between polarization and US foreign policy remain to be fully answered. To what extent are American ideas about foreign policy now polarized along partisan lines? How is polarization changing the foreign policy behavior of the US Congr…
The prevalence of bipartisanship in U.S. foreign policy: An analysis of important congressional votes
Forcing the President's Hand: How the US Congress Shapes Foreign Policy through Sanctions Legislation
Given the US president's leading role in many areas of American foreign policy, one might expect the president to prevail in executive-legislative clashes over economic sanctions. In this paper, I show that, with surprising frequency, US legislators overcome presidential opposition to their sanctions proposals and induce the president to take foreign policy actions that he or she would not otherwise take. My argument explains why the president of…
Crises, Commissions, and Reform: The Impact of Blue-Ribbon Panels
Scholars have found that, even when a crisis creates demand for reform, a focal point is often necessary to overcome obstacles to change. I argue that, with surprising frequency, U.S. blue-ribbon commissions use their bipartisan political credibility to provide this focal point and thereby catalyze postcrisis government reform. Since commission-inspired reform is often designed to integrate or centralize policy making, I further explain that comm…
Bridging the Gap in a Changing World: New Opportunities and Challenges for Engaging Practitioners and the Public
In recent years, an array of initiatives has sought to bridge widely recognized gaps separating international studies scholars from policymakers and the public. While such gaps persist, changes in society, the media, and academia have altered the context for scholars seeking to make their research known to public and policy communities. On the one hand, the emergence on the public agenda of new policy concerns, proliferation of public-facing outl…
The Contemporary Presidency: The Power and Limitations of Commissions: The Iraq Study Group, Bush, Obama, and Congress
This article uses a case study of the 2006 Iraq Study Group to illustrate the policy‐making power and limitations of blue‐ribbon commissions. I argue that the distinct political credibility of commissions can enable them to shape public opinion and drive policy change, but that commissions usually cannot bridge partisan divides on highly salient issues marked by intense polarization. The case study reveals that the Iraq Study Group influenced pub…
Tradeoffs in defense strategic planning: Lessons from the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review
Defense ministries conduct strategic planning in various ways. In this article I outline tradeoffs in the design of strategic planning processes, and consider the implications of these tradeoffs for choices about the conduct of defense planning in different circumstances. Whereas an inclusive and transparent planning process is well-suited to building internal and external buy-in for a defense strategy, a more exclusive and opaque process is more…
Independent Commissions as Settings for Civil-Military Deliberation: The Case of Women in the Military
US combat operations involving women and revelations of sexual abuse in the US military have periodically sparked intense political debates about women's military roles. In the midst of these debates, US policy makers have repeatedly created independent advisory commissions on issues concerning women in the military. This article uses qualitative case studies of three such commissions to evaluate whether commissions can foster meaningful civil-mi…
Does Strategic Planning Matter? The Outcomes of U.S. National Security Reviews
Journal Article Does Strategic Planning Matter? The Outcomes of U.S. National Security Reviews Get access Jordan Tama Jordan Tama JORDAN TAMA is assistant professor of international relations at American University's School of International Service. He is the author of Terrorism and National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises and of a variety of articles on the politics, processes, and institutions of foreign policy a…
The U.S. Congress and North Korea during the Clinton Years: Talk Tough, Carry a Small Stick
This essay explores the striking gap between Republican rhetoric and congressional action on North Korea between 1995 and 2001, when the GOP held majorities in both houses of Congress. While historical in nature, this inquiry offers lessons for President Bush—or, if elected president, John Kerry—as he struggles to meet the North Korea challenge
Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation
Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation." Congress & the Presidency, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
The politics of strategy: Why government agencies conduct major strategic reviews
In recent years, United States (US) policymakers have instituted quadrennial strategy reviews in several major policy areas. In this article, I examine why policymakers have initiated these large strategic reviews, and why a particular model for them has diffused from the US Defense Department to other government agencies. I find that policymakers have initiated the reviews principally to spur organisational change in agencies and influence the r…
Is Europe Too Cautious
Le Monde diplomatique: August 1999, Paris
Is Europe Too Cautious
The U.S. Congress and North Korea during the Clinton Years: Talk Tough, Carry a Small Stick
This essay explores the striking gap between Republican rhetoric and congressional action on North Korea between 1995 and 2001, when the GOP held majorities in both houses of Congress. While historical in nature, this inquiry offers lessons for President Bush—or, if elected president, John Kerry—as he struggles to meet the North Korea challenge
Terrorism and National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises
Terrorism and National Security Reform demonstrates that blue-ribbon commissions can be powerful vehicles for policy change, overturning the conventional wisdom that views them only as devices for passing the buck. Jordan Tama explains how the unique political credibility of commissions can enable them to forge bipartisan consensus on tough policy challenges. He also shows that commissions are most valuable during a crisis, when policymakers face…
The Contemporary Presidency: The Power and Limitations of Commissions: The Iraq Study Group, Bush, Obama, and Congress
This article uses a case study of the 2006 Iraq Study Group to illustrate the policy‐making power and limitations of blue‐ribbon commissions. I argue that the distinct political credibility of commissions can enable them to shape public opinion and drive policy change, but that commissions usually cannot bridge partisan divides on highly salient issues marked by intense polarization. The case study reveals that the Iraq Study Group influenced pub…
From Private Consultation to Public Crusade: Assessing Eisenhower's Legislative Strategies on Foreign Policy
Existing scholarship describes Congress as deferring to Dwight Eisenhower on foreign policy during the majority of his presidency. In this article, I demonstrate that Congress resisted key elements of Eisenhower's foreign policy agenda throughout his presidency, and that Eisenhower needed to employ a variety of sophisticated strategies to obtain congressional backing. On foreign aid—one of his top presidential priorities—Eisenhower launched a mul…
Crises, Commissions, and Reform: The Impact of Blue-Ribbon Panels
Scholars have found that, even when a crisis creates demand for reform, a focal point is often necessary to overcome obstacles to change. I argue that, with surprising frequency, U.S. blue-ribbon commissions use their bipartisan political credibility to provide this focal point and thereby catalyze postcrisis government reform. Since commission-inspired reform is often designed to integrate or centralize policy making, I further explain that comm…
The politics of strategy: Why government agencies conduct major strategic reviews
In recent years, United States (US) policymakers have instituted quadrennial strategy reviews in several major policy areas. In this article, I examine why policymakers have initiated these large strategic reviews, and why a particular model for them has diffused from the US Defense Department to other government agencies. I find that policymakers have initiated the reviews principally to spur organisational change in agencies and influence the r…
Does Strategic Planning Matter? The Outcomes of U.S. National Security Reviews
Journal Article Does Strategic Planning Matter? The Outcomes of U.S. National Security Reviews Get access Jordan Tama Jordan Tama JORDAN TAMA is assistant professor of international relations at American University's School of International Service. He is the author of Terrorism and National Security Reform: How Commissions Can Drive Change During Crises and of a variety of articles on the politics, processes, and institutions of foreign policy a…
Independent Commissions as Settings for Civil-Military Deliberation: The Case of Women in the Military
US combat operations involving women and revelations of sexual abuse in the US military have periodically sparked intense political debates about women's military roles. In the midst of these debates, US policy makers have repeatedly created independent advisory commissions on issues concerning women in the military. This article uses qualitative case studies of three such commissions to evaluate whether commissions can foster meaningful civil-mi…
Tradeoffs in defense strategic planning: Lessons from the U.S. Quadrennial Defense Review
Defense ministries conduct strategic planning in various ways. In this article I outline tradeoffs in the design of strategic planning processes, and consider the implications of these tradeoffs for choices about the conduct of defense planning in different circumstances. Whereas an inclusive and transparent planning process is well-suited to building internal and external buy-in for a defense strategy, a more exclusive and opaque process is more…
Jim Thurber: A Model of a Publicly-Oriented Scholar
The way I first came to know Jim Thurber is symptomatic of what may be his most impressive achievement – his ability to produce important scholarship about American politics while engaging extensiv
Multilateralism and the Use of Force: Experimental Evidence on the Views of Foreign Policy Elites
International relations scholars have found that multilateral approval increases public support for the use of military force and have developed competing explanations for this phenomenon. However, this literature has given little attention to the attitudes of individuals who participate directly in the foreign policy process or shape foreign policy debates. In this research note, we administer a survey experiment to both a cross-section of US fo…
Forcing the President's Hand: How the US Congress Shapes Foreign Policy through Sanctions Legislation
Given the US president's leading role in many areas of American foreign policy, one might expect the president to prevail in executive-legislative clashes over economic sanctions. In this paper, I show that, with surprising frequency, US legislators overcome presidential opposition to their sanctions proposals and induce the president to take foreign policy actions that he or she would not otherwise take. My argument explains why the president of…
Foreign Policy Advocacy and Entrepreneurship: How a New Generation in Congress Is Shaping U.S. Engagement with the World
Anti-Presidential Bipartisanship in Foreign Policy in the Trump Era
The prevalence of bipartisanship in U.S. foreign policy: An analysis of important congressional votes
Rasmus Sinding Søndergaard, 2020. Reagan, Congress, and Human Rights. Contesting Morality in US Foreign Policy
Polarization and US foreign policy: Key debates and new findings
Polarization in the USA has been on the rise for several decades. In this context, few observers expect politics today to stop "at the water's edge," as the old cliché goes. But key questions about the relationship between polarization and US foreign policy remain to be fully answered. To what extent are American ideas about foreign policy now polarized along partisan lines? How is polarization changing the foreign policy behavior of the US Congr…
Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation
Power Shifts: Congress and Presidential Representation." Congress & the Presidency, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
Sascat: Natural language processing approach to the study of economic sanctions
Existing datasets of economic sanctions rely primarily on secondary sources and do not tend to take full advantage of government documents related to economic coercion. Such data may miss sanctions, and do not capture important details in how coercive measures are threatened, imposed and removed. The latter processes often have much to do with the domestic politics in sender countries. Understanding these processes may be necessary in order to fu…
Bipartisanship and US Foreign Policy: Cooperation in a Polarized Age
Bridging the Gap in a Changing World: New Opportunities and Challenges for Engaging Practitioners and the Public
In recent years, an array of initiatives has sought to bridge widely recognized gaps separating international studies scholars from policymakers and the public. While such gaps persist, changes in society, the media, and academia have altered the context for scholars seeking to make their research known to public and policy communities. On the one hand, the emergence on the public agenda of new policy concerns, proliferation of public-facing outl…
The Impact of Professional Training in Public and Policy Engagement
Engaging with audiences and communities beyond academia is now a common practice for political scientists. Yet, political scientists rarely are trained in how to conduct public or policy engagement, and we know little about the impact that training programs have on their preparedness to communicate with the public and policy makers. In this study, we evaluate whether professional training equips scholars with the skills needed to perform public a…
Elite Misperceptions in Foreign Policy
Many models of domestic politics in international relations presume that political elites correctly perceive public preferences, even as a growing body of research in political behavior calls this assumption into question. Leveraging seven paired surveys of 4,852 foreign policy elites and 13,687 members of the American public from 2004–24 on twenty-four different questions, we show elites systematically misperceive public opinion in foreign polic…
Political science (24 works) · Politics (21 works) · Law (19 works) · Law (15 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Foreign policy (11 works) · International Relations and Foreign Policy (11 works) · Political economy (9 works) · Public Administration (9 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (8 works)