Replication Data for: Elite Partisan Disagreement and Military Victory: Evidence from South Korean Battle Experiments

Does partisan disagreement impact expectations of victory in war? We conjectured it could by degrading military cohesion. We registered two main predictions: (a) soldiers fight less effectively if they observe political parties disagree during a crisis about whether to initiate war; and (b) the effects of (a) are amplified when soldiers are affiliated with a dissenting opposition party. With some nuance, we found broad support for these predictions through two pre-registered survey experiments that recruited South Korean military cadets and soldiers of appropriate ranks for warfighting. Our novel design estimated effects on the will to perform six essential battlefield tasks given land-battle doctrine, unit structures, and force employment of modern democratic armies. 13 exploratory tests yield findings consistent with arguments that military institutions provide non-partisan socialization, but surprising for research on nationalism, soldier-to-solider trust, and the psychological and dispositional determinants of military effectiveness. We also introduce and calibrate rifle shooting outcomes for experiments. For replication notes and instructions, see: README.txt. For codebook for primary datasets, see: Codebook.txt.