In their first ERC-funded article titled “Allied commitments and public support for military interventions: A cross-national experiment”, Michal Smetana, Marek Vranka, and Ondřej Rosendorf present findings from a cross-national survey experiment across six countries (N = 7,200) to show that while allied commitments boost public support for military intervention globally, this effect is weaker in non-Western, non-NATO countries. Find the full article here.
In a new article in the Journal of Conflict Resolution, Tobias Risse and Christoph Valentin Steinert use findings from four survey experiments among citizens and parliamentarians in the UK and Germany to show that when forming opinions on arms exports, politicians are not more likely than citizens to trade human rights for the political and economic benefits of the trade. Find the full article here.
In their new article in the Journal of Peace Research, David M. Allison, Stephen Herzog and Lauren Sukin report findings from a conjoint survey experiment which investigates U.S. public attitudes toward the use of different weapon types. They find that respondents favor lower-casualty strikes even at reduced mission effectiveness and highlight that respondents rank weapons morally: cyber attacks are most acceptable, followed by conventional, cluster, chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.
Cross-border cooperation between Czechia and Germany has been proven to be the best way of normalizing neighborly relations between countries burdened by a troublesome past. In their new article, Karel B. Müller, Jana Urbanovská and Zuzana Lizcová analyze how “border effects” are mediated through the cross-border valuation and convertibility of different forms of capital, and why many people-to-people initiatives remain institutionally fragile despite decades of European integration. Find the full article here.
Public support against usage of autonomous weapons is well documented, yet prior experiments focus largely on U.S. samples and “terrorist” scenarios, limiting cross-national generalizability. This preregistered experimental survey in the United States, Brazil, Germany, and China finds that the public responds similarly to risk-based primes across countries, enemy identity has no significant effect, and Chinese respondents show higher overall support. Find the full study here.
Jan Hornát’s article in Survival explores how the European Union long reflected the United States’ federal “peace pact” model, and why this mirror shattered under Trump’s administration. The article highlights how Trump’s interpretation of the EU as a hotbed of liberal culture wars and his open support for populist and far-right movements destabilises the European peace architecture the United States once encouraged.
Nuclear deterrence and disarmament do not necessarily need to go against each other. A new paper by Lauren Sukin and colleagues shows many people hold both pro- and anti-nuclear views. Using survey data from 24 countries (N=27,250), the study finds publics value both deterrence and disarmament rather than categorical positions.
Zuzana Lizcová & Rob Geist Pinfold’s article in EJIS explores whether grand strategies and strategic narratives endure or shift after traumatic geopolitical shocks. Comparing Israel’s response to 7 October 2023 with Czechia’s reaction to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, it finds that the scale of strategic change reflected the severity of perceived threat and disruption.
