IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/amposc/v60y2016i4p932-946.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Death and Turnout: The Human Costs of War and Voter Participation in Democracies

Author

Listed:
  • Michael T. Koch
  • Stephen P. Nicholson

Abstract

War heightens public interest in politics, especially when human lives are lost. We examine whether, and how, combat casualties affect the decision to vote in established democracies. Drawing from social psychology research on mortality salience, we expect increasing casualties to increase the salience of death, information that moves people to defend their worldview, especially nationalistic and ideological values. By heightening the importance of values, we propose that combat casualties increase the benefits of voting. In particular, we expect the effect of combat casualties to be pronounced among the least politically engaged. Using both cross‐national data of elections in 23 democracies over a 50‐year period and survey data from the United States and United Kingdom during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, we found that mounting casualties increase turnout. Furthermore, as expected, we found the effect of casualties to be most pronounced among those least interested in politics.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael T. Koch & Stephen P. Nicholson, 2016. "Death and Turnout: The Human Costs of War and Voter Participation in Democracies," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 60(4), pages 932-946, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:amposc:v:60:y:2016:i:4:p:932-946
    DOI: 10.1111/ajps.12230
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12230
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/ajps.12230?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Ackermann, Klaus & Awaworyi Churchill, Sefa & Smyth, Russell, 2024. "Estimating the relationship between ethnic inequality, conflict and voter turnout in Africa using geocoded data," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 180(C).
    2. Boland, Matthew & Godsell, David, 2020. "Local soldier fatalities and war profiteers: New tests of the political cost hypothesis," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(1).
    3. Kikuta,Kyosuke, 2022. "The drowning-out effect: voter turnout, uncertainty, and protests," IDE Discussion Papers 867, Institute of Developing Economies, Japan External Trade Organization(JETRO).
    4. Mark D. Ramirez, 2021. "Understanding public blame attributions when private contractors are responsible for civilian casualties," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 54(1), pages 21-40, March.
    5. Anna Getmansky & Chagai M. Weiss, 2023. "Interstate Conflict Can Reduce Support for Incumbents: Evidence from the Israeli Electorate and the Yom Kippur War," Journal of Conflict Resolution, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 67(2-3), pages 326-348, February.

    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:wly:amposc:v:60:y:2016:i:4:p:932-946. 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1111/(ISSN)1540-5907 .

    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.