Citizens to Soldiers: Mobilization, Cost Perceptions, and Support for Military Action

Policymakers have long assumed, and scholars have long argued, that how a government raises military manpower affects public support for military action through two obvious mechanisms: the likelihood any given individual will be personally affected by the conflict, and the expected aggregate cost of the conflict. Increased costs are thought to cause the public to be more critical of the use of military force. But do they? We gain leverage on this question in the US context by employing a survey experiment that allows us both to compare reactions to a range of manpower policies—an all-volunteer standing force, conscription, and mobilization of the reserves—and to explicitly test multiple mechanisms—expectations of bearing personal cost, expectations of aggregate cost, and effects not explained by these cost expectations. Our results strongly suggest that manpower policies’ effects are not straightforward. Consistent with previous studies, we find that an expectation of conscription lowers public support for military action. Mobilization of the reserves, however, fails to diminish support, despite the fact that it should also affect more people and signal a larger conflict. While casualty estimates (proxy for scale) are negatively correlated with mission support, personal cost expectations are not. Furthermore, much of the variation between manpower treatments is not explained by either tested cost mechanism, suggesting a role for norms and values. These findings have implications for whether military manpower policies designed to impose political costs on policymakers are likely to work and for wider discussions of public support for military operations.