Losing on the home front? Battlefield casualties, media, and public support for foreign interventions

Thiemo Fetzer, Pedro Souza, Oliver Vanden Eynde () and Austin Wright
Additional contact information
Pedro Souza: QMUL - Queen Mary University of London
Oliver Vanden Eynde: PSE - Paris School of Economics - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement, PJSE - Paris Jourdan Sciences Economiques - UP1 - Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne - ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement
Austin Wright: University of Chicago

PSE-Ecole d'économie de Paris (Postprint) from HAL

Abstract: How domestic constituents respond to signals of weakness in foreign wars remains an important question in international relations. This paper studies the impact of battlefield casualties and media coverage on public demand for war termination. To identify the effect of troop fatalities, we leverage the timing of survey collection across respondents from nine members of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. Quasi‐experimental evidence demonstrates that battlefield casualties increase the news coverage of Afghanistan and the public demand for withdrawal. Evidence from a survey experiment replicates the main results. To shed light on the media mechanism, we leverage a news pressure design and find that major sporting matches occurring around the time of battlefield casualties drive down subsequent coverage, and significantly weaken the effect of casualties on support for war termination. These results highlight the role that media play in shaping public support for foreign military interventions.

Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-mac
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04815986v1
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Published in American Journal of Political Science, inPress, ⟨10.1111/ajps.12907⟩

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Related works:
Working Paper: Losing on the Home Front? Battlefield Casualties, Media, and Public Support for Foreign Interventions (2024)
Working Paper: Losing on the home front? Battlefield casualties, media, and public support for foreign interventions (2024)
Working Paper: Losing on the Home Front? Battlefield Casualties, Media, and Public Support for Foreign Interventions (2023)
Working Paper: Losing on the Home Front? Battlefield Casualties, Media, and Public Support for Foreign Interventions (2023)
Working Paper: Losing on the Home Front? Battlefield Casualties, Media, and Public Support for Foreign Interventions (2023)
Working Paper: Losing on the Home Front? Battlefield Casualties, Media, and Public Support for Foreign Interventions (2023)
Working Paper: Losing on the Home Front? Battlefield Casualties, Media, and Public Support for Foreign Interventions (2023)
Working Paper: Losing on the Home Front? Battlefield Casualties, Media, and Public Support for Foreign Interventions (2021)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:pseptp:halshs-04815986

DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12907

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