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The Structure of Western European Attitudes Towards Atlantic Co-operation: Implications for the Western Alliance

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Andrew H. Ziegler Jr
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Extract

Previous studies of Western European foreign policy attitudes rely almost exclusively on single-item measures, such as support for defence spending, support for the new missiles in Europe, opinions on NATO, and so on. This article, using a multi-country data set, aggregates several survey items and explores the manner in which Europeans structure their attitudes towards one aspect of foreign policy: Atlantic co-operation. A factor analysis uncovers two underlying conceptual dimensions: military and non-military co-operation. These dimensions provide the axes to construct a four-fold typology of viewpoints, consisting of Atlanticists, Military Allies, Dovish Partners and Isolationists. Respondents are classified within this typology, and the European-wide and cross-national distributions of opinion are presented. The highest support for Atlantic co-operation is found among the West Germans, and the lowest is found among the French.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 1987 , pp. 457 - 477
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

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13 The data used in this study were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Neither the original collectors of the data, the Consortium, nor the sponsors of the study bear any responsibility for the analysis or interpretation presented here.

14 Original multi-country data sets other than the Eurobarometers are rarely available for the kind of analysis performed here. This is why most studies in this field have relied on a secondary analysis of single items from published opinion polls such as Gallup and Harris. Another difficulty is that the number of foreign policy and security items included in any one survey is usually very limited, thus preventing a meaningful analysis of underlying dimensions. No Eurobarometer survey includes as many foreign policy and security items as Eurobarometer 14. Other potential sources for original machine-readable data sets are those produced by the United States Information Agency (USIA). These are available from the National Archives in Washington, DC, and the Roper Center in New Haven, Connecticut. However, the documentation and code books provided are often incomplete and inaccurate and the data are not ‘cleaned’ adequately. Extensive efforts by the author and others to use these data in their machine-readable form have been largely unsuccessful. In comparison with this rather meagre supply of data on European foreign policy attitudes, analysts of American foreign policy attitudes have available the surveys conducted by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations. These surveys, conducted periodically since 1974, each contain over 200 questionnaire items specifically on foreign policy issues. Currently, there are no data sets on European attitudes remotely equivalent to this rich source.

15 The number of response categories varied between items. A range of 1 to 7 was used to recode the numerical values for the responses so that the range of values would be equivalent for all items. For example, items with three responses – (1), (2), and (3) – were receded (1), (4) and (7); and items with four responses – (1), (2), (3) and (4) – were recoded (1), (3), (5) and (7). In each case the higher numbers reflect greater support for Atlantic co-operation. For the factor analysis this recoding is not necessary; however, for the summary scales discussed in the next section it is essential.

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17 This article represents one part of a broader research project focusing on these four countries. It is clearly recognized that other interesting cases are not included here. For example, the Netherlands and Belgium should be obvious candidates for inclusion in any future studies of this sort. However, the Eurobarometers are administered only in European Community countries, so Norway and some other Alliance members are automatically excluded from this data source.

18 Missing data on any questions were automatically recorded to the mean for that item. In this way no respondents were deleted from the analysis. Additional analyses using pairwise and listwise deletion of missing data yielded essentially identical factor solutions.

19 Eigenvalues are produced by the principal components method and are useful in determining the number of relevant dimensions. This statistic is computed for each of the factors generated by the analysis up to the number of variables entered, and it can be interpreted as the total variance explained by each factor. In a principal components analysis, factors are standardized such that total variance equals the number of variables, and each variable has a variance of 1. For this reason, factors with eigenvalues less than 1 are no better than a single variable, and the normal criterion is to accept as valid conceptual dimensions only those factors with eigenvalues greater than 1. See Norusis, Marija I., SPSSx Advanced Statistics Guide (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985).Google Scholar

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23 The figures entered in the factor columns are the ‘loadings’. These measure the degree to which variables are related to the factors. Specifically, they are correlation coefficients between variables and factors. The square of the loading multiplied by 100 equals the percentage of a variable's variance accounted for by the factor. Normally, according to Rummel, in Applied Factor Analysis, p. 139Google Scholar, factors are interpreted as consisting only of those variables with loadings equal to or greater than an absolute value of 0.40; that is, those variables with 16 per cent or more of their variation explained by the factor. Factor loadings meeting this criterion may have been underscored, and they can be used to identify which variables belong to which factors. The communalities and loadings together show at a glance how the data are ordered and explained by the factors.

24 In separate analyses for each national sample, a two-factor solution produced the loadings listed in Appendix II. The international expectations item was not included because of its independent effects indicated in Table 2.

25 Another method would be to use factor scores to construct ‘factor scales’. Factor scores are estimates for respondents on a factor computed by various types of differential weighting of variables based on the factor loadings. However, if the factor analysis is used primarily as a heuristic device for sorting out major clusters of variables, the simpler method of summary scales is preferred. For a comparison of ‘factor scales’ with ‘factor-based scales’, see Kim, Jao-On and Mueller, Charles W., Factor Analysis: Statistical Methods and Practical Issues (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1985), pp. 60–73.Google Scholar

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40 A note of caution should be raised here. The structure derived from exploratory factor analysis is obviously a function of the items entered. There are many other foreign policy issues related to Atlantic co-operation not available in the data set analysed. As such, the conclusion in regard to the apparent simplicity of the structure of European foreign policy attitudes at the mass level could be exaggerated.

41 Flynn, and Rattinger, , The Public and Atlantic Defense, pp. 382, 383.Google Scholar

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46 The final two items, ECPOL and SCTYPOL, each contained two responses that received equal values during recoding. This was necessary because in each case the pair of responses were interpreted as not being amenable to ordinal ranking.