This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Witko, C. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?

Cold War Belligerence and U.S. Public Opinion toward Defense Spending

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The relationship between political events and aggregate opinion change is complicated, and the influence of actual events, as opposed to domestic political elites' responses to those events, has seldom been analyzed. This article attempts to untangle these relationships with data examining events and statements of the political leaders (belligerence) of both the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold war. Considering the salience of the Soviet Union for domestic politics, there is reason to suspect that the public should have responded directly to Soviet actions and statements, while also reacting to U.S. belligerence. The analysis indicates that the public reacted only to changes in U.S., not Soviet, belligerence. The implications of this finding for public preferences on foreign and defense policy, and for opinion more generally, are discussed.

Key Words: defense • military • spending cold war • belligerence • spending preferences • public attitudes • public opinion • Soviet Union

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?