#NatSec twitter is all abuzz about the operational reserve component and its implications for civil-military relations. I happen to have done some recent work on the subject (with @lindsaypcohn and the twitterless Doug Kriner) so it's time for a thread! #AcademicFridayNight
We were puzzled by the seeming reversal from the Vietnam-era to today in terms of politicians' perceptions of the political costs associated with different manpower systems. Then, a draft was perceived as less politically costly than deploying reservists and members of the Guard.
Today, the reserve component has been continually deployed in support of overseas operations (since at least the early 1990s) without public outcry. But now there's a perception that a draft would be so politically costly that it would constrain decisions to use force.
There could be a number of reasons for this, among them changes in who decides to joins the reserve component in the era of the All-Volunteer Force and operational reserve. If anyone has leads on where to find data on this, @lindsaypcohn and I would really appreciate it!
But to start, we wanted to get a sense for how public support for war might react to different proposed manpower systems today. So we conducted a survey experiment on a nationally representative sample. (This is an unpublished paper, but I'm happy to share the working version).
Our main findings are 1) A possible draft lowered public support for our hypothetical military action, mobilization of the reserve component did not (both relative to a control of telling people only the active-duty volunteer force would be used).
2) People perceived a draft as costly, both as a signal that the conflict is likely to have higher US casualties, and that they are more likely to be personally affected. They did not associate these costs with reserve component mobilization.
3) Unsurprisingly, higher casualty estimates were associated with lower support for the operation. Surprisingly, beliefs that one would be personally affected by the mobilization were not. This is where I tag in @lindsaypcohn to talk about the "skin in the game" argument.
4) Increases in respondents' perceptions of aggregate costs (proxied by casualty estimates) and personal costs (will it affect you, a close friend, or relative?) did't fully account for how much the draft decreased public support.
In other words, Americans really don't like the draft. They don't seem to care much about reserve component mobilization.
Why? We can't say for sure, but have a few ideas. Prospect theory tells us that people see costs relative to the status quo. If reserve component mobilization is the new normal, maybe people don't see it as costly.
America also has a strong political tradition of valuing personal liberty, so people may be bothered by a draft (non-voluntary) in ways they aren't by mobilizing (volunteer) reservists. If you have other ideas, let us know!
Bottom line, we replicate others' findings that draft decreases public support for military ops, but also get an interesting null result--the decrease doesn't seem to be driven by self-interest, i.e., support doesn't decrease just bc people are afraid they will be affected.
For those who are curious, I've added the working paper to my personal website jessicadblankshain.wordpress.com/research/
