Campaign Contributions and U.S. Foreign Policy Outcomes: An Analysis of Armenian Identity Group Interests

To what extent are ethnic minority interest groups able to influence U.S. foreign policy? Current case study research has identified several factors that may condition the ability of diasporic groups to influence foreign policy toward ancestral homelands. One set of conditions focuses on the ability of ethnic identity groups to mobilize the necessary resources to make significant campaign contributions in the hope of influencing political outcomes. To this point, existing studies have been unable to isolate the Impact of campaign contributions from other factors that may influence U.S: foreign policy decision-making. The current study uses a mixture of statistical techniques in an attempt to determine the impact of ethnic minority interest group and individual campaign contributions on foreign policy decisions in the U.S. House of Representatives. Results from the study indicate that ethnic identity groups do have an impact on U.S. foreign policy. There are, however, significant limits to this influence