Replication Data for: No Right to Be Wrong: What Americans Think About Civil-Military Relations

An influential model of democratic civil-military relations insists that civilian politicians and officials, accountable to the public, have “the right to be wrong” about the use of force: they, not senior military officers, decide when force will be used and set military strategy. While polls have routinely asked about Americans’ trust in the military, they have rarely probed deeply into Americans’ views of civil-military relations. This paper reports and analyzes the results of a June 2019 survey that yields two important, and troubling, findings. First, Americans do not accept the basic premises of democratic civil-military relations. They are extraordinarily deferential to the military’s judgment regarding when to use military force, and they are comfortable with high-ranking officers intervening in public debates over policy. Second, in this polarized age, Americans’ views of civil-military relations are not immune to partisanship. Consequently, with their man in the Oval Office in June 2019, Republicans—who, as political conservatives, might be expected to be more deferential to the military—were actually less so. And Democrats, similarly putting ideology aside, wanted the military to act as a check on a president they abhorred. The stakes are high: democracy is weakened when civilians relinquish their “right to be wrong.”有一项颇具影响力的民主军政关系（democratic civil-military relations）理论模型提出，对公众负责的文官政客与公职人员在武力使用问题上拥有“犯错的权利”：由他们而非高级军官决定武力使用的时机，并制定军事战略。尽管民调通常会就美国人对美军的信任程度进行调研，但极少深入探究美国人对军政关系的看法。本文报告并分析了2019年6月一项民调的结果，该调研得出了两项重要且令人不安的发现。其一，美国人并不认可民主军政关系的基本前提：他们对美军在武力使用时机方面的判断表现出极高的顺从态度，同时也认可高级军官介入政策相关公共辩论的行为。其二，在当前这个党派极化的时代，美国人对军政关系的看法无法免受党派偏见的影响。因此，在2019年6月其党派人士入主白宫的背景下，作为政治保守派的共和党人本应更顺从军方，但实际情况却恰恰相反；而民主党人则同样抛开意识形态立场，希望军方能够对他们所憎恶的总统形成权力制衡。此事风险极高：一旦文官放弃其“犯错的权利”，民主制度便会遭到削弱。