Explanations for citizen support of public policies like military and national defense spending

What leads people to support Public Policy like Military and National Defense spending? excerpted from my research proposal (Zehnder 2014)

There are conflicting explanations among the reasons for citizen support of public policies like military and national defense spending. Psychological research attributes fear for support of military spending, more specifically fear of terrorism in the United States. Political Science research attributes state characteristics as the leading cause for support of military spending. State characteristics are the characteristics of a political state such as geographic location (North, or South), state of the union, racial ethnicity, number of military personnel in a state, economic benefit in a state from military and political climate based on recent public policy decisions or wars. In a study conducted by Tuzuner, Dolu, and Uludag, (2012) researchers conducted an experiment to find which explanation was correct. They concluded that state characteristics, the Political Science explanation is the leading cause of support for public policy showing that state characteristics of American citizens such as living in the Southern states leads to more support of military spending (Tuzuner et. al. 2012).

Polls and news sources vary displaying their in their results of American opinions on Military spending. However, over the years you can notice some trends. Torres-Reyna and Shapiro (2002) investigated trends over the years in public opinion of military spending using the state characteristics of budget tradeoffs, views on the quality of America’s defenses, and confidence in the military as explanations for these trends. They found that long term views on military spending were influenced most strongly by the state characteristics of  popularity of wars we were in, existing threats to the United States, and perceived strength of the military (Torres-Reyna, Shapiro, 2002).

References

Torres-Reyna, O., Shapiro, R.Y. (2002), The polls trends: defense and the military. Public Opinion Quarterly, 66(2), 279-303.            

Tuzuner, M., Dolu, O., Uludag, S. (2012), Unraveling the determinants or public support for anti-terrorism policies in the united states: fear of terrorism and state contextual characteristics. Review of International Law and Politics, 8(32), 97-115. 

-Corey Zehnder