International relations, covert action and secret detention: The perceptual theory of legitimacy and government decision making

Abstract

Governments are driven by a desire by to maintain their legitimacy, and so must take public perception into account in its decision making. We present four studies using the Perceptual Theory of Legitimacy (Crandall & Beasley, 2001) to explain why public perception matters to the government. Following our hypotheses that the public is motivated to have a consistent view of countries, governments, and people that it sees as related, we present evidence in our first study that the public links its perceptions of foreign governments to their alliance with the United States. The second study shows that manipulating the perceived level of democracy in Iran can affectively change the perception of its alliance with the United States. Likewise manipulating Iran's perceived level of alliance with the United States can affectively change the perceived level of democracy in Iran. As Iran's democracy increases so does its alliance and vice versa. The next two studies show that these public perceptions are linked to government action. We provide evidence that the United States is motivated by public perception in its decisions to use military force against other nations and in its detention of combatants in the "war on terror." The third study shows that when aggressing against other nations the United States uses covert actions at a greater rate against democracies than non-democracies. Likewise, the study shows that combatants from democracies apprehended in the "war on terror" are more likely to be subjected to extraordinary rendition than those apprehended from non-democracies. Both these studies are used as evidence of the government's desire to hide actions that the public would perceive as illegitimate.