Replication Data for: Public and Expert Preferences in Survey Experiments on Foreign Policy: Evidence from Parallel Conjoint Analyses

The boom in published survey experiments in the international relations literature has allowed researchers to make valid causal inferences on longstanding foreign policy debates such as democratic peace, audience costs, and signaling. However, most of these experiments rely on mass samples, whereas foreign policy is arguably more technocratically driven. In this study, we probe the validity of generalizing from mass to elite preferences by exploring preferences of ordinary U.S. citizens and foreign policy experts (employees of the U.S. Department of State) in two identical conjoint experiments on democratic peace. We find that expert respondents are more opposed to military actions against other democracies than members of the public—but also that overall preferences about the matters of war and peace are stronger among foreign policy professionals. Our findings have important implications for the conduct of survey experiments in international relations and foreign policy.