Speaker
Description
During the Cold War, Western public opinion was an important factor in shaping the trajectory of nuclear arms control talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, we know little about the extent of public support for arms control in today’s era of renewed great power competition. To address this gap, we conducted a series of surveys and survey experiments in the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Poland. Our results show a high rate of approval of new arms control talks between the United States and its strategic competitors, Russia and China, among the citizens of all five NATO countries. Using data from a new elite survey of UK parliamentarians, we also found a sizeable gap between the views of the UK public and their political representatives. Finally, we demonstrate that public views can be strongly shaped by elite cues from experts and politicians, with arguments about the risk of non-compliance significantly reducing the support for new arms control negotiations. Our findings contribute to the scholarly literature on public attitudes toward nuclear weapons as well as to the policy debates on the feasibility and desirability of strategic arms control in the “third nuclear age.”
| What discipline or branch of humanities or social sciences do you identify yourself with? | Security Studies |
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| If you are submitting an Open Panel proposal, have you included all four abstracts in attachment? | No, I am submitting a Closed Panel abstract |
| Are you a PhD student or early-career researcher? | Yes |
