Replication Data for: Do Americans Support War Crimes Prosecutions?

Do Americans support war crimes investigations and prosecutions? Historically, the United States has considered itself a torchbearer of international criminal justice, leading the establishment of tribunals in Nuremberg, Tokyo, the Hague, and Arusha. The United States even participated in the drafting of the Rome Statute, which established the International Criminal Court (ICC). Yet the nation was not a subject of an international criminal tribunal – until the ICC's Afghanistan investigation, which covers, among others, the Afghan National Security Forces, the Taliban, and U.S. military and intelligence personnel. Previous scholarship shows Americans support the ICC and U.S. membership. However, almost all of this research precedes the Afghanistan investigation, leaving open two important questions: (1) to what extent does the U.S. public support ICC investigations and possible prosecutions of U.S. personnel and (2) what discursive frames (i.e., arguments) support or undermine the ICC's work? Extending research on U.S. foreign policy public opinion, we evaluate the proposition that human rights arguments will increase and national interest arguments will decrease support for the ICC's work in Afghanistan. We test this proposition using an online survey experiment. The upshot is Americans are fairly fixed in their opinions and the vast majority support investigations and prosecutions.

美国民众是否支持战争罪调查与起诉？长期以来，美国自视为国际刑事司法的领军者，主导设立了纽伦堡、东京、海牙以及阿鲁沙法庭。美国甚至参与了设立国际刑事法院（International Criminal Court, ICC）的《罗马规约》起草工作。然而在此之前，美国从未成为国际刑事法庭的调查对象——直至ICC针对阿富汗展开调查，该调查覆盖的对象包括阿富汗国家安全部队、塔利班，以及美国军方与情报人员。既往研究表明，美国民众支持ICC及美国加入该法院。但此类研究几乎均早于阿富汗调查的启动，因此留下两个关键悬而未决的问题：其一，美国民众在多大程度上支持ICC针对美国人员开展调查与可能的起诉？其二，哪些话语框架（即论证逻辑）会支持或削弱ICC的相关工作？本研究拓展了关于美国外交政策民意的相关研究，对如下假设展开验证：提及人权相关论证将提升民众对ICC在阿富汗工作的支持度，而提及国家利益相关论证则会降低民众的支持度。我们通过在线调查实验对该假设进行检验。研究结果显示，美国民众的相关态度相当稳固，绝大多数人支持针对战争罪的调查与起诉。