CONGRESS, THE PRESIDENT, AND THE END OF THE COLD-WAR - HAS ANYTHING CHANGED

Many analysts believe that the end of the cold war will spark greater conflict between Congress and the president on foreign issues, thus fu rther undermining the nation's political mythology that politics stops at the water's edge. The authors test that hypothesis using House of Representatives' support of presidents' foreign policy bids on preroga tive power and defense budgeting issues during the Reagan, Bush, and C linton Congresses (1983-1996). They also examine the votes of members of Congress whose careers bridged the cold war divide, asking whether the cold war's end shocked them into new forms of behavior. The author s conclude that conflict between Congress and the president has height ened in the post-cold war era, but the impact of the cold war's end is a less important explanation of executive-congressional contestation than members' role responsibilities and ideological preferences. Thus, the agenda of foreign policy issues may have changed with the end of the cold war, but the process of policy making has not.