Do Partisan Types Stop at the Water's Edge?

A growing number of analyses presume that distinctive "partisan types" exist in the American public's eyes in foreign policy, with implications for questions ranging from the ability of leaders to send credible signals by going against their party's type to the future of bipartisanship in foreign policy. We offer the first systematic exploration of partisan types in foreign affairs, exploring their microfoundations and scope conditions using two national survey experiments. We find that partisan types vary across foreign policy issues, but are generally weaker and less distinct in foreign affairs than in domestic politics. We also find that there is an impressive amount of congruence between the partisan stereotypes Americans hold and actual distributions of partisan preferences. Our findings have important implications for the study of public opinion, "against-type" models, and the domestic politics of interstate conflict.