The Laws of War and Public Opinion: An Experimental Study

Chilton, Adam S.

doi:10.1628/093245615x14188909230370

Cited by 40 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Moreover, domestic courts sometimes curb government policies that violate international law, and public-law scholars have shown how popular opinion can affect their decisions as well (Dahl 2017;Epstein, Knight and Shvetsova 2001). To the extent internationallaw compliance relies on domestic political and legal mechanisms, then, national popular support for respecting international law is certainly relevant (Chilton 2015).…”

Section: Public Opinion and International Law 21 International Law'smentioning

confidence: 99%

A Nationalist Backlash to International Refugee Law: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey

Cope

Crabtree

2018

Preprint

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How do international laws affect citizens’ willingness to accept refugees? In full and partial democracies, citizens’ attitudes can influence national policy on accepting refugees. A growing literature suggests international institutions can influence citizens’ attitudes on foreign policy issues, but those studies are almost entirely confined to domestic human rights and U.S.-based respondents; none consider refugee policy. Using data from a survey experiment administered in September 2017 via face-to-face interviews with 1335 Turkish citizens, we investigate how international norms affect citizens’ willingness to accept refugees. Our findings are surprising: reminding people about the government’s responsibility under the Refugee Convention to accept refugees triggers a backfire effect, decreasing support for accepting them. This effect appears driven by respondents who support the nationalist-populist incumbent party and by lower-educated respondents. We therefore provide evidence that international refugee law – and perhaps international institutions generally – can trigger a political backlash, undermining the very policies that they promote.

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Section: Public Opinion and International Law 21 International Law'smentioning

confidence: 99%

A Nationalist Backlash to International Refugee Law: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey

Cope

Crabtree

2018

Preprint

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“…This list of questions addressed in the special issue demonstrates that a consequentialist view is meaningful in all subdisciplines of law: in private law (Frakes, Frank, and Seabury, 2015), public law (Ho, 2015;Nunes et al, 2015), and criminal law (Schanzenbach, 2015), including procedural law (Miller, 2015) and public international law (Chilton, 2015;Versteeg, 2015).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Empirical research is not only helpful for evaluating the explicit aims of the legislator (Chilton, 2015;Ho, 2015). One may also check whether ex post consequentialist interpretations developed in the legal literature are well founded: Is specific performance the superior remedy for breach of contract, rather than damages (Miller, 2015)?…”

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confidence: 99%

“…But the finding at least casts doubt on the efficacy of the intervention. Chilton (2015) illustrates how another inferential problem can be mitigated. He wants to test whether the international law of war actually improves the fate of soldiers and civilians on the battlefield.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even less would countries be willing to be at war just for the purpose of testing the efficacy of these international rules. Chilton (2015) makes two identifying assumptions: if individuals are asked what they would do in a hypothetical situation, and if their answers systematically vary with the contents of the vignette, this is indirect evidence for the intervention being instrumental. One may not learn the true effect size, but one at least gains a sense of whether the rule is going to be helpful at all.…”

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confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Does the Law Deliver? 32nd International Seminar on the New Institutional Economics June 11–14

Engel¹,

Schweizer²

2018

JITE

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When to Not Respond in Kind? Individuals’ Expectations of the Future and Their Support for Reciprocity in Foreign Policy

Kiratli

Ertan²

2023

Polit Behav

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This paper investigates if individuals’ negative assessments of the future drive micro-level reluctance for international cooperation and reciprocal behavior, a core principle of multilateralism. To test our theoretical expectations, we field online survey experiments on a sample of over 3000 respondents in the US and Turkey in October–November 2020. The experimental results show that on average, individuals are fairly sensitive to target countries’ policy actions and are inclined to reciprocate when contemplating whether to increase contributions to UN or consent to bilateral trade liberalization. Yet, further analyses concur that individual inclinations to reciprocate are substantially moderated by their future expectations. Specifically, individuals who are more pessimistic about their material prospects remain fairly indifferent to the positive actions of other countries, but are more likely to penalize negative foreign policy actions by reciprocating in kind.

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The Laws of War and Public Opinion: An Experimental Study

Cited by 40 publications

References 39 publications

A Nationalist Backlash to International Refugee Law: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey

A Nationalist Backlash to International Refugee Law: Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Turkey

Does the Law Deliver? 32nd International Seminar on the New Institutional Economics June 11–14

When to Not Respond in Kind? Individuals’ Expectations of the Future and Their Support for Reciprocity in Foreign Policy

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