Do citizens favor the use of force less often against countries that share their ideological orientation? This article tests a domestic–international nexus beyond the democratic peace: the authors propose a “left‑wing peace” and a “right‑wing peace,” where respondents are less willing to use force against foreign states that match their own left‑ or right‑wing ideology. The study argues this pattern arises from out‑group bias and that rising polarization amplifies the effect.
survey experiments militarized interstate disputes out‑group bias
Data and methods
The paper reports two survey experiments conducted among the American public and an observational analysis of militarized interstate disputes. The experiments manipulate the ideological alignment of a foreign country and measure respondents' willingness to support force; the observational component examines whether conflict behavior at the interstate level is consistent with the proposed ideological alignment effect. The abstract specifies the U.S. public as the survey population and uses internationally coded disputes for the macro analysis.
Main findings
According to the abstract, the authors find that people are less likely to support using force against countries that share their left‑ or right‑wing ideology, and that this pattern holds regardless of whether the target country is democratic or not. They interpret this as evidence that perceived threat depends on ideological in‑group versus out‑group status, with polarization intensifying the bias.
- Evidence comes from two American public survey experiments and an analysis of militarized interstate disputes.
- The ideological alignment effect is reported to be independent of the target country's regime type.
