Could Humphrey Have Gone to China? Measuring the Electoral Costs and Benefits of Making Peace
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Date
2004-10-05
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Volume Title
Publisher
Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security Studies
Abstract
Theoretical arguments for why “it takes a Nixon to go to China”
emphasize either the superior credibility that hawks have in
advocating peace or the superior political benefits they enjoy in
doing so. This paper looks for evidence of these effects in the
canonical case: that of U.S. rapprochement with China in the
early 1970s. I use counterfactual simulations on data from the
1968 National Election Study to explore the political effects of a
proposal to open relations with China, focusing on whether and
how those effects would depend on who made the proposal:
Richard Nixon or Hubert Humphrey. I find evidence of both the
credibility and electoral security effects hypothesized in the
theoretical literature. In particular, there is a very dramatic
asymmetry in the political costs and benefits of proposing peace:
while such a proposal would have been electorally costly for
Humphrey, it could have been an electoral boon for Nixon.
Description
The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.
The media can be accessed here: http://streaming.osu.edu/knowledgebank/mershon08/schultz.mp3
The media can be accessed here: http://streaming.osu.edu/knowledgebank/mershon08/schultz.mp3
Keywords
China, peace