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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X030310040032003 31: 379American Politics Research

Christopher Witkoold War Belligerence and U.S. Public Opinion toward Defense Spending

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10.1177/1532673X03252529ARTICLEAMERICAN POLITICS RESEARCH / JULY 2003Witko/THE COLDWARANDDEFENSE SPENDINGOPINION

COLD WAR BELLIGERENCE AND U.S. PUBLICOPINION TOWARD DEFENSE SPENDING

CHRISTOPHER WITKOUniversity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The relationship between political events and aggregate opinion change is complicated, and theinfluence of actual events, as opposed to domestic political elitesresponses to those events, hasseldom been analyzed. This article attempts to untangle these relationships with data examiningevents and statements of the political leaders (belligerence) of both the United States and theSoviet Union during the cold war. Considering thesalience of theSoviet Union fordomestic pol-itics, there is reason to suspect that the public should have responded directly to Soviet actionsand statements, while also reacting to U.S. belligerence. The analysis indicates that the publicreacted only to changes in U.S., not Soviet, belligerence. The implications of this finding forpublicpreferences on foreign anddefensepolicy, andforopinion more generally, arediscussed.

Keywords: defense; military; spending cold war; belligerence; spending preferences; publicattitudes; public opinion; Soviet Union

How does the mass public , with limited political interest and exper-

tise, respond to complicated international events? Recent work dem-onstrates that aggregate responses to a changing political environmentare reasonable and sometimes even wise (Mackuen, Erikson, &Stimson, 1992, 2001; Page & Shapiro, 1992). Either implicitly orexplicitly, these aggregate opinion theories assume that the newsmedia and domestic political elites play an important role in thepreference-formation process through their reactions to and interpre-tations of complex political events. Although this question is of clear

theoretical and practical importance, it has received limited empiricalattention. This article examines more precisely how the public

Authors Note: I would like to thank Robert Erikson, Christopher Wlezien, Jim Stimson, MarcoSteenbergen, and Dave Lowery for helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. Thisresearch was partially funded by the American Politics Research Group,Department of PoliticalScience, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

AMERICAN POLITICS RESEARCH, Vol. 31 No. 4, July 2003 379-403DOI: 10.1177/1532673X03252529 2003 Sage Publications

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responded to political events when forming defense-spending prefer-ences during the cold war.

Clearly, the relationship between political events and aggregateopinion change is quite complicated, and the influence of eventsas

opposed to elite responses to those eventshas seldom been untan-gled. Using international-event and aggregate-opinion data, I moreprecisely examine how cold war events influenced U.S. public atti-tudes toward defense spending from 1969 to 1989. Rather than look athow elite opinion influenced mass opinion, I examine how actualstatements and actions of the U.S. and Soviet governments and mili-taries affected public opinion during the cold war.

The World Event Interaction Survey (WEIS) event data set pro-vides information on actual events (e.g., troop movements, summits,etc.) and statements of political leaders (e.g., threats, conciliatorystatements, etc.) of both the United States and the Soviet Union duringthis period. The belligerence measure used here contains not only con-crete actions taken by the governments involved but also statementsand actions of its political leaders. Because the objective events wereconstant at any one time, we can gain some leverage on how events, asopposed to elite interpretations of those events, influence aggregate-opinion formation by looking at the influence of the two measures

together.Given the salience of the Soviet Union as a threat during this time

period, we might expect to see public attitudes toward defense spend-ing vary in response to the actions and statements of the Soviet Union.For example, if the Soviet leadership took a more conciliatory stancetoward the United States or removed the threat of troop activities froma certain area, the public should have responded with less support fordefense spending. However, if the public was reacting through the fil -

ter of U.S. elite responses, there should be no direct response to Sovietactions and only a response to U.S. belligerence.

COLD WAR EVENTS ANDDEFENSE-SPENDING OPINION

The early examination of the determinants of mass opinion focusedon the link between elite opinion structures and mass opinions and

380 AMERICAN POLITICS RESEARCH / JULY 2003



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beliefs. In his classic study, Converse (1964) concluded that massopinions and beliefs are not structured in the same systematic, ideo-logical manner that elite opinions and beliefs are. He expected that thepublic should have opinion structures quite similar to political elites,

which was far from the case (Converse, 1964). Other work has lookedat how public attitudes evolve in response to complicated changes inpartisan politics and to elite opinions and activities (Carmines &Stimson, 1989) but leaves open the question of more short-term opin-ion change in response to external events.

Recent research has looked at public responses to changes in thepolitical environment but largely leaves the mechanism of informa-tion transmission unexplored (Mackuen et al., 1992, 2001). For exam-ple, Mackuen et al. (1992) examine how the electorate did indeedrespond to changing economic circumstances, but they do not addresshow the economic information was transmitted to the public. Was thepublic responding to media reports about the newest unemploymentstatistics, to partisan attacks related to this issue, or to something else?Page and Shapiro (1992) have gone one step further and documentedthe importance of media coverage of events and of various actors por-trayed in the media but have not fully parsed out the influence of thoseevents from the interpretations and reactions to those events.

The strategic relationship between the United States and the SovietUnion during the cold war undoubtedly helped shape public prefer-ences ona number of policyareas. For example, at the individual level,Hurwitz and Peffley (1989, 1990) have found that attitudes toward theSoviet Union were related to a persons policy preferences concerningthe general questions of containment and defense. Stable beliefs wereclearly important, but individuals probably viewed recent changes inthe relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States as

most relevant when updating defense preferences (Zaller, 1992).Indeed, Peffley and Hurwitz (1992) found that shifting perceptions of the Soviet Union caused changes in related policy preferences, sup-porting this notion.

The link between cold war events and public opinion has also beenestablished at the aggregate level. Mueller (1979) found a relationshipbetween particular cold war eventsand the fear ofwar in the Americanpublic. Looking at annual data, Wlezien (1995, 1996) found that pub -lic perceptions of the Soviet Union influenced public preferences

Witko / THE COLD WAR AND DEFENSE SPENDING OPINION 381



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toward defense spending. At times of greater public antipathy towardthe Soviet Union, higher levels of defense spending were supported.This finding is of obvious interest to the research presented here butleaves open the question of how actual cold war events influenced

preferences for defense spending. For example, political leadersmight have portrayed the Soviet Union in a negative (positive) light todrum up support for higher (lower) levels of defense spending, whichmight or might not have reflected actual levels of belligerence.

Page and Shapiro (1983, 1992) point out that when formulatingpolicy preferences, the American public is most likely responding notto the events themselves but to the elite reactions to those events astransmitted through the media. Furthermore, even the seeminglyobjective news coverage of events contains elite interpretationsthrough the amount and tone of coverage of political events (Brody,1991). Likewise, at times, domestic political leaders are able to con-trol events through their deliberate actions, which are then portrayedas events in the news media (Page & Shapiro, 1992).

During the cold war, the American public had to rely on the newsmedia for reports of any changes in Soviet posture toward the UnitedStates. Undoubtedly, many Americans had strong predispositions andbeliefs regarding the Soviet Union (Hirshberg, 1993), which would

have influenced stable attitudes toward defense, containment, and for-eign policy more generally (Hurwitz & Peffley, 1989). However, itseems that the public was frequently adjusting its preferences forspending throughout the cold war period and that attitudes toward theSoviet Union also varied across time (Wlezien, 1996).

Given the importance of the media to the process of opinion changeas discussed by Page and Shapiro (1992), the public should have sup-ported greater defense spending when the cold war became tenser, as

long as this information was present in media accounts. Because therewas a great deal of media attention to developments between theUnited States and the Soviet Union throughout the cold war, the publicwas probably quite aware of the changes in the level of tensionthroughout this period. Clearly, the more important cold war events(such as the Cuban missile crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghani -stan) were certainly covered in considerable detail by the U.S. newsmedia. However, these media accounts of cold war events contained anumber of pieces of information that the public might have responded




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to during the opinion-formation process. Which pieces of informationthey did in fact respond to can tell us a great deal about exactly whatdrives aggregate opinion change.

Looking back at the New York Times coverage of the Soviet inva-

sion of Afghanistan in late 1979 can help to illuminate what drivesopinion change. Almost immediately following reports of the inva -sion, President Carter issued a stern warning to the Soviet Union towithdraw its troops or face serious consequences (Smith, 1979).The next day, the Times featured articles presenting foreign leaders of countries such as Great Britain, New Zealand, Pakistan, and Qatarcondemning the Soviet invasion. Also on that day, the president of Afghanistan was quoted praising the revolutionary initiative of forces that had essentially overthrown the government, portraying theevents as the product of domestic revolution rather than of foreigninvasion. On the very same day, the Soviet leadership expressed itsversion, stating that they had sent a limited military contingent torepel foreign aggression (Austin, 1979).

Around the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, public atti-tudes toward the Soviets and defense spending did indeed change. Butthe question of what precisely caused this change is not entirely clear.Was it the mere objective fact of the invasion, or more accurately the

belligerent U.S. response? In this example, with a clear act of Sovietaggression and an aggressive U.S. response, it is most likely impossi-ble to determine precisely to what information the public was react-ing. But it is interesting to ponder whether a less critical reaction bythe U.S. government to the Soviet invasion would have led to the samepublic reaction. Of course, it is impossible to address this counterfac-tual, but across the 20-year period of this study, the belligerence of thetwo countries varied considerably, affording us the opportunity to

more clearly determine to what information the public was reactingwhen formulating defense-spending opinion. Although other inci-dents would likely have influenced attitudes toward defense spending(i.e., the Iran hostage crisis), the relationship with the Soviet Unionwas clearly the dominant consideration across the entire period cov-ered in this analysis.

Looking at the belligerence of the United States and the SovietUnion during the cold war provides an excellent opportunity to exam-ine how the public responded to the changing international context.




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Although it is extremely difficult to untangle public responses toevents portrayed in the news media, the WEIS data set allows us toview U.S. belligerence and Soviet belligerence as distinct influenceson U.S. attitudes toward defense spending (although they are, of

course, related, a topic that will be addressed). Each belligerence mea-sure contains both actual events and statements of political leaders inresponse to and about those events. Looking at the influence of bothmeasures on U.S. public attitudes toward defense spending allows usto examine how events and their elite interpretations influenced opin-ion. Although the actual, objective, strategic situation was constant atany one point in time, the levels of belligerence in statements andactions by both governments varied considerably. This provides uswith the necessary leverage to examine the question of how elite inter-pretations influence aggregate opinion formation. The analysis allowsus to separate the unique U.S. component of the cold war relationship(statements and actions) and see how American, as opposed to Soviet,activity influenced public opinion.

Unlike some other examples throughout history (see Page &Shapiro, 1992), the U.S. government was not able to entirely controlthe sequence and definition of events in the cold war because of Sovietpower and the visibility of the cold war conflict to the American pub-

lic. Given the high-profile nature of the Soviet threat during thisperiod, we might expect the public to react directly to Soviet behaviorsand statements (belligerence), while also reacting to U.S. actions andstatements (belligerence). If we find that the public responds directlyto only U.S. actions and statements in this context (with a very salientenemy), we can conclude that the importance of domestic eliteinterpretation is probably even greater than has been previouslyacknowledged.

ANALYSIS

The analysis presented here utilizes quarterly time-series data forthe periodof1969to1989. 1 This periodwas chosen primarily for data-availability purposes, but it is also a very good period to examine forsubstantive reasons. There is considerable debate concerning theexact date the cold war ended, but it was certainly beginning to wind




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down by 1988, despite the existence of the Soviet Union as a govern-ment until 1991 (Blanton, 2002). Of importance to this analysis, dur-ing the roughly 20-year span covered here, there was substantial varia-tion in the belligerent activities of both countries. For example, the

period covers dtente in the Nixon era, the new cold war of the late1970s and early 1980s, and the period o f glasnos t of the mid- to late-1980s. Undoubtedly, if variation in the belligerence of either countryinfluenced defense-spending opinion, we should be able to see it dur-ing this period. Below, I will present the variables and describe thesubstantive and theoretical reasons for their inclusion as well as theirexpected influence on the dependent variable.

The dependent variable, the defense-spending opinion index, wascompiled from various survey houses with only slightly differentquestion wording (see Appendix A for the questions). All three ques-tions asked essentially whether the respondent favored more defensespending, less defense spending, or about the same amount of defensespending. These various questions were combined into a single timeseries using the Stimson dyadic ratio algorithm method (for a fullexplanation of the intuition and mathematics underlying this proce-dure, see Stimson, 1999, Appendix 1). This algorithm extracts anunderlying dimension in the questions and creates a single series from

the original survey marginals. This series was then converted into adefense-spending support index that was used in the statistical analy-sis.2 The defense-spending index used here is quite parsimoniouscompared to other indexes using the percentage of the public favoringeither more or less spending, because it takes into account both of these figures as well as the undecided respondents. 3 Higher values onthe index indicate higher levels of support for defense spending.

The public-mood data were created by Stimson and presented in

Public Opinion in America: Moods, Cycles and Swings (1999). Thismeasure of domestic-opinion policy liberalism is based on theanswers to hundreds of survey questions covering dozens of differenttopics; it is discussed in great detail in the original text. The measure of public mood used in this analysis has been purged of any defense- orforeign-policy questions to ensure that the independent variable is notcontaminated with any of the variance of the dependent variable.Although defense-spending opinion should react to the external threatenvironment, there is also reason to expect that domestic mood will




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influence defense-spending opinion. Stimson (1999) demonstratesthat defense opinion largely moves in the opposite direction of otherspending preferences (although with much greater variance). Also,during the period under review, the guns-butter trade-offpitting the

needs of the military versus other spending prioritieswas prevalentin political discourse, giving reason to expect that preferences towarddefense spending and other types of government spending areinversely related (see Wlezien, 1995). The expectation is that as itsmood becomes more liberal, the public will favor lower levels of defense spending.

Wlezien (1996) found that public opinion negatively reacts tochanges in defense spending. When defense spending rises, the publicresponds by favoring lower defense spending, and vice versa. Conse-quently, a measure of U.S. defense expenditures has been included asa control variable. It might seem that U.S. or Soviet belligerencewould influence military spending, making estimation problematic.Given the defense-budgeting process, only belligerence from severalquarters ago would influence current levels of defense spendinghowever (Hartley & Russett, 1992). This variable represents theannual, congressional, defense authorization (U.S. Department of Defense, 2000) and consists of the same value for each quarter of a

given calendar year, creating some cause for concern. From a theoreti-cal standpoint, using differenced values would require a preciseapproximation of when the increase in defense spending would likelybe perceived by the public, which is quite difficult. If one accepts thatextremely high (low) defense expenditures would receive attention inthe media and political discourse throughout the entire year, using thesame values for four quarters is appropriate.

Although the Soviet Union was virtually the only international

threat that faced the United States across the period reviewed here,other threats of shorter duration might also have influenced publicattitudes toward defense spending. One possibility is the VietnamWar, and a dummy variable covering the period of its duration hasbeen included. Generally, we might expect the presence of the war topositively influence public support for defense spending, but theperiod under review here takes place after the public had largely fal-tered in its support of the war, making the probable direction of influ-ence unknown.




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The main independent variables of concern are the U.S. and theSoviet belligerence variables. These variables (taken from the WEISdata set) capture the nature of U.S. and Soviet interactions (troopmovements, statements of leaders, and other international activities),

measuring them for how much cooperative or conflictual behavioreach demonstrated toward the other superpower (for the sake of sim -plicity, I refer to the data as a measure of belligerence). In this analy-sis, belligerent behavior has been coded positively, with higher valuesindicating higher levels of conflict or belligerence. Clearly, the expec-tation is that as belligerence rises, public support for increases indefense spending should also rise.

The WEIS is an international event data set coded daily from eventsreported in the New York Times . It has been used quite frequently toanalyze interactions between different sets of countries. For example,Goldstein and Freeman (1990) used this data to examine strategic rec-iprocity among the United States, the Soviet Union, and the PeoplesRepublic of China. Although this data set was not originally intendedfor use as a measure of explicit U.S.-Soviet conflict, it was convertedinto one by Vincent (1979, 1983). The data used to create the quarterlytime series presented here appeared in Appendix A of Goldstein andFreemans Three-Way Street (1990) as a monthly time series. To gen-

erate the quarterly data, I simply added the three correspondingmonthly figures into one quarterly value. This could potentially mutethe true variation in the belligerence levels of the Soviet Union and theUnited States. Fortunately, this was not the case. 4

There has been considerable criticism of the WEIS data set whencompared with the two other major international-event data sets fromthe cold war period, ASHLEY and COPDAB. For example, looking atthe same strategic dyads, Vincent (1983) found that there are signifi-

cant discrepancies between the numbers and types of events that arecovered in the COPDAB data set compared to WEIS. Because theWEIS data set is taken only fromthe New York Times , it systematicallyunderreports events in certain areas that COPDAB includes (which istaken from multiple sources; e.g., Middle East events are under-reported by WEIS compared to COPDAB).

Although the single-source basis of the WEIS event data set isproblematic for the analyst interested in full coverage of internationalevents, it is almost ideal for the purposes of this research. Most Ameri-




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cans certainly do not read the New York Times , but it is probably fairlyrepresentative of the contents (at least the particular events covered, if not the writing style) of many other major newspapers in the country.If an international event or situation is not covered in the New York

Times , it is probably even more likely that it will not receive seriousattention in other U.S. media. Although most Americans receive theirnews from television rather than newspapers, Page and Shapiro(1992) report that the public reacted to New York Times stories in muchthe same manner as it did to the nightly televisionnews (pp.345-346).

Finally, the WEISdata set isanexcellent event set touse for the pur-poses of this study because it contains both the actions (e.g., the inva-sion of Afghanistan or the basing of nuclear missiles in Turkey) andthe statements of political leaders of both countries (e.g., Cartersstatement after the invasion of Afghanistan). As Brody (1991) notes,news coverage of events themselves undoubtedly contains elite inter-pretation, which subsequently helps to shape public opinion.This is of particular interest here.

Having reviewed the important data and measures, we can now turnto the specifics of the analysis. Below, I will present the findings of whether public opinion on defense spending reacted to the changinglevels of belligerence associated with the Soviet Union and the United

States. Specifically, I will assess whether the public is responding toSoviet activity (belligerence), to the U.S. government responses to theperceived Soviet belligerence (U.S. belligerence), or both.

FINDINGS

Before getting into the heart of the analysis, it is useful to briefly

discuss the basic time-series data under consideration here. The possi-bility exists that the aggregation procedure used on the WEIS data(which was collected daily) could mute the true variation in the bellig-erence measures. The quarterly time series presented below indicatesthat this does not seem to be the case (see Figure 1).

We can clearly see how the contours of the belligerence series fol-low what most observers would consider the major changes in tensionbetween the United States and the Soviet Union. For example, some of the highest belligerence levels are during the time that the Soviet




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Union invaded Afghanistan and the United States invaded Grenada(with the concurrent events in Nicaragua and the rest of Central Amer-ica). Conversely, some of the lowest levels of net belligerence can beseen during the period of dtente in the early 1970s and during the eraof Gorbachev-Reagan summits of the mid- and late-1980s.

In Figure 2, we can see that the defense-spending opinion indexalso appears to move roughly with the contours of the U.S. and Soviet

belligerence variables, although less so in the beginning and ending of the time series presented here. The index has its lowest levels during1969, after it became clear to many that the Vietnam War was some-thing of a lost cause. The index reaches its highest levels during 1980,

just after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and when Reaganscampaign rhetoric had considerably ramped up the aggression andhelped to fuel the new coldwar. Although the graphsconfirm expec-tations, to assess any causal impact, we must turn to the regressionanalysis.

Before discussing the regression results, the model specificationdeserves more attention. The autocorrelation of residuals is a poten-tially serious problem in time-series analysis. The solution to thisproblem in the current analysis is to include the lagged dependentvariable on the right-hand side of the equation (Greene, 2000). 5 Fur-thermore, because I am concerned with modeling a dynamic process,including the lagged dependent variable makes theoretical sensebecause it captures the memory in the system. 6 Finally, this specifica-


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Figure 1: U.S. and Soviet Belligerence (standardized values)



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tion provides a more conservative statistical test because the laggedvariable always accounts for a large portion of the variance at time t .

Turning to other independent variables, the Vietnam dummy iscoded as 1 until 1974 and 0 thereafter. The mood variable is differ-enced for both theoretical and methodological reasons. 7 Finally, thebelligerence variables are differenced figures for two reasons. First,

the undifferenced variables are integrated, which can cause seriousproblems for ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation. 8 Second, andmore important, we are theoretically concerned with how changes inthe levels of belligerence influenced public opinion. Using the differ-enced belligerence variables with the lagged dependent variable cap-tures the dynamic nature of public reaction in addition to the desirablestatistical properties.

The first equation to be estimated will examine only the belliger-

ence of the Soviet Union with the other independent variables.Defense opinion can be represented as:

O = a 0 + B1O t 1 + B2 M t + B3 E t + B4V + B5S t + et ,

where O refers to public opinion, M to the change in public mood, E toU.S. expenditures, V to the Vietnam dummy, and S to the change inSoviet belligerence.


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INDEX

Figure 2: Defense Opinion and U.S.-Soviet Belligerence (standardized values)



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For now, looking at only the influence of changes in Soviet belliger-ence on the defense-spending support index (see Table 1), we can seesome relatively surprising results. The Durbin H statistic, with anonsignificant p value, indicates that we can fail to reject the null

hypothesis of zero autocorrelation in the residuals.9

The high R2

sim-ply indicates that the lagged dependent variable has a great deal of pre -dictive power, as expected.

Somewhat surprisingly, changes in public mood (although cor-rectlysigned) do nothavea statistically significant influenceon publicopinion toward defense spending. Although public mood anddefense-spending opinion do appear to have negative covarianceacross time at the annual level (Stimson, 1999), purging the moodmeasure of any defense or foreign-policy-related questions mighthave substantively changed what this variable is measuring. Wlezien(1995) did find that preferences for domestic and defense spendingareinversely related, but that the public adjusts preferences for domesticspending in response to preferences for defense spending, rather thanthe reverse. Also, the possibility exists that public mood cannotexplain more short-term changes in attitudes toward defense spend-ing. Consequently, we might expect that measures of belligerenceshould do a better job of explaining quarterly variation.

TheVietnamdummy variable was nota statistically significant pre-dictor in the time series under review. As stated above, this is not nec-essarily a surprising result. During the Vietnam War era, the publicgenerally favored lower defense spending, no doubt partly in responseto the failure of the war (see Figure 2).

Confirming previous research, levels of defense spending hada sig-nificant influence on defense-spending opinion. The sign of the coef-ficient indicates that the public is reacting negatively to levels of

defense spending. At times of greater spending, the public expressespreferences for lower defense expenditures. This confirms thework of Wlezien (1996), even though he used annual data to look at howchanges in defense expenditures influence opinion toward defensespending.

Turning to the main independent variable of concern, Soviet bellig -erence, it appears that the U.S. public was not directly reacting toSoviet belligerence when formulating defense-spending preferences.Even using a unidirectional t test (which is theoretically appropriate),




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the belligerence variable is not a statistically significant predictor of U.S. defense-spending opinion. 10

The possibility exists that it takes longer for the public to update itsopinions about Soviet belligerence when formulating defense-spending preferences. Perhaps because Americans had some fairlystrong, preconceived ideas about the Soviet Union (Hirshberg, 1993),the public might have been unwilling to update its views (in eitherdirection) when new information about Soviet activity presenteditself. Inserting several different lag lengths of the Soviet belligerencevariable into the equation above indicates that this was not the case(see Table 1). The Granger test presented in Appendix B, examiningthe influence of the Soviet belligerence variable, also confirms thisfinding.


TABLE 1

The Influence of Soviet Belligerenceon U.S. Defense Spending Opinion

Independent

Variable Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Model 4

Index t 1 0.867** (0.050) 0.861** (0.052) 0.860** (0.050) 0.855** (0.051) Mood 0.329 (0.416) 0.379 (0.479) 3.58 (0.419) 0.484 (0.469)U.S. Defense

spending 0.032** (0.011) 0.032** (0.012) 0.033** (0.011) 0.034** (0.012)Vietnam 1.665 (1.465) 1.891 (1.631) 1.880 (1.483) 2.152 (1.616) Soviet 0.014 (0.011) Soviet t 1 0.011 (0.013) Soviet t 2 0.003 (0.013) Soviet t 3 0.007 (0.013)

Soviet-China 0.017 (0.032) Soviet-China t 1 0.028 (0.040) Soviet-China t 2 0.042 (0.040) Soviet-China t 3 0.585 (0.039)

R2 .92 .92 .92 .92Durbins H

( p value) .38 .65 .44 .35n 78 75 78 75

NOTE: Coefficients are ordinary least squares (OLS) regression values; standard errors are inparentheses. Soviet = the change in Soviet belligerence toward the United States. U.S. defensespending is the congressional authorization (FY 2000 $).** p < .01.



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Before moving on to the influence of U.S. belligerence on defense-spending opinion, it is worth considering the possibility that the U.S.public was responding not to Soviet belligerence toward the UnitedStates but to Soviet belligerence more generally. Although a full

examination is beyond the scope of this study, available WEIS dataallow us to test whether Soviet aggression toward China influencedU.S. attitudes toward defense spending. There is no reason to believethat Americans would be particularly sensitive to aggression towardChina, but if this belligerence is evidence of a general increase inSoviet aggression, it might influence support for defense spending.Looking at Models 3 and 4 in Table 1, we can see that there is no sup-port for this assertion (a combined measure of aggression toward theUnited States and China yielded similar results and has therefore notbeen included). Undoubtedly, Soviet acts against countries other thanthe United States (and other sporadic exogenous events) would haveinfluenced American perceptions of the need for increased defensespending. Across the time period covered in this article, however, therelationship with the Soviet Union should have been the largest inter-national influence on these considerations.

The next step is to examine the influence of U.S. belligerence ondefense-spending opinion. It now appears that if the U.S. public were

reacting to changes in the cold war context at all, it would have beenthrough responses to U.S. belligerence. In the following analysis, theSoviet belligerence variable has been dropped. 11 There is reason tobelieve that the U.S. and Soviet belligerences are responding to eachother and are therefore simultaneously determined (Goldstein & Free-man, 1990), in which case including both measures could lead toinconsistent parameter estimates. 12

Restricting the following model to include only U.S. belligerence

obviates a number of potentially serious estimation problems. In themodel presented below, U.S. public opinion toward defense spendingis represented as

O = a 0 + B1O t 1 + B2 M t + B3 E t + B4V + B5U t + e t ,

where O refers to public opinion, M to the change in public mood, E toU.S. expenditures, V to the Vietnam dummy, and U to the change inU.S. belligerence.




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Looking at Table 2, we can see that the belligerent actions of theU.S. government did have a significant influence on public opiniontoward defense spending. As the U.S. government behaved more bel-ligerently toward the Soviet Union, the public demonstrated greater

support for defense spending. Several diagnostics indicate that theestimation was free of problems often associated with time-seriesanalysis. 13

The model specified above only assesses how current changes inbelligerence influenced current changes in support for defense spend-ing. Although the specification of belligerence influencing defenseopinion makes more theoretical sense, it is also possible that defense-spending opinion influenced U.S. belligerence. A Granger test exam-ining both possible directions of causality indicates that defense-spending opinion did not Granger cause U.S. belligerence towardthe Soviet Union (see Appendix B). 14

The full model, including the Vietnam dummy variable and a mea-sure of public mood, indicates that these variables are not statisticallysignificant even in the more accurately specified model. The substan-tive results of the analysis will be discussed in reference only to Model1, although, as can be seen in Table 2, the coefficients of the significantvariables in the prior equation are almost identical.

Substantively, we can see that previous levels of opinion accountfor much of the variance in current levels of opinion, as should be thecase with most political time series. Essentially, current opinion is thebest predictor of future opinion. Looking at the influence of actualdefense spending on public opinion toward that spending, we can seethe significant negative relationship. When levels of defense spendingare higher, the public is less favorable to further increases in defensespending.

We can also note that the belligerent statements and actions of U.S.leaders did have a statistically significant influence on public supportfor defense spending. In substantive terms, each unit increase inbelligerence toward the Soviet Union led to approximately two hun-dredths of a point increase in the defense-spending support index.This does not seem like a dramatic influence, but given some of themajor swings in belligerence toward the Soviet Union, we can con-clude that the U.S. governments actions caused important changes in




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U.S. public opinion during the period under review. For example,from the fourth quarter of 1979 to the first quarter of 1980, net U.S.belligerence toward the Soviet Union increased by about 160 points,according to the quarterly WEIS data. This increase in U.S. belliger-ence toward the Soviet Union resulted in an increase of more than 3

points in net support for defense spending in just one quarter.Although this was the most dramatic short-term increase in bellig-erence toward the Soviet Union during the period under review, lessdramatic and more sustained changes in posture toward the SovietUnion also influenced public support for defense spending. For exam-ple, public support for increases in defense spending had lessenedconsiderably by the mid- to late-1980s, when the relations betweenthe United States and the Soviet Union had improved from the earlydays of the Reagan administration.

The analysis above indicates that the public, when thinking aboutdefense spending, responds to belligerent statements and actionsmade byU.S. political leaders. The public did not have any direct reac-tion to Soviet belligerence, even when a number of lags were exam-ined. The reaction to complex, international political events, then,appears to be filtered through the reaction of the U.S. governmentsleaders. The implications of this finding are discussed below.


TABLE 2

The Influence of U.S. Belligerence on U.S. Defense Spending Opinion

Independent Variable Model 1 Model 2

Index t 1 0.867** (0.050) 0.91** (0.04) Mood 0.329 (0.416) U.S. defense spending 0.032** (0.012) 0.03** (0.01)Vietnam 1.665 (1.469) U.S. 0.022** (0.009) 0.02** (0.01)

R2 .93 .93Durbins H ( p value) .28 .28n 78 78

NOTE: Coefficients are ordinary least squares (OLS) regression values; standard errors are inparentheses. U.S. = the change in U.S. belligerence. U.S. defense spending is the congressio-

nal authorization (FY 2000 $).** p < .01.



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directly experienced by very few Americans. If, at some point in time,there is substantial divergence between the interests of the govern-ments political leaders and the interests of the public vis--vis inter-national affairs, the consequences for public opinion could be dire. In

this situation, rather than acting as a guiding force for the actions of political leaders, opinion would most likely serve as a rubber stampfor elite decisions that might or might not be in line with the publicinterest.

Although potentially dire, public reliance on domestic politicalelites for information from the international realm must be viewedwithin the context of the American political system and institutions.The two-party system clearly creates incentives for disagreementamong political elites, which is beneficial in light of the fact that thepublic appears to be so reliant on political elites. If there is at least par-tisan disagreement, the public often has two choices of what to believeabout complicated political events. Although many think that politicsshould stop at the waters edge, this would be a terrible developmentfor the U.S. publics ability to deliberate and to think sensibly aboutinternational events and foreign policy. The potential for agreementamong political elites resulting from the breakdown of these institu-tional incentives and the possible repercussions for public opinion are

deserving of more serious attention.It is also worth thinking in more detail about the possible determi-

nants of defense-spending opinion in the postcold war era. Duringthe cold war, the public was generally very supportive of relativelyhigh levels of military spending, which could be easily justified bypointing to the Soviet threat. It appears that a new and serious threat toAmerican security in the form of global terrorism has emerged.Whether this threat looms large in the minds of Americans remains to

be seen but will likelydependon the actions and statements of nationalpolitical leaders. As the nation embarks on a new military buildup insupport of the war on terror, the relationship between internationalevents, elite actions, and domestic public opinion again becomes criti-cally important.




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APPENDIX ASurvey Questions

American National Election Studies(If you had a say in making up the federal budget this year, for which of the follow-

ing programs would you like to see spending increased and for which would you liketo see spending decreased.) Should federal spending on defense be increased,decreased, or kept about the same?

Gallup(I am going to read a list of present federal government programs. For each Id like

you to tell me whether you feel it should be expanded, cut back, or kept about thesame.) . . . defense spending.

National Opinion Research Center(We are faced with many problems in this country, none of which can be solved

easily or inexpensively. Im going to name some of these problems, and for each oneId like you to tell me whether you think were spending too much, too little, or aboutthe right amount.) Are we spending too much, too little, or about the right amounton . . . the military, armaments and defense?

Gallup/National Opinion Research CenterHere is an interesting experiment. You will notice that the boxes on this card go

fromthe highest position ofplus5 for a country you likevery much to the lowestposi-

tion of minus 5 for a country you dislike very much. How far up the scale or how fardownthescale would yourate thefollowing countries? (NORC omits first sentence.)

APPENDIX BSupplementary Analysis

TABLE B1

The Influence of U.S. and Soviet Belligerenceon Attitudes Toward the Soviet Union

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3

Soviet dislike t 1 .89 (.07)** .90 (.06)** .90 (.06)**U.S. belligerence .06 (.03)* .08 (.04)*Soviet belligerence .02 (.04) .04 (.05)




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R2 .74 .75 .76

Durbins H ( p value) .65 .57 .50n 68 68 68

NOTE: Coefficients are ordinary least squares (OLS) regression values; standard errors are inparentheses. Analysis is quarterly data, 1972-1989. Net Soviet dislike is the dependent variable.See Appendix A for survey question on attitudes toward the Soviet Union.* p < .05. ** p < .01.

TABLE B2

Granger Causality Tests: Influence of LaggedBelligerence on Defense-Spending Opinion

Variable p Value Variable p Value

Soviet t 1 .32 U.S. t 1 .09Soviet t 2 .27 U.S. t 2 .04Soviet t 3 .45 U.S. t 3 .35Soviet t 4 .44 U.S. t 4 .20Soviet t 5 .13 U.S. t 5 .17Block F test .80 Block F test .08

NOTE: Ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates. Both equations include lagged values of publicopinion (at t 1, t 2, t 3, t 4, t 5) to control for the influence of past values of the variable

upon itself.

TABLE B3

Granger Causality Test: Influence of Belligerence onDefense Opinion and Defense Opinion on Belligerence

Belligerence on Opinion p Value Opinion on Belligerence p Value

U.S. t 1 .25 Opinion t 1 .24U.S. t 2 .22 Opinion t 2 .15U.S.

t 3.05 Opinion

t 3.13

U.S. t 4 .21 Opinion t 4 .14U.S. t 5 .02 Opinion t 5 .13Block F test .07 Block F test .33

NOTE: Ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates. Both equations include lagged values of thedependent variable (at t 1, t 2, t 3, t 4, t 5) to control for the influence of past values of thevariable upon itself.


TABLE B1 (continued)

Model 1 Model 2 Model 3



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TABLE B4

Error-Correction Models of the RelationshipBetween U.S. and Soviet Belligerence

U.S. Belligerence Soviet Belligerence

U.S. t 1 .96 (.11)** .65 (.13)**U.S. t 1 .70 (.08)**Soviet t 1 .59 (.11)** .58 (.10)**Soviet t 1 .76 (.08)**

R2 .71 .62n 78 78

NOTE: Coefficients are ordinary least squares (OLS) regression values; standard errors are inparentheses.* p < .05. ** p < .01.

NOTES

1. The series begins in the third quarter of 1969 and ends in the second quarter of 1989.2. Thethree separate questions used to create thetimeseries arecorrelatedat approximately

.90, indicating a strong underlying dimension even before input into the algorithm. The ques-tions were asked a total of 74 times across the 79 quarters, meaning that some observations areinterpolated from the data.

3. The index was computed using the following formula: (percentage favoring increase)/ (percentage favoring increase + percentage favoring decrease). Higher values represent greaternet public support for spending.

4. Previous research has addressed the relationship between perceptions of the SovietUnion (on a like/dislike scale) and defense-spending opinion, whereas I am examining the influ-ence of actual events that should have influenced defense-spending opinion. Ideally, we mightwant to combine both of these approaches in the work reported here. Unfortunately, the like/dis-like question was not used until1972 and was asked too infrequently for the creation of a reliablequarterly time series.Aggregating the WEIS data set to the annual level removes anyintelligibletrends from the data, limiting its usefulness as a measure of the relationship between the UnitedStates andtheSovietUnion (for limitations of thedata, seeGoldstein & Freeman, 1990).Supple-

mentary analysis presented in Appendix B indicates that Soviet belligerence did not signifi-cantly influence attitudes toward the Soviet Union, whereas U.S. belligerence did, supportingthe main conclusions of this article. For more on the link between attitudes toward the SovietUnion and defense spending, the reader should see Wlezien (1996).

5. Including the lagged dependent variable in the analysis eliminates most potential prob -lems with autocorrelation, even if there would likely have been correlated disturbances in theabsence of the lagged dependent variable. However, this procedure also introduces a smallamount of bias into the parameterestimates, the amount of which is unknown. Monte Carlo sim-ulation indicates that this bias is normally trivial, even under extreme circumstances (Greene,2000). For applications of this approach in the political science literature, see Anderson and




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Newmark (2002); Mackuen, Erikson, and Stimson (2001); and Durr, Gilmour, and Wolbrecht(1997).

6. Another possible specification would have been to model change in defense-spendingopinion as thedependent variable. From both a theoretical anda statistical standpoint, the laggeddependent variable approach is superior. The lagged dependent variable allows us to model thememory of the system because the lagged value represents not only the last value of spending

opinion, but also all prior influences on spending opinion. Undoubtedly, opinion at time t 1influences opinion at time t , and this is captured in the specification used here.

7. Theoretically, I am interestedin the influence of changes in (rather than levels of)domes-tic policy liberalism, making differenced data appropriate. Furthermore, although not strictlyintegrated, using a Dickey-Fuller test, the mood variable is nearly integrated, and differencingmight eliminate potential problems in the estimation stage.

8. Dickey-Fuller test statistics and the corresponding MacKinnon approximate p valuesindicated the presence of a unit root in both belligerence series. Integrated data can lead to falsefindings of significance using ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation.

9. TheDurbin-Watson test, which is normally used to assess thepresence of autocorrelationin the residuals, is invalid for models including a lagged dependent variable, with the resultsbiased toward 2 and away from a rejection of the null of noncorrelated errors. Consequently, inthis case the Durbins H (a special case of the Breusch-Godfrey Lagrange multiplier test) is theappropriate test procedure to use.

10. Taking a somewhat different approach, a Granger causality test (presented in AppendixB) also indicated that theSovietbelligerence variabledidnotsignificantlyinfluencepublic opin-ion on defense spending in the time period under review (for applications of Granger testing inpolitical science, see Freeman, 1983).

11. Although initially it might have made sense to include both the Soviet and U.S. belliger-ence variables in the analysis, this would have resulted in potential estimation problems due tomulticollinearity and the endogeneity of the belligerence variables. These two variables arehighly correlated (simple bivariate correlation = .75) and are also causally related (Goldstein &Freeman, 1990). Given the results of the Granger test assessing the influence of the two belliger-ence series, we can be reasonably confident that Soviet belligerence had no direct causal impacton defense-spending opinion (see Appendix B, Table B1).

12. Although the U.S. public did not have a direct reaction to Soviet belligerence toward theUnited States, it seems that levels of U.S. belligerence should have been determined to someextent by Soviet levels. Using vector autoregression (VAR), Goldstein and Freeman (1990)found that the United States and the Soviet Union were engaged in a direct relationship of reci-procity. Granger tests of the influence of Soviet and U.S. belligerence on each other indicatedthat there is no direct, causal relationship between the two levels of belligerence. The differencein the finding of no direct relationship here probably stems from the aggregation mechanism

used, which introduced some integration into the data. However, the possibility exists that twovariables are engaged in an equilibrium relationship, where one or both series respond tochanges in the other (see Ostrom & Smith, 1992). For example, if an exogenous shock occurs tothe independent series, the dependent series will correct itself and adjust back to the equilib-rium state.

We can assess this type of relationship with single-equation, error-correction models. Theresults of these single-equation, error-correction models indicate that Soviet and U.S. belliger-ences were engaged in this equilibrium-type relationship (see Appendix B). Both error-correction terms (the lags of the dependent variables) are highly significant, indicating that bothseries are engaged in a long-term equilibrium relationship. Therefore, although no direct rela-




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tionship existed between Soviet belligerence and U.S. public opinion toward defense spending,this variable was reflected to some degree in changes in U.S. belligerence. For some purposes,we might wish to estimate the indirect impact of Soviet belligerence on U.S. attitudes towarddefense spending using a simultaneous-equations approach. This would require additional datathat is probably unavailable (i.e., exogenous determinants of Soviet belligerence) and is not nec-essary in light of the theoretical question underlying this study.

13. Durbins H test statistic indicates that there was not either positive or negative first-orderserial autocorrelation in the residuals. Because neither the U.S. belligerence nor the defensespending index was integrated, we canconclude that cointegration is not responsible for thefind-ings of significance (see Granger & Newbold, 1974). Furthermore, Dickey-Fuller tests on all of the final variables indicated against the presence of a unit root. Also, inspection of the varianceinflation factors indicated that the model did not suffer from collinearity problems.

14. The block F test indicates that past values of defense-spending opinion did not influencecurrent values of belligerence (see Appendix B, Table B2). On the other hand, past belligerencewas a significant influence on defense-spending opinion at the .10 level ( p = .07). Given theseresults and prior expectations, we can be quite confident that the direction of causality examinedin the model above is correct.

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Christopher Witko received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and will be joining the Department of Government at California State University,Sacramento.


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