The Sectoral Politics of War : Evidence from Public Support for the U.S. - Iraq War in 2003
Do commercial interests favor peace? Or, does war bring profits to select industries? Such questions are critical to a variety of theories about interstate and intrastate war. At the same time, a large literature contends that economic considerations are an important determinant of voting and public opinion in the United States. Taken together, this raises a question relevant to both literatures: do economic interests affect public opinion about war? In this paper, I address this question by investigating whether or not the expected economic effects of military action were a consideration in public support for the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Although political elites surely influenced support for war with Iraq, I argue that private economic considerations were also important. In particular, financial markets expected the invasion of Iraq to have a broad distributional of economic consequences, with some sectors, such as construction, energy, and defense, being relative winners and other sectors, such as information technology, consumer discretionary, and airlines, being relative losers. Consistent with an asset theory of individual policy preferences, these differences are reflected in public opinion about war in a relatively reasonable fashion. Respondents with industry-specific assets working in sectors the market expected to be winners were more supportive of war than those working in sectors expected to be losers, ceteris paribus. The results provide additional micro-foundations for political economy theories of war and peace
Year of publication: |
2012
|
---|---|
Authors: | Seljan, Samuel S. |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | USA | United States | Irak | Iraq | Krieg | War | Kriegsfolgen | Consequences of war |
Saved in:
freely available
Saved in favorites
Similar items by subject
-
The economic cost of the Iraq war
Wallsten, Scott J., (2008)
-
Stiglitz, Joseph E., (2008)
-
Blood money : wasted billions, lost lives, and corporate greed in Iraq
Miller, T. Christian, (2006)
- More ...