Assuming the Costs of War: Events, Elites, and American Public Support for Military Conflict
نویسنده
چکیده
Many political scientists and policymakers argue that unmediated events—the successes and failures on the battlefield—determine whether the mass public will support military excursions. The public supports war, the story goes, if the benefits of action outweigh the costs of conflict. Other scholars contend that the balance of elite discourse influences public support for war. I draw upon survey evidence from World War II and the current war in Iraq to come to a common conclusion regarding public support for international interventions. I find little evidence that citizens make complex cost/benefit calculations when evaluating military action. Instead, I find that patterns of elite conflict shape opinion concerning war. When political elites disagree as to the wisdom of intervention, the public divides as well. But when elites come to a common interpretation of a political reality, the public gives them great latitude to wage war.
منابع مشابه
On Why the United States Should Not Attack Iran: A Conservative, Evangelical Christian Response
In the midst of American intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in the aftermath of the presidential election in Iran, support for American involvement in Iran has increased in some circles. In this piece, our desire is to give a conservative, evangelical Christian response to why America should not support any military action against Iran. A position advocated by many of us is “Just War.” I...
متن کاملاقدامات پرستاری در زمان جنگ
EXTRACTThis study have been done in the American University of Beirut Medical Center for recognizing the skills of nurses in counseling for facilitating mental and physical rehabilitation of war disabled. This center was admitted veterans from ten years ago. This study showed important role of nurses in rehabilitation persons who were disabled from war conflict, terrible events related to war, ...
متن کاملThe elasticity of reality and British support for the war in Afghanistan
Research Highlights and Abstract Building on recent efforts to bridge the elites/events dichotomy in the wartime opinion literature, we test the explanatory power of, and offer a theoretical extension to, the elasticity of reality hypothesis using the case of British support for the war in Afghanistan from 2001 through 2010. Marshaling an array of aggregate, individual-level and experimental su...
متن کاملReassessing American Casualty Sensitivity: The Mediating Influence of Inequality
Scholars have long conceptualized public support for war as the product of a cost– benefit calculation in which combat casualties factor significantly. This article argues that, when calculating the human costs of conflict, Americans care about more than just the number of war dead; they also care about the distribution of those casualties across society. Using two original survey experiments, ...
متن کاملCasualties of the Global War on Terror and their future impact on health care and society: a looming public health crisis.
This article is a primer to understand the medical advances and the future health care consequences of the current conflicts in the Middle East and Southwest Asia, known as the Global War on Terror. There have been significant advances in health care learned in caring for those injured by the conflict--often a polytrauma blast victim, but there are also very high incidence rates of the hidden i...
متن کامل