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Under what circumstances do busy members of the public pay attention to foreign policy issues? According to the ‘fire alarm’ model (Zaller 2003, Saunders 2014), generally inattentive audiences will become engaged with foreign policy matters when they sense elite division. We explore the effects divided elites can play in fostering interest in (and support for) national involvement in EU foreign policy. As part of a broader Volkswagen Stiftung Foundation SecEUrity Project researching the relationship between elites and the mass audiences in European defence, this survey experiment assesses the effects of elite division on samples designed to resemble the population in France, Germany, Italy, and Great Britain (countries that have different historical levels of support for the European Union). Some of the elite division cues we examine have not been studied before (particularly cues from European Union leadership). We compare the effects of disagreement with a government policy emerging from national opposition parties, the governing party, a party within the governing coalition, and the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy on public approval and interest in learning more about the disputed policy. In line with other research on elite cues, we also examine the moderating effects of individual-level attitudes and foreign policy postures. This allows us to compare the relative effects of national versus individual-level factors on the ‘fire alarm’ account of when domestic audiences are likely to respond to foreign policy. We conduct a survey experiment that asks respondents how supportive they are (and how much attention they would devote to learning more about) government plans to increase national involvement in the EU naval mission Atalanta. The elite cues conditions we vary are: (1) key figures of opposition party publicly disagreeing with the government plan, (2) key figures of the governing party disagreeing with the government plan, (3) key figures of coalition partner party publicly disagreeing with the government plan (in Germany and Italy only, where this division applies), (4) the European Union’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security disagreeing with the government plan, and (5) a control group in which key figures of opposition party publicly agree with the government plan. The study will have an exploratory element where we check for variation in experimental results across countries.

Contemporary conflicts are increasingly designed to unfold in the so-called ‘gray zone’. Gray zone conflicts encompass rivalry and competition short of war using diverse military and non-military means (including diplomatic, economic, social and political tactics). An important issue is the threshold of violence that is likely to bring on a violent response on the part of the threatened nation. As part of a broader ‘Escalation Management in the Gray Zone’ Minerva Research Initiative project studying analytic and operational planning tools to shape adversary behavior in managing escalation in gray zone crises, this survey experiment assesses the effects of key theoretical factors on willingness to respond in escalatory or de-escalatory ways. Specifically, we compare the effects of regime type variation, power disparity, and facing a one-off or reiterated gray zone crises on preferred appropriate response. We also assess the effects of these theoretical factors on public perception of security specialists taking a more aggressive course of action (and vice-versa), as well as the role of international allied support in willingness to engage in military action. We field the experiment using samples designed to resemble the general population in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Lithuania, as well as with smaller groups of security experts in each of these countries. To the best of our knowledge this experiment constitutes the first examination of escalatory/de-scalatory responses in gray zone conflicts. In line with other research on security policy preferences, we also examine the moderating effects of individual-level attitudes and foreign policy postures. This allows us to compare the relative effects of national versus individual-level factors when reacting to gray zone conflicts. We conduct a survey experiment that asks respondents to select most appropriate response from a list of possible actions to a situation in which a manned spy plane is found flying over sensitive military areas, in clear violation of the targeted nation’s airspace. Response categories are grounded in newly-coded historical gray zone conflicts from the International Crisis Behavior (ICB) dataset. Members of the public in each country were then asked whether they think security specialists would be inclined to be more or less aggressive (security specialists are asked about the public). Participants then have to state whether they would be more inclined to engage in a military response if international allies indicated support for doing so. For samples designed to resemble the general population, the experimental factors we introduce are: (1) regime type of the challenger country, (2) whether the challenger is more or less powerful than the target country, (3) regime type of the target country, and (4) whether the challenger country has acted once or over the course of several months. Participants are randomly assigned to variations of the first 3 experimental factors, whereas they are all exposed to both the one-off and the reiterated gray zone crises (as the key measure asking what the most appropriate response is asked before and after revealing the challenging behavior continued for several months). The study will have an exploratory element where we check for variation in experimental results across countries, as well as between members of the public and security experts. Due to difficulties in accessing security specialist sample, we do not vary experimental factor (3) in said group.

Within the realm of comparative politics, ethnicity has been conceptualized as both a fixed category in which individuals are born, as well as one of multiple identities that can be made politically salient by different actors. The latter perspective corresponds to instrumental and constructivist conceptualizations of ethnicity that seeks first and fore most to answer the question: ‘Under which circumstances will ethnicity activate and affect citizens’ political behavior?’ Since the 1990s, Latin American social movements began to ‘play the ethnic card’, which culminated with the first indigenous candidate ever, to win a presidential election in the region in 2005. Applying research designs based on instrumental and constructivist conceptualizations of ethnicity could significantly advance the study of Latin American social movements.