Democratic Peace or Clash of Civilizations? Target States and Support for War in Britain and the United States

Research on public support for war shows that citizens are responsive to various aspects of strategic context. Less attention has been paid to the core characteristics of the target state. In this comparative study we report survey experiments manipulating two such characteristics, regime type and dominant faith, to test whether the ?democratic peace? and the ?clash of civilizations? theses are reflected in U.S. and British public opinion. The basic findings show small differences across the two cases: both publics were somewhat more inclined to use force against dictatorships than against democracies and against Islamic than against Christian countries. Respondent religion played no moderating role in Britain: Christians and nonbelievers were alike readier to attack Islamic states. However, in the United States, the dominant faith effect was driven entirely by Christians. Together, our results imply that public judgments are driven as much by images and identities as by strategic calculations of threat

National images, trust and international friendship: Evidence from Chinese students

This article uses a new dataset of Chinese student attitudes to foreign affairs to analyse how perceptions of the United States, Russia, Japan and North and South Korea affect respondent perceptions of international friendship with these states. Employing a mediation analysis we find that perceptions of national trustworthiness above all other images is the crucial factor in explaining cross-national friendship. These findings suggest that trust-building measures would be a fruitful avenue for both reducing the likelihood of conflict in the region and fostering cooperative international interactions

R2P from Below: Does the British Public View Humanitarian Interventions as Ethical and Effective?

One of the major barriers to the implementation of the Responsibility to Protect principle is the lack of a political will. Public attitudes towards intervention will have a crucial impact on elite willingness to prevent mass atrocities, yet we have little understanding of the factors that influence those attitudes. This article provides the first examination of UK public perceptions about the moral justifiability and effectiveness of humanitarian interventions. The article shows that decisions about justifiability and effectiveness are very different. Attitudes towards justification were more easily explained suggesting that judgements about effectiveness are more contextual and less easily accounted for by individuals’ background characteristics and attitudes. Experiences with both Iraq and Afghanistan have contaminated public perceptions of both the ethics and effectiveness of humanitarian interventions. Although the public is broadly supportive about the justifiability of humanitarian interventions they are extremely sceptical about the likelihood that those interventions will be successful

British Public Confidence in MI6 and Government Use of Intelligence: The Effect on Support for Preventive Military Action

There are considerable concerns about public perceptions of intelligence stemming directly from the highly politicized nature of intelligence estimates in the run-up to the US-UK invasion of Iraq in 2003. In this article we use a new public attitudes dataset to provide the first ever analysis of British public confidence in MI6 and Government use of intelligence. The article demonstrates that the public have relatively high confidence in the intelligence produced by MI6 but are extremely sceptical about how the Government will present that intelligence. Using an ordered logit model this article then examines the factors that influence public perceptions of both intelligence and Government, finding that women are a lot less confident in both the intelligence services and government presentation of intelligence than men, suggesting that this might help explain gender differences in support for military action. The study also demonstrates that party identifiers and Catholics have very low confidence in the intelligence produced by MI6. The study shows that public confidence in both government and intelligence has a strong effect on support for preventive military action against terror camps, suggesting that the intelligence agencies need to avoid being contaminated by political agendas as much as possible if the intelligence case for future military actions is to be supported by the public

The domestic consequences of international over-cooperation: An experimental study of microfoundations

While questions about the diplomatic effectiveness of hawkish or dovish policies are crucially important, little research has been conducted on the domestic political risks and benefits associated with a chosen policy. This paper provides evidence to suggest why elites avoid the use of inducements and focus on more hawkish policies. Specifically this article focuses on the public opinion risks associated with offering an inducement that does not result in a change in behaviour of a target state. Using an experiment embedded within a wider survey instrument, we assess public ex post evaluations of government behaviour towards a nascent nuclear power that is believed to threaten British national security. The study examines not only the rewards associated with successful policies and the costs of failure, but also whether those costs are particularly heavy when it is dovish policies that fail. The results indicate that the public does have a particular aversion for unsuccessful engagement policies. Successful policies are generally more popular than unsuccessful policies, but a hawkish failure wins more public sympathy than a failed inducement. These results provide an important explanation as to why inducements tend to be avoided on the international stage: the risks of failure are too severe