Abstract
In 2020 President Biden appointed Michelle Kwan, an Olympic medalist, as ambassador to Belize, and he also appointed R. Nicholas Burns, an American diplomat and foreign policy scholar, to China. This variation in qualifications raises the question: what explains presidential choice of ambassadors to various countries? I theorize that presidents make decisions on who to nominate based on several factors, namely their electoral and policy goals. However, presidents may have to balance these goals in the face of tradeoffs. As such, I argue that presidents will appoint campaign donors to countries the United States shares values and a history of cooperation with. In contrast, I expect the president to appoint experts to countries with which the U.S. has a fraught relationship. I test my theory with 166 nominations made during the Biden presidency and find partial support for my claims. The findings show potential for a correlation between my independent variables and nominations around the world. However, further research on a wider sample over a larger time period should be conducted in order to gain more insight into the connections that lead to ambassadorial nominations.
How to Cite
Conroy, K. S., (2025) “Presidential Ambassadorial Appointments: Competence or Patronage?”, Capstone, The UNC Asheville Journal of Undergraduate Scholarship 38(2).
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