Abstract
The aim of this paper was to investigate the relationship between a perceived antagonistic view of social relations (as a struggle for limited resources), measured by the Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG) Scale, national military expenditure, and civil liberties. We used multi-level modeling to analyze data on 5,520 participants from 30 countries, testing the hypothesis that a country’s level of militarization and civil liberties would be associated with its people’s belief in a zero-sum game. We hypothesized that BZSG is more typical of countries that try to gain more resources or defend their interests and thus have high military expenditure but low civil liberties. The results confirmed the stated hypothesis and showed that a country’s high military expenditure and low level of civil liberties correlates positively with citizens’ BZSG. The use of multi-level modeling to account for within- and across-country variation is a main contribution of the study. In conclusion, the reported triad of individual beliefs, military expenditure, and civil liberties seems to be beneficial in linking individual-level data with national-level indices that have major importance for the wellbeing of the world.
Highlights
We can observe many wars and military interventions ongoing throughout the world in recent years
We investigate belief in a zero-sum game and its possible associations with a country’s militarization and civil liberties as subcomponents of the democracy index
First we tested a one-factor Belief in a Zero-Sum Game (BZSG) structure based on the pooled covariance matrix
Summary
We can observe many wars and military interventions ongoing throughout the world in recent years. The global list of violent conflicts is long, including around 50 conflicts involving more than 60 countries and at least 370 guerrilla groups (Peace Research Institute Oslo [PRIO], 2017; Uppsala Conflict Data Program [UCDP], 2017), and in 2017 alone these conflicts resulted in the deaths of more than 200,000 people. The Fragile States Index (Fund for Peace, 2017) is a scale of the military threat that a country faces and indicates that almost 125 countries are at risk of war. Policymakers influence public attitudes, military intervention can only be carried out when there is support for, or acceptance of war at least in democracies (Foyle, 2004). Many studies have found that the specific beliefs in a given culture are connected with government policy – e.g., societal cynicism, which represents a generalized belief that the social system and institutions of a society are hostile toward its members (Bond et al, 2004; Stavrova and Ehlebracht, 2015).
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