Natural Experiments of the Rally 'Round the Flag Effects Using Worldwide Surveys

TaeJun Seo and Yusaku Horiuchi

Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2024, vol. 68, issue 2-3, 269-293

Abstract: The “rally 'round the flag†effect—a short-term boost in a political leader’s popularity during an interstate political dispute—was first proposed by Mueller (1970) more than half a century ago. However, there is no scholarly consensus on its empirical validity and the circumstances under which the effect becomes most prominent. In this paper, based on a natural experimental design, we analyze large-scale worldwide surveys of 34,118 responses and causally identify the effects of 46 militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) on the approval ratings of political leaders in 27 countries. We find that MIDs, on average, decrease public support for national leaders. However, the public backlash could be attenuated depending on theoretically relevant contexts. Our finding implies that political leaders cannot rely on MIDs for public support increases , as they are generally penalized for such decisions.

Keywords: militarized interstate disputes; global public opinion; diversionary theory of war; natural experiments (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00220027231171310 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:jocore:v:68:y:2024:i:2-3:p:269-293

DOI: 10.1177/00220027231171310

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Conflict Resolution from Peace Science Society (International)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().