IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/apsrev/v105y2011i02p221-237_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Caught in the Draft: The Effects of Vietnam Draft Lottery Status on Political Attitudes

Author

Listed:
  • ERIKSON, ROBERT S.
  • STOKER, LAURA

Abstract

The 1969 Vietnam draft lottery assigned numbers to birth dates in order to determine which young men would be called to fight in Vietnam. We exploit this natural experiment to examine how draft vulnerability influenced political attitudes. Data are from the Political Socialization Panel Study, which surveyed high school seniors from the class of 1965 before and after the national draft lottery was instituted. Males holding low lottery numbers became more antiwar, more liberal, and more Democratic in their voting compared to those whose high numbers protected them from the draft. They were also more likely than those with safe numbers to abandon the party identification that they had held as teenagers. Trace effects are found in reinterviews from the 1990s. Draft number effects exceed those for preadult party identification and are not mediated by military service. The results show how profoundly political attitudes can be transformed when public policies directly affect citizens' lives.

Suggested Citation

  • Erikson, Robert S. & Stoker, Laura, 2011. "Caught in the Draft: The Effects of Vietnam Draft Lottery Status on Political Attitudes," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 105(2), pages 221-237, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:105:y:2011:i:02:p:221-237_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0003055411000141/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cáceres-Delpiano, Julio & De Moragas, Antoni-Italo & Facchini, Gabriel & González, Ignacio, 2021. "Intergroup contact and nation building: Evidence from military service in Spain," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    2. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/45gqdl5l4387f9b9l12gr2g3kt is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Bagues, Manuel & Roth, Christopher, 2020. "Interregional Contact and National Identity," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 526, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    4. Koenig, Christoph, 2023. "Loose Cannons: War Veterans and the Erosion of Democracy in Weimar Germany," The Journal of Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 83(1), pages 167-202, March.
    5. Douglas L. Kriner & Francis X. Shen, 2016. "Conscription, Inequality, and Partisan Support for War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 60(8), pages 1419-1445, December.
    6. Manuel Bagues & Christopher Roth, 2023. "Interregional Contact and the Formation of a Shared Identity," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 15(3), pages 322-350, August.
    7. Yegor Lazarev & Anton Sobolev & Irina Soboleva & Boris Sokolov, 2012. "Trial by Fire: a Natural Disaster’s Impact on Attitudes toward the Government in Rural Russia," HSE Working papers WP BRP 04/PS/2012, National Research University Higher School of Economics.
    8. Fize, Etienne & Louis-Sidois, Charles, 2020. "Military service and political behavior: Evidence from France," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    9. Shelley X Liu, 2022. "How war-related deprivation affects political participation: Evidence from education loss in Liberia," Journal of Peace Research, Peace Research Institute Oslo, vol. 59(3), pages 353-366, May.
    10. Huber, Martin & Tyahlo, Svitlana, 2016. "How war affects political attitudes: evidence from eastern Ukraine," FSES Working Papers 472, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, University of Freiburg/Fribourg Switzerland.
    11. Kate Baldwin & Rikhil R. Bhavnani, 2013. "Ancillary Experiments: Opportunities and Challenges," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-024, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/45gqdl5l4387f9b9l12gr2g3kt is not listed on IDEAS
    13. Baldwin, Kate & Bhavnani, Rikhil R., 2013. "Ancillary Experiments: Opportunities and Challenges," WIDER Working Paper Series 024, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    14. Li Huang & Oliver Zhen Li & Baiqiang Wang & Zilong Zhang, 2022. "Individualism and the fight against COVID-19," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-20, December.
    15. Baldwin Kate & Bhavnani Rikhil R., 2015. "Ancillary Studies of Experiments: Opportunities and Challenges," Journal of Globalization and Development, De Gruyter, vol. 6(1), pages 113-146, June.
    16. Christian R. Grose & Abby K. Wood, 2020. "Randomized experiments by government institutions and American political development," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 185(3), pages 401-413, December.
    17. Campante, Filipe & Yanagizawa-Drott, David, 2015. "The Intergenerational Transmission of War," Working Paper Series rwp15-039, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    18. Rocio Titiunik, 2020. "Natural Experiments," Papers 2002.00202, arXiv.org.
    19. Eva Deuchert & Martin Huber & Mark Schelker, 2019. "Direct and Indirect Effects Based on Difference-in-Differences With an Application to Political Preferences Following the Vietnam Draft Lottery," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(4), pages 710-720, October.
    20. Shuai Jin & Yingnan Joseph Zhou, 2021. "An Authoritarian Undercurrent in the Postmaterialist Tide: The Rise of Authoritarianism Among the Younger Generation in China," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 102(1), pages 90-106, January.
    21. Arnstein Aassve & Gianmarco Daniele & Marco Le Moglie, 2018. "Never Forget the First Time: The Persistent Effects of Corruption and the Rise of Populism in Italy," BAFFI CAREFIN Working Papers 1896, BAFFI CAREFIN, Centre for Applied Research on International Markets Banking Finance and Regulation, Universita' Bocconi, Milano, Italy.
    22. Douglas Kriner & Breanna Lechase & Rosella Cappella Zielinski, 2018. "Self-interest, partisanship, and the conditional influence of taxation on support for war in the USA," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 35(1), pages 43-64, January.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:105:y:2011:i:02:p:221-237_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/psr .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.