Gender and Conditional Support for Torture in the War on Terror

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Issue Date
2008Author
Haider-Markel, Donald P.
Vieux, Andrea Rieke
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Type
Article
Article Version
Scholarly/refereed, publisher version
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The events of September 11 have clearly changed the way that Americans think about
politics and policy and may have changed attitudes about the treatment of America’s
perceived enemies. At the same time, revelations about American interrogation
techniques in the war on terror have forced a national dialogue on human rights during
a time of war. Americans do tend to oppose a variety of harsh interrogation techniques,
but opposition appears to be conditioned by gender, partisanship, and the context in
which an interrogation might take place. We explore how conditions shape attitudes on
interrogation techniques in the war on terror, with a particular focus on gender and
contextual framing. We analyze data from a unique 2004 national survey of American
adults to test several hypotheses. Our results suggest that gender strongly shapes
opposition to harsh interrogation techniques, but contextual framing also shapes
opposition. Partisanship and contextual framing also mediate the influence of gender on
attitudes.
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Citation
Haider-Markel, Donald P. and Andrea Vieux. 2008. “Gender and Conditional Support for Torture in the War on Terror.” Politics & Gender 4(1):5-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X08000019
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