Previous research on public opinion regarding military expenditures in the United States was conducted predominantly in the cold war context. This analysis of public opinion in thirty major U.S. cities over the period 1999 through 2002 revisits this earlier literature in light of changing sociopolitical conditions during a period bracketing the onset of the war on terrorism. The study offers support for much of the earlier research with respect to sources of support for robust military expenditures, in the process illustrating the value of archival data in replicating key research findings in extant literature conducted in a cold war context. The results of the multivariate analysis offer important insights into the sources of public support for military expenditure in the post-9/11 setting.
Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Macmillan , 1922); Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign Policy (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1950).
2.
Robert Y. Shapiro and Benjamin I. Page, "Foreign Policy and the Rational Public ," Journal of Conflict Resolution32, 2 (1988): 211.
3.
James A. Nathan and James K. Oliver, "Public Opinion and US Security Policy,"Armed Forces & Society2, 1 (1975): 48.
4.
Bruce Russett and Donald R. Deluca, "‘Don’t Tread on Me’; Public Opinion and Foreign Policy in the Eighties,"Political Science Quarterly96, 3 (1981): 389.
5.
Connie DeBoer , "The Polls: Our Commitment to World War III ," Public Opinion Quarterly45, 1 (1981): 126-34.
6.
Bruce Russett , Thomas Hartley, and Shoon Murray, "The End of the Cold War, Attitude Change, and the Politics of Defense Spending," PS: Political Science and Politics27, 1 (1994): 17-21.
7.
Jeffrey W. Knopf, "How Rational is ‘The Rational Public’? " Journal of Conflict Resolution42, 5 (1998): 571-644.
8.
Franz Kernic, Jean Callaghan, and Philippe Manigart , Public Opinion on European Security and Defense. A Survey of Trends and Public Attitudes toward CFSP and ESDP ( Frankfurt, Germany: Peter Lang Verlag, 2002).
9.
Binyam Solomon , "The Demand for Canadian Defence Expenditures ," Defence and Peace Economics16, 3 (2005): 171-89.
10.
Murray Weidenbaum , "Why War Is So Affordable: The Military’s Role in the US Economy,"USA Today, November 1, 2005, 10-12; Mark Strauss, "Guns and Butter,"Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists62 (January-February 2006): 65.
11.
Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, "Changes in Americans’ Policy Preferences, 1935-1979,"Public Opinion Quarterly46, 1 (1982): 24-42.
12.
Michael B. Berkman and Eric Plutzer, Ten Thousand Democracies: Politics and Public Opinion in America’s School Districts (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2005), 156.
13.
See Thomas Hartley and Bruce Russett, "Public Opinion and the Common Defense: Who Governs Military Spending in the United States?" American Political Science Review 86, 4 (1992): 905-15; Richard C. Eichenberg and Richard Stoll, "Representing Defense: Democratic Control of the Defense Budget in the United States and Western Europe," Journal of Conflict Resolution 47, 4 (2003): 399-422; Benjamin I. Page and Robert Y. Shapiro, "Effects of Public Opinion on Policy," American Political Science Review 77, 1 (1983): 175-90; Robert Y. Shapiro and Benjamin I. Page, "Foreign Policy and the Rational Public," Journal of Conflict Resolution 32, 2 (1988): 211-47.
14.
Christopher Wleizen, "The Public as a Thermostat: Dynamics of Preferences of Spending," American Journal of Political Science39, 4 (1995): 981-1000; Christopher Wleizen, "Dynamic Representation: The Case of US Spending on Defense,"British Journal of Political Science26, 1 ( 1996): 81-103.
15.
Louis Kriesberg and Ross Klein, "Changes in Support for US Military Spending ," Journal of Conflict Resolution24, 1 (1980): 90.
16.
David L. Leal, "American Public Opinion toward the Military: Differences by Race, Gender, and Class?"Armed Forces & Society32, 1 ( 2005): 123-38.
17.
John S. Butler and Margaret A. Johnson, "Attitudes of Americans towards Issues of Military Service," Journal of Political and Military Sociology19 ( 1991): 273-91.
18.
Ted Goertzel , "Public Opinion Concerning Military Spending in the United States 1937- 1985," Journal of Political and Military Sociology15 (1985): 61-72. Note that Goertzel’s model predicts approximately 13 percent of variance in the dependent variable (i.e., opinion of military expenditure).
19.
Rodger A. Payne, "Public Opinion and Foreign Threats: Eisenhower’s Response to Sputnik,"Armed Forces & Society21, 1 (1994): 89-112.
20.
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, "Public Opinion on the War with Iraq," AEI Public Opinion Studies, http://www.aei.org (accessed September 11, 2007).
21.
Gary Langer , "Touchpoint: Responsible Polling in the Wake of 9/11," Public Perspective13, 2 (2002): 14-15; Solomon, "Demand for Canadian Defence Expenditures."
22.
P. Edward Haley, "A Defense Grand Strategy for the United States,"Armed Forces & Society30, 3 (2004): 461-81.
23.
Sociologist Dr. Sandy Schlee (former student of Don Dillman and Milton Rokeach) designed these surveys, melding both market research and sociological and social psychological indicators to produce cross-disciplinary market survey studies of considerable value for secondary analyses.
24.
Fred Borsch , "Comparing Pearl Harbor and ‘9/11’: Intelligence Failure? American Unpreparedness? Military Responsibility?"Journal of Military History67 ( 2003): 845-60.
25.
In attempting to respond to this question, the study employs existing data made available to Washington State University by a major marketing firm, Leigh Stowell & Company, Inc. of Seattle, Washington. While the data sets were primarily designed to measure media market preferences and behaviors, many of the psychographic indicators were drawn from the research literature of sociology, social psychology, and political science.
26.
Surveys for the metropolitan areas included in this analysis feature all individuals contacted in the phone survey sample. The metropolitan areas involved in the study are Albuquerque, New Mexico; Atlanta, Georgia; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Charlotte, South Carolina; Cincinnati, Ohio; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Columbus, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Hawaii; Jackson, Mississippi; Jacksonville, Florida; Kansas City, Missouri; Knoxville, Tennessee; Las Vegas, Nevada; Little Rock, Arkansas; Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minnesota; Nashville, Tennessee; Norfolk, Virginia; Omaha, Nebraska; Palm Springs, California; Reno, Nevada; Roanoke, Virginia; Sacramento, California; Seattle, Washington; Shreveport, Louisiana; Spokane, Washington; St. Louis, Missouri; Tampa Bay, Florida; and West Palm Beach, Florida.
27.
The original Likert-type scale coding was 1 = strongly disagree, 2 = disagree, 3 = depends, 4 = agree, 5 = strongly agree. The trichotomous dependent variable recoding for multinomial logistic regression was as follows:
28.
Ideology was scored on a 3-point scale: conservative, moderate, liberal. While a rough measure of ideology, the findings tend to mirror findings in recent studies, such as Leal, "American Public Opinion." Political party identification, a traditional measure of survey respondents’ general political preferences, was not included in the analysis. Party identification is traditionally a strong measure of preferences-stronger than ideology as measured. See John Petrocik, "An Expected Party Vote: New Data for an Old Concept," American Journal of Political Science 33, 1 (1989): 44-66, appendix, 64. But historically there has been evidence of ideology in a re-emergent role. See John D. Holm and John P. Robin-son, "Ideological Identification and the American Voter," Public Opinion Quarterly 42, 2 (1978): 235-46. In quasi-experimental analysis, there is evidence of strong correlations between ideology and partisan identification. See Carol Sharp and Milton Lodge, "Partisan and Ideological Belief Systems: Do They Differ?" Political Behavior 7, 2 (1985): 147-66.
29.
Donald Granberg , "War Expectancy and the Evaluation of a Specific War," Journal of Conflict Resolution13, 4 (1969): 546-49.
30.
Wleizen, "Public as a Thermostat," 995.
31.
Larry Seltzer , "Five Years after the End of the World," PC Magazine24, 4 (2005): 92; Richard Danzig, "The Cole is Attacked,"US Naval Institute Proceedings126, 12 (2000): 48-52.
32.
"NMD Ranks High on Election Agenda,"CQ Weekly58, 36 ( 2000): 23.
33.
Kriesberg and Klein, "Changes in Support," 91.
34.
Mike Schmierbach , Michael P. Boyle, and Douglas M. McLeod, "Civic Attachment in the Aftermath of September 11," Mass Communication & Society8, 4 ( 2005): 323-46.
35.
Jonathan Fox , "Religion as an Overlooked Element of International Relations," International Studies Review3, 3 (2001): 53-73; Brian S. Turner, Religion and Social Theory (London: Sage, 1990).
36.
Ole R. Holsti, "A Widening Gap between the US Military and Civilian Society? Some Evidence, 1976-1996," International Security23, 3 ( 1998-99): 29.
37.
Joshua Mitchell , "Religion Is Not a Preference," Journal of Politics69, 2 (2007): 351-62.
38.
Joseph Tamney and Stephen Johnson, "Explaining Support for the Moral Majority ," Sociological Forum3, 2 (1988): 249.
39.
Leal, "American Public Opinion."
40.
Monroe Billington , "Civil Rights, President Truman, and the South,"Journal of Negro History58, 2 (1973): 127-39.
41.
Cynthia Gimbel and Alan Booth, "Who Fought in Vietnam?Social Forces74, 4 (1996): 1137-57.
42.
David L. Leal, "It’s Not Just a Job: Military Service and Latino Political Participation," Political Behavior21 (1999): 153-74; James Westheider, Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War ( New York: New York University Press, 1997); Paul T. Murray, "Blacks and the Draft: A History of Institutional Racism,"Journal of Black Studies2 (1971): 57-76.
43.
Leal, "American Public Opinion."
44.
Maya Eicher, "Russia’s Post-communist Transformation,"International Feminist Journal of Politics8 ( 2006): 486-511; Hilary Summy, "Margaret Thorp and the Anti-conscription Campaign in Brisbane, 1915-1917,"Hecate32 (2006 ): 59-76.
45.
Judith Gardam , "Women and the Law of Armed Conflict: Why the Silence?" International and Comparative Law Quarterly46, 1 (1997): 55-80.
46.
Kriesberg and Klein, "Changes in Support," 102.
47.
Leal, "American Public Opinion."
48.
Dave Tarantino , "Asian Tsunami Relief: Department of Defense Public Health Response: Policy and Strategic Coordination Considerations,"Military Medicine171, 10 (2006): 15-18.
49.
Leal, "American Public Opinion."
50.
Special thanks to the manuscript reviewer who recommended that we include the ordered probit model to ensure complete analysis.
51.
Anne R. Daykin and Peter G. Moffatt, "Analyzing Ordered Responses: A Review of the Ordered Probit Model,"Understanding Statistics1, 3 ( 2002): 161.
52.
Ibid.; also see Marija J. Norušis, SPSS 16.0 Advanced Statistical Procedures Companion (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2009), chap. 13.
53.
Kang H. Park and Peter M. Kerr, "Determinants of Academic Performance: A Multinomial Logit Approach,"Journal of Economic Education21, 2 (1990): 103.
54.
Ordinal regression in SPSS uses PLUM-polytomous universal model-which is a programmatic variation of the general linear modeling technique in the statistical package.
55.
Kriesberg and Klein, "Changes in Support."
56.
Ibid.; Leal, "American Public Opinion."
57.
See Adam J. Berinsky, "Assuming the Costs of War: Events, Elites, and American Public Support for Military Conflict,"Journal of Politics69, 4 (2007): 975-97; also see Brian J. Gaines, James H. Kuklinkski, Paul J. Quirk, Buddy Peyton, Jay Verkuilen, "Some Facts, Different Interpretations: Partisan Motivation and Opinion on Iraq,"Journal of Politics69, 4 (2007): 957-74.
