Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public

Abstract

Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public. By Jon Western. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 320p. $48.00 cloth, $18.95 paper. Jon Western's book joins an expanding list of studies on the sociopolitical context that shapes U.S. decisions to resort to force abroad. Most such studies reflect an appreciation that, core assumptions of realpolitik aside, these decisions are the resultant of various vectors of domestic power and preference, vectors that often point in different directions. Some of these studies directly address the incentives and constraints that public opinion places in the path of democratic leadership. Others analyze the manner in which actors within the higher echelons of the power structure interact to produce national policies. Western's study encompasses both levels of analysis, examining how the interaction of elites and public affect the likelihood that the United States would intervene militarily in other nations.