ABSTRACT

How can democratic governments convince their citizens to support a costly military alliance? We theorize about two rhetorical tools that foreign policy leaders have historically used to achieve this goal: instrumental cues emphasizing national interests and ideational cues highlighting shared values. We then assess the effects of these appeals in various forms and contexts by analyzing two original survey experiments fielded in the United States. Our analysis shows that alliance rhetoric – whether positive or negative – can sway public support for alliances. Positive appeals to both interests and values raise citizen approval for maintaining a costly alliance in times of peace and during an active crisis, though their effects are slightly muted in a crisis. We also find that negative rhetoric erodes public support for alliances, but only under limited conditions: negative rhetoric affects public support for peace-time alliance policies but not for defending an ally during a crisis, and its effect disappears in the presence of positive rhetoric. The findings contribute to literatures on the domestic politics of international institutions and the role of political communication in foreign policy.

摘要

民主政府如何说服其公民支持代价高昂的军事联盟？我们对外交政策领导人历史上用来实现这一目标的两种修辞工具进行了理论分析：强调国家利益的工具性线索和强调共同价值观的观念性线索。然后，我们通过分析在美国进行的两个原始调查实验来评估这些呼吁在各种形式和背景下的影响。我们的分析表明，联盟言论——无论是积极的还是消极的——都会影响公众对联盟的支持。对利益和价值观的积极呼吁会提高公民对在和平时期和活跃危机期间维持代价高昂的联盟的认可，尽管它们的影响在危机中会略微减弱。我们还发现负面言论削弱了公众对联盟的支持，但仅在有限的条件下：负面言论会影响公众对和平时期联盟政策的支持，但不会影响在危机期间捍卫盟友的支持，并且在正面言论出现时其效果会消失。这些发现有助于研究国际机构的国内政治和政治传播在外交政策中的作用。