Consent, Aggregation, and War Support

• In Event: Ethics, Law, and Civilian Casualties in Wartime Settings: Experimental Evidence

Abstract

Does the consent of “the intervened” affect war support in the United States? U.S.
Presidents consistently claim that local populations welcome their military interventions.
This claim echoes moral principles which demand that the “beneficiaries” of
violent rescue give consent. Whether and how local consent affects war support in
the United States is unstudied. We rely on a conjoint experiment with 5,050 U.S.
citizens to show that local consent increases war support. Moreover, we show that
consent matters regardless of cost-benefit calculations, a finding consistent with a
principled stance on local consent. We further compare attitudes toward individual
rescue with attitudes toward U.S. military other-defense and find that asking respondents
to reflect on individual rescue scenarios increases the negative effects of the
costs to the intended beneficiaries on war support. The study is the first to show
how the consent of intended beneficiaries affects war support, and to link attitudes
toward an aggregate phenomenon to attitudes toward its micro-foundations.

Authors

• Livia Isabella Schubiger, ETH Zurich

• Janina Dill, University of Oxford

• Emily Myers, Duke University