An empirical study of the generational impact of the Vietnam War on the foreign policy attitudes of the American mass and attentive publics was undertaken in order to determine if and how Vietnam served as a critical socializing experience for the generation which came of age during the period of American involvement in Southeast Asia. Specifically, this study tests the proposition that the breakdown of consensus on foreign policy beliefs which followed the Vietnam War is a consequence of the emergence of a Vietnam generation with a distinctive foreign policy outlook. / Among the most significant findings of this study was that generational differences among both the mass and attentive publics are modest in nature. Thus generational cleavage is only a weak and partial explanation to the post-Vietnam breakdown of foreign policy consensus. A second conclusion of this study is that, even though the presence of generational differences is weak, the differences do not conform to most theories about the foreign policy views of the Vietnam generation. Particularly, the mass public of the Vietnam generation is more conservative on foreign policy issues than other generational groups. / This study also offers evidence to support the thesis that the Vietnam generation is more polarized than other age cohorts. Based on a comparison of the attitudes of the general and attentive publics, the Vietnam generation exhibited greater intragenerational conflict compared to other generations. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-07, Section: A, page: 2533. / Major Professor: James R. Ray. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:fsu.edu/oai:fsu.digital.flvc.org:fsu_76690 |
| Contributors | Wells, Robert Alexander., Florida State University |
| Source Sets | Florida State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Text |
| Format | 174 p. |
| Rights | On campus use only. |
| Relation | Dissertation Abstracts International |
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