Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Christian Nukes: The Effects Of Christian Ethics On Support For Nuclear Strikes, Jack Jogerst

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Over the last several decades, constructivist and realist scholars of international relations have acknowledged the empirical holes in deterrence theory and debated the conditions contributing to the non-use of nuclear weapons since 1945. While constructivists have argued that a strong norm of non-use has constrained state behavior through a logic of appropriateness, realist scholars have contended that a logic of consequences prevents their utilization. In the last decade, a wave of survey experiments have measured the validity of these theories. Though these studies generally seem to reaffirm the realist perspective, the literature largely overlooks the micro-level variables that might be …