The Polls—review Public Opinionresearch and Support for the Iraq War Adamj.berinsky Jamesn.druckman

Professors Peter Feaver, Christopher Gelpi, and Jason Reifler’s theory of the determinants of public support for war has received a great deal of attention among academics, journalists, and policymakers. They argue that support for war hinges on initial support for military action and the belief in the success of the war. In this review, we take a critical and constructive view of their work, focusing on methodological concerns. We discuss the dependent variable used by the authors—individual casualty tolerance—and argue that it is an insufficient measure of war support. We also make the case that their independent variables of interest—initial support for war and evaluation of war success—may, in fact, be best understood as indicators of latent support for the war more generally. Finally, we discuss the need for more research into the determinants of support for war, focusing on core values and elite rhetoric as potential variables for continued and future study. The question of whether politicians, particularly the president, attend to public opinion when crafting foreign policy has long intrigued social scientists. For many years, conventional wisdom suggested that the public lacked the sophistication needed to form coherent foreign policy attitudes. From this point of view politicians should—and do—ignore public opinion. More recently, however, scholars have countered this perspective, producing considerable evidence that the public holds consistent opinions on foreign ADAM J. BERINSKY is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA 02139. JAMES N. DRUCKMAN is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208, USA. We thank Jason Reifler and Christopher Gelpi for making their questionnaires available to us and Chris Federico for providing us with the data from his co-authored article. We thank the anonymous reviewers, Sean Aday, Matthew Baum, Paul Brewer, Sunshine Hillygus, Ron Krebs, Rose McDermott, Peter Miller, Jason Reifler, Mark Schulman, and John Sides for helpful advice, and Toby Bolsen and Matt Gusella for research assistance. Address correspondence to James N. Druckman, e-mail: [email protected] policy, and that politicians respond to these opinions. As Aldrich et al. (2006, p. 496), succinctly summarize, ‘‘A mounting body of evidence suggests that the foreign policies of American presidents—and democratic leaders more generally—have been influenced by their understanding of the public’s foreign policy views.’’ Understanding the determinants and effects of public opinion on foreign policy becomes increasingly relevant during times of war, such as the current conflict in Iraq. While Presidents, at least since Nixon, have relied on their private public opinion polls in crafting their rhetorical strategies (Jacobs and Shapiro 1995), it is rare that we can actually trace the influence of opinion polls on presidential rhetoric and policy. President Bush’s November 30, 2005, address where he outlined his future strategy for the War in Iraq may have been such a case. During the speech, Bush heavily emphasized the concept of ‘‘victory,’’ by using the word ‘‘victory’’ 15 times, posting ‘‘Plan for Victory’’ signs on the podium, and entitling an accompanying National Security Council report ‘‘National Strategy for Victory in Iraq.’’ Bush presumably sought to persuade citizens to expect success, thereby increasing support for the war, his foreign policy, and his administration (Shane 2005). A number of news outlets traced the origins of Bush’s victory theme to public opinion survey results. The New York Times pointed to the research of National Security Council (NSC) staffer Dr Peter Feaver (who also is a political science Professor at Duke University), along with his colleagues, Professors Christopher Gelpi (of Duke) and Jason Reifler (of Loyola, Chicago) who have argued that the public supports military action when they believe that a war will succeed. This attribution sparked considerable debate in the mainstream media, academic journals, and websites about the origins and nature of public opinion about war, with particular attention to Feaver, Gelpi, and Reifler’s approach. The purported reliance by Bush on the work of Feaver and his colleagues is beneficial for public opinion researchers. For one, it demonstrates an application of cutting-edge scholarship to ongoing political events. But casting a spotlight on this research also generates debate about Feaver, Gelpi, and Reifler’s particular findings, and more generally about what we, as a research community, know about attitudes toward war. Feaver, Gelpi, and Reifler have developed an intriguing theory of the determinants of public support for war and have completed a unique data collection effort. In what follows, we provide a critical but hopefully constructive review of Feaver, Gelpi, and Reifler’s work. Our intent is neither to present an alternative theory (we present little new analyses) nor to disparage the authors’ work which we consider rigorous and thoughtprovoking. Rather, by focusing on Feaver, Gelpi, and Reifler’s influential work, we attempt to determine whether the authors’ test of their theory allows them to adjudicate between competing claims. We also hope to clarify those Poll Review: Support for the IraqWar 127