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Democracy as Justification for Waging War: The Role of Public Support |
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Published in | Social psychological & personality science. 2012, vol. 3, no. 3, p. 324-332 | |
Abstract | Democracy is positively valued. This positive evaluation extends to a democracy's actions, even if it is to wage war. The authors investigated whether the perceived legitimacy of military interventions depends on the political structure (democratic vs. nondemocratic) of the countries involved and on the aggressor country's popular support for the government's aggressive policy. Participants learned that an alleged country planned to attack another. The political structure of both countries was manipulated in the two experiments. The support of the aggressor's population toward military intervention was measured in Experiment 1 and manipulated in Experiment 2. Both experiments confirmed that military intervention was perceived as being less illegitimate when the population supported their democratic government's policy to attack a nondemocratic country. | |
Keywords | Democracy — Perceived legitimacy — Military intervention — Public opinion | |
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Research group | Groupe de recherche sur l'influence sociale (GRIS) | |
Citation (ISO format) | FALOMIR PICHASTOR, Juan Manuel et al. Democracy as Justification for Waging War: The Role of Public Support. In: Social psychological & personality science, 2012, vol. 3, n° 3, p. 324-332. doi: 10.1177/1948550611420172 https://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:21474 |