What Costs Will Democracies Bear? A Review of Popular Theories of Casualty Aversion

Smith, Hugh

doi:10.1177/0095327x0503100403

Cited by 87 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…8 The first scope condition leads to the exclusion of Cyprus, Iceland, Luxembourg and Malta, whereas the second condition affects Israel and Turkey. 9 For current reviews of the literature on casualty aversion and the relationship between public opinion and foreign policy, see Baum and Potter (2008) and Smith (2005). 10 Under specific circumstances governments can have incentives to downplay their country's military involvement.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parliamentary peace or partisan politics? Democracies’ participation in the Iraq War

Mello

2012

J Int Relat Dev

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This paper seeks to explain democracies' military participation in the Iraq War. Prior studies have identified institutional and partisan differences as potential explanatory factors for the observed variance. The interaction of institutions and partisanship, however, has gone largely unobserved. I argue that these factors must be analysed in conjunction: institutional constraints presume actors that fulfil their role as veto players to the executive. Likewise, partisan politics is embedded in institutional frames that enable or constrain decision-making. Hence I suggest a comparative approach that combines these factors to explain why some democracies joined the ad hoc coalition against Iraq and others did not. To investigate the interaction between institutions, partisanship and war participation I apply fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis. The analysis reveals that the conjunction of right-of-centre governments with an absence of both parliamentary veto rights and constitutional restrictions was sufficient for participation in the Iraq War. In turn, for countries where the constitution requires parliamentary approval of military deployments, the distribution of preferences within the legislature proved to be decisive for military participation or non-participation.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Parliamentary peace or partisan politics? Democracies’ participation in the Iraq War

Mello

2012

J Int Relat Dev

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“…The Israeli case thus resembles the experience of other democracies, where, following the demise of the Cold War, military death has gradually been stripped of its meaning and sensitivity to losses has risen (see Ben-Ari 2005;Smith 2005). In Israel, growing sensitivity to losses and diminished social legitimation for sacrifice in the military sphere derived from similar social factors to those that accounted for the same trend in western societies.…”

Section: Bereaved Parents' Multiple Voicesmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…The greater the perceived threat and the role of the war in eliminating it, the greater the legitimacy for sacrificing human life (Jentleson 1992;Smith 2005).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An Unbearable Price: War Casualties and Warring Democracies

Levy

2009

Int J Polit Cult Soc

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Israeli society has changed its attitude to the sacrifice of life in war, a change that is reflected in the bereavement discourse. Attitudes have shifted from the unquestioned justification of military losses prior to the First Lebanon War (1982) to the emergence of an antiwar bereavement discourse after the war and during the South Lebanon war of attrition that followed it. More recently, following the Al-Aqsa Intifada and the Second Lebanon War (2006), a discourse that accepts losses has emerged. While the retreat from the hegemonic discourse prior to the First Lebanon War is explained by the changing attitudes to military sacrifice among the social elites, the latter shift took place in parallel with the alteration of the social composition of the Israeli Defence Force. It is argued that the social composition of the military affects the level of sensitivity to losses. While secular uppermiddle class groups tend to show a high level of sensitivity to war losses, which they then translate into a subversive bereavement discourse, religious and peripheral groups with a hawkish agenda are more tolerant of military losses, or, alternatively, may seek to avoid excessive casualties by improving the military's performance or the quality of the political directives.

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“…As long as vital national interests are seen to be at stake, Western publics remain prepared to sacrifice the lives of their young men and women (Smith 2005). In other words, the demographic, cultural and institutional shifts discussed above produce casualty aversion only in the context of political disinterest.…”

Section: Ideals As Impedimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Idealism, Realism, and Success in Armed Humanitarian Intervention

Dobos

2016

Philosophia

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An armed humanitarian intervention (AHI) must have a reasonable prospect of success to be justified. It must also be a proportional last resort. These are necessary conditions for legitimate AHI. It has been suggested that, in addition to these necessary conditions, there are also ideal conditions of AHI, namely disinterest and multilateralism. These conditions are said to enhance the moral credentials of an armed intervention without being strictly required. The paper concerns itself with the relationship between these two ideals and the requirement of a reasonable prospect of success. Specifically, I explore the suggestion that the former are in some way instrumental to the latter. On this view, we should aspire towards disinterest and multilateralism because these things contribute to a positive humanitarian outcome. If this is correct then the ideal conditions can be partly grounded in, or justified in reference to, the prospect of success principle.

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What Costs Will Democracies Bear? A Review of Popular Theories of Casualty Aversion

Cited by 87 publications

References 18 publications

Parliamentary peace or partisan politics? Democracies’ participation in the Iraq War

Parliamentary peace or partisan politics? Democracies’ participation in the Iraq War

An Unbearable Price: War Casualties and Warring Democracies

Idealism, Realism, and Success in Armed Humanitarian Intervention

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