Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T02:07:31.888Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Talking War: Representation, Veterans and Ideology in Post-War Parliamentary Debates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2020

Michal Mochtak Open the ORCID record for Michal Mochtak [Opens in a new window] ,
Josip Glaurdić Open the ORCID record for Josip Glaurdić [Opens in a new window]  and
Christophe Lesschaeve Open the ORCID record for Christophe Lesschaeve [Opens in a new window]
Michal Mochtak*
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
Josip Glaurdić
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
Christophe Lesschaeve
Affiliation:
Institute of Political Science, University of Luxembourg, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
*
*Corresponding author: Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How do politicians in post-war societies talk about the past war? How do they discursively represent vulnerable social groups created by the conflict? Does the nature of this representation depend on the politicians’ ideology or their record of combat service? We answer these questions by pairing natural language processing tools and a large corpus of parliamentary debates with an extensive data set of biographical information including detailed records of war service for all members of parliament during two recent terms in Croatia. We demonstrate not only that veteran politicians talk about war differently from their non-veteran counterparts, but also that the sentiment of war-related political discourse is highly dependent on the speaker's exposure to combat and ideological orientation. These results improve our understanding of the representational role played by combat veterans, as well as of the link between descriptive and substantive representation of vulnerable groups in post-war societies.

Keywords

warveteransrepresentationsentimentspeechesCroatia
Type
Article
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 57 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 148 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Government and Opposition Limited

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Best, R and Vonnahme, G (2019) Military Service and Legislative Agendas: A Study of Legislators in Four States. Armed Forces & Society, published early online, May, https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X19848009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bianco, WT (2005) Last Post for ‘The Greatest Generation’: The Policy Implications of the Decline of Military Experience in the U.S. Congress. Legislative Studies Quarterly 30(1), 85–102. https://doi.org/10.3162/036298005X201464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bovens, M and Wille, A (2017) The Consequences of Diploma Democracy. In Bovens M and Wille A, Diploma Democracy: The Rise of Political Meritocracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 139–163.Google Scholar
Broockman, DE (2013) Black Politicians Are More Intrinsically Motivated to Advance Blacks’ Interests: A Field Experiment Manipulating Political Incentives. American Journal of Political Science 57(3), 521–536. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12018.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budra, PV and Zeitlin, M (2004) Soldier Talk: The Vietnam War in Oral Narrative. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Burden, BC (2007) Personal Roots of Representation. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carnes, N (2012) Does the Numerical Underrepresentation of the Working Class in Congress Matter? Legislative Studies Quarterly 37(1), 5–34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-9162.2011.00033.x.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carnes, N and Lupu, N (2015) Rethinking the Comparative Perspective on Class and Representation: Evidence from Latin America. American Journal of Political Science 59(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12112.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carsey, TM and Rundquist, B (1999) Party and Committee in Distributive Politics: Evidence from Defense Spending. Journal of Politics 61(4), 1156–1169. https://doi.org/10.2307/2647558.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Celis, K et al. (2008) Rethinking Women's Substantive Representation. Representation 44(2), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1080/00344890802079573.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chirot, D, Shin, G-W and Sneider, DC (2014) Confronting Memories of World War II: European and Asian Legacies. Seattle: University of Washington Press.Google Scholar
Dahlerup, D and Freidenvall, L (2010) Judging Gender Quotas: Predictions and Results. Policy and Politics 38(3), 407–425. https://doi.org/10.1332/030557310X521080.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dolenec, D (2017) A Soldier's State? Veterans and the Welfare Regime in Croatia. Anali Hrvatskog politološkog društva: časopis za politologiju 14(1), 55–77. https://doi.org/10.20901/an.14.03.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feaver, PD and Gelpi, C (2011) Choosing Your Battles: American Civil–Military Relations and the Use of Force. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, S (2005) Contentious Politics in Croatia: The War Veterans’ Movement. In Kopecky, P and Mudde, C (eds), Uncivil Society? Contentious Politics in Post-Communist Europe. London: Routledge, pp. 86–104.Google Scholar
Gartner, SS, Segura, GM and Barratt, BA (2004) War Casualties, Policy Positions, and the Fate of Legislators. Political Research Quarterly 57(3), 467–477. https://doi.org/10.1177/106591290405700311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelpi, C and Feaver, PD (2002) Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick? Veterans in the Political Elite and the American Use of Force. American Political Science Review 96(4), 779–793. https://doi.org/10.1017/S000305540200045X.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerrity, JC, Osborn, T and Mendez, JM (2007) Women and Representation: A Different View of the District? Politics and Gender 3(2), 179–200. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1743923X07000025.Google Scholar
Glaurdić, J and Vuković, V (2016) Voting after War: Legacy of Conflict and the Economy as Determinants of Electoral Support in Croatia. Electoral Studies 42, 135–145. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2016.02.012.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Glavaš, G, Šnajder, J and Dalbelo Bašić, B (2012) Semi-Supervised Acquisition of Croatian Sentiment Lexicon. In Sojka, P et al. (eds), Text, Speech and Dialogue: 15th International Conference, TSD 2012, Brno, Czech Republic, September 3–7, 2012: Proceedings. Berlin: Springer, pp. 166–173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gödl, D (2007) Challenging the Past: Serbian and Croatian Aggressor–Victim Narratives. International Journal of Sociology 37(1), 43–57. https://doi.org/10.2307/20628284.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldgeier, JM (1994) Leadership Style and Soviet Foreign Policy: Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Holsti, OR (1998) A Widening Gap between the U.S. Military and Civilian Society? Some Evidence, 1976–96. International Security 23(3), 5. https://doi.org/10.2307/2539337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Holsti, OR (2001) Of Chasms and Convergences: Attitudes and Beliefs of Civilians and Military Elites at the Start of a New Millennium. In Feaver, P and Kohn, RH (eds), Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil–Military Gap and American National Security. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 15–100.Google Scholar
Horowitz, MC and Stam, AC (2014) How Prior Military Experience Influences the Future Militarized Behavior of Leaders. International Organization 68(3), 527–559. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020818314000046.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hrvatski sabor (2012) Zakon o Izmjenama i Dopunama Zakona o Pravima Hrvatskih Branitelja Iz Domovinskog Rata i Članova Njihovih Obitelji. Narodne Novine 140/2012(2945).Google Scholar
Hrvatski sabor (2017) Zakon o Hrvatskim Braniteljima Iz Domovinskog Rata i Članovima Njihovih Obitelji. Narodne Novine 121/2017(2758).Google Scholar
Jervis, R (2017) Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Karsten, P (2012) Veteran Electability to the Presidency. Armed Forces & Society 38(3), 486–499. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X11426551.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lawless, JL (2015) Female Candidates and Legislators. Annual Review of Political Science 18(1), 349–366. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-020614-094613.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lesschaeve, C (2020) Voting After Violence: How Combat Experiences and Postwar Trauma Affect Veteran and Voter Party Choices in Croatia's 2003 Postwar Elections. Armed Forces & Society 46(2), 259–280. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X18819244.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lindsay, JM (1990) Parochialism, Policy, and Constituency Constraints: Congressional Voting on Strategic Weapons Systems. American Journal of Political Science 34(4), 960. https://doi.org/10.2307/2111466.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowande, K, Ritchie, M and Lauterbach, E (2019) Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Congress: Evidence from 80,000 Congressional Inquiries. American Journal of Political Science 63(3), 644–659. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupton, DL (2017) Out of the Service, Into the House. Political Research Quarterly 70(2), 327–339. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912917691359.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Manin, B (2010) The Principles of Representative Government. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Mansbridge, J (1999) Should Blacks Represent Blacks and Women Represent Women? A Contingent ‘Yes’. Journal of Politics 61(3), 628–657. https://doi.org/10.2307/2647821.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Matthews, D (1967) The Social Background of Political Decision-Makers. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Miles, MR and Haider-Markel, DP (2019) Personality and Genetic Associations with Military Service. Armed Forces & Society 45(4), 637–658. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X18765449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, MW, Greif, JL and Smith, AA (2003) Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire Profiles of Veterans with Traumatic Combat Exposure: Externalizing and Internalizing Subtypes. Psychological Assessment 15(2), 205–215. https://doi.org/10.1037/1040-3590.15.2.205.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Newport, F (2009) Military Veterans of All Ages Tend to be More Republican. Gallup, 25 May. https://news.gallup.com/poll/118684/military-veterans-ages-tend-republican.aspx.Google Scholar
Phillips, A (1995) The Politics of Presence: The Political Representation of Gender, Ethnicity, and Race. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pitkin, HF (1967) The Concept of Representation. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Robinson, D (2019) Widyr: Widen, Process, Then Re-Tidy Data. https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/widyr/index.html (accessed 8 October 2019).Google Scholar
Runnals, JJ et al. (2014) Systematic Review of Women Veterans’ Mental Health. Women's Health Issues 24(5), 485–502. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.WHI.2014.06.012.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saalfeld, T and Bischof, D (2013) Minority-Ethnic MPs and the Substantive Representation of Minority Interests in the House of Commons, 2005–2011. Parliamentary Affairs 66(2), 305–328. https://doi.org/10.1093/pa/gss084.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkesian, SC, Williams, JA and Bryant, FB (1995) Soldiers, Society, and National Security. Boulder: Lynne Rienner.Google Scholar
Silge, J and Robinson, D (2016) Tidytext: Text Mining and Analysis Using Tidy Data Principles in R. Journal of Open Source Software 1(3), 1–3. https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.00037.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, AK and Barkhof, S (2018) War Experience and Memory in Global Cultures since 1914. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sokolić, I (2019) International Courts and Mass Atrocity: Narratives of War and Justice in Croatia. Cham: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stadelmann, D, Portmann, M and Eichenberger, R (2015) Military Careers of Politicians Matter for National Security Policy. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 116, 142–156. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JEBO.2015.04.001.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stadelmann, D, Portmann, M and Eichenberger, R (2018) Military Service of Politicians, Public Policy, and Parliamentary Decisions. CESifo Economic Studies 64(4), 639–666. https://doi.org/10.1093/cesifo/ify006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Straka, M, Hajič, J and Straková, J (2015) UDPipe: Trainable Pipeline for Processing CoNLL-U Files Performing Tokenization, Morphological Analysis, POS Tagging and Parsing (Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2016)). Portorož.Google Scholar
Swers, ML (2005) Connecting Descriptive and Substantive Representation: An Analysis of Sex Differences in Cosponsorship Activity. Legislative Studies Quarterly 30(3), 407–433. https://doi.org/10.3162/036298005X201617.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Swers, M (2007) Building a Reputation on National Security: The Impact of Stereotypes Related to Gender and Military Experience. Legislative Studies Quarterly 32(4), 559–595. https://doi.org/10.3162/036298007782398512.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tedeschi, RG and McNally, RJ (2011) Can We Facilitate Posttraumatic Growth in Combat Veterans? American Psychologist 66(1), 19–24. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021896.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wallace, SJ (2014) Representing Latinos: Examining Descriptive and Substantive Representation in Congress. Political Research Quarterly 67(4), 917–929. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912914541795.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wängnerud, L (2009) Women in Parliaments: Descriptive and Substantive Representation. Annual Review of Political Science 12(1), 51–69. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.053106.123839.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Washington, EL (2008) Female Socialization: How Daughters Affect Their Legislator Fathers’ Voting on Women's Issues. American Economic Review 98(1), 311–332. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.98.1.311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wickham, H (2016) Package Rvest. https://github.com/hadley/rvest (accessed 13 April 2018).Google Scholar