The Laws of War and Public Opinion: An Experimental Study

Chilton, Adam S.

doi:10.2139/ssrn.2439428

Cited by 26 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 26 publications

(14 reference statements)

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“…Data from other studies suggest that fluency in basic international legal obligations alters attitudes. In an experiment, Chilton (2014) finds that familiarity with human rights commitments makes respondents less supportive of solitary confinement, whereas Meernik and King (2014) show that rudimentary knowledge of the laws of war increases support for international justice. Cross-national empirical studies also demonstrate that educated people are more opinionated because they are imbued with an overall sense that their individual attitudes are meaningful (Weakliem 2002).…”

Section: Existing Literature On Perceptions Of International Courtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Determines Perceptions of Bias toward the International Criminal Court? Evidence from Kenya

Dancy

Dutton

Alleblas

et al. 2019

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) has struggled with the perception that it is biased against Africans, especially in relation to its investigation in Kenya. But which Kenyans are most likely to believe the ICC is biased? Building on pluralistic models of public opinion and psychological studies, we aim to contribute to emerging research on attitudes toward international courts. We expect that group attachments will drive attitudes toward international institutions. Yet, we also theorize that exposure to violence makes individuals more likely to support international justice and reject narratives that would have the effect of insulating those who have committed crimes from being held accountable. Using new survey data from 507 Kenyans in the fall of 2015, we find support for our hypotheses.

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Section: Existing Literature On Perceptions Of International Courtsmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Determines Perceptions of Bias toward the International Criminal Court? Evidence from Kenya

Dancy

Dutton

Alleblas

et al. 2019

Journal of Conflict Resolution

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“…punishment by voters) for breaking policy commitments, and the past ten years have seen a deluge of survey experiments providing evidence that voters do, indeed, tend to punish policymakers for reneging on foreign policy commitments (e.g. Tomz, 2007;McGillivray and Smith, 2000;Chaudoin, 2014;Chilton, 2015;Hyde, 2015). These many studies have differed greatly, however, not only in terms of their foreign policy contexts (e.g.…”

Section: A Testing Theoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a number of recent studies using survey experiments, political scientists have accumulated evidence that voters in the United States and elsewhere are indeed inclined to punish elected officials who renege on previous foreign policy commitments (Tomz, 2007;McGillivray and Smith, 2000;Chaudoin, 2014;Chilton, 2015;Hyde, 2015). The political costs that a government incurs as a result of constituents disapproving of violations of policy commitments-which may manifest in the form of electoral power in democracies or via the threat of protest and dissent in non-democracies-are generally referred to as domestic "audience costs" (Fearon, 1994;Morrow, 2000;Tomz, 2007;Weeks, 2008;Jensen, 2003).…”

Section: Application: International Law and Audience Costs A Bamentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative Causal Mediation and Relaxing the Assumption of No Mediator–Outcome Confounding: An Application to International Law and Audience Costs

Bansak

2019

Polit. Anal.

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Experiments often include multiple treatments, with the primary goal to compare the causal effects of multiple treatments. While comparing the magnitudes of the average treatment effects (ATEs) is straightforward, there exist few methods to systematically compare the causal anatomies of each treatment-that is, the collection of causal mechanisms underlying each treatment's total effect-in order to understand the sources of their relative magnitudes. This study introduces a framework for comparing the causal anatomies of multiple treatments through the use of causal mediation analysis. The study proposes a set of comparative causal mediation estimands that compare the mediation effects of different treatments via a common mediator. It derives the properties of a set of estimators, which are shown to be consistent (or conservative) under a set of assumptions that do not require the absence of unobserved confounding of the mediator-outcome relationship, which is a strong and nonrefutable assumption that must be made for consistent estimation of individual causal mediation effects. To illustrate the method, this study presents an original application investigating the effect of international legality on the domestic political costs that democratic governments suffer for violating foreign policy commitments.

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“…It should be possible to measure empirically when and how much a particular higher-order legal rule sways public opinion. Indeed, at least two-dozen studies have attempted to explore this question (e.g., Chaudoin, 2014;A. S. Chilton, 2014;A.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring law's normative force

Cope

2023

J Empirical Legal Studies

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An important question in legal theory and policy is when people are willing to put aside their policy preferences to uphold higher‐order legal values. That is, when does constitutional or international law, for instance, have “normative force”? Around two‐dozen experimental studies have attempted to measure this question empirically, but their designs contain an inherent limitation. While they are interested in gauging the effect of internalizing a norm, they measure only the effect of exposure to that norm. This is significant because subjects in the treatment group whose priors are strongly contrary to the treatment message on the legality of a policy may effectively be “treatment resistant”: it is difficult to successfully treat them because their prior beliefs on the issue are entrenched; as a result, they simply do not believe the treatment message. This treatment failure attenuates any effects, and where a significant portion of the treatment and/or control group is not successfully treated, the results will be biased toward small, null, or even backfire findings. This article first formally models the mechanism underlying experiments on law's normative force. I then demonstrate a methodological solution to the problem of treatment resistance. By using the experimental treatment as an instrumental variable and employing a post‐treatment treatment‐uptake test, the researcher can estimate the causal effect of the real explanatory variable of interest: sincerely holding a belief about a policy's higher‐order lawfulness. Using new data from a 2022 survey experiment conducted on US residents, I illustrate this method for three constitutional or international law issues. The theoretical and empirical results together suggest that backfire effects documented by some studies do not reflect a tepid or negative response against the legal source per se, but rather reflect treatment resistance. These findings suggest that we should re‐evaluate the existing body of experimental studies on law's normative force, and they should prompt researchers to reconsider how we conduct future research in this domain.

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The Laws of War and Public Opinion: An Experimental Study

Cited by 26 publications

References 26 publications

What Determines Perceptions of Bias toward the International Criminal Court? Evidence from Kenya

What Determines Perceptions of Bias toward the International Criminal Court? Evidence from Kenya

Comparative Causal Mediation and Relaxing the Assumption of No Mediator–Outcome Confounding: An Application to International Law and Audience Costs

Measuring law's normative force

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