Americans express more confidence in their military than any other institution. The components and causes of confidence have been little studied, especially as a partisan phenomenon. This study assesses trends in how partisanship and ideology affect confidence in the military. Multivariate analysis of General Social Survey and Harris Poll data shows that while confidence has increased for all demographic and political subgroups, partisanship and ideology play larger roles than commonly recognized. Democrats and Republicans are more confident than independents, but Republican confidence increased sharply over the last 20 years. Party ID is now the best predictor of one's confidence in the military. Conservative ideology has little effect, but liberalism reduces confidence, splitting Democrats. The pattern is not only “Republicanization,” however; partisans on both sides are more confident when their party holds the White House.
AbramowitzA. I.WebsterS. (2016). The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of US elections in the 21st century. Electoral Studies, 41, 12–22.
2.
BaumM.GroelingT. J. (2009). War stories: The causes and consequences of public views of war. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
3.
BrooksR. (2016a). Civil-military paradoxes. In SchakeK.MattisJ. (Eds.), Warriors and citizens: American views of our military (pp. 21–68). Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
4.
BrooksR. (2016b). How everything became war and the military became everything: Tales from the Pentagon. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster.
5.
BrooksR. A. (2009). Militaries and political activities in democracies. In NielsenS.SniderD. (Eds.), American civil-military relations: The soldier and the state in a new era (213–238). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins.
6.
BurbachD. T. (2017). Gaining trust while losing wars: Confidence in the U.S. military after Iraq and Afghanistan. Orbis, 61, 154–177.
7.
BurrisV. (2008). From Vietnam to Iraq: Continuity and change in between-group differences in support for military action. Social Problems, 55, 443–479.
8.
CookT. E.GronkeP. (2005). The skeptical American: Revisiting the meanings of trust in government and confidence in institutions. Journal of Politics–67, 784–803.
9.
DempseyJ. K. (2009). Our army: Soldiers, politics, and American civil-military relations. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
10.
DeschM. (2001). Explaining the gap: Vietnam, the Republicanization of the South, and the end of the mass army. In FeaverP.KohnR. (Eds.), Soldiers and civilians (pp. 289–324). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
11.
DunlapC. J. (1992). The origins of the American military coup of 2012. Parameters, 22, 2–20.
12.
EichenbergR. C.StollR. J. (2012). Gender difference or parallel publics? The dynamics of defense spending opinions in the United States, 1965–2007. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 56, 331–348.
GolbyJ.CohnL. P.FeaverP. D. (2016). Thanks for your service: Civilian and veteran attitudes after fifteen years of war. In SchakeK.MattisJ. (Eds.), Warriors and citizens: American views of our military (pp. 97–142). Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
17.
GolbyJ.FeaverP.DroppK. (2017). Elite military cues and public opinion about the use of military force. Armed Forces & Society, 44, 44–71.
18.
GreenD. P.PalmquistB.SchicklerE. (2004). Partisan hearts and minds: Political parties and the social identities of voters. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
19.
GronkeP.FeaverP. (2001). Uncertain confidence: Civilian and military attitudes about civil-military relations. In FeaverP.KohnR. (Eds.), Soldiers and civilians (pp. 129–162). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Harris Interactive, Inc. (2012, 521). Confidence in Congress stays at lowest point in fifty years. Retrieved fromwww.harrisinteractive.com/vault/
22.
HetheringtonM. J.RudolphT. J. (2015). Why Washington won’t work: Polarization, political trust, and the governing crisis. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago.
23.
HibbingJ. R.Theiss-MorseE. (1995). Congress as public enemy: Public attitudes toward American political institutions. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
24.
HillA. A.WongL.GerrasS. J. (2013). “Self-interest well understood”: The origins & lessons of public confidence in the military. Daedalus, 142, 49–64.
25.
HoweN.StraussW. (2007). The next 20 years. Harvard Business Review, 85, 41–52.
26.
IyengarS.WestwoodS. J. (2015). Fear and loathing across party lines: New evidence on group polarization. American Journal of Political Science, 59, 690–707.
27.
JacobsonG. C. (2010). A tale of two wars: Public opinion on the US military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Presidential Studies Quarterly, 40, 585–610.
KingD.KarabellZ. (2003). The generation of trust: How the U.S. military regained the public’s confidence since Vietnam. Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute.
30.
KohnR. H. (1994). Out of control: The crisis in civil-military relations. The National Interest, 35, 3–17. Retrieved fromhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/42894926
31.
LaymanG. C.CarseyT. M.HorowitzJ. M. (2006). Party polarization in American politics: Characteristics, causes, and consequences. Annual Review of Political Science, 9, 83–110.
32.
LevenduskyM. S. (2009). The partisan sort: How liberals became Democrats and conservatives became Republicans. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
33.
LiebertH.GolbyJ. (2017). Midlife crisis? The all-volunteer force at 40. Armed Forces & Society, 43, 115–138.
34.
LindbergT. (2016). The “very liberal” view of the U.S. military. In SchakeK.MattisJ. (Eds.), Warriors and citizens: American views of our military (pp. 219–244). Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
35.
LipsetS. M. (1987). The confidence gap: Business, labor, and government in the public mind. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
MaglebyD. B.NelsonC. J.WestlyeM. C. (2011). The myth of the independent voter revisited. In SnidermanP. M.HightonB. (Eds.), Facing the challenge of democracy: Explorations in the analysis of public opinion and political participation (pp. 238–266). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
39.
MoskosC. (2003) Patriotism-lite meets the citizen soldier. In DionneE. J.DrogoszK. M.LitanR. E. (Ed.), United we serve: National service and the future of citizenship (pp. 33–42). Washington, DC: Brookings.
40.
NannestadP. (2008). What have we learned about generalized trust, if anything?. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 413–436.
41.
NyeJ. S.ZelikowP.KingD. C. (1997). Why people don’t trust government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
SchakeK.MattisJ. (Ed.). (2016). Warriors and citizens: American views of our military. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
47.
SmeltzD.DaalderI.FriedhoffK.KafuraC. (2015). America divided: Political partisanship and U.S. foreign policy. Chicago, IL: Chicago Council on Global Affairs.
SmithT. W.DavernM.FreeseJ.HoutM. (2017). General Social Surveys, 1972-2016[data file and codebook]. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center. Retrieved fromhttp://gss.norc.org/
50.
SmithT. W.SonJ. (2013). General Social Survey 2012: Trends in public attitudes about confidence in institutions. Chicago, IL: National Opinion Research Center.
51.
TrubowitzP.MellowN. (2011). Foreign policy, bipartisanship and the paradox of post- September 11 America. International Politics, 48, 164–187.
52.
TwengeJ.CampbellW.CarterN. (2014). Declines in trust in others and confidence in institutions among American adults and late adolescents, 1972–2012. Psychological Science, 25, 1914–1923.
53.
UrbenH. (2013). Party, politics and deciding what is proper: Army officers’ attitudes after two long wars. Orbis, 57, 351–368.
54.
WilliamsR. (2016). Understanding and interpreting generalized ordered logit models. The Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 40, 7–20.
55.
WittesB.PoplinC. (2016). Public opinion, military justice, and the fight against terrorism overseas. In SchakeK.MattisJ. (Eds.), Warriors and citizens: American views of our military (143–160). Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
