Are the American People "Pretty Prudent"? Public Responses to U.S. Uses of Force, 1950-1988

Bibliographic Data

ID7301980
AuthorsJohn R Oneal (University of Alabama), Brad Lian (0000-0003-4711-0189, University of Alabama), James H Joyner (University of Alabama)
Year1996
Volume40
Issue2
Pages261-261
Publication date1996-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-8833 • E-ISSN: 1468-2478
PublisherOxford University Press (OUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2600959
OpenAlexW2321338551
LanguageEN
Citations received54
References cited42

A new consensus has emerged in recent years that the public responds to foreign affairs in reasonable ways. Bruce Jentleson (1992) has contributed to this optimistic revisionism, arguing that the public is “pretty prudent” in the “post post-Vietnam period.” The American people, he suggests, now discriminate between using the military to force foreign policy restraint on aggressive adversaries and using it to coerce internal political change. We test Jentleson's hypothesis, with several theoretically interesting controls, using regression analyses of all thirty-eight major uses of force that occurred during a U.S. foreign policy crisis, 1950–1988. We do not find support for Jentleson's periodization of the post—World War II era; but our analyses do indicate that the American people have, throughout the postwar years, been more supportive of using military force to resist aggression than to engineer internal change in other countries

Aggression · Development economics · Economics · Foreign policy · Periodization · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Public opinion · Sociology · Test (biology · Use of force · Vietnam War · History · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Political Conflict and Governance · Psychology · Social Psychology · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence