Civilian Attitudes Research Articles

Civilian Attitudes Toward the Military through the Prism of Personal Experience in Wartime Ukraine

Aim. The goal of the research is psychological analysis as well as the development of the typology of attitude of the civilians of Ukraine toward military personnel in wartime. Methods. The transcripts of five focus group discussions in five cities of different regions of Ukraine have been subjected to thematic analysis. The criteria for analysis were: a) the quality of contacts, b) regularity (frequency) of contacts with military personnel. Results. Four types of attitudes of civilians toward military personnel have been identified: “interaction participant” as a real and personalised contact; “interested witness” as real and close irregular contacts; “observer” as a distant and imaginary irregular contact; “re-teller” as a remote, imaginary contact through accidental meetings. Topics for analysis include emotional treatment, attitudes depending on military personnel types, interaction formats and conflict probability, and the associative image of a military man. Conclusion. The identified attitudes of civilians to military personnel reflect the availability of a dichotomy between the sense of gratitude to military personnel for their heroism vs the striving of civilians to have their own normal life. Proximity to one of the poles determines the type of treatment of military personnel, and, at the same time, the prospective probability and tension of the conflict. Originality. The study was conducted in September-October 2023, the second year of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine. Psychological analysis of the subjective attitude of civilians to military personnel in the social and psychological context of war has been made through focus group discussions.

Right-Wing Populist Leaders, Nationalist Rhetoric, and Dispute Initiation in International Politics

The global rise of right-wing populist (RWP) leaders has raised concerns about the threat they pose to a cooperative international order, but there is little systematic evidence linking RWP leaders to military aggression. Are RWP leaders more prone to initiating international disputes? If so, when and why? We argue that a RWP leader’s hyper-nationalist rhetoric can galvanize popular support for militant internationalism, but this only leads to pressures for the leader to follow through on their belligerent rhetoric by initiating international disputes in participatory democracies. Using survey experiments fielded in India and Japan, we find strong support for our claims about the effects of RWP rhetoric on civilian attitudes. Statistical results from original data on populist leaders worldwide (1886-2014) then show that RWP leaders in participatory democracies are more likely to initiate militarized disputes. Our results are troubling given the recent increase in RWP leaders elected in participatory democracies.

Chinese aid in Africa: Attitudes and conflict

This study examines Chinese aid projects’ impact on conflict and perceptions of China in 820 African districts from 2000 to 2012. We show that a 10% increase in Chinese aid projects results in a 6% increase in conflict incidents. This rise is mainly due to confrontations involving non-state actors, such as militias and rebel groups, and clashes between these groups and government forces. Civilian attitudes towards China’s presence do not drive this increase, as evidenced by both revealed and stated preferences. We find that Chinese aid does not provoke protests, riots, or strikes, nor does it amplify critical views among Africans regarding Chinese culture, resource extraction, or land acquisitions. Our evidence suggests that Africans attribute the rise in conflict to the interaction of resource influx and local politics, rather than to China itself, reflecting a discerning perspective on China’s influence on the continent.

Military music and society during the French wars, 1793–1815

Abstract The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars were experienced by the ears as much as the eyes, yet the auditory dimensions of these conflicts have received limited attention from historians. This article interrogates the reach and reception of military music in wartime Britain and Ireland by drawing on a wealth of evidence from memoirs, diaries, press reports and regimental archives. It demonstrates that military bands provided sought-after entertainment at myriad public events and staged open-air concerts for socially diverse audiences. The article interprets martial music-making as an important civil-military interface and a potent form of cultural propaganda: a means of inculcating patriotism and asserting the sonic supremacy of the established order in a revolutionary age. But it also reveals that military music provoked irritation, controversy and distress, not least by generating noise complaints and exacerbating sectarianism in Ireland. The article concludes by considering the role of British regimental music-making in overseas colonies and foreign theatres of operations, arguing that it functioned as a form of soft power that underpinned imperial authority, aided diplomacy and eased relations with local inhabitants. An intrusive symptom of large-scale military mobilization, martial music shaped civilian attitudes and soundscapes while profoundly influencing broader musical culture.

Civilian Attitudes of Russian Students in the Context of a Special Military Operation

The article analyzes individual elements in the structure of civil attitudes of Russian students in the situation of the beginning and continuation of a special military operation (SVO). A special military operation acts as a kind of “litmus test”, which allows to identify the features of the civic consciousness of students, since it is in a crisis situation that latent value attitudes that determine social and civic behavior are actualized. The article is based on the results of an empirical sociological study. The study sample is quota– based, stratified by gender, the sample size is 1,380 people aged 18 to 22 years. As a result of the conducted research: the polarization of Russian students in terms of attitude to a special military operation is justified; the conclusion is made about the “background” nature of the SVO for a significant part of the student youth; the influence of ITS on the growth of stress among students faced with its results has been proven; the hypothesis about the influence of the SVO on the dynamics of civil attitudes of Russian students is confirmed. In particular, a special military operation has an impact on reducing students’ trust in socio-political institutions and actors, and also affects the dynamics of migration sentiments, increasing the percentage of young people considering migration as a possible option for a life trajectory. The study demonstrated the need for further study of the stability of the civic attitudes of Russian youth in the context of the escalation of “new” cognitive wars, as well as an analysis of the effectiveness of state institutions of socialization in a situation of geopolitical instability.

A theory of jihadist beheadings

Why do some jihadist organizations engage in beheadings while others do not? Although beheadings have become a signature tactic of the contemporary global jihadist movement, I show that most jihadist groups perpetrate few or no beheadings and only a minority have adopted beheading as a consistent part of their repertoire of violence. Such variation exists even among ideologically similar ‘Salafi-jihadist’ groups, suggesting that ideology alone cannot explain why such violence occurs. Instead, I argue that the use of beheadings is shaped by a combination of local strategic context and transnational ties. Beheadings are strategically useful to jihadist groups engaged in insurgency as a means of deterring civilian collaboration with the enemy, demoralizing enemy combatants and attracting foreign recruits. But the use of beheading is also costly for such groups, notably because of its tendency to alienate potential civilian supporters. Whether or not particular jihadist groups use beheadings depends largely on whether they can afford to ignore these costs. Jihadist insurgents who control significant territory are less sensitive to civilian attitudes because of their ability to obtain support through coercion and are therefore more likely to perpetrate beheadings. The use of beheadings is also shaped by transnational ties: organizations that seek formal affiliation with transnational jihadist networks are more likely to calculate that the benefits of using extreme violence to attract transnational support outweigh its costs. I test this theory using an original dataset of over 1,500 beheading events perpetrated by jihadist organizations between 1998 and 2019.

How civilian attitudes respond to the state’s violence: Lessons from the Israel–Gaza conflict

States, in their conflicts with militant groups embedded in civilian populations, often resort to policies of collective punishment to erode civilian support for the militants. We attempt to evaluate the efficacy of such policies in the context of the Gaza Strip, where Israel's blockade and military interventions, purportedly intended to erode support for Hamas, have inflicted hardship on the civilian population. We combine Palestinian public opinion data, Palestinian labor force surveys, and Palestinian fatalities data, to understand the relationship between exposure to Israeli policies and Palestinian support for militant factions. Our baseline strategy is a difference-in-differences specification that compares the gap in public opinion between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank during periods of intense punishment with the gap during periods when punishment is eased. Consistent with previous research, we find that Palestinian fatalities are associated with Palestinian support for more militant political factions. The effect is short-lived, however, dissipating after merely one quarter. Moreover, the blockade of Gaza itself appears to be only weakly associated with support for militant factions. Overall, we find little evidence to suggest that Israeli security policies toward the Gaza Strip have any substantial lasting effect on Gazan support for militant factions, neither deterring nor provoking them relative to their West Bank counterparts. Our findings therefore call into question the logic of Israel's continued security policies toward Gaza, while prompting a wider re-examination of the efficacy of deterrence strategies in other asymmetric conflicts.

The “Civilizing” Effect of Body-Worn Cameras on Police-Civilian Interactions: Examining the Current Evidence, Potential Moderators, and Methodological Limitations

Past studies on the “civilizing” effect of body-worn cameras (BWC) on police and civilian behavior have yielded mixed results. Some studies have shown a reduction in the use of force reports (e.g., Ariel et al., 2015 ) and civilian complaints ( Hedberg et al., 2017 ) as a result of officers utilizing BWCs. However, other studies have found null effects (e.g., Yokum et al., 2017 ) or even the opposite findings (i.e., increases in use of force reports; Ariel et al., 2016a ). In the current review, we aim to reconcile these inconsistencies by discussing psychological factors (i.e., police attitudes toward BWCs, civilian attitudes toward the police, geographic psychology, officer perceptions of self-legitimacy, and civilian stress) that may moderate the civilizing effect of BWCs. We also highlight the methodological issues (i.e., contamination, unit of analysis, and low base rates) that have burdened past studies involving field experiments and advocate for the use of multiple methods to strengthen any existing weaknesses in the literature. Overall, we argue for a closer examination of individual-level psychological factors and the use of multiple methods to help elucidate the ambiguities concerning the “civilizing” effect found in the BWC literature.

The Character and Origins of Military Attitudes on the Use of Force

Abstract Do military and civilian attitudes on the use of force differ and, if so, why? Past scholarship is divided not only on whether decision-makers with military experience are more hawkish but also in whether differences stem from organizational selection or socialization. We contribute to these debates through a unique opportunity to survey incoming military officers at the US Military Academy before and after basic training and pair the results with simultaneous surveys of a nationally representative sample. We find that future military elites are more hawkish than civilians, the gap is evident upon arrival, and initial socializing experiences cannot explain the gap. Numerous tests addressing potential socialization effects over a longer period reveal that experience may attenuate hawkishness but that it is insufficient to offset initial differences. The results indicate that preexisting attitudes shape the groups into which elites select as much as experiences in those groups shape attitudes.

How Civilian Attitudes Respond to the State's Violence: Lessons from the Israel- Gaza Conflict

How Civilian Attitudes Respond to the State's Violence: Lessons from the Israel- Gaza Conflict

An investigation of emotional and evaluative implicit associations with police using four versions of the Implicit Association Test

ABSTRACT In two studies (total N = 829), we assessed civilian implicit associations with police using four modified Implicit Association Tests (IAT). Across studies and IATs, individuals harbored stronger negative implicit associations (associating police with fear/bad) than positive implicit associations (associating police with safety/good). The predictive validity of the implicit associations and magnitude of D scores varied across IAT. In Study 1, the IATs involving categorization of police-related (vs. everyday) symbols were most sensitive, but the versions involving categorization of police (vs. civilian) models provided more evidence for predictive validity. In Study 2, the IAT involving categorization of emotional words (safety/fear) was most sensitive, but the version involving categorization of evaluative words (good/bad) provided more evidence for predictive validity. In both studies, we also assessed individual differences (race, political affiliation) in implicit associations. The findings prompt the need to further examine the underlying cognitive components of civilian attitudes toward police and emphasize the importance of developing several IATs when assessing implicit attitudes.

Confidence in Law Enforcement When African-Americans are Underrepresented on the Force: An Exploratory Study

Confidence in Law Enforcement When African-Americans are Underrepresented on the Force: An Exploratory Study, Charles E. MacLean, 2019: Dissertation, Nova Southeastern University, Abraham S. Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice. This dissertation explores the prediction that when African-Americans are underrepresented among sworn officers in a community’s local law enforcement agencies compared to the African-American proportions in that community’s overall population, African-American civilians’ confidence in their local law enforcement agencies may suffer, leading to impaired respect for law, reduced civilian cooperation with law enforcement, and civilian impressions of weakened procedural justice and fairness. With low civilian confidence, the argument goes, one could expect an enhanced sense of disenfranchisement among the underrepresented sub-populations. The purpose of this study is to consider the impact of underrepresentation of African-Americans among sworn officers serving a local community, explore the key correlates of civilian confidence viewed through the lens of African-American perceptions and attitudes, and confront the superordinate roles that procedural justice and police effectiveness play in forming African-American civilian attitudes of confidence, trust, and satisfaction in local law enforcement. To quantify representativeness, this study expresses relative racial compositions of the police and the policed as a Racial Mirror Index (“RMI”). If the percent of a community’s police, who are African-American, exactly matches the percent of the policed in that community, who are African-American, the RMI-AA (“Racial Mirror Index-African-American”) would equal 100. RMI-AAs over 100 indicate African-Americans are overrepresented on the local law enforcement agency compared to the African-American share of the general population; RMI-AAs under 100 indicate African-Americans are underrepresented among sworn officers on the force. Despite expectations, as this study makes clear, RMI-AA is not a significant predictor of African-American civilian confidence, trust, and satisfaction in local law enforcement. Instead, African-American attitudes about local law enforcement are overwhelmingly driven by African-American perceptions of procedural justice and police effectiveness. African-American confidence, trust, and satisfaction in law enforcement remains far lower than for Whites regardless of RMI-AA and the degree of underrepresentation on the force. Thus, law enforcement agencies cannot hire their way out of this confidence gap through minority recruitment. Instead, improving African-American confidence in local law enforcement will require the agencies to engage with the far more substantive work of ensuring their officers deliver both procedural justice and effective policing.

Extremes and Exceptions: Civilian Attitudes toward Jews in Bukovina during World War II

Extremes and Exceptions: Civilian Attitudes toward Jews in Bukovina during World War II

Can Economic Assistance Shape Combatant Support in Wartime? Experimental Evidence from Afghanistan

Governments, militaries, and aid organizations all rely on economic interventions to shape civilian attitudes toward combatants during wartime. We have, however, little individual-level evidence that these “hearts and minds” programs actually influence combatant support. We address this problem by conducting a factorial randomized control trial of two common interventions—vocational training and cash transfers—on combatant support among 2,597 at-risk youth in Kandahar, Afghanistan. We find that training only improved economic livelihoods modestly and had little effect on combatant support. Cash failed to lift incomes, producing a boom-and-bust dynamic in which pro-government sentiment initially spiked and then quickly reversed itself, leaving a residue of increased Taliban support. Conditional on training, cash failed to improve beneficiaries’ livelihoods but did increase support for the Afghan government for at least eight months after the intervention. These findings suggest that aid affects attitudes by providing information about government resolve and competence rather than by improving economic livelihoods.

In My Name: The Impact of Regional Identity on Civilian Attitudes in the Armed Conflict in Donbas

AbstractThis article examines the effect of shared group membership on civilian attitudes regarding insurgent forces during an armed conflict. We rely on the original survey conducted in eight towns of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in May–June 2015. Based on the bivariate and multivariate analysis of the survey results, this article finds that a sense of shared identity with rebel forces at the start of the armed conflict in Donbas had a strong independent effect on civilian views of insurgents. Those respondents who identified themselves as residents of the region were more likely to attribute ideational motives to insurgents, report no knowledge of civilian victimization caused by rebel forces, and feel secure in their presence. By contrast, respondents identifying themselves as Ukrainian citizens were more likely to attribute material motives to insurgents, indicate their responsibility for attacks against civilians, and feel intimidated during direct encounters with rebels. These findings point to broader significance of identity cleavages in explaining the Donbas conflict.

Peace agreement design and public support for peace: Evidence from Colombia

Conflict negotiations are often met with backlash in the public sphere. A substantial literature has explored why civilians support or oppose peace agreements in general. Yet, the terms underlying peace agreements are often absent in this literature, even though (a) settlement negotiators must craft agreement provisions covering a host of issues that are complex, multidimensional, and vary across conflicts, and (b) civilian support is likely to vary depending on what peace agreements look like. As a result, we know much less about how settlement design molds overall public response, which settlement provisions are more or less controversial, or what citizens prioritize in conflict termination. In this article, I identify four key types of peace agreement provisions and derive expectations for how they might shape civilian attitudes toward conflict termination. Using novel conjoint experiments fielded during the Colombian peace process, I find evidence that citizens evaluate agreements based primarily on how provisions mete out justice to out-group combatants, and further that transitional justice provisions produced sharp divisions among urban voters in the 2016 referendum. Additional analysis suggests that material, distributive concerns were particularly salient for rural citizens. The results have implications for understanding the challenge of generating public buy-in for conflict termination and sheds light on the polarizing Colombian peace process.

An Investigation of Civilian Implicit Attitudes Toward Police Officers

This research investigated civilian implicit attitudes toward police. Previous research has solely used explicit measures (or examined police officers’ implicit reactions to civilians). Two studies assessed the implicit activation of safety and fear when participants were primed with police using a Word Fragment Completion Task (e.g., Johnson and Lord 2010). In a college sample, police primes led to increased safety and decreased fear construct activation, whereas in an online sample, both safety and fear became more accessible. Overall, results indicated that a wide range of individual differences in implicit attitudes toward police exist, that implicit reactions to police officers might be distinct from explicit global evaluations, and that, despite the existence of negative police-civilian interactions, the appearance of police officers might still tend to activate safety-related thoughts. The findings prompt the need to further assess the underlying cognitive components of civilian attitudes toward police officers.

Reducing Insurgent Support among At-Risk Populations: Experimental Evidence from Cash Transfers and Livelihood Training in Afghanistan

Governments, militaries, and aid organizations all rely on economic interventions to shape civilian attitudes toward combatants during wartime. We have, however, little individual-level evidence that these hearts and minds'' programs actually influence combatant support. We address this problem by conducting a factorial randomized control trial of two common interventions -- vocational training and cash transfers -- on combatant support among 2,597 at-risk youth in Kandahar, Afghanistan. We find that training only improved economic livelihoods modestly and had little effect on combatant support. Cash failed to lift incomes, producing a boom-and-bust dynamic in which pro-government sentiment initially spiked and then quickly reversed itself, leaving a residue of increased Taliban support. Training and cash jointly failed to improve beneficiaries' livelihoods but did increase support for the Afghan government for at least nine months. These findings suggest that aid affects attitudes by providing information about government resolve and competence rather than increasing recipients' income.

Worlds Apart: Conflict Exposure and Preferences for Peace

Life on the frontlines of a civil war is markedly different from life in safe(r) areas. How does this drastic difference in lived experience shape civilian attitudes toward war and peace? Contrary to theories that link conflict exposure to intransigence, I argue that under certain conditions, exposure increases support for both peace as an outcome and the granting of concessions to armed actors who render settlement more likely. I use various model specifications and matching methodology on survey data from the Colombian peace process, finding strong evidence that civilians in conflict zones exhibit greater support for the peace process overall and are more willing to grant political concessions to armed groups. Mixed evidence further suggests that exposed civilians are less willing to reintegrate with demobilized fighters. The study has theoretical implications for accounts of conflict exposure and helps explain regional variation in the failed referendum vote in Colombia.

Can civilian attitudes predict insurgent violence? Ideology and insurgent tactical choice in civil war

Are civilian attitudes a useful predictor of patterns of violence in civil wars? A prominent debate has emerged among scholars and practitioners about the importance of winning civilian ‘hearts and minds’ for influencing their wartime behavior. We argue that such efforts may have a dark side: insurgents can use pro-counterinsurgent attitudes as cues to select their targets and tactics. We conduct an original survey experiment in 204 Afghan villages and establish a positive association between pro-International Security Assistance Force attitudes and future Taliban attacks. We extend our analysis to 14,606 non-surveyed villages and demonstrate that our measure of civilian attitudes improves out-of-sample predictive performance by 20–30% over a standard forecasting model. The results are especially strong for Taliban attacks with improvised explosive devices. These improvements in predictive power remain even after adjusting for possible confounders, including past violence, military bases, and development aid.