Rally 'Round the Union Jack? Public Opinion and the Use of Force in the United Kingdom, 1948-2001

Abstract

This paper provides the most comprehensive and extensive analysis to date of the possibility of a ''rally 'round the flag'' effectFan increase in support for the government caused by involvement in international conflictFin Britain, for the years 1948-2001. We use a fractionally integrated time series model with an array of political and economic controls. Our primary dependent variable is intention to vote for the ruling party. The results confirm earlier studies that the Falklands War generated a rally effect, but they provide a more sophisticated understanding of the Gulf War rally. New results also include the findings that participation in international crises which stopped short of war did not engender rallies, and that there were no rallies for the Korean, Suez, or Kosovo Wars. The findings indicate that when they do occur rallies are heterogeneous in nature, that rallies are most likely when there is intense and direct threat to the national interest, that the relationship between multilateralism and rallies in the British case is tenuous, and that rallies for the ruling party are sometimes expressed through satisfaction with the prime minister.Does involvement in international conflict affect a democratically elected government's popularity? Much of the empirical work on the so-called ''rally 'round the flag effect'' has to date been limited to exploration of the American case. In this paper, we test for the presence of rally effects in the United Kingdom. Past research has found that the Falklands War boosted Prime Minister (PM) Margaret Thatcher's popularity in the early 1980s, helping carry her to victory in the 1983 election. However, there are virtually no comprehensive studies exploring whether British conflict involvement has affected government popularity across a long time span, searching for the general effects of conflict on the popularity of British governments.This study aims to fill that gap. We ask the question: In the post-World War II period, has the popularity of the British government significantly increased when

Cultural Leaders and the Clash of Civilizations

“…See e.g. Baker and Oneal (2001) for rally around the ‡ag e¤ects in the US and Lai and Reiter (2005) for rally around the ‡ag e¤ects in the UK. Colaresi (2004) uses event history techniques to analyze the likelihood of all state leaders between 1950-1990 to be replaced from o¢ ce depending on whether they were more or less aggressive than the leader of the rival state in a con ‡ict situation.…”

Logics of war: explanations for limited and unlimited conflicts

“…For evidence of signifi cant popularity gains in external crises in the United States and elsewhere, see Mueller (1970Mueller ( , 1973, Sprecher and DeRouen (2002), and Lai and Reiter (2005). For the fi nding that the gains from the average crisis are small, see Lian and Oneal (1993), James and Rioux (1998), and Baker and Oneal (2001).…”

“…For the fi nding that the gains from the average crisis are small, see Lian and Oneal (1993), James and Rioux (1998), and Baker and Oneal (2001). For the fi nding that the big gains occur in precisely those crises that are least open to manipulation, see Chapman and Reiter (2004) and Lai and Reiter (2005). Colaresi (2007) similarly emphasizes the role of constraints on rally effects.…”

Assumed Transmission in Political Science: A Call for Bringing Description Back In

“…It is likely that such critical coverage might include more attention to the human costs of war. However, since elite divisions should be more likely the longer a war goes on, in practice it becomes difficult to separate the effects of elite opinion on war coverage independently from the effects of mounting numbers of cumulative casualties, or any other factor that is correlated with the passage of time (e.g., Lai and Reiter 2005). We therefore examine a different indicator of current political context: signals carried in news coverage about whether a war is likely to be won or lost (Feaver and Gelpi 2004;Reifler 2005, 2009).…”