Michal Smetana

world politics | international security | political psychology

Elite-Public Gaps in Attitudes to Nuclear Weapons: New Evidence from a Survey of German Citizens and Parliamentarians


Journal article


Michal Smetana, Michal Onderco
International Studies Quarterly, 2022

Semantic Scholar DOI
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APA   Click to copy
Smetana, M., & Onderco, M. (2022). Elite-Public Gaps in Attitudes to Nuclear Weapons: New Evidence from a Survey of German Citizens and Parliamentarians. International Studies Quarterly.


Chicago/Turabian   Click to copy
Smetana, Michal, and Michal Onderco. “Elite-Public Gaps in Attitudes to Nuclear Weapons: New Evidence from a Survey of German Citizens and Parliamentarians.” International Studies Quarterly (2022).


MLA   Click to copy
Smetana, Michal, and Michal Onderco. “Elite-Public Gaps in Attitudes to Nuclear Weapons: New Evidence from a Survey of German Citizens and Parliamentarians.” International Studies Quarterly, 2022.


BibTeX   Click to copy

@article{michal2022a,
  title = {Elite-Public Gaps in Attitudes to Nuclear Weapons: New Evidence from a Survey of German Citizens and Parliamentarians},
  year = {2022},
  journal = {International Studies Quarterly},
  author = {Smetana, Michal and Onderco, Michal}
}

Abstract

A recent surge in survey-based scholarship has shed new light on public attitudes toward nuclear weapons. Yet, we still know little about how these public attitudes differ from those of political elites. To address this gap, we conducted an original survey on a large representative sample of German citizens and on a unique elite sample of German parliamentarians. In the survey, we asked the respondents about their views on different aspects of NATO's nuclear sharing practice. We found support for several hypotheses concerning nuclear use, extended deterrence, withdrawal of forward-deployed weapons, and the feasibility of global nuclear disarmament. As such, we provide systematic empirical evidence that there are, indeed, important gaps in public and elite attitudes toward nuclear weapons. Our findings underscore the argument that scholars should survey both political elites and the general public to obtain a comprehensive picture of attitudes toward pertinent questions in our field.





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