Ideology and Threat Perceptions: American Public Opinion toward China and Iran
| Author | Nikola Mirilovic,Myunghee Kim |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321715614850 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
614850PSX0010.1177/0032321715614850Political StudiesMirilovic and Kim
research-article2016
Article
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(1) 179 –198
Ideology and Threat
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321715614850
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Public Opinion toward
China and Iran
Nikola Mirilovic and Myunghee Kim
Abstract
What determines threat perceptions in the context of potential interstate conflict? We argue that
such perceptions are to an important extent driven by domestic political cleavages and ideological
differences. The ideology effects are often surprising and are more complex than the conventional
wisdom would indicate. We specify the conditions under which conservatives may favor the
economic rise of rising powers. Concern about budget deficits affects not only domestic political
preferences but also threat perceptions. Finally, civil libertarianism in certain contexts can lead to
isolationist preferences. We test these claims using the 2012 American National Election Studies
data about the perceptions of American citizens of the economic and military rise of China, and of
potential American responses to Iran’s nuclear program.
Keywords
ideology, public opinion, threat perceptions, China, Iran
Accepted: 30 September 2015
What are the sources of public opinion regarding foreign policymaking and international
threat perceptions? More specifically, why do some Americans perceive the rise of China
as a threat while others do not, and what explains variation in policy preferences of
Americans regarding Iran’s nuclear program? These questions have important implica-
tions for political science theory building and for current policy debates.
Understanding these questions can help us address larger debates about domestic and
international politics. Is international politics an autonomous area, governed by its own
set of rules, and largely separate from domestic politics? Alternatively, are domestic and
international politics intrinsically linked, with issues perceived as domestic influencing
foreign policy preferences and vice versa? We argue that domestic and international
Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, USA
Corresponding author:
Nikola Mirilovic, Department of Political Science, University of Central Florida, 4297 Andromeda Loop N.,
Howard Phillips Hall 302, PO Box 161356, Orlando, FL 32816-1356, USA.
Email: nikola.mirilovic@ucf.edu
180
Political Studies 65 (1)
politics are intrinsically linked and demonstrate why they should be studied together. We
show that disagreements exist across Americans over what constitutes an external threat,
as well as regarding how such potential threats should be addressed. Americans differ
regarding the implications of the rise of China for the United States, and regarding how
the United States should respond to Iran’s nuclear program. That variation presents a puz-
zle in need of an explanation. We examine domestic political sources of those differences.
The question of which perspective prevails domestically can influence foreign
policymaking.
Another important subject is political ideology and its impact on policy preferences
and outcomes. In this article, we emphasize several surprising findings regarding the
impact of ideology on foreign policy preferences. We argue that conservatives are more
likely than liberals to view the economic rise of China as a positive, and that this pattern
is particularly relevant in explaining differences between liberal and conservative
Democrats; that civil libertarians oppose all forms of US involvement with Iran’s nuclear
program, including diplomacy; and that concerns about budget deficits affect how
Americans view the rise of China and potential responses to Iran’s nuclear program.
In addition to its implications for theory building, the article addresses two policy areas
with current relevance. As we discuss in more detail in the following, the rise of China,
Iran’s nuclear program, and the policy choices that the United States adopts toward these
questions are among the most consequential issues in contemporary international politics.
In the next section, we develop our argument in more detail. In the third section, we
situate our claims in the literature. In the fourth section, we discuss our data and empirical
results. We test our claims using data from the 2012 American National Election Studies
(ANES). The fifth section concludes and discusses avenues for future research.
Ideology and Threat Perceptions
We argue that domestic politics shapes international threat perceptions. International
events matter, but they are often interpreted via ideological categories based in domestic
politics. Ideology acts as an informational shortcut. Information about international
events and their implications for an individual’s interests are often costly to acquire and
analyze. In response, individuals adopt an ideological orientation in order to establish
which issues to prioritize. Ideological and partisan leaders interpret foreign policy events
and take positions on them. Ideological and partisan identifiers can follow cues set by
those leaders in interpreting foreign policy events.
We follow and build on the work of Adam Berinsky (2009), who argues that percep-
tions of international events are substantially influenced by domestic politics in general
and by partisan cleavages in particular. According to Berinsky (2009), partisan elites
make judgments and take positions on military conflicts, and partisan identifiers tend to
follow those judgments. Berinsky’s (2009) examination of the opinions of Americans
regarding several wars demonstrates that partisan cleavages played an important role in
shaping those attitudes (e.g. he argues that shifts in the foreign policy positions of partisan
leaders during the buildup to World War II affected American public opinion toward
England and Germany).
We argue that ideology shapes foreign policy preferences. According to Peffley and
Hurwitz (1985: 871), a widely used definition by Philip Converse (1964) describes ide-
ology as a “configuration of ideas and attitudes in which the elements are bound together
by some form of constraint or functional interdependence.” According to Kathleen
Mirilovic and Kim
181
Knight (2006) “[d]efinitions of ideology that refer to parties, groups, and ‘isms’ imply
not only coherence, but also contrast one abstract group, or its beliefs, with another,”
such as contrasting liberalism and conservatism (p. 625, emphasis in the original). Fred
Kerlinger (1984: 15–17) claims that liberalism involves, among other factors, an empha-
sis on egalitarianism and rights of minorities, constructive social progress and change,
and secularism and positive government action, while conservatism emphasizes, among
other factors, stability, religion and morality, liberty, and business and private property.
Kerlinger (1984) and Peffley and Hurwitz (1985) argue that ideology shapes social and
political attitudes. Heskin and Power (2010) argue that conservative Australians were
more likely than liberals to approve of the Gulf War, while Gries and Crowson (2010)
and Gries et al. (2011) claim that ideology affects perceptions of the rise of China.
In addition to establishing whether or not ideology and domestic politics shape atti-
tudes regarding foreign policies, it is also important to examine the specific ways in
which they matter. We propose that ideological differences play an important role in shap-
ing external threat perceptions, and that they do so in ways that are more complex than
the conventional wisdom would indicate.
Conservatives and/or Republicans do not necessarily view the rise of China as a threat
or favor use of military force by the United States against Iran. Rather, we should con-
sider the ideological camps in the United States as forming broad coalitions, with various
elements of those coalitions having different foreign policy preferences. There are also
important differences in how rising powers are perceived in terms of their economic and
military rise. Conservatives may view the economic rise of China positively partly
because of their emphasis on business opportunities. Since the reforms that started in the
late 1970s, China has embraced international economic integration (Kim, 2013). The
reforms raised living standards in China and created business opportunities for foreign
investors, which conservatives are likely to view positively. By contrast, liberals are more
likely than conservatives to emphasize perceived negative consequences of the economic
rise of China and of US–China trade on the wages of American blue-collar workers.
Meanwhile, conservatives may have a neutral or a negative view of China’s military rise,
which they do not associate with business opportunities and rising living standards.
Hypothesis 1: Conservatives are more likely than liberals to have a positive view of
the economic rise of China.
Regarding perceptions of Iran’s nuclear program, the differences between conserva-
tives and liberals may not follow a pattern similar to Hypothesis 1. Unlike the economic
rise of China, Iran’s nuclear program is not associated with close economic ties between
the United States and Iran or with improving living standards in Iran.1 Hence, it lacks the
appeal that the economic rise of China has for American...
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