Hostname: page-component-77c89778f8-7drxs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-22T03:05:42.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Evolution of Republican and Democratic Positions on Cold War Military Spending

A Historical Puzzle

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Benjamin O. Fordham
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The domestic politics of American military spending during the Cold War confronts scholars with an important but often overlooked puzzle: the two major parties appear to have switched positions on the issue. During the early Cold War era, Democrats were generally supportive of increased military spending, while Republicans were critical. After the mid-1960s, Democrats increasingly tended to oppose larger military budgets, while Republicans more often favored them. This article presents evidence about the process through which this change took place. It identifies several developments in the domestic and international environments that may have contributed to this party switch and evaluates preliminary evidence about each of them.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 31 , Issue 4 , Winter 2007 , pp. 603 - 636
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2007 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abramowitz, Alan I. (1994) “Issue evolution reconsidered: Racial attitudes and partisanship in the U.S. electorate.” American Journal of Political Science 38: 1–24.10.2307/2111333Google Scholar
Adams, Greg D. (1997) “Abortion: Evidence of an issue evolution.” American Journal of Political Science 41: 718–37.10.2307/2111673Google Scholar
American National Election Studies (2005) The 1948–2004 ANES Cumulative Data File [machine-readable dataset]. Stanford University and University of Michigan [producers and distributors], www.electionstudies.org.Google Scholar
Baltagi, Badi H., and Wu, Ping X. (1999) “Unequally spaced panel data regressions with AR(1) disturbances.” Econometric Theory 15: 814–23.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. (1991) “Constituency opinion and congressional policy making: The Reagan defense buildup.” American Political Science Review 85: 457–74.10.2307/1963169Google Scholar
Berry, William D., and Lowery, David (1990) “An alternative approach to understanding budgetary trade-offs.” American Journal of Political Science 34: 671–705.Google Scholar
Black, Earl, and Black, Merle (2002) The Rise of Southern Republicans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Blechman, Barry M., and Kaplan, Stephen S. (1978) Force without War: U.S. Armed Forces as a Political Instrument. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Block, Fred (1980) “Economic instability and military strength: The paradoxes of the 1950 rearmament decision.” Politics and Society 10: 35–58.Google Scholar
Bolton, Roger (1966) Defense Purchases and Regional Growth. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.Google Scholar
Brody, Richard A., Ekman, Paul, Parker, Edwin B., Polsby, Nelson W., Rossi, Peter H., Sheatsley, Paul B., and Verba, Sidney, with Black, Gordon S. and Nie, Norman H. (1966) Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam [machine-readable dataset]. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research.Google Scholar
Bueno de Mesquita, Bruce, Smith, Alastair, Siverson, Randolph M., and Morrow, James D. (2003) The Logic of Political Survival. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.10.7551/mitpress/4292.001.0001Google Scholar
Burch, Philip H. (1980). Elites in American History. Vol. 3. New York: Holmes and Meier.Google Scholar
Carmines, Edward G., and Stimson, James L. (1989) Issue Evolution: Race and the Transformation of American Politics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 10.1515/9780691218250Google Scholar
Collins, Robert M. (1996) “The economic crisis of 1968 and the waning of the ‘American century.’” American Historical Review 101: 396–422.10.2307/2170396Google Scholar
Condit, Doris M. (1988) History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Vol. 2, The Test of War, 1950–1953. Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense.Google Scholar
Congressional Quarterly (1948–90) Congressional Quarterly Almanac. Annual vols. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly.Google Scholar
Correlates of War Project (2005) National Material Capabilities Dataset, version 3.02, May 2005 [machine-readable dataset], www.correlatesofwar.org.Google Scholar
Domke, William K., Eichenberg, Richard C., and Kelleher, Catherine M. (1983) “The illusion of choice: Defense and welfare in advanced industrial democracies, 1948–1978.” American Political Science Review 77: 19–35.10.2307/1956009Google Scholar
Fordham, Benjamin O. (1998) “Economic interests, party, and ideology in early Cold War era U.S. foreign policy.” International Organization 52: 359–96.10.1162/002081898753162857Google Scholar
Gaddis, John L. (1982) Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy during the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gallup, George H. (1972) The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Grossman, Gene M., and Helpman, Elhanan (2002) Interest Groups and Trade Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.10.1515/9780691220178Google Scholar
Henderson, Errol A. (1998) “Military spending and poverty.” Journal of Politics 60: 503–20.Google Scholar
Hibbs, Douglas (1987) The American Political Economy: Macroeconomics and Electoral Politics. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hiscox, Michael J. (2002) International Trade and Political Conflict: Commerce, Coalitions, and Mobility. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hogan, Michael (1998) A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Holsti, Ole R. (1998–99) “A widening gap between the U.S. military and civilian society?” International Security 23: 5–42.Google Scholar
Holsti, Ole R. (2001) “Of chasms and convergences: Attitudes and beliefs of civilians and military elites at the start of a new millennium,” in Feaver, P. D. and Kohn, R. H. (eds.) Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 15–99.Google Scholar
Huntington, Samuel P. (1963) The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Inglehart, Ronald (1990) Culture Shift in Advanced Industrial Societies. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
International Monetary Fund (2006) International Financial Statistics [machine-readable dataset], www.imf.org.Google Scholar
Irwin, Douglas A., and Kroszner, Randall S. (1999) “Interests, institutions, and ideology in securing policy change: The Republican conversion to trade liberalization after Smoot-Hawley.” Journal of Law and Economics 42: 643–73.Google Scholar
Kamlet, Mark S., Mowery, David C., and Su, Tsai-Tsu (1988) “Upsetting national priorities: The Reagan administration’s budgetary strategy.” American Political Science Review 82: 1293–1307.Google Scholar
Kaun, David E. (1990) “War and Wall Street: The impact of military conflict on investor attitudes.” Cambridge Journal of Economics 14: 439–52.Google Scholar
Keohane, Robert O. (1984) After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kindleberger, Charles P. (1973) The World in Depression, 1929–1939. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Korb, Lawrence J. (1979) The Fall and Rise of the Pentagon: American Defense Policy in the 1970s. Westport, CT: Greenwood.Google Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. (1976) “State power and the structure of international trade.” World Politics 28: 317–47.Google Scholar
Krasner, Stephen D. (1978) Defending the National Interest: Raw Materials Investments and U.S. Foreign Policy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Leffler, Melvyn P. (1991) “National security,” in Hogan, M. J. and Paterson, T. G. (eds.) Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press: 202–12.Google Scholar
Leffler, Melvyn P. (1992) A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Lo, Clarence Y. H. (1982) “Theories of the state and business opposition to increased military spending.” Social Problems 29: 424–36.Google Scholar
Markusen, Ann R., Campbell, Scott, Hall, Peter, and Dietrich, Sabina (1991) The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mueller, John (1971) “Trends in popular support for the wars in Korea and Vietnam.” American Political Science Review 65: 358–75.Google Scholar
Nitze, Paul H. (1980) “The development of NSC 68.” International Security 4: 170–76.Google Scholar
Peroff, Kathleen, and Podolak-Warren, Margaret (1979) “Does spending on defence cut spending on health? A time-series analysis of the U.S. economy, 1929–74.” British Journal of Political Science 9: 21–39.Google Scholar
Pierpaoli, Paul G. (1999) Truman and Korea: The Political Culture of the Early Cold War. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.Google Scholar
Pollard, Robert A. (1985) Economic Security and the Origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Posen, Barry R. (1984) The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany between the World Wars. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Rogowski, Ronald (1989) Commerce and Coalitions: How Trade Affects Domestic Political Alignments. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Russett, Bruce M. (1969) “Who pays for defense?” American Political Science Review 63: 412–26.Google Scholar
Russett, Bruce M., and Oneal, John R. (2001) Triangulating Peace: Democracy, Inter-dependence, and International Organizations. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Segal, David R., Freedman-Doan, Peter, Bachman, Jerald G., and O'Malley, Patrick M. (2001) “Attitudes of entry-level enlisted personnel: Pro-military and politically mainstreamed,” in Feaver, P. D. and Kohn, R. H. (eds.) Soldiers and Civilians: the Civil-Military Gap and American National Security. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 163–212.Google Scholar
David, Singer J. (1987) “Reconstructing the Correlates of War dataset on material capabilities of states, 1816–1985.” International Interactions 14: 115–32.Google Scholar
David, Singer J., Bremer, Stuart, and Stuckey, John (1972) “Capability distribution, uncertainty, and major power war, 1820–1965,” in Russett, B. (ed.) Peace, War, and Numbers. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage: 19–48.Google Scholar
Souers, Sidney (1950) “Memorandum for the file, 8 June 1950.” Sidney Souers Papers. Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, Independence, MO.Google Scholar
Su, Tsai-Tsu, Kamlet, Mark S., and Mowery, David C. (1993) “Modeling U.S. budgetary and fiscal policy outcomes: A disaggregated, systemwide perspective.” American Journal of Political Science 37: 213–45.Google Scholar
Taylor, A. J. P. (1954) The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Trubowitz, Peter (1992) “Sectionalism and American foreign policy: The political geography of consensus and conflict.” International Studies Quarterly 36: 173–90.10.2307/2600880Google Scholar
Trubowitz, Peter (1998) Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Commerce (2006) U.S. Economic Accounts [machine-readable dataset], www.bea.gov.Google Scholar
U.S. Department of Defense (2004) Selected Manpower Statistics, Fiscal Year 2004, www.dior.whs.mil/mmid/mmidhome.htm.Google Scholar
Verba, Sidney, Brody, Richard A., Parker, Edwin B., Nie, Norman H., Polsby, Nelson W., Ekman, Paul, and Black, Gordon S. (1967) “Public opinion and the war in Vietnam.” American Political Science Review 61: 317–33.Google Scholar
Walt, Stephen M. (1987) The Origins of Alliances. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Weingast, Barry, Goldstein, Judith, and Bailey, Michael (1997) “The institutional roots of American trade policy: Politics, coalitions, and international trade.” World Politics 49: 309–38.Google Scholar
Wells, Samuel F. (1979) “Sounding the tocsin: NSC 68 and the Soviet threat.” International Security 4: 116–58.Google Scholar