Theory of International Politics
Citations
80 citations
Cites background from "Theory of International Politics"
...On the variants, predictably: Waltz (1979), Mearsheimer (2001) and Lobell et al. (2009)....
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80 citations
Cites background from "Theory of International Politics"
...These hypotheses are untested in empirical research on either IOs or public attitudes toward foreign policy+ Importantly, they go beyond the well-documented finding that the public generally prefers multilateralism to examine how politics within security organizations affects the public’s view of multilateralism+ All three run counter to the realist “null hypothesis” of no institutional effects on attitudes ~apart from the possible burden-sharing benefits! and H2 and H3, in particular, distinguish the strategic information perspective from the pure legitimacy or procedural legitimacy views, as well as from the realist+41 It is worth noting that the logic of the informational perspective echoes general arguments about “cheap talk” in other political contexts, in that the information that is conveyed by a signal depends on a receiver’s perception of a sender’s incentives+ For the present purposes, however, the view that IO signals may inform the public, but that this effect may be conditional on some observable indicators of the IO’s general preferences ~as represented by those of important member states! suggests a means of empirically differentiating legitimacy- and informationbased arguments+ The legitimacy view suggests either ~1! that public support for foreign policies should be greater when accompanied by support from important multilateral security organization, such as the UN SC, or ~2! that public support for foreign policies should always be greater when a government consults such an important multilateral security organization+ The strategic information perspective suggests that this effect should be conditional on whether audiences believe the organization in question is ex ante likely to support or oppose the policy+ If authorization comes from an unlikely source, or contradicts the perceived biases of member states, it is likely to boost public support for foreign policy+ This conditional effect may be particularly important given the voting rules of the SC+ In order for a resolution to pass, only the most distant member, in terms of policy preferences, from a proposing state has to support it ~this implies that the four other closer states should support!, whereas only that same state has to oppose 41+ See Kull and Destler 1999; Eichenberg 2005; and Grieco 2003+ a resolution for it to fail+ Thus, vetoes may be “noisy” signals of policy appropriateness, whereas authorization is a particularly useful signal to uninformed audiences+...
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...Nothing!” justified war+51 Also, media pundits pointed out that both France and Russia may have had economic incentives to oppose the invasion+ The public thus likely viewed the failure to obtain an SC endorsement as very noisy+ Second, strategic information models commonly find that the relationship between the principal, in this case the public, and the agent, in this case the president, moderates the effect of third party signals+ If the principal believes its agent holds preferences very close to its own, a noisy signal may have little effect on confidence in the agent+ President Bush enjoyed moderately high approval ratings in the months prior to the war ~between 58 percent and 64 percent in mid-March!, suggesting some alignment between the public’s preferences and its leadership’s+52 48+ Of respondents, 78 percent indicated support if the SC voted for a resolution; 54 percent indicated support if the SC voted down a resolution, and only 47 percent indicated support if the United States chose not to submit a resolution at all+ See Gallup0CNN0USA Today Poll @March 2003# USGALLUP+03MAR14+R14A-C+ 49+ As late as February 2003, 56 percent of respondents said it was “necessary” to receive UN approval before an invasion of Iraq, according to a PIPA-Knowledge Networks poll+ See also Los Angeles Times poll, 4 February 2003; and Pew Center poll, 20 February 2003+ Malone ~2004, 639! provides some discussion+ Various polls established strong support for the war after it began; see Pew Research Center Release, 10 April 2003+ 50+ See January 2003 Los Angeles Times Poll USLAT+020403+R47; and February 2003 Los Angeles Times Poll USLAT+020903+R10; and PIPA, 3 December 2002+ Unless otherwise noted, all poll data is from the Roper Center, available at ^http:00roperweb+ropercenter+uconn+edu&+ Accessed 2 July 2009+ 51+ Woodward 2004, 285; see also Marfleet and Miller 2005+ This point draws on Chapman 2007+ 52+ A Gallup poll conducted 14–15 March showed 58 percent approval; a CBS poll on 17 March showed 64 percent approval+ The perception of similar preferences may have made the noisy signal of SC opposition even less likely to affect the public+ Third, Voeten’s53 view suggests that authorization ~and, by extension, opposition! is important because it signals something about the likely response of the international community+ However, the signal of consequences against a powerful state may often lack credibility, in that many states in the international system derive benefits from cooperating with the United States that limit incentives to impose costs in response to unilateral U+S+ activity+54 When member states cannot “credibly threaten” to obstruct policy, a signal of opposition is likely to be discounted by the public+ In 2003, none of the permanent five ~P-5!...
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...This behavior is not limited the 2003 Iraq War+ President George H+ W+ Bush and his National Security Advisor General, Brent Scowcroft, expressed hope that UN SC Resolution 678, authorizing the 1991 Persian Gulf War, would help boost support at home as well as give political cover to key Arab allies+6 The administration even created a special public relations committee to publicize the authorization and allied support for the war+7 President Harry Truman sought SC authorization for the Korean War to build allied support, and later during the Korean War sought a UN General Assembly resolution authorizing the crossing of the 38th 1+ See Chapman and Reiter 2004; Fang 2008; and Grieco 2003+ 2+ See Voeten 2005; and Thompson 2006+ 3+ Chapman and Wolford 2008+ 4+ See Mearsheimer 1995; and Glennon 2001 and 2003+ See Downs, Rocke, and Barsoom 1996, on enforcement and compliance+ 5+ See Brooks and Wohlforth 2005+ 6+ Bush and Scowcroft 1998, 342– 416+ 7+ Memos housed at the George H+ W+ Bush Presidential Library detail discussions between White House Chief of Staff, John Sununu, and Assistant to the President for Communications, Dave Demarest, about the public campaign+ For instance, one memo dated 11 November 1990, titled “Communication Plan—Operation Desert Shield,” states “specific information on details of our involvement, purpose, international and UN support, should be updated regularly+” A number of other memos detailing talking points for public affairs officials emphasize the defensive nature of the operation as well as the UN support+ parallel+8 Even in the hours after the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident, the administration of President Lyndon Johnson discussed how they could amass evidence to make the case for the war to the SC, although they did not ultimately ask for authorization+9 Authorization-seeking behavior is also not limited to U+S+ governments+ British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s insistence on seeking SC authorization for the 2003 Iraq War is well documented,10 and some governments make SC authorization a virtual prerequisite for the commitment of military forces+ Thompson makes this point strongly, writing, “foreign intervention without some effort to gain @external# approval is now virtually obsolete+”11 Constructivist scholarship provides one explanation for this behavior, pointing to the symbolic importance of obtaining authorization or operating through appropriate channels prior to conducting foreign policy+12 From this perspective, it is more or less always optimal to seek institutional approval, even if one does not expect it to be forthcoming, because it signals an effort to do what is appropriate for modern,mature states+Yet this explanation does not match the empirical record, as states do not always consult organizations during foreign policy crises+ For instance, states brought issues to the SC in only about one quarter of all international crises between 1946–2003+13 Moreover, the constructivist view suggests that certain institutions become imbued with legitimacy over time, owing to either their decision-making procedures or to how they are treated by powerful states+14 The SC, in particular, has become an important arbiter of policy appropriateness+15 This suggests that decisions from such an institution should routinely be taken as important+ Yet one can observe variation in reactions to institutional decisions+ For instance, European and U+S+ audiences viewed the failure to obtain SC authorization prior to the 2003 Iraq War in different ways, and the American public seemed to treat the failure prior to 2003 as less important than the authorization in 1991 for the Persian Gulf War, as indicated by trends in public support for the two wars+16 A third approach, however, provides an explanation rooted in the rationalist logic of the information transmission+17 This view, labeled the strategic information perspective, suggests that behavior consistent with legitimacy, or the belief that an 8+ By October 1951, the Soviet Union boycott, which enabled the passage of the SC resolution authorizing the war, had ended, prompting the United States to take the issue of crossing the 38th parallel to the General Assembly+ See Wainstock 1999, 23, 64– 65+ 9+ Karnow 1983, 387+ 10+ See Woodward 2004+ 11+ Thompson 2006, 2+ 12+ Hurd 1999 and 2007+ 13+ International crises here are defined as in Brecher, Wilkenfeld, and Moser 1988+ The count is based on author codings of instances in which states formally asked the SC to discuss a crisis or formally submitted a resolution during a crisis+ Data available from author upon request+ 14+ See, for example, Hurd 2002; Grant and Keohane 2005; and Barnett and Finnemore 1999+ 15+ See Hurd 2007; and Malone 2004+ 16+ Mueller 1994, 32+ These trends are discussed in more detail below+ 17+ For example, Voeten 2005 argues SC authorization signals the likely policy response of key states, while Thompson 2006 suggests that authorization signals benign intent to foreign audiences+ institution’s decisions should be followed, is conditional on perceptions about an institution’s motives or the preferences of member states+ Of course, from the point of view of the hypothetical uninformed citizen, who cares only about “good” policy, it is optimal to have a source of information that is altruistic, or that also cares only about good policy+ If the institution has access to more information, such as vital intelligence and foreign policy experience, but holds preferences that are identical to the uninformed citizen, its decisions should be taken at face value and greatly affect citizens’ beliefs about international affairs+ But such a situation is unrealistic when one considers contemporary multilateral security institutions+ Institutions such as the SC are comprised of states with heterogeneous, and often competing, interests+ These bodies are therefore unlikely to be seen as completely neutral or altruistic+ Yet this does not necessarily preclude audiences learning from IO decisions+ When multilateral security bodies hold aggregate preferences that are perceived to be generally opposed to the foreign policy goals of a proposing state, support or authorization from those bodies can be a powerful signal to an uninformed audience that a proposed policy is worth supporting, precisely because the uninformed audience does not expect authorization+ However, while the effect of IO support on public support for foreign policies should increase as an IO is seen as less likely to grant authorization, the effect of IO opposition ~or failure to garner support! should decrease with that same perception+ In other words, bodies whose interests are seen to be inimical to a proposing state can provide an uninformed audience with a strong signal of legitimacy but may often see their opposition ignored+ Bodies perceived as friendly to a state’s interests can provide an audience with a strong signal of the dangers of a proposed policy by expressing their ~unexpected! disapproval, but their support may have little effect on public support+18 The key point is that the effect of institutional authorization and opposition on audiences will vary according to how an institution is perceived+ There is, in fact, some anecdotal evidence that actors react differently to the activity of different institutions ~for example, SC versus the Organization of American States ~OAS!! and to the same institution at different times ~for example, SC pre– and post–Cold War!...
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...; if perceptions are completely random there should be no evidence of an information transmission effect+ Second, the public must be aware of organizational decisions+ This is most likely to occur during SC deliberations of prominent foreign policy issues, such as the 2003 Iraq War+ In that case, the media provided extensive coverage of SC deliberations, as well as the threatened vetoes of France, Russia, and China, and the vocal opposition of other traditional European allies+ For more obscure events or for organizations with a narrower scope, this condition is less likely to be met+ Yet stories denoting lower scale SC activity are often reported in major national newspapers, such as the New York Times, which is a crude, but often employed measure of how aware the public may be of an event+ If these conditions are present, then decisions of multilateral organizations are likely to both influence public opinion and be conditional on public perceptions of 42+ The political behavior literature on this point is vast+ See Page and Shapiro 1992; Aldrich et al+ 2006; Holsti 1996; and Baum and Potter 2008+ 43+ Aldrich, Sullivan, and Borgida 1989 develop a similar argument+ organizational preferences+ Otherwise the information conveyed by organizational activity will simply go unnoticed or be too “noisy” to systematically alter public support+ Ultimately, this is an empirical question that can be uncovered with careful observation and research design+...
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...…decisions are enforced, it is because powerful states take it upon themselves to do so, as the United States has done in recent memory, but 19+ See Waltz 1979; and Carr 1964+ generally states will ignore IO decisions that are detrimental to their interests, while supporting and complying with…...
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80 citations
Cites background from "Theory of International Politics"
...A significant increase in the capabilities of any nation or bloc must be met by countervailing power if aggression is to be deterred and a stable equilibrium maintained (Gulick 1955; Waltz 1979)....
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80 citations
80 citations
References
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