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Browsing Political Science Publications by Author "Eichenberg, Richard C."
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Item Gender Difference or Parallel Publics? The Dynamics of Defense Spending Opinions in the United States, 1965-2007(Sage, 2012) Eichenberg, Richard C.; Stoll, Richard J.Gender is now recognized as an important dividing line in American political life, and scholars have accumulated evidence that national security issues are an important reason for gender differences in policy preferences. We therefore expect that the dynamics of support for defense spending among men and women will differ. In contrast, several scholars have shown that population subgroups exhibit a ‘‘parallel’’ dynamic in which the evolution of their preferences over time is very similar, despite differences in the average level of support. Unfortunately, there is little time series evidence on gendered reactions to policy, including defense spending, that would allow one to arbitrate between these competing perspectives. In this research note, we assemble a time series of support for defense spending among men and women and model the determinants of that support for the period 1967–2007. We find that women are on average less supportive of defense spending than are men. However, we also find that the over time variation of support for defense spending among men and women is very similar—each is conditioned principally by the past year’s change in defense spending and occasionally by war casualties and a trade-off between defense and civilian spending.Item Representing Defense : Democratic Control of the Defense Budget in the United States and Western Europe(Sage, 2003-08) Eichenberg, Richard C.; Stoll, Richard J.There is now substantial evidence that defense spending decisions in the United States are influenced by citizen preferences. However, there is little time-series evidence for countries other than the United States. Regression models of citizen responsiveness and opinion representation in the politics of defense spending in five democracies are estimated. Results show that public opinion in all five countries is systematically responsive to recent changes in defense spending, and the form of the responses across countries uniformly resembles the “thermostat” metaphor developed by Wlezien and the more general theory of opinion dynamics developed by Stimson. Findings show also that defense budgeting is representative: public support for defense spending is the most consistently significant influence on defense budgeting change in four countries; thus, a parsimonious theory of comparative policy representation is potentially within reach. The implications of the results for defense spending in the NATO alliance and the European Union are discussed.Item The Acceptability of War and Support for Defense Spending: Evidence from Fourteen Democracies, 2004–2013(Sage, 2017) Eichenberg, Richard C.; Stoll, Richard J.We study the factors that influence citizen support for defense spending in fourteen democracies over the period 2004–2013. We pose two research questions. First, what factors influence citizen support for war and military force? We refer to this as the acceptability of war. Second, in addition to the acceptability of war, what other factors affect support for defense spending? Our principal finding is that citizen acceptance of war and support for defense spending are most influenced by basic beliefs and values. Gender also has a strong negative influence on attitudes toward war and thus indirectly lowers support for defense spending among women. Attitudes toward war and defense spending are also sometimes influenced by short-term threats and by alliance considerations, but the effects are not as substantively meaningful. We conclude with a summary of the results and a discussion of the implications for theory and policy.Item War President : The Approval Ratings of George W. Bush(Sage, 2006-12) Eichenberg, Richard C.; Stoll, Richard J.; Lebo, MatthewThe authors estimate a model of the job approval ratings of President George W. Bush that includes five sets of variables: a “honeymoon” effect, an autoregressive function that tracks a decline in approval, measures of economic performance, measures of important “rally events,” and a measure of the costs of war—in this case, the U.S. death toll in the Iraq War. Several significant effects are found, including the rally that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001; the commencement of the war in Iraq; and the capture of Baghdad in April 2003. Since the beginning of the war in Iraq, however, the casualties of war have had a significant negative impact on Bush’s approval ratings. Although the effects of additional battle deaths in Iraq will decrease approval only marginally, results suggest that there is also little prospect for sustained improvement so long as casualties continue to accumulate.