Guns to butter: sociotropic concerns and foreign policy preferences in Russia

ABSTRACT

On the concept of “rally around the flag,” scholars often argue that by invoking the danger of external threats in times of economic hardship, leaders can rally the public around the government in a way that would otherwise be impossible. Alternative streams of literature suggest that a darkening economic reality (“butter”) may weaken the impact of patriotic euphoria (“guns”). I conducted an experimental survey to measure changes in foreign policy preferences among respondents exposed to negative economic primes in Russia. In line with the earlier findings on this topic, my analysis shows that participants who encounter negative economic primes report significantly less support for assertive foreign policy narratives. These results suggest that continuing economic strain may limit the Kremlin’s ability to divert public attention from internal problems through the use of assertive rhetoric.

KEYWORDS:

• Rally around the flag
• experiment
• sociotropic
• militarism

Acknowledgement

The author gratefully acknowledges the valuable comments of Nancy Gallagher, Clay Ramsey, Timothy Frye, Joshua Tucker and Donald Green.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. Participants in both treatment groups were asked two post-treatment questions about the articles’ content. During the presentation of these questions, the articles were kept on the screen in a reduced form, with the ability to expand the full view. The following questions were asked: “How did you understand the content of the above article?,” and “How interesting do you find the information provided in the article?”.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.