This article seeks to improve our grasp of the societal foundations of US foreign policy by examining how race and gender -two fundamental dimensions of social stratification of US society -affect support for military force in the pursuit of external objectives. It is generally appreciated that, in the United States, women are less inclined to support armed intervention than are men, and feminist theory provides some foundation for explaining the gap. It is less widely recognized that a similar gap separates the attitudes of African-Americans and white Americans, but there is little in the social science literature to suggest why this should be so. The authors examine a number of possible explanations for the parallel, focusing both on attributes that are specific to women and blacks, and on one common to both groups (a high level of political alienation) but not shared by white men. They conclude that, while alienation partially accounts for the parallel attitudes toward force, properties specific to the two demographic groups nevertheless carry part of the burden for explaining their shared relative aversion to military intervention.

The causes of the dramatic rise in military spending in the post-war era have been the subject of much political and academic controversy. No extant formulation seems to provide a compelling explanation of the dynamics involved in the levels of, and rates of change in, such spending.In light of this, the authors develop a new model, based mainly on a political-business cycle argument, to account for these dynamics. The basic proposition in this model is that variations in national defense spending arise from political considerations which are related to real and desired conditions within the national economy. Applying this model to the experience of the United States 1948-1976, the authors show that it has a large measure of empirical validity. If one removes the effects of war-time mobilization, it is clear that for the United States the principal driving forces in military spending dynamics were (1) the perceived utility of such spending in stabilizing aggregate demand, (2) the political or electoral value of the perceived economic effects arising out of such spending, and (3) the pressures of institutional-constituency demands.1. Introductory remarks Both because of its bearing on national security and because it is so large and visible, defense spending has been the frequent object of both political and academic controversy in the US. The issue which has commanded particular attention in the foreign policy literature concerns the causes of the regular post-war increases in such expenditure. It perhaps reflects the misleading simplicity of the problem that, despite the elegance of theoretical formulations and the sophistication of analytic techniques employed, there is as yet no compelling explanation of the levels of, and rates of change in, military spending in the United States. The question of the domestic consequences of defense outlays has also been occasionally addressed, although frequently from an excessively doctrinaire perspective and with results barely more conclusive than those concerning its determinants.Our first task in this paper will be to account for variations in US military spending during the past three decades. We begin by providing a brief assessment of the extant analytical frameworks bearing on this issue. Following that, we construct an alternative, though partly complementary, explanatory structure of our own. Specifically, we examine the proposition that variations in defense spending arise from political consideration which are related to real and desired conditions within the national economy. Finally, we ask how successfully military spending functions as a tool of macro-economic policy as far as the reduction of unemployment is concerned.2. Compulsion or impulsion? Two principal types of explanation have been advanced to account for changing military expenditures: the first relies primarily on influences exogenous to the nation, the second focuses on internal considerations.Most writers in the first tradition rely, to * We thank Professor Karl W. Deutsch and Catherine Kelleher...

We seek to understand how ideological preferences in the domestic realm are linked to those in the foreign policy arena. We suggest that stances in both are arrayed along two dimensions: one anchored by self-regarding and other-regarding objectives, the other by preferences for either positive or negative incentives-based means of policy. Using public opinion data from the Pew and Chicago Council on Foreign Relations, we find that these dimensions separate conservatives from liberals on domestic issues as well as on foreign policy preferences. Moreover, international conditions shape the precise manner in which this ideological matrix shapes foreign policy preferences, and the effects of such conditions vary by ideology.Our purpose is to examine how ideology shapes societal preferences on foreign policy and international affairs, and how ideological positions respond to major international developments. As such, this paper places itself within a stream of work addressing the societal foundations of foreign policy and the nature and sources of attitudes on international affairs. Some related work bears on specific aspects of foreign policy beliefs, such as support for war 1 or military spending. 2 Other work, which is rigorous and theoretically developed, has a broader purpose: to establish the underpinnings of overall foreign policy belief systems. 3 In the latter regard, the contribution of authors, such as Eugene Wittkopf, 4 who provides a framework within which to view the extent and nature of isolationism and internationalism, as well as their social correlates, has proven particularly valuable. Our aim is to take the discussion in a related, but different direction. While the above-cited work explores the structure and correlates of specific foreign policy preferences, our aim is to reveal, as closely as possible, the ideological matrix within which foreign policy beliefs are located, adding another layer to the work that has gone before us. Our aim is to discern structures

The author examines the hypothesis that U.S. Soviet policy is largely driven by electoral considerations rather than by the shifting nature of the Soviet challenge. He combines historical and quantitative analysis to probe the forces that shape these electoral calculations as well as the manner in which they manifest themselves at various stages of the electoral cycle. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of the domestic determinants of America's Soviet policy for the USSR's own foreign policy behavior.

This article examines and tests two models of the circumstances shaping the extent of the American public's isolationist sentiment. The first, termed the "elastic band" model, assumes a constant popular disinclination toward foreign involvements, one that may, at most, temporarily be stretched to accommodate responses to major external threats. A second model assumes the operation of a "cognitive shortcut" based on low-information rationality. It proposes that acceptable levels of domestic involvement depend on the gravity of the domestic opportunity costs of foreign involvement, and it is termed the "domestic costs" model. While the former model implies a constant public resistance to international activism, a resistance that is relaxed only in proportion to the gravity of external threats, the latter model suggests that the U.S. public displays a relatively constant internationalist attitude, and that variations around that threat are largely explained by fluctuations in the perceived domestic opportunity costs of international involvement.Both models are subjected to statistical testing, a testing that vindicates the domestic costs model. Further insights are obtained by examining attitudes toward internationalism as they are affected by levels of education. Although internationalism increases with education, and although levels of education predict differential impacts of the variables encompassed by the model, each segment of the public seems to operate within the general parameters of the "domestic costs" model.