Do elite cues exert extensive, conditional or minimal influence on public support for military alliances in the United States? I assess the boundaries of elite leadership on public opinion towards alliances by dividing partisan respondents into wings based on isolationism and militant assertiveness. If co-partisan elite cues change public attitudes across three or four wings within their party, elites exert extensive influence. Elite cues exert conditional influence if they reach two party wings, and minimal influence if they impact one or no wings. Using two conjoint survey experiments to examine public attitudes towards forming and maintaining international alliances, I find that elite cues exert extensive influence, but some individuals hold rigid alliance attitudes. Staunch alliance supporters in the Democratic party and consistent alliance skeptics in the Republican party both discount elite cues. Therefore, elites can lead most party wings with alliance cues, but intra-party divisions can constrain their influence.
Approximately 20% of contemporary rebel groups have expressed commitment to international law and signaled their intention to exercise restraint during wartime. Which rebel groups make these commitments and under what conditions? We argue that international engagement shapes the likelihood of rebel commitment to international law. Rebel groups with transnational non-military support and clear organizational structure are likely to speak the language of international law, especially near peace negotiations. We find support for our argument in a statistical analysis of international law commitments by rebel groups between 1974 and 2010. The analysis has implications for humanitarian engagement and promoting restraint in war.
How does alliance participation affect military spending? Some argue that alliance membership increases military expenditures, while others contend that it produces spending cuts. I argue that deep formal defense cooperation modifies the impact of alliance participation on military expenditures and can explain increases and decreases in spending by small alliance members. Security-seeking junior members of deep alliances usually decrease military spending because these treaties are more credible. Joining shallow alliances often increases junior alliance member military spending, however. I test the argument by creating a latent measure of alliance treaty depth and using it to predict differences in how alliance participation affects military spending. The research design generates new empirical evidence linking alliance participation and percentage changes in state military spending from 1919 to 2007. I find that deeper alliance treaties tend to decrease military spending by junior alliance members, and shallow alliances often increase military spending. These results help scholars and policymakers better understand a central question about alliance politics that has been debated in scholarship for decades.
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