Public Support For War Research Articles

Foreign Policy and Public Support for War: New Experimental Evidence

ABSTRACT This paper investigates how foreign policy decisions shape US public support for military intervention on behalf of a state that is under attack. In particular, we consider two key questions. First, does a defender’s foreign policy behavior shape the public’s willingness to defend it? Second, what impact do US “hands-tying” policies, including alliance treaties, public threats, and tripwire forces, have on public support? We use a survey experiment to shed new light on these questions. Our experiment indicates that defender foreign policy matters; the public is more likely to support defenders that have contributed to previous US military operations, and less likely to support defenders that provoked their attackers. We also find that US hands-tying policies have a significant effect on public opinion. Interestingly, these impacts are statistically indistinguishable from one another; no one hands-tying policy is superior as a means of bolstering public demand for war.

Revisiting the Emotion–Risk Interaction: Do Anger and Fear Moderate the Impact of Risk on Public Support for War?

AbstractA key claim in the study of emotions is that anger makes people less responsive to risks, whereas fear makes people more responsive. Although risk is a fundamental concern in the area of military conflict, no studies have directly tested whether anger and fear moderate the impact of risk on public support for war. We test this key claim with casualty risks as our case. Across five experiments (N = 4,559), utilizing well-established treatment material to vary casualty risk and induce emotions, we replicate the central finding that higher casualty risk decreases support for war. Emotions, however, do not moderate the effect of risk. These findings, combined with limitations in existing research, raise debate about the empirical robustness of the prominent emotion–risk interaction as well as widely used emotion inductions.

At War and at Home: The Consequences of US Women Combat Casualties

What are the consequences of women dying in combat? We study how women fighting on the frontlines of the military affects public attitudes toward (1) military conflict and (2) women’s equality. We demonstrate through a series of survey experiments that women dying in combat does not reduce public support for war. However, women’s combat deaths do shape perceptions of women’s equality. Women dying in combat increases support for gender equality, particularly in the public sphere of work and politics, but only among women respondents. The findings indicate that women’s combat deaths do not undermine leaders’ ability to garner support for war, but combat service—and indeed, combat sacrifice—alone is insufficient to yield women’s “first-class citizenship” among the general US public. The results highlight how major policy changes challenging traditional conceptions of gender and war can generate positive attitudinal shifts concentrated among members of the underrepresented community.

Residual Balancing: A Method of Constructing Weights for Marginal Structural Models

When making causal inferences, post-treatment confounders complicate analyses of time-varying treatment effects. Conditioning on these variables naively to estimate marginal effects may inappropriately block causal pathways and may induce spurious associations between treatment and the outcome, leading to bias. To avoid such bias, researchers often use marginal structural models (MSMs) with inverse probability weighting (IPW). However, IPW requires models for the conditional distributions of treatment and is highly sensitive to their misspecification. Moreover, IPW is relatively inefficient, susceptible to finite-sample bias, and difficult to use with continuous treatments. We introduce an alternative method of constructing weights for MSMs, which we call “residual balancing”. In contrast to IPW, it requires modeling the conditional means of the post-treatment confounders rather than the conditional distributions of treatment, and it is therefore easier to use with continuous treatments. Numeric simulations suggest that residual balancing is both more efficient and more robust to model misspecification than IPW and its variants in a variety of scenarios. We illustrate the method by estimating (a) the cumulative effect of negative advertising on election outcomes and (b) the controlled direct effect of shared democracy on public support for war. Open-source software is available for implementing the proposed method.

Oil wealth and US public support for war

How does the oil wealth of a potential target state affect the likelihood of the US public favoring the use of military force? Recent studies suggest that public opinion on foreign policy is responsive to the core characteristics of target states, such as regime type and majority religion. This article advances this research agenda by examining the effects of intra-regime heterogeneity in respect of an important characteristic of target states: their oil wealth. To examine the relationship between oil wealth and US public opinion on war, we fielded a conjoint experiment with US citizens. Respondents chose between hypothetical pairs of target states that varied across seven different intra-regime characteristics. We found that that the oil wealth of a target exerts a statistically significant (albeit small) effect on public support for the use of force, independent of the effects of other regime characteristics.

Human Rights and Public Support for War

One of the most important themes in international relations is the relationship between domestic politics and interstate conflict. In this article, we use experiments to study how the human rights ...

Vicarious Retribution in US Public Support for War Against Iraq

abstractUS public anger and desire to avenge the September 11, 2001 terror attacks were redirected toward Iraq partly because of its identity as an Arab and Muslim state. Online panel survey data reveal that citizens who were relatively angry about the terror attacks were more belligerent toward Iraq, an effect that was strongest among those who perceived Arabs and Muslims in monolithic terms. The angry desire to avenge 9/11 was more persistent for those who saw Arabs and Muslims in that light, and its effect on war support was partially mediated by worsened feelings about Arabs and Muslims in general. These findings help explain why public belligerence toward Iraq shot up right after 9/11, before President George W. Bush began alleging that Iraq was pursuing weapons of mass destruction and had ties to al Qaeda.

Casualties and Support for Violent Conflict in Civil Wars

ABSTRACTThe casualty effect is a widely studied explanation of public support for war in the context of overseas military operations, yet work on the effect of casualties on support for intrastate war is scant. This paper examines the impact of local casualties on support for using military action as a conflict resolution method for intrastate war, using data from two public opinion surveys, collected in Turkey in the absence and presence of large-scale violence, and an original dataset for the local casualties. We find that local-level casualties on average increase the support for military action in ethnic wars.

How can international organizations shape public opinion? analysis of a pair of survey-based experiments

How, and under what conditions, can International Organizations (IOs) shape public opinion? The impact of IOs on public support for war has been studied closely by international relations scholars, yet their effects on environmental or human rights issues has not. This is surprising given the extent to which the success of these initiatives will depend upon cooperation through international institutions. This article examines how IOs can influence popular support for two policies aimed at solving global collective action problems: (1) the REDD+ deforestation initiative; and (2) efforts to resettle Syrian refugees. The results presented here use a pair of survey-based experiments to test whether public support for these policies can be affected by the recommendations made by various organizations and their member states. Somewhat surprisingly, the results suggest that endorsements by the United Nations have a greater effect on the US public than do endorsements by organizations known for their technical expertise, or by prominent international NGOs. These findings call into question some of the assumptions we commonly make about the perceived legitimacy of international organizations.

Civilian Casualties and Public Support for Military Action: Experimental Evidence

In contrast to the expansive literature on military casualties and support for war, we know very little about public reactions to foreign civilian casualties. This article, based on representative sample surveys in the United States and Britain, reports four survey experiments weaving information about civilian casualties into vignettes about Western military action. These produce consistent evidence of civilian casualty aversion: where death tolls were higher, support for force was invariably and significantly lower. Casualty effects were moderate in size but robust across our two cases and across different scenarios. They were also strikingly resistant to moderation by other factors manipulated in the experiments, such as the framing of casualties or their religious affiliation. The importance of numbers over even strongly humanizing frames points toward a utilitarian rather than a social psychological model of casualty aversion. Either way, civilian casualties deserve a more prominent place in the literature on public support for war.

Revenge in US Public Support for War against Iraq

To better understand how desires to avenge the September 11 terror attacks affected US public support for the 2003 Iraq War, we integrate data from two uncoordinated surveys—one measuring revenge motivations and the other beliefs about Iraqi complicity—completed by overlapping samples drawn from the same online panel. Citizens who mistakenly blamed Iraq for 9/11 were more likely to say that going to war would satisfy their desires for revenge, which in turn predicted greater war support, controlling for political orientations and the perceived security incentives and costs of war. But a substantial proportion of those who said Iraq was not involved in 9/11 also expected war to satisfy desires for revenge, suggesting that a revenge “spillover” effect also contributed to war support. These findings help explain how President George W. Bush was able to bring the nation to war against Iraq, testify to the importance of emotion and moral motivation in public opinion, and demonstrate the utility of integrating data from independent online panel surveys.

ATROCITY PROPAGANDA AND THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE MASSES IN THE OTTOMAN EMPIRE DURING THE BALKAN WARS (1912–13)

AbstractDuring the Balkan Wars (1912–13), the mobilization of the home front became significant for the belligerent states, which initiated propaganda activities demonizing their enemies and galvanizing the emotions of their publics. This paper explores one type of such mobilization efforts from above, atrocity propaganda, through which states sought to invoke hatred and mobilize public support for war by focusing on the atrocities (mezalim) that their coreligionists had suffered at the hands of enemies. Although the term “atrocity propaganda” has been used exclusively in the context of World War I in the historiography, the practice it describes was effectively utilized during the earlier Balkan Wars. In the Ottoman Empire, both state and civil initiatives played crucial roles in the making of atrocity propaganda, which was disseminated through intense coverage in the Turkish-language press. The imagery it employed shifted with the onset of the wars, becoming increasingly shocking. Atrocity propaganda contributed to the well-known radicalization of nationalism in the late Ottoman Empire.

Responding to War on Capitol Hill: Battlefield Casualties, Congressional Response, and Public Support for the War in Iraq

Recent scholarship argues that how members of Congress respond to an ongoing war significantly influences the president's strategic calculations. However, the literature is comparably silent on the factors influencing the public positions members take during the course of a military venture. Accounting for both national and local electoral incentives, we develop a theory positing that partisanship conditions congressional responses to casualties in the aggregate, but that all members respond to casualties in their constituency by increasingly criticizing the war. Analyzing an original database of more than 7,500 content‐coded House floor speeches on the Iraq War, we find strong support for both hypotheses. We also find that Democrats from high‐casualty constituencies were significantly more likely to cast antiwar roll‐call votes than their peers. Finally, we show that this significant variation in congressional antiwar position taking strongly correlates with geographic differences in public support for war.

Implications of the sunk cost effect and regional proximity for public support for Canada’s mission in Kandahar

Much of the literature on casualty sensitivity suggests that there is an inverse correlation between casualty levels and public support for war. It also suggests that a public will be more sensitive to local casualties. This article tests these pre-existing theses using data from Canada's participation in the war in southern Afghanistan between February 2006 and 2011. Studying the impact of both provincial and nationwide casualties, it finds no evidence to support these assumptions. Instead, this study finds strong indications that nationwide casualties led to a short-term increase in public support for the Afghan mission. This result is attributed to the sunk cost effect.

Democracy, Deception, and Entry into War

Realists propose that elected leaders that seek war but face a hesitant public may use deception to build public support for war. Leaders may secretly make provocative diplomatic or military moves to push the adversary to attack first, rallying the public behind a war effort seen as defensive, or publicly exaggerate the threat posed by the adversary. This paper develops a liberal institutionalist critique of this theory, positing that elected leaders are deterred from engaging in such deception because democratic political institutions such as political competition, a professionalized military, and the marketplace of ideas increase the likelihood that such moves will be exposed, and once exposed, deceptive politicians will suffer domestic political punishment. The paper examines the thesis that Franklin Roosevelt sought to provoke Germany and Japan to war in 1941, finding little support. It also finds that in general autocratic leaders are more likely than elected leaders to deceive.

How Citizens Respond to Combat Casualties

Scholars have long analyzed the influence of combat casualties on public support for war. However, the mechanisms through which casualties—particularly local casualties—affect wartime opinion formation have received much less attention. We employ a novel survey experiment to test three mechanisms that might explain previously observed cleavages in war support between residents of high- and low-casualty communities. We find that subjects who read a news story concerning a casualty from their home state were significantly more likely to oppose the war in Afghanistan than were subjects who read an identically worded news story in which the fallen soldier was not identified as being from the respondent’s home state. Moreover, this difference emerged regardless of whether the story followed the coverage patterns and emphasis typical of national or local media reporting. We conclude that the local connections triggered by learning of a home-state casualty, not the emotionally charged nature of local media reporting, is most responsible for generating opinion cleavages observed in previous research.

Democratic Peace or Clash of Civilisations? Target States and Support for War in Britain and the USA

Research on public support for war has shown that citizens are responsive to the objectives of military action, the chances of success, the interests at stake and other strategic factors. Less attention has been paid to the nature of the target state: are some states just “the kind of countries that we should/should not be attacking”? In this comparative study we look at two features of the target state – regime type and dominant faith – in order to test whether the ‘democratic peace’ and the ‘clash of civilizations’ these are reflected in US and British public opinion on the use of force. The same survey experiment was administered over the internet to American and British samples. Our main results show little difference across the two cases: both publics were somewhat more inclined to use force against dictatorships than against democracies, and against mainly Islamic than against mainly Christian countries. The clash of civilizations seems to trump the democratic peace, with citizens in both countries readier to use force against Islamic democracies than Christian dictatorships. Religion played no moderating role in Britain: Christians and non-believers were alike readier to attack Islamic than Christian states. However, in the US, the dominant faith effect was driven entirely by Christians; it seems that secular Americans refuse to take part in any clash of civilizations. The results suggest that public judgements are driven more by international images and identities than by strategic calculations of threat.

Casualty Reporting and Domestic Support for War: The US Experience during the Korean War

The common argument that public support for war is casualty sensitive ignores the fact that casualty figures are not revealed automatically. While the military decides when, and to whom, to release such information, political elites can question, even condemn, how the government goes about this business. After briefly exploring how the US military operated during the two world wars, this article focuses on American casualty reporting during the Korean War, arguing that the way the figures were revealed often sparked enormous political controversy, which at two crucial moments helped to undermine domestic support for this distant war.

Losing Heart: Declining Support and the Political Marketing of the Afghanistan Mission

Abstract. Public opinion shifted markedly between 2006 and 2007 regarding Canadian military participation in Afghanistan. Multivariate analysis of survey data reveals that the interplay of cognitive and emotional responses fractured support and consolidated opposition to the mission. Subsequently, a major government communication strategy, aimed at bolstering support for the Afghan mission succeeded at an informational level but failed to connect at an emotional one, leaving overall support for the mission essentially unchanged. Our analysis points to the need for nuanced interpretation of shifts in public support for war as well as in assessing political marketing efforts by government.Résumé. L'opinion publique s'est nettement décalée entre 2006 et 2007 concernant la participation militaire canadienne en Afghanistan. L'analyse multi variée des données d'aperçu indique que l'effet des réponses cognitives et émotives a divisé l'appui et a consolidé l'opposition à la mission. D'ailleurs, une stratégie importante de communication du gouvernement, destinée à augmenter le soutien de la mission afghane a réussi à un niveau informationnel, mais ne s'est pas reliée au niveau émotif, laissant le soutien global de la mission essentiellement inchangé. Notre analyse indique le besoin d'une interprétation diversifiée et nuancée des variations de soutien public face à la guerre ainsi qu'une évaluation du marketing politique du gouvernement.

Propaganda and the subversion of objectivity: media coverage of the war on terrorism in Iraq

Osama bin Laden must be supremely confident about the continuing success of international terrorism, given events of the seven years following the 9/11 attacks. The West's response thus far has weakened the United States and its allies and generally strengthened terrorist organisations across the globe. We argue that the terrorist victory stems in part from media coverage of the George W. Bush administration's march to war. We argue that the media (1) failed to employ time-honoured principles of objectivity in covering the run-up to war, and (2) endorsed the Bush administration's exploitation of propaganda techniques to rally public support for war. We conclude that the media have not accepted that this constitutes a failure in professional ethics – even as journalists and news organisations acknowledge lapses in judgement in their coverage of news about Iraq – and we offer a few suggestions about what journalists could have done to alter the media's stance on terrorism and the war. It is doubtful, however, whether the media have learned from this experience or will act any differently the next time the nation faces a crisis.