The Nature and Structure of the Transatlantic Divide

Abstract

It is perhaps inevitable that proponents of each of the various views on the causes and nature of the alleged transatlantic divide will look for — and sometimes find — arguments and data from public opinion research results that tend to confirm their own differing hypotheses. At the same time, the core issue of where and why American and European publics differ on questions of war and peace and the use of military force in particular — as has been shown in Chapter Three — has not yet been adequately addressed. Continuing the analysis, we now want to supplement more conventional presentations of results of surveys on this issue by digging a bit deeper into the nature and structure of the transatlantic divide by looking primarily at general attitudes, or the level of political ideology, and then systematically comparing the relative explanatory power of these different dimensions of the Atlantic community in accounting for support for the use of force in hypothetical and real situations.