Dynamic Constraint and the Politics of Nuclear Attitudes

• In Event: Innovations in the Study of Constraint in Mass Belief Systems

Abstract

Persuasive messaging about both nuclear energy and nuclear weapons has been a recurrent feature of the last 70 years, yet little scholarship considers how mass publics relate these technologies, or how messaging about one might influence attitudes toward the other. I seek to understand this relationship using formal causal models to guide qualitative and quantitative empirical studies that show that nuclear attitudes are related. New graphical models formalize the relationship in nuclear attitudes under multiple interpretations of Converse (1964)’s "dynamic constraint," resolving conceptual issues in prior formalizations producing unnecessarily pessimistic conclusions about identification (Coppock and Green 2020). These frameworks clarify how pro- and anti-nuclear elites' historical persuasion efforts sought to influence public support for nuclear power by altering mass associations between the technologies. The frameworks also motivate an adaptively conducted multi-stage experiment demonstrating that nuclear attitudes remain tightly linked; messaging about either technology can affect attitudes toward the other.

Author

• Jonathon Baron