Would conscription reduce support for war?

David R. Henderson and Chad W. Seagren

Defense & Security Analysis, 2014, vol. 30, issue 2, 133-147

Abstract: An increasingly popular justification for conscription is that it would increase the probability that the “children” of politically powerful people would serve in the military, thus giving them an incentive to lobby against war. However, this argument neglects the fact that avoiding war for a nation is a public good and is, therefore, subject to the classic free-rider problem. Under-provision of anti-war agitation from those seeking to avoid the draft is exacerbated by the fact that seeking a deferment provides an alternative with a superior private payoff. Empirical findings since World War II are consistent with our thesis.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/14751798.2014.894293 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:taf:cdanxx:v:30:y:2014:i:2:p:133-147

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/CDAN20

DOI: 10.1080/14751798.2014.894293

Access Statistics for this article

Defense & Security Analysis is currently edited by Martin Edmonds

More articles in Defense & Security Analysis from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().