IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v81y1987i03p949-959_20.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Guns and Butter and Government Popularity in Britain

Author

Listed:
  • Norpoth, Helmut

Abstract

Britain under the government of Prime Minister Thatcher provides a unique opportunity to probe the effects of both war and macroeconomic performance on government popularity. Monthly ratings for Thatcher and Conservative-party support (June 1979 to July 1985) are examined by way of Box-Tiao intervention models. The model that best captures the impact of the Falklands War of 1982 is of the gradual-temporary variety: popularity gains accrued through the three-month war shrink in a geometric fashion. Nevertheless, they prove to be worth over five percentage points for the Conservative party a year later, in the 1983 election. Macroeconomic performance, meanwhile, is found to have an asymmetric effect on government popularity, with unemployment strongly significant but inflation not significant at all. Apparently, the British public is punishing failure (on employment) while letting success (on inflation) go unrewarded. Qualifications of the positive effect of war and the negative effect of macroeconomic performance are suggested.

Suggested Citation

  • Norpoth, Helmut, 1987. "Guns and Butter and Government Popularity in Britain," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(3), pages 949-959, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:81:y:1987:i:03:p:949-959_20
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055400203559/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gerald T. Fox, 2009. "Partisan Divide on War and the Economy," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 53(6), pages 905-933, December.
    2. Lis, Piotr, 2011. "Fatality sensitivity in coalition countries: a study of British, Polish and Australian public opinion on the Iraq war," MPRA Paper 61490, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Aug 2013.
    3. Jonathon M. Clegg, 2016. "Perception vs Reality: How Does The British Electorate Evaluate Economic Performance of Incumbent Governments In The Post War Period?," Oxford Economic and Social History Working Papers _143, University of Oxford, Department of Economics.
    4. William D. Baker & John R. Oneal, 2001. "Patriotism or Opinion Leadership?," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 45(5), pages 661-687, October.
    5. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2016. "Voting and Popularity," CESifo Working Paper Series 6182, CESifo.
    6. Diana Richards & T. Clifton Morgan & Rick K. Wilson & Valerie L. Schwebach & Garry D. Young, 1993. "Good Times, Bad Times, and the Diversionary Use of Force," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 37(3), pages 504-535, September.
    7. Charles Pattie & Ron Johnston, 1998. "The Role of Regional Context in Voting: Evidence from the 1992 British General Election," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 32(3), pages 249-263.
    8. Hemmens, Craig & Marquart, James W., 2000. "Friend or foe? Race, age, and inmate perceptions of inmate-staff relations," Journal of Criminal Justice, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 297-312.
    9. Fox, Gerald T., 2012. "Macroeconomic time consistency and wartime presidential approval," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 891-902.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:81:y:1987:i:03:p:949-959_20. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.