IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/ginixx/v47y2021i3p477-503.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Commanding Support: Values and Interests in the Rhetoric of Alliance Politics

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan A. Chu
  • Jiyoung Ko
  • Adam Liu

Abstract

How can democratic governments convince their citizens to support a costly military alliance? We theorize about two rhetorical tools that foreign policy leaders have historically used to achieve this goal: instrumental cues emphasizing national interests and ideational cues highlighting shared values. We then assess the effects of these appeals in various forms and contexts by analyzing two original survey experiments fielded in the United States. Our analysis shows that alliance rhetoric – whether positive or negative – can sway public support for alliances. Positive appeals to both interests and values raise citizen approval for maintaining a costly alliance in times of peace and during an active crisis, though their effects are slightly muted in a crisis. We also find that negative rhetoric erodes public support for alliances, but only under limited conditions: negative rhetoric affects public support for peace-time alliance policies but not for defending an ally during a crisis, and its effect disappears in the presence of positive rhetoric. The findings contribute to literatures on the domestic politics of international institutions and the role of political communication in foreign policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan A. Chu & Jiyoung Ko & Adam Liu, 2021. "Commanding Support: Values and Interests in the Rhetoric of Alliance Politics," International Interactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(3), pages 477-503, May.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:ginixx:v:47:y:2021:i:3:p:477-503
    DOI: 10.1080/03050629.2021.1898955
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/03050629.2021.1898955
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/03050629.2021.1898955?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    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:taf:ginixx:v:47:y:2021:i:3:p:477-503. 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: Chris Longhurst (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/GINI20 .

    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.