How US Voters Balance Legal & Moral Imperatives in War Attitudes?

International Relations @AJPS 2 R files 2 Stata files 2 Datasets Dataverse

Understanding why ordinary citizens support war involves weighing multiple competing factors. This study examines three distinct logics driving public opinion: moral imperatives (e.g., protecting innocents), legal imperatives (demands of international law), and instrumental military goals.

Our research employed an experimental survey design with 3,000 U.S. respondents to test how citizens make trade-offs among these considerations when forming attitudes about the use of force.

Experimental Design

We isolated three core war support logics:

Moral Imperative: Minimizing civilian harm and protecting innocents.
Legal Imperative: Adherence to international law governing military action.
Instrumental Imperative: Achieving strategic or tactical objectives on the battlefield.

Our key findings reveal a clear pattern in how U.S. citizens prioritize these factors:

Findings Overview

Moral Imperative: Protecting innocents and minimizing harm are significant considerations for respondents.
Legal Imperative: Adherence to international law principles is consistently valued, even when participants aren't explicitly aware of its relevance.

The most powerful driver identified was the imperative to minimize U.S. military casualties:

Key Result

Only the imperative to avoid American deaths outweighs both moral and legal considerations in shaping public preference regarding the use of force.

This revised abstract simplifies complex concepts, uses short paragraphs with emoji-enhanced labels for key sections (Experimental Design, Findings Overview, Key Result), emphasizes findings without adding new data or interpretations. It avoids first-person language while maintaining clarity about methods ("experimental survey design") and core results ("only the imperative to minimize U.S. military casualties overwhelms both legal and moral demands"). Keywords: Public Opinion, International Law Imperatives, Decision-Making Trade-offs, U.S. Military Casualties, Experimental Survey, Comparative Analysis

Article card for article: Attitudes Towards the Use of Force: Instrumental Imperatives, Moral Principles and International Law

Attitudes Towards the Use of Force: Instrumental Imperatives, Moral Principles and International Law was authored by Livia Schubiger and Janina Dill. It was published by Wiley in AJPS in 2021.