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AbstractPolitical scientists often criticize psychological approaches to the study of politics on the grounds that many psychological theories were developed on convenience samples of college students or members of the mass public, whereas many of the most important decisions in politics are made by elites, who are presumed to differ systematically from ordinary citizens. This paper proposes an overarching framework for thinking about differences between elites and masses, presenting the results of a meta‐analysis of 162 paired treatments from paired experiments on political elites and mass publics, as well as an analysis of 12 waves of historical elite and mass public opinion data on foreign policy issues over a 43 year period. It finds political scientists both overstate the magnitude of elite‐public gaps in decision‐making, and misunderstand the determinants of elite‐public gaps in political attitudes, many of which are due to basic compositional differences rather than to elites' domain‐specific expertise.

AbstractWhy do some actors in international politics display remarkable persistence in wartime, while others "cut and run" at the first sign of trouble? I offer a behavioral theory of resolve, suggesting that variation in time and risk preferences can help explain why some actors display more resolve than others. I test the theory experimentally in the context of public opinion about military interventions. The results not only help explain why certain types of costs of war loom larger for certain types of actors but also shed light on some of the behavioral revolution's contributions more broadly.

Many of our theories of international politics rely on microfoundations. In this short note, I suggest that although there has been increasing interest in microfoundations in international relations (IR) over the past 20 years, the frequency with which the concept is invoked belies a surprising lack of specificity about what microfoundations are, or explicit arguments about why we should study them. I then offer an argument about the value of micro-level approaches to the study of conflict. My claim is not that all theories of IR need to be developed or tested at the micro-level in order to be satisfying, but rather, that many of our theories in IR already rest on lower-level mechanisms—they either leave these assumptions unarticulated or fail to test them directly. In these circumstances, theorizing and testing micro-level dynamics will be especially helpful. I illustrate my argument using the case of resolve, one of the central explanatory variables in the study of international security. I argue that the absence of microfoundations for resolve is one reason why IR scholars have had difficulties testing whether resolve has the effects we often claim, and sketch out a two-stage research design political scientists can use to study unobservable phenomena.

An article on the continuity and change that characterized American counter terrorism policy of the past 20 years, which examines three interrelated paradigms: the counter terrorism as law-enforcement doctrine used by the Clinton administration, the counter terrorism as national-security doctrine exemplified by the Bush administration, and the counter terrorism as counter-insurgency doctrine now being trumpeted by critics in both academic and policymaking circles. Based on the one hand on perceived weaknesses of their predecessors, they are based also upon two different understandings of being serious about tackling terrorism. The Bush administration, for example, sought to distance itself from law-enforcement-driven counter terrorism of the 1990's, and chose a more muscular national security response, while unfavorable assessments of American progress in Iraq have prompted a shift towards counter terrorism as counterinsurgency. In the first case, seriousness meant acting assertively with military force to display determination and resolve, in the latter case, it meant acting according to the particular social, political and economic exigencies of the situation. Another counter terrorism paradigm shift will follow if the American public tires of lacking counterinsurgency strategy results. O. van Zijl

When is the public more likely to defer to elites on foreign policy? Existing research suggests the public takes its cues from co-partisans, but what happens when co-partisans disagree? We argue that the public defers to elites whose prior experiences signal expertise and favorable intentions. Elites with backgrounds in socially esteemed institutions are thus especially powerful cue-givers, even when the core competencies of those institutions are not directly related to the issue at hand. Using two conjoint experiments, we find that the American public defers to more experienced elites generally, but is especially deferential toward elites with experience in trusted institutions: the public defers more to elites with military backgrounds, even when considering non-military issues. The theory and findings suggest that where elites sat in the past shapes how much power they wield once standing in office.

One of the major developments in political science in the past decade has been the rise of experiments and surveys on political elites. Yet, the increase in the number of elite studies has outpaced our collective understanding of best practices and how we know a good elite experiment when we see one. In this article, we discuss some of the challenges in the study of political elites—from who counts as an elite to how to best utilize elite experiments in the context of broader research designs. We also offer recommendations on questions of access, recruitment, and representativeness, as well as designs that researchers can use to study "eliteness" without access to elites.