Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T01:06:31.748Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Costs of Conflict and Support for the Use of Force: Accounting for Information Equivalence in Survey Experiments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 July 2020

Jared McDonald Open the ORCID record for Jared McDonald [Opens in a new window]  and
James Igoe Walsh Open the ORCID record for James Igoe Walsh [Opens in a new window]
Jared McDonald*
Affiliation:
Department of Communication, Stanford University, 300N McClatchy Hall, Stanford, CA, 94305
James Igoe Walsh
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC28223
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

How do the costs of conflict influence public support for the use of force? Existing research finds that weapons that eliminate the possibility of military casualties, such as drones, increase popular support for engaging in conflict. We argue that this effect may be overstated because the choice of weapons technology is endogenous to conflict. Leaders may select to use drones in conflicts where the risk of harm to ground forces is especially high. To address this, we replicate and extend the research design of Walsh and Schulzke across three survey experiments. The key innovation in our experiments is that subjects are led to believe that the choice of attack type – drones or ground troops – is determined by weather conditions rather than strategic considerations. We find that support for military action does not differ across treatments in which subjects are told that the attack involves drone strikes or ground troops.

Keywords

international conflictpublic opinionsurvey experimentsinformation equivalence
Type
Replications
Information
Journal of Experimental Political Science , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , Summer 2021 , pp. 195 - 202
Copyright
© The Experimental Research Section of the American Political Science Association, 2020

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.)

Footnotes

This research was made possible through support from the POLS Lab at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The authors declare no conflicts of interest. The data, code, and any additional materials required to replicate all analyses in this article are available at the Journal of Experimental Political Science Dataverse within the Harvard Dataverse Network at doi: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EPJBOO.

References

Ackerman, Spencer and Shachtman, Noah. 2011. “Inside bin Laden’s Drone-Proof Compound.” Wired, May 2. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/2011/05/video-inside-bin-ladens-drone-proof-compound/.Google Scholar
Brodie, Bernard. 1946. The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order. New York: Harcourt Brace.Google Scholar
Brunstetter, Daniel and Braun, Megan. 2011. The Implications of Drones on the Just War Tradition. Ethics and International Affairs 25(3): 337–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dafoe, Allan, Zhang, Baobao and Caughey, Devin. 2018. Information Equivalence in Survey Experiments. Political Analysis 26(4): 399–416.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gartner, Scott Sigmund. 2008. The Multiple Effects of Casualties on Public Support for War: An Experimental Approach. American Political Science Review 102(1): 95–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gartner, Scott Sigmund and Segura, Gary M.. 1998. War, Casualties, and Public Opinion. Journal of Conflict Resolution 42(2): 278–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gelpi, Christopher, Feaver, Peter D. and Reifler, Jason. 2009. Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillespie, Paul G. 2006. The Development of Precision Guided Munitions. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.Google Scholar
Kinder, Donald R. and Palfrey, Thomas R.. 1993. Experimental Foundations of Political Science. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kreps, Sarah and Kaag, John. 2012. Drone Warfare. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Lakens, Daniël. 2017. Equivalence Tests: A Practical Primer for t Tests, Correlations, and Meta-Analyses. Social Psychological and Personality Science 8(4): 355–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNeal, Gregory S. 2011. Why Obama Chose SEALS, Not Drones. Foreign Policy, May 5. Retrieved from https://foreignpolicy.com/2011/05/05/the-bin-laden-aftermath-why-obama-chose-seals-not-drones/.Google Scholar
Mueller, John E. 1973. War, Presidents, and Public Opinion. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Schelling, Thomas. 1966. Arms and Influence. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Schneider, Jacquelyn, and MacDonald, Julia. 2016. U.S. Public Support for Drone Strikes. Washington DC: Center for a New American Security.Google Scholar
Walsh, James Igoe. 2015. Precision Weapons, Civilian Casualties, and Support for the Use of Force. Political Psychology 36(5): 507–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Walsh, James Igoe, and Schulzke, Marcus. 2015. The Ethics of Drone Strikes: Does Reducing the Cost of Conflict Encourage War? Carlisle, PA:Strategic Studies Institute, Army War College.Google Scholar
Walsh, James Igoe, and Schulzke, Marcus. 2018. Drones and Support for the Use of Force. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

McDonald and Walsh Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EPJBOO
Link
Supplementary material: File

McDonald and Walsh supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download McDonald and Walsh supplementary material(File)
File 36.3 KB