Following the Party In Time of War? The Implications of Elite Consensus

Prominent perspectives in the study of conflict point to two factors that exert substantial influence on public opinion about foreign intervention: 1) news about casualties and 2) signals from partisan elites. Past work is limited, however, in what it can say about how these two factors interact. We present an experiment designed to understand the surprisingly common scenario where elites send competing messages about whether the public should support war or oppose it— and these messages do not coincide with party divisions. We find that partisans are generally insensitive to news about casualties, but they become noticeably more sensitive when they perceive within-party disputes over support for the war. Independents, however, respond to news of casualties irrespective of what messages elites send. These findings shed light on when and how the public responds to competing and unclear cues and speak to the role of public opinion in determining conflict outcomes and democratic foreign policy-making more broadly.

冲突研究领域的主流视角指出，有两大因素对民众关于外国军事干预的舆论存在显著影响：其一为伤亡相关报道，其二为党派精英传递的信号。然而，过往研究对于这两大因素的交互作用机制的阐释仍存在局限。本研究设计了一项实验，旨在探究一类颇为普遍的场景：当精英群体就公众应支持还是反对战争传递相互对立的信号，且这类信号并未契合传统的党派分化逻辑时，公众的舆论反应。研究结果显示，党派支持者通常对伤亡报道不敏感，但当他们感知到本党内部就战争支持度存在争议时，其敏感度会显著提升。而无党派选民则无论精英传递何种信号，均会对伤亡报道做出反应。本研究结果阐明了公众在何种情境下、以何种方式对相互矛盾且模糊的信号做出反应，同时也进一步揭示了公众舆论在决定冲突结局以及更广泛的民主外交政策制定过程中所扮演的角色。