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Government Popularity and the Falklands War: A Reassessment

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  • Sanders, David
  • Ward, Hugh
  • Marsh, David
  • Fletcher, Tony

Abstract

Mrs Thatcher's decisive and determined stand during the Falklands crisis in 1982 has been widely credited with restoring the electoral fortunes of the Conservative party in the run-up to the 1983 general election. This article argues that the Falklands war produced a boost to Conservative popularity of at most three percentage points for a period of only three months. Government popularity was already accelerating as a result of macroeconomic factors before the outbreak of the Falklands crisis, in particular ‘personal economic expectations’ proved to be of critical theoretical and empirical significance, and can be modelled satisfactorily on the basis purely of objective macroeconomic indices. Thus macroeconomic factors were at the root of the revival of Mrs Thatcher's political fortunes, and most of the boost to government popularity which occurred in the spring of 1982 derived from intelligent (or cynical) macroeconomic management. The Falklands crisis merely coincided with a jump in government popularity which would have occurred anyway in the wake of Geoffrey Howe's 1982 Budget.

Suggested Citation

  • Sanders, David & Ward, Hugh & Marsh, David & Fletcher, Tony, 1987. "Government Popularity and the Falklands War: A Reassessment," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 17(3), pages 281-313, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:bjposi:v:17:y:1987:i:03:p:281-313_00
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    Cited by:

    1. 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.
    2. R. J. Johnston & C. J. Pattie, 2001. "'It's the Economy, Stupid' - But Which Economy? Geographical Scales, Retrospective Economic Evaluations and Voting at the 1997 British General Election," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 309-319.
    3. Matthew J. Lebo & Janet M. Box‐Steffensmeier, 2008. "Dynamic Conditional Correlations in Political Science," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 52(3), pages 688-704, July.
    4. Charles Pattie & Daniel Dorling & Ron Johnston, 1995. "A Debt-owing Democracy: The Political Impact of Housing Market Recession at the British General Election of 1992," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 32(8), pages 1293-1315, August.
    5. 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.
    6. Ron Johnston & Richard Harris & Kelvyn Jones, 2007. "Sampling People or People in Places? The BES as an Election Study," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 55(1), pages 86-112, March.
    7. Aida Díaz & Clara Riba, 1999. "Catalan government popularity. An example of economic effects on sub-national government support," Economics Working Papers 406, Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

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