Replication Data for: Do Soldiers Get a Say? Soldiers' Views and Public Support for Military Operations in Four Democracies

When deciding whether to support a military operation, do citizens in democracies
weigh whether soldiers themselves support the operation? Recent research has
concluded that, in the United States, public support for military operations rests in part
on people’s beliefs that soldiers favor their own deployment. However, it is not known
whether this finding extends beyond the United States to democracies with diverse
national citizenship discourses and threat profiles, and its theoretical basis is not well
understood. This article addresses both these gaps. Using novel survey data and an
experiment in four democracies with divergent citizenship traditions—France, Israel,
the United Kingdom, and the United States—we show that, in all four nations, support
for military operations depends significantly on whether people believe that soldiers
themselves favor the operation. We highlight two reasons: (1) battlefield performance:
respondents think that soldiers who favor their mission fight better; and (2) soldier
consent: humans’ capacity for empathy makes them sensitive to whether soldiers are
willingly sent into harm’s way. This article has significant implications for debates on
public support for the use of military force, the nature of citizenship in modern
democracies, and contemporary militarism.