scholarly journals The ‘ultimate insurance’ or an ‘irrelevance’ for national security needs? Partisanship, foreign policy attitudes, and the gender gap in British public opinion towards nuclear weapons

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Ben Clements ◽  
Catarina P. Thomson
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
The Uk

Abstract Only two European countries – France and the UK, both NATO members – have nuclear weapons, and leading politicians have called for the UK and EU to maintain close military and security links post-Brexit. In the context of the Trident renewal debate and the UK government's recently published integrated defence and security review, this article uses data from the new UK Security Survey to analyse attitudes towards the possession of nuclear weapons among the British public. It assesses three key theorical strands in the wider scholarly literature on public opinion and states’ use of military force: domestic political attitudes, foreign policy predispositions, and the ‘gender gap’. We find that all three theoretical perspectives contribute to the underpinnings of contemporary public opinion towards nuclear weapons. Support for the retention of Britain's nuclear deterrent is associated with being a Conservative Party supporter, favouring Brexit, endorsing superior military power worldwide as an important foreign policy goal, wanting to protect the transatlantic relationship, and with being male. The article makes a distinctive contribution to the growing subfield of research on public opinion and foreign policy, while the findings advance wider empirical understanding of contemporary citizen engagement in a key dimension of security policy.

Public Opinion on Foreign Policy Issues

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard C. Eichenberg
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Attitudes Toward War ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Impact

Scholars and governments are interested in four sets of questions concerning public opinion on foreign policy and national security policy. First, what do public opinion polls measure? How do citizens, who are generally uninformed about foreign policy and world affairs, form opinions on these matters? Second, how rational is public opinion? Is it stable or volatile? Are opinions coherent? Do opinions plausibly reflect the flow of world events? Third, what factors influence the formation of citizen opinions? Specifically, what is the impact of fundamental attitudes toward war and military force, partisanship, ideology, and gender? Finally, how universal are the determinants of citizen opinion, especially on crucial issues of war and peace? Are the findings in global comparisons the same as those in the American or European contexts? Considerable scholarship has been devoted to these four questions. Scholars now characterize public opinion as rational, in the sense that it is fairly stable, coherent, and responsive to real world events. Attitudes toward war and military force are a major focus of the research literature because many specific policy attitudes flow from fundamental views of war. Gender has also become a major focus of research because many studies find that women are less supportive of the use of military force for most purposes. Finally, scholars are beginning to discover that some opinion patterns are universal across societies, while others are more affected by the individual characteristics of national societies. Studies of global public opinion have expanded greatly, with recent scholarship focusing on global attitudes toward gender equality, immigration, and climate change.

Public Opinion and Decisions About Military Force in Democracies

2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Tomz ◽  
Jessica L.P. Weeks ◽  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Observational Data ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Religious Policy ◽  
The Public ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
The Us

AbstractMany theories of international relations assume that public opinion exerts a powerful effect on foreign policy in democracies. Previous research, based on observational data, has reached conflicting conclusions about this foundational assumption. We use experiments to examine two mechanisms—responsiveness and selection—through which opinion could shape decisions about the use of military force. We tested responsiveness by asking members of the Israeli parliament to consider a crisis in which we randomized information about public opinion. Parliamentarians were more willing to use military force when the public was in favor and believed that contravening public opinion would entail heavy political costs. We tested selection by asking citizens in Israel and the US to evaluate parties/candidates, which varied randomly on many dimensions. In both countries, security policy proved as electorally significant as economic and religious policy, and far more consequential than nonpolicy considerations such as gender, race, and experience. Overall, our experiments in two important democracies imply that citizens can affect policy by incentivizing incumbents and shaping who gets elected.

How government-controlled media shifts policy attitudes through framing

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Jennifer Pan ◽  
Zijie Shao ◽  
Yiqing Xu
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Authoritarian Regimes ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Composite Measures ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Tv News

Abstract Research shows that government-controlled media is an effective tool for authoritarian regimes to shape public opinion. Does government-controlled media remain effective when it is required to support changes in positions that autocrats take on issues? Existing theories do not provide a clear answer to this question, but we often observe authoritarian governments using government media to frame policies in new ways when significant changes in policy positions are required. By conducting an experiment that exposes respondents to government-controlled media—in the form of TV news segments—on issues where the regime substantially changed its policy positions, we find that by framing the same issue differently, government-controlled media moves respondents to adopt policy positions closer to the ones espoused by the regime regardless of individual predisposition. This result holds for domestic and foreign policy issues, for direct and composite measures of attitudes, and persists up to 48 hours after exposure.

Intervention and Intransitivity: Public Opinion, Social Choice, and the Use of Military Force Abroad

1995 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 534-554 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kurt Taylor Gaubatz
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Social Choice ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Public Preferences ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The Impact

This article argues that the problems identified in the literature on public choice should critically affect our research on public opinion and our understanding of the impact of public opinion on foreign policy. While a robust literature has emerged around social choice issues in political science, there has been remarkably little appreciation for these problems in the literature on public opinion in general and on public opinion and foreign policy in particular. The potential importance of social choice problems for understanding the nature and role of public opinion in foreign policy making is demonstrated through an examination of American public attitudes about military intervention abroad. In particular, drawing on several common descriptions of the underlying dimensionality of public attitudes on major foreign policy issues, it is shown that there may be important intransitivities in the ordering of public preferences at the aggregate level on policy choices such as those considered by American decision makers in the period leading up to the Gulf War. Without new approaches to public-opinion polling that take these problems into consideration, it will be difficult to make credible claims about the role of public opinion in theforeignpolicy process.

6. The party system

UK Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 121-143
Author(s):  
Andrew Blick
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Party System ◽  
Conservative Party ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
The Political ◽  
Theoretical Perspectives ◽  
System P ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Uk

This chapter switches the focus to political parties. It looks at their individual roles and how they operate. The chapter discusses the parties that constitute the ‘party system’. It considers the two main parties operating at the UK level: the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. It also looks at the smaller parties, such as the Liberal Democrats. The chapter considers the political approach of the various parties and the type of support they attract. It also looks at how parties are funded. The chapter provides a number of theoretical perspectives to help with an analysis of political parties. These are: the extent to which parties pursue values or power; the respective roles of their members and leaders; groupings within parties; how far the UK has a two-party system or whether our definition of the party system should be revised; and the relationships between the various parities. The chapter then gives examples of how these ideas play out with specific focus on recent events involving the Conversative and Labour parties. The chapter asks: do members have too much influence over their parties? The chapter ends by asking: where are we now?

From Vietnam to Iraq: American Elites' Views on the Use of Military Force

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 215-231
Author(s):  
Gwen Moore ◽  
Stephanie Mack
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Foreign Relations ◽  
War On Terror ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
Policy Attitudes ◽  
Long Time

AbstractIn this paper we present trends in US elites' opinions on the use of military force abroad in the period from the end of US military involvement in Vietnam in 1975 to 2004 during the 'war on terror.' With data from quadrennial surveys of US elites' foreign policy attitudes sponsored by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations since 1975, we ask whether elites have become more militaristic or whether such views have been a long term characteristic of US elites. We find support for the view of United States leaders as prone to the use of military might, even without the support of allies. Yet the findings also indicate that American elites have held this military view of reality for a long time.

scholarly journals The Limited Role of the Japanese Military: The 2003 Iraq War and the War on the Islamic State

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Mieczysław P. Boduszyński ◽  
Christopher K. Lamont ◽  
Philip Streich
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Islamic State ◽  
Security Threat ◽  
Liberal Democratic ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Defensive Realism

What determines Japan's willingness to flex its limited military muscle abroad? While analysts and scholars closely watched Japanese "militarization" under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (2012-2020), Japan had already deployed its military overseas over a decade ago in support of U.S. operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. By contrast, in 2014, Japan was unwilling to support U.S.-led operations against the Islamic State (ISIL) in Iraq and Syria. This presents a puzzle, as the fight against ISIL offered the kind of international legitimacy that the 2003 Iraq invasion lacked, and Japan traditionally seeks. Moreover, ISIL had killed Japanese citizens. This paper explains Japan's varying policies in Iraq in 2003 and 2014, thereby shedding light on the determinants of Japanese national security policy more generally. Our argument focuses on domestic political factors (especially the pluralist foreign policymaking) and strategic thinking rooted in realism. We argue that Japanese policies are driven by domestic politics, profound suspicions about the utility of military force and fears of becoming entangled in a seemingly never-ending conflict. While Koizumi may have had more room to manoeuvre despite long-standing public opposition to overseas military deployments when he dispatched the SDF to Iraq in 2003, it is precisely such deeply-entrenched popular anathema that many blame for the Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) historic and devastating loss in the 2009 election. Abe was unwilling to repeat such a risky venture in 2014. We also highlight the role of realist calculations on both Japanese elites and the public, who by 2014 had come to see China rather than state or non-state actors in the Middle East as a primary security threat. We thus confirm Midford's finding that "defensive realism" tends to drive Japanese foreign policy thinking. Japanese citizens are not pacifists, as conventional wisdom might hold. Instead, Japanese public opinion supports the use of minimum military force when and if Japan is attacked to defend Japan's national sovereignty and territory but is much more suspicious of such power when it comes to deployments and the pursuit of other foreign policy goals.

scholarly journals Public Opinion as an Instrument of Socio-Cultural Influence in the Debate on the «NATO Option» in Finland

2020 ◽  
pp. 164-171
Author(s):  
N. Yu. Vezhlivtseva
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Public Opinion ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
State Government ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Policy Decision ◽  
Finnish Population ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
Auxiliary Role

The article analyzes how the attitude of the Finnish population to Finland’s policy of military non-alignment correlates with the official foreign strategy. The question of public opinion can act as a possible sociocultural tool for its change is examined. The author explains the main reasons for the formation of stable public opinion in favor of neutrality, based on national and cultural identity. The role of public opinion in the Finnish internal debate on the «NATO option» is shown. The thesis that public opinion plays only an auxiliary role in comparison with external circumstances affecting the foreign policy of Finland, which is widespread in research circles, is considered. The author argues that public opinion on Finland’s possible entry into NATO is crucial in two key ways. First, at present, it’s a factor supporting the stable foreign policy decision, which is carried out by the state government. Secondly, in the future, public opinion may become a factor capable, under certain conditions of having a significant impact on the change of the Finnish course in foreign and security policy. The second option assumes that public opinion can play its own role by changing the pre-planned foreign policy scenario.

scholarly journals Jakub Eberle: Discourse and Affect in Foreign Policy. Germany and the Iraq War

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 66-68
Author(s):  
Zuzana Buroňová
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Critical Security Studies ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Complex Process ◽  
Foreign And Security Policy ◽  
Lacanian Theory ◽  
The Individual

Foreign and security policy have long been removed from the political pressures that influence other areas of policymaking. This has led to a tendency to separate the analytical levels of the individual and the collective. Using Lacanian theory, which views the subject as ontologically incomplete and desiring a perfect identity which is realised in fantasies, or narrative scenarios, this book shows that the making of foreign policy is a much more complex process. Emotions and affect play an important role, even where ‘hard’ security issues, such as the use of military force, are concerned. Eberle constructs a new theoretical framework for analysing foreign policy by capturing the interweaving of both discursive and affective aspects in policymaking. He uses this framework to explain Germany’s often contradictory foreign policy towards the Iraq crisis of 2002/2003, and the emotional, even existential, public debate that accompanied it. This book adds to ongoing theoretical debates in International Political Sociology and Critical Security Studies and will be required reading for all scholars working in these areas.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document