Consensus Lost? Domestic Politics and the “Crisis” in NATO

Domke, William K.; Eichenberg, Richard C.; Kelleher, Catherine McArdle

doi:10.2307/2010225

Cited by 11 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…Here it seems that popular opinion is considerably more sophisticated than much professional analysis. As polls over the last decade have repeatedly shown, public opinion, while rejecting particular deployments, overwhelmingly endorses the political purposes of the Alliance and supports NATO as a necessary means for the preservation of certain Western values (Flynn and Rattinger, 1985;Domke, Eichenberg, and Kelleher, 1987;Rochon, 1988;Eichenberg, 1989). It seems that NATO is more widely appreciated in a political role than in a military one.…”

Section: Deterrencementioning

confidence: 99%

How the West was One: Representational Politics of NATO

Klein

1990

International Studies Quarterly

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Contemporary discussions about the West having "won' the Cold War are framed within a conventional strategic discourse in which one politicalmilitary alliance, NATO, demonstrated its staying power and integrity in the face of its rival alliance, the Warsaw Pact. NATO's strategic practices, long the object of criticism on the part of revisionist historians and critical peace researchers, have apparently been vindicated. This paper draws upon a variety of post-realist approaches to global politics to examine NATO as a set of practices by which the West has constituted itself as a political and cultural identity. By turning our attention from the external, foreign, and defense policies of NATO and its member states to the domestic social and cultural dimensions of Western security politics, we can illuminate a side of security policy overlooked in conventional debates. NATO's success resides in having provided a network of intertextual representations for the articulation of global political space. Traditional security concerns, including the nature of the Soviet/Warsaw Pact "threat," can thereby be seen not as existing externally out there on their own, but as circulating within a broader set of social practices. In the wake of recent developments within the Warsaw Pact and between the two alliance systems, the critical perspective outlined here enables us to analyze contemporary security issues in ways that transcend prevailing strategic discourse. Theoretically, we can see the outlines of a post-realist approach to security. For Europe, such an approach accords dignity to alternative, post-statist, post-modern security arrangements. Conventional Accounts Western strategists can be proud of having "won" the Cold War. The editorial columns of newspapers and the pages of manyjournals are crammed these days with words of heady self-confidence proclaiming the demonstrable superiority of the First World to the Second. The great ideological battles of history are now apparently over. Communism, once so virile, lies tattered and beaten, whether in the streets of Prague or in the ballot boxes of East Germany and Hungary. With the waning of the East-West military standoff across the German-German border and the gradual incorporation of a divided Europe into something like a regional community, the historic need for NATO and the Warsaw Pact will alter dramatically.

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Section: Deterrencementioning

confidence: 99%

How the West was One: Representational Politics of NATO

Klein

1990

International Studies Quarterly

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“…The control variables included in this analysis are meant to identify if any individual level factors will influence the foreign policy preferences of an individual. The first set of variables is meant to capture individual level characteristics and include: Left-Right ideology (Peffley and Hurwitz 1992), gender (Eichenberg and Stoll 2012), age (Ellis and Faricy 2011), and occupation (Kertzer and Zeitzoff 2017)..The second set of variables is meant to capture a respondents existing policy preferences and includes: if the respondent is a hawk/dove (Asmus,Everts, and Isernia 2004), if they favor increased military spending (Fay 2020), if they prefer economic power over military power(Domke, Eichenberg, and Kelleher 1987), if they want an independent foreign policy(Eichenberg and Stoll 2017), and if they prefer EU leadership (Becker and Malesky 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Public Perceptions of NATO: US Leadership and Defense Spending

Fay¹

2021

Preprint

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This study examines the factors that influence public opinion on the topic of international security and foreign policy preferences in 13 NATO member countries between 2004-2012. Specifically, I focus on how individual foreign policy preferences (i.e. support for strong U.S leadership) drive public perceptions of NATO as being essential for security. I then explore if there is divergence within NATO in the form of differences in public opinion due the level of military spending within each country. These questions fill an important gap in the literature by tying individual level public opinion to questions of burden sharing and free riding within NATO, with the goal of explaining how citizens’ preferences are influenced by their domestic environment. Empirical evidence from a multilevel model suggest that individuals who prefer strong US leadership are more likely to perceive NATO as essential for security unless they are in a country that met the 2% defense spending criteria established by the alliance.

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Collision and Collusion: The Public, Nuclear Weapons, and Arms Control

Eichenberg

1989

Public Opinion and National Security in Western Europe

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Consensus Lost? Domestic Politics and the “Crisis” in NATO

Cited by 11 publications

References 4 publications

How the West was One: Representational Politics of NATO

How the West was One: Representational Politics of NATO

Public Perceptions of NATO: US Leadership and Defense Spending

Collision and Collusion: The Public, Nuclear Weapons, and Arms Control

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