Miroslav Nincic

The Political Economy of US Military Spending

The causes of the dramatic rise in military spending in the post-war era have been the subject of much political and academic controversy. No extant formulation seems to provide a compelling explanation of the dynamics involved in the levels of, and rates of change in, such spending. In light of this, the authors develop a new model, based mainly on a political-business cycle argument, to account for these dynamics. The basic proposition in this model is that variations in national defense spending arise from political considerations which are related to real and desired conditions within the national economy. Applying this model to the experience of the United States 1948-1976, the authors show that it has a large measure of empirical validity. If one removes the effects of war-time mobilization, it is clear that for the United States the principal driving forces in military spending dynamics were (1) the perceived utility of such spending in stabilizing aggregate demand, (2) the political or electoral value of the perceived economic effects arising out of such spending, and (3) the pressures of institutional-constituency demands.

Race, Gender, and War:

This article seeks to improve our grasp of the societal foundations of US foreign policy by examining how race and gender - two fundamental dimensions of social stratification of US society - affect support for military force in the pursuit of external objectives. It is generally appreciated that, in the United States, women are less inclined to support armed intervention than are men, and feminist theory provides some foundation for explaining the gap. It is less widely recognized that a similar gap separates the attitudes of African-Americans and white Americans, but there is little in the social science literature to suggest why this should be so. The authors examine a number of possible explanations for the parallel, focusing both on attributes that are specific to women and blacks, and on one common to both groups (a high level of political alienation) but not shared by white men. They conclude that, while alienation partially accounts for the parallel attitudes toward force, properties specific to the two demographic groups nevertheless carry part of the burden for explaining their shared relative aversion to military intervention.

A Sensible Public

The four books reviewed here share a conviction that many important influences on the international behavior of nations flow from within them, that public opinion is a significant such influence and that, as a general rule, popular preferences are sensibly related to the sound conduct of foreign policy. As such, this body of recent literature should help the discipline of international relations free itself from the hold that political realism has had on it. A conception of rationality as “reasonableness” is one of its valuable contributions; another is the insight it provides into the relationship between public opinion, governmental interests, and media views. At the same time, this article suggests ways in which the study of public opinion and foreign policy could be directed in new theoretical directions.

The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Politics of Opposites

The notion that the attitudes of the American public vis-a-vis the Soviet Union are driven essentially by emotion, and that they are more extreme and volatile than those of the government itself, is widely believed but may not be valid. While the public typically desires a combination of tough and conciliatory policies, it also tends to express, at any given moment, particular concern about whichever of the two it feels is most slighted in U.S. policy. Thus, the public will tend to seek conciliatory behavior from hawkish administrations while preferring a tough stance from administrations it deems dovish. By so doing, the public is likely to have a moderating effect on official behavior toward Moscow. The proposition is tested with reference to shifts in public approval of presidential Soviet policy, and certain implications are suggested for the manner in which political leadership perceives of its mandate.

Foreign Policy and the Evaluation of Presidential Candidates

This article applies recent work on social cognition to examine the impact of foreign policy on presidential elections, particularly on the evaluation of incumbent candidates. The authors propose that specific issue evaluations shape the publics overall evaluation of candidates and that the overall evaluation in turn shapes the publics voting decision. This two-step hypothesis is tested with aggregate and individual-level data for both foreign policy and economic evaluations of incumbent performance and for the very different elections of 1980 and 1984. The results support the hypothesized two-step process at both aggregate and individual levels of analysis and for all categories of party identifiers. Foreign policy issues not only shape public evaluation of candidates but their influence does not compare unfavorably with that of economic circumstances. The results provide new evidence that the outcome of presidential elections is influenced, albeit indirectly, by foreign policy.

The Effect of Similarity and Interest on Attitudes Toward Foreign Countries

The authors test the hypothesis that the American publics attitudes toward foreign nations will be determined by the similarity of those nations to their own country and by the interest which the United States derives from these nations. The analysis is based on regression techniques and the results confirm the original proposi- tion.

Getting What You Want: Positive Inducements in International Relations

Positive inducements as a strategy for dealing with regimes that challenge core norms of international behavior and the national interests of the United States (renegade regimes) contain both promises and pitfalls. Such inducements, which include policy concessions and economic favors, can serve two main purposes: (1) arranging a beneficial quid pro quo with the other side, and (2) catalyzing, via positive engagement, a restructuring of interests and preferences within the other sides politico-economic system (such that quid pro quos become less and less necessary). The conditions for progress toward either purpose can vary, as can the requirements for sufficient and credible concessions on both sides and the obstacles in the way of such concessions. For renegade regimes, a primary consideration involves the domestic purposes that internationally objectionable behavior can serve. An examination of the cases of North Korea, Iran, and Libya finds that negative pressures have been relatively ineffective, suggesting that more attention should be given to the potential for positive inducements to produce better outcomes.

Domestic Costs, the U.S. Public, and the Isolationist Calculus

This article examines and tests two models of the circumstances shaping the extent of the American public&;apos;s isolationist sentiment. The first, termed the “elastic band” model, assumes a constant popular disinclination toward foreign involvements, one that may, at most, temporarily be stretched to accommodate responses to major external threats. A second model assumes the operation of a “cognitive shortcut” based on low-information rationality. It proposes that acceptable levels of domestic involvement depend on the gravity of the domestic opportunity costs of foreign involvement, and it is termed the “domestic costs” model. While the former model implies a constant public resistance to international activism, a resistance that is relaxed only in proportion to the gravity of external threats, the latter model suggests that the U.S. public displays a relatively constant internationalist attitude, and that variations around that threat are largely explained by fluctuations in the perceived domestic opportunity costs of international involvement. Both models are subjected to statistical testing, a testing that vindicates the domestic costs model. Further insights are obtained by examining attitudes toward internationalism as they are affected by levels of education. Although internationalism increases with education, and although levels of education predict differential impacts of the variables encompassed by the model, each segment of the public seems to operate within the general parameters of the “domestic costs” model.

Commitment to Military Intervention: The Democratic Government as Economic Investor

Much of the work on US military intervention addresses the patterns it exhibits and the circumstances that lead to the decision to resort to force. This article deals with a somewhat different aspect of the issue: the structure of the incentives that determine the US governments commitment to persevere in the armed interventions it has chosen to undertake. Commitment is modeled in terms of the costs of the intervention and public support for the venture, and the model is based on an economic metaphor. The hypothesis is that the public responds to costs in the manner of consumers, making its support an inverse function of costs. By contrast, Government responds to costs in the fashion of an investor, viewing costs as an investment to be redeemed: up to a point, the higher the cost, the greater the commitment. The parameters of the model are statistically estimated for the wars in Korea and Vietnam, and the point at which public and governmental support coincide is discussed.

Ideological structure and foreign policy preferences

We seek to understand how ideological preferences in the domestic realm are linked to those in the foreign policy arena. We suggest that stances in both are arrayed along two dimensions: one anchored by self-regarding and other-regarding objectives, the other by preferences for either positive or negative incentives-based means of policy. Using public opinion data from the Pew and Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, we find that these dimensions separate conservatives from liberals on domestic issues as well as on foreign policy preferences. Moreover, international conditions shape the precise manner in which this ideological matrix shapes foreign policy preferences, and the effects of such conditions vary by ideology.