Ignore the vetoes, and forget about Coalitions of the Willing: How the U.S. can achieve higher levels of foreign public support for its military operations

In the early 2000s, the US gained a great deal of foreign criticism over its military operations in Iraq, and later, Afghanistan. But what determines whether the foreign public will support such interventions? In new research which uses survey research based in Japan, Atsushi Tago finds that the use of force in the Middle East by the US is most likely to be supported by foreigners when it also has the approval of the United Nations Security Council, and that much of that support continues even if the UN resolution is vetoed by Russia and China. Significantly, they also find that when the US forms a friendly ‘Coalition of the Willing’, this does little to increase foreign support for military actions

Obama’s visit to Hiroshima is viewed as “a sort of” apology by the people of Japan.

This week President Obama will visit the Japanese city of Hiroshima, more than 70 years after the city was destroyed by a US nuclear attack at the end of World War II. While the White House has stated that the President will not apologize for the atomic bombing during his visit – and has also made clear that his visit should not be seen as an apology – it is hard not to link the visit to the idea of an apology. Atsushi Tago and Kazunori Inamasu conducted a Japan-wide survey and a survey of Hiroshima residents. They found evidence that while neither the people of Hiroshima nor the Japanese public more generally are looking for an apology from Obama, even without a formal statement of apology, his visit is still seen to be “a sort of apology”

Alliance Commitment to East Asian Countries and US Party Politics

International Relations scholars provide the contradictory empirical findings as to democratic alliance reliability. They place very different assumptions about the similarity of preference of domestic political group vis-a-vis alliance commitments. The studies in supporting the thesis that the democracies are more reliable partners make the assumption that there is a national consensus about keeping the promises it made in a form of the formal treaty. The scholars in the opposite side of the debate assume that the preferences for an alliance commitment significantly vary among different political actors. This paper illustrates how differently/ similarly competing political parties consider alliance commitments. As a trial, I select three US alliances in northeast Asia and explain the differences between the Democrat.s and Republican.s preferences to maintain US commitments.特集　政権交代と外交政

Political Leadership Changes and the Withdrawal from Military Coalition Operations, 1946-2001

Several studies have claimed that changes in the political leadership of a country affect foreign policy decision making. The following paper systematically tests this in the context of states' participation in military coalition operations. By building on previous theoretical models, the authors argue that new leaders may differ from their predecessors in that the former (i) have dissimilar preferences with regard to the involvement in military interventions, (ii) evaluate relevant information differently, and (iii) are less likely to be entrapped in intervention policies. Ultimately, the net effect of these factors should make it more likely that political leadership turnovers are associated with premature withdrawals from ongoing military coalitions. The theory is tested by quantitative analyses of newly collected data on military coalition operations in 1946-2001 and a qualitative case study. The authors find strong and robust support for their argumen

The Role of Public Broadcasting in Media Bias:Do People React Differently to Pro-government Bias in Public and Private Media?

People often reject new information, especially when it does not fit their prior beliefs. But do publics in advanced democracies reject information from public and private media outlets in the same way? We examine this question in the form of the media’s pro-government bias in the under-examined case of Japan. By combining unique textual data with an original survey experiment, we document that (1) people generally tend to reject pro-government biased information that overly praises government actions; but (2) the reasons why people reject the same biased information vary—based on their expectations of neutrality for public media, and on expectations derived from political ideology for private media. Our study suggests that the basis of people’s motivated reasoning differs when they evaluate content from public and private media

Seeing the Lexus for the Olive Trees? Public Opinion, Economic Interdependence, and Interstate Conflict

Many scholars argue that economic interdependence and more extensive economic ties between countries decreases the risk of violent conflict between them. However, despite considerable research on the “capitalist peace” at the macro or dyadic level, there has been less attention to its possible individual-level microfoundations or underpinnings. We argue that public perceptions about economic ties with other states and the costs of conflict should influence the expected constraints on the use of force for leaders. Actual high interdependence and potential economic costs may not suffice to create political constraints on the use of force if people are unaware of the degree of interdependence or fail to understand the benefits of trade and the likely economic costs of disruptive conflict. We examine the linkages between individual perceptions about economic interdependence and their views on conflict and peace through a survey experiment, where we ask respondents in Japan about approval for belligerent actions in a territorial dispute with China and varying information about economic ties. Our findings indicate that greater knowledge and information about economic interdependence affects attitudes about territorial disputes and increases support for peaceful solutions with China

To Denounce, or Not To Denounce : Survey Experiments on Diplomatic Quarrels

Despite widespread concern over heated diplomatic debates and growing interest in public diplomacy, it is still incompletely understood what type of message is more effective for gaining support from foreign public, or the international society, in situations where disputing countries compete in diplomatic campaigns. This study, through multiple survey experiments, uncovers the effect of being silent, issuing positive justification, and negative accusation, in interaction with the opponent's strategy. We demonstrate that negative verbal attacks work and undermine the target's popularity as they do in electoral campaigns. Unlike domestic electoral campaigns, however, negative diplomacy has little backlash and persuades people to support the attacker. Consequently, mutual verbal fights make neither party more popular than the other. Nevertheless, this does not discourage disputants from waging verbal fights due to the structure similar to the one-shot prisoner's dilemma. We also find that positive messages are highly context-dependentthat is, their effects greatly depend on the opponent's strategy and value proximity between the messenger and the receiver

Replication data for Atsushi Tago's "Veto's Surprise" (2017)

The data file and STATA do-file for Atsushi Tago (2017) "Veto's Surprise" Annals of Japanese Political Science Association 2017-II, pp.13-35

Replication Data for: Negative surprise in UN Security Council authorization: UK and French vetoes send valuable information for the general public in deciding if they support a US military action, Journal of Peace Research

Replication dataset for "Negative surprise in UN Security Council authorization: UK and French vetoes send valuable information for the general public in deciding if they support a US military action" Journal of Peace Research. (authored by Naoko Matsumura and Atsushi Tago) [https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343318809786