It is well accepted that casualties incurred as a result of interstate militarized
disputes have a significant influence on domestic public opinion and ultimately on
foreign policy decision making (FPDM). Although scholars have studied the influence
of casualties on FPDM, the major line of research ignores the possibility that different
cultural settings may generate different levels of tolerance for human casualties and
thereby differentially mediate public reactions. Therefore, I attempt to clarify the impact
of cultural factors on interpretation and perception of human casualties in international
conflicts by the general public and their implications on consequent foreign policy
choices.
I specifically examine two socio-cultural factors in the context of two culturally
different states, South Korea and the United States. The two cultural factors are (1) the
level of individualism vs. collectivism, and (2) the degree of ambiguity intolerance. I
argue that the two factors will possibly affect the public’s tolerance of human casualties.
I expect that they will affect both the process by which members of the two cultures
make decisions and their choices. Cross-national experimental design (in South Korea
and the United States) and a comparative case study were employed. Regarding the decision choice, I found that the expected number of casualties
were considered in different ways by American students and Korean students. Different
from my expectation, the Korean students perceived the expected number of casualties
more negatively than the American students. With regard to the process of decision
making, the empirical results support the hypotheses that the different levels of
intolerance of ambiguity, a cultural factor, will have an impact on the decision process.
Specifically, Korean students, who are less tolerant of ambiguity, needed less
information to reach a final decision than did American students.
Overall, although the results did not completely support cultural accounts,
cultural explanation has been proven to be a viable ingredient in explaining the different
observed patterns of foreign policy decision making. Specifically, a cultural factor,
ambiguity intolerance, had an impact on the process rather than the choice. In addition,
this study presents some theoretical implications as well as political implications.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1964 |
| Date | 02 June 2009 |
| Creators | Park, Nam Tae |
| Contributors | Geva, Nehemia |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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