Self-interest, partisanship, and the conditional influence of taxation on support for war in the USA

Douglas Kriner, Breanna Lechase and Rosella Cappella Zielinski
Additional contact information
Douglas Kriner: Boston University, USA
Breanna Lechase: Marist College, USA
Rosella Cappella Zielinski: Boston University, USA

Conflict Management and Peace Science, 2018, vol. 35, issue 1, 43-64

Abstract: Does the imposition of taxation inevitably erode public support for war? Through a pair of survey experiments we show that whether a war tax decreases public support for military action critically depends on the design of the taxation instrument itself. Broad-based, regressive taxes decrease support for war; progressive taxes targeted on the wealthy do not. We also uncover the mechanisms through which Americans incorporate information about war taxation into their wartime policy preferences. Economic self-interest, alone, cannot explain the individual-level variation in reactions to war taxation. Rather, Americans assess war taxation both through the lens of economic self-interest and by using partisan heuristics. The negative effect of taxation on war support is both conditional on the design of the taxation instrument and variable across segments of the public.

Keywords: Domestic politics; public opinion; survey experiment; taxation; war (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0738894215611133 (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:compsc:v:35:y:2018:i:1:p:43-64

DOI: 10.1177/0738894215611133

Access Statistics for this article

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