Good Enough? Public Perceptions of Success in Military Interventions

Abstract

Public perceptions of successful military interventions carry high stakes for democratic governance. Expectations of success help mobilize support for military action, while political punishment for failure deters elected leaders from starting wars they cannot win. What factors drive public perceptions of success? How susceptible are public perceptions of success to elite manipulation? Treating perceptions of success as a dependent variable in their own right, I show that public evaluations are both multifaceted and malleable. I first use a conjoint experiment to capture the multiple factors that influence public perceptions of successful interventions. Two additional survey experiments then gauge whether elite rhetoric and priming can shift public metrics for success. The results show that the public’s concept of success is complex, weighing the ultimate costs and benefits of intervention along multiple dimensions. Leaders, however, have significant power to offset perceptions of and avoid accountability for failure.