{"title":"Us and Them: Foreign Threat and Domestic Polarization","authors":"Joshua A. Schwartz, Dominic Tierney","doi":"10.1177/00220027241246539","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Can foreign threats reduce domestic polarization, and if so, under what conditions? This is an important question for the United States given the severity of internal division and the emergence of China as a potentially unifying external peril. We offer a novel theoretical argument about when external danger will rally Americans based on the nexus between the vividness of foreign danger and bipartisan elite agreement about the threat. We test our theory through a series of pre-registered survey experiments. We find that vivid foreign threats, in isolation, do not reduce domestic polarization and therefore the danger from China alone may not be sufficient to spur domestic unity. However, vivid foreign threats in combination with policymaker agreement about the threat does significantly reduce domestic polarization. This reduction in polarization comes at a cost: increased public willingness to violate use of force norms against China. Overall, our study establishes that foreign peril can reduce domestic polarization under certain circumstances, and demonstrates that elite reactions to foreign threats are highly important in shaping wider domestic effects.","PeriodicalId":51363,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.2000,"publicationDate":"2024-04-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Conflict Resolution","FirstCategoryId":"90","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027241246539","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Can foreign threats reduce domestic polarization, and if so, under what conditions? This is an important question for the United States given the severity of internal division and the emergence of China as a potentially unifying external peril. We offer a novel theoretical argument about when external danger will rally Americans based on the nexus between the vividness of foreign danger and bipartisan elite agreement about the threat. We test our theory through a series of pre-registered survey experiments. We find that vivid foreign threats, in isolation, do not reduce domestic polarization and therefore the danger from China alone may not be sufficient to spur domestic unity. However, vivid foreign threats in combination with policymaker agreement about the threat does significantly reduce domestic polarization. This reduction in polarization comes at a cost: increased public willingness to violate use of force norms against China. Overall, our study establishes that foreign peril can reduce domestic polarization under certain circumstances, and demonstrates that elite reactions to foreign threats are highly important in shaping wider domestic effects.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Conflict Resolution is an interdisciplinary journal of social scientific theory and research on human conflict. It focuses especially on international conflict, but its pages are open to a variety of contributions about intergroup conflict, as well as between nations, that may help in understanding problems of war and peace. Reports about innovative applications, as well as basic research, are welcomed, especially when the results are of interest to scholars in several disciplines.