Guns Yield Butter? An Exploration of Defense Spending Preferences
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6284150 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Laron K Williams (0009-0009-6584-5534, University of Missouri), Laron Williams (University of Missouri, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 63 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 1193-1221 |
| Publication date | 2019-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Conflict Resolution (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-0027 • E-ISSN: 1552-8766 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0022002718785969 |
| OpenAlex | W2814363398 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 8 |
| References cited | 49 |
The popular notion of a trade-off between social and defense spending—or guns versus butter—appears often in elite discourse, popular media, and empirical studies of budgetary politics. Yet, there are good reasons to suspect that the public’s preferences for these types of spending do not reflect that trade-off. I develop a theory that whether social and defense spending preferences are competing or complementary depends on if the respondent views the government as an important contributor to job creation. Using data from fifty-nine surveys in twenty-seven countries from 1985 to 2008, I show that favoring government-financed job creation makes a respondent much more likely to view social and defense spending as complementary. Indeed, aside from the anomalous case of the United States, preferences are consistent with guns yield butter instead of guns versus butter. This theory has important implications for the thermostatic model of policy responsiveness and theories of budgetary politics
Economics · Elite · Empirical research · Government (linguistics · Government spending · Market economy · Microeconomics · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Prospect theory · Public economics · Public opinion · Respondent · Yield (engineering · Defense, Military, and Policy Studies · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Law
Israel, the Gaza war, and the 2024 US presidential election
Mistrusted to Serve? Discrimination in the Military and Its Impact on Public Support
The Party Politics of Defense Spending in Western Europe
Interdependent Preferences for Financing and Providing Public Goods—The Case of National Defense
Breaking the stalemate
Militarization and Gender Inequality
Security or Social Spending? Perceptions of Insecurity, Victimization, and Policy Priorities in Mexico and Brazil
Threats and the Public Constraint on Military Spending
The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion
Controlling the Sword
Public Opinion and Public Policy
The American people and foreign policy
The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics
Military Expenditures and the Employment Multiplier in Hawaii
Democracy and foreign policy
The Structure of Western European Attitudes Towards Atlantic Co-operation
Changes in Public Support for U.S. Military Spending
Does Spending on Defence Cut Spending on Health
Political Institutions and the Opinion–Policy Link
Patterns of Representation
Predispositions and Public Support for the President During the War on Terrorism
The American Public's Defense Spending Preferences in the Post-Cold War Era
Compression and Conditional Effects
Context and the Economic Vote
Understanding Interaction Models
Measures and Models of Budgetary Policy
Foreign Policy and the Rational Public
Gender Difference or Parallel Publics? The Dynamics of Defense Spending Opinions in the United States, 1965–2007
Representing Defense
A Sensible Public
American Public Attitudes toward Foreign Policy
Elites and Masses
Opinion Representation and Policy Feedback
Electoral Andpartisancycles Ineconomicpolicies Andoutcomes
Public Attitudes toward Government Spending
The Public as Thermostat
Buttery Guns and Welfare Hawks
Alliance Politics and Issue Areas
Making the Most of Statistical Analyses
Testing for Interaction in Binary Logit and Probit Models
An Alternative Approach to Understanding Budgetary Trade-offs
Opinion–Policy Dynamics
Dynamics of Representation
Estimating the defense spending vote
The Political Economy of US Military Spending
Upsetting National Priorities
Policy Voting and the Electoral Process
How are Foreign Policy Attitudes Structured? A Hierarchical Model
The Illusion of Choice
Public Opinion and the Common Defense
| Unique citing works | 8 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 2 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 7 |