The Conduct of Warfare: Perceptions and Beyond

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

All the papers in this panel move beyond "the usual suspects" in international security by showing how domestic politics affects important decisions about war. This panel is centered around how the broader public and a wide range of stakeholders, including the defense industry and engineers, perceive and interpret warfare and how those perceptions affect consequential foreign-policy decisions by governments. Using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies—including survey experiments, original large-N datasets, archival and interview research, and text analysis—the papers on this panel explore the effects of domestic opinion on decisions about foreign military intervention, states' war-fighting capabilities, and detente with adversaries.

Sub Unit

• Division 19: International Security

Individual Presentations

• "Proxies" and the Public: Public Support for Military Aid to States and Militias - Sara Plana, University of Pennsylvania

• The Return of Star Wars? Examining Missile Defense after the Cold War - Sanne Verschuren, Brown University

• Enduring Enemies: Domestic Threat Perception and US–Cuba Relations After 1989 - Abby M Fanlo, Stanford University

Chair

• Danielle Lupton Colgate University

Discussants

• Jennifer Spindel University of New Hampshire

• Danielle Lupton Colgate University