2
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 used to help explain Americans' foreign policy opinions. Except in work
focused exclusively on foreign economic policy, 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 on broader foreign and defense policy
questions, 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.
The Economic Stakes in American Foreign Policy
How do economic interests influence public opinion on issues beyond foreign
economic policy? One way in which economic interests influence public opinion on
national security issues is already widely recognized: the local and individual economic
stake in Pentagon spending influences public support for it (e.g., Bartels 1994).
However, even when considering the issue of military spending itself, benefits from the
provision of military goods and services are by no means the only economic interests at
Convention