Do Soldiers Get a Say? Soldiers’ Views and Public Support for Military Operations in Four Democracies

Bibliographic Data

ID6322729
AuthorsRonald R Krebs (0000-0001-6504-060X, University of Birmingham), Robert Ralston (0000-0002-4470-1242, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris), Thierry Balzacq (0000-0002-4242-5088, Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris), David Blagden (0000-0001-6923-4946, University of Exeter), Shaul Shenhav (0000-0002-8820-3579, Jerusalem University College)
Year2025
Pages1-20
Publication date2025-01-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenuePerspectives on Politics (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1537-5927 • E-ISSN: 1541-0986
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s1537592724002214
OpenAlexW4406405583
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited78

When deciding whether to support a military operation, do citizens in democracies weigh whether soldiers themselves support the operation? Recent research has concluded that, in the United States, public support for military operations rests in part on people’s beliefs that soldiers favor their own deployment. However, it is not known whether this finding extends beyond the United States to democracies with diverse national citizenship discourses and threat profiles, and its theoretical basis is not well understood. This article addresses both these gaps. Using novel survey data and an experiment in four democracies with divergent citizenship traditions—France, Israel, the United Kingdom, and the United States—we show that, in all four nations, support for military operations depends significantly on whether people believe that soldiers themselves favor the operation. We highlight two reasons: (1) battlefield performance (respondents think that soldiers who favor their mission fight better), and (2) soldier consent (humans’ capacity for empathy makes them sensitive to whether soldiers are willingly sent into harm’s way). This article has significant implications for debates on public support for the use of military force, the nature of citizenship in modern democracies, and contemporary militarism

Military personnel · Political science · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Gender, Security, and Conflict · Law · Military History and Strategy · Psychology

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