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one possible solution to this puzzle using two surveys from the 1950s and 1960s. A final
section summarizes and concludes.
Economic Interests and Support for the World Role of the United States
Although the possibility that economic interests could influence public opinion on
foreign policy issues has been considered before, most research on this topic has focused
on other sources of explanation. Political ideology (Bartels 1994; Hurwitz and Peffley
1987; Peffley and Hurwitz 1993; Rieselbach 1960; Wittkopf 1987), concerns about
domestic and international costs (Nincic 1997; Gartner, Segura, and Wilkening 1997),
gender (Conover and Sapiro 1993), ethnicity (Lubell 1956), individual psychology
(Sniderman and Citrin 1971; Modigliani 1972), generational divides (Klecka 1971;
Roskin 1974) and rural-urban differences (Rieselbach 1960), among other considerations,
have been advanced to help explain Americans' foreign policy opinions. Regional and
individual economic interests have received comparatively little attention. In this section,
I will first suggest that these interests have been too narrowly conceived in most work,
something that may help explain their relative unimportance in previous research, then
examine the ways in which these interests might influence public opinion about military
spending.
Economic Interests and Security Issues
Why should regional economic interests influence public opinion on security
issues? One influence of this sort is already widely recognized: the local economic stake
in Pentagon spending influences public support for it (e.g., Bartels 1994). Although they
are sometimes treated as such, the benefits from the provision of military goods and
services are not the only economic interests relevant to national security issues. Although
Convention