Power in America: How American Elites Gain Access to Diplomacy

Abstract

Despite the availability of well-qualified career diplomats, a significant number of U.S. Ambassadors are political appointees who lack previous relevant diplomatic experience; these same people, however, are often campaign fundraisers. The relationship between political appointees and their status as fundraisers is an understudied area of campaign finance literatures. To examine the role financial contributions play in the nomination of political appointees serving as U.S. Ambassadors in recent years, I conducted quantitative analysis on campaign contributions made across the four years preceding their nomination in the Obama, Trump, and Biden Administrations, and qualitative analysis on the performance of these ambassadors. This analysis shows that political appointees were significantly more likely to be major donors compared to career diplomats appointed to serve as ambassadors. Furthermore, these political appointees were also significantly more likely to underperform on the job. This practice of appointing inexperienced donors to serve as ambassadors is an especially concerning practice considering there are many other well-qualified candidates who are not wealthy and connected campaign contributors. To address this problem, this thesis considers policy responses that will not lead to constitutional challenges or require interbranch consensus yet will serve to minimize the impact of financial contributions on U.S. Ambassador nominations today.