Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-5mwv9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-21T02:35:13.413Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Burden Sharing: Income, Inequality and Willingness to Fight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2018

Christopher J. Anderson ,
Anna Getmansky  and
Sivan Hirsch-Hoefler
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What explains citizens’ willingness to fight for their country in times of war? Using six waves of the World Values Survey, this study finds that individual willingness to fight is negatively related with country-level income inequality. When income inequality is high, the rich are less willing to fight than the poor. When inequality is low, the poor and rich differ little in their willingness to fight. This change in the willingness to fight between low and high inequality countries is greater among the rich than among the poor. This article explores several explanations for these findings. The data are consistent with the argument that high inequality makes it more attractive for the rich to buy themselves out of military service.

Keywords

warfightinequalityincomesurvey
Type
Articles
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 50 , Issue 1 , January 2020 , pp. 363 - 379
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

Departments of Economics and Politics & International Studies (PAIS), University of Warwick (email: chris.anderson@warwick.ac.uk); Department of Government, University of Essex (email: anna.getmansky@essex.ac.uk); Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy, and Strategy, Interdisciplinary Center, Herzliya (email: hsivan@idc.ac.il). The three authors contributed equally, and are listed alphabetically. We thank Patrick Kuhn, Johannes Lindvall, Yotam Margalit and Tolga Sinmazdemir for comments on earlier drafts, and the BJPS editors and anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. We also thank participants of the Midwest Political Science Association (2010 ), the American Political Science Association (2011), and the Empirical Studies in Political Analysis (2016) annual meetings, who commented on this article. All remaining errors are ours. The dataset and the commands required to replicate the empirical results are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EIZWXX and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000679 .

References

Alderman, Liz. 2015. Paris Attacks Have Many in France Eager to Join the Fight. New York Times, 26 November 2015. Available from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/27/world/europe/paris-attacks-have-many-in-france-eager-to-join-the-fight.html, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
Alesina, Alberto, and Perotti, Roberto. 1996. Income Distribution, Political Instability, and Investment. European Economic Review 40 (6):1203–1228.Google Scholar
Anderson, Christopher J., Getmansky, Anna, and Hirsch-Hoefler, Sivan. 2017. Replication Data for: Burden Sharing: Income, Inequality, and Willingness to Fight, doi:10.7910/DVN/EIZWXX, Harvard Dataverse, V1.Google Scholar
Andersen, Robert, and Fetner, Tina. 2008. Economic Inequality and Intolerance: Attitudes Toward Homosexuality in 35 Democracies. American Journal of Political Science 52 (4):942–958.Google Scholar
Anderson, Christopher J., and Beramendi, Pablo. 2008. Income, Inequality, and Electoral Participation. In Democracy, Inequality, and Representation: A Comparative Perspective, edited by Pablo Beramendi and Christopher J. Anderson, 278–311. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Anderson, Christopher J., and Singer, Matthew M.. 2008. The Sensitive Left and the Impervious Right: Multilevel Models and the Politics of Inequality, Ideology, and Legitimacy in Europe. Comparative Political Studies 41 (4–5):564–599.Google Scholar
Andreski, Stanislav. 1968. Military Organization and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Berman, Eli, Callen, Michael, Felter, Joseph, and Shapiro, Jacob. 2011. Do Working Men Rebel? Insurgency and Unemployment in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Philippines. Journal of Conflict Resolution 55 (4):496–528.Google Scholar
Brady, Henry E. 2004. An Analytical Perspective on Participatory Inequality and Income Inequality. In Social Inequality, edited by Kathryn M. Neckerman, 667–702. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.Google Scholar
Braw, Elizabeth. 2015. Russians Dodge a Bullet: How Young Russian Men Avoid the Draft. Foreign Affairs, 9 November 2015. Available from https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/russian-federation/2015-11-09/russians-dodge-bullet, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
Brubaker, Rogers, and Laitin, David D.. 1998. Ethnic and Nationalist Violence. Annual Review of Sociology 24:423–452.Google Scholar
Caverley, Jonathan D. 2014. Democratic Militarism: Voting, Wealth, and War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Cederman, Lars-Erik, Weidmann, Nils B., and Gleditsch, Kristian Skrede. 2011. Horizontal Inequalities and Ethno-Nationalist Civil War: A Global Comparison. American Political Science Review 105 (3):478–495.Google Scholar
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). ND. The World Factbook: Military Service Age and Obligation. Available from https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2024.html, accessed 13 September, 2017.Google Scholar
Díez-Nicolás, J. 2009. Cultural Differences on Values About Conflict, War and Peace. In Religion, Democratic Values and Political Conflict, edited by Y. Esmer, H. D. Klingemann and Bi Puranen, 257–276. Uppsala: Uppsala University.Google Scholar
Elder, Glen H. 1987. War Mobilization and the Life Course: A Cohort of World War II Veterans. Sociological Forum 2 (3):449–472.Google Scholar
Esteban, Joan, and Ray, Debraj. 2011. A Model of Ethnic Conflict. Journal of the European Economic Association 9 (3):496–521.Google Scholar
Gilens, Martin. 2005. Inequality and Democratic Responsiveness. Public Opinion Quarterly 69 (5):778–796.Google Scholar
Gurcan, Metin. 2014. $8,700 Will Let Young Turks ‘Buy Out’ Their Military Service. Al-Monitor. 10 December 2014. Available from http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/12/turkey-compulsory-military-service-buy-exemption.html#, accessed 13 September, 2017.Google Scholar
Heston, Alan, Summers, Robert, and Aten, Bettina. 2012. Penn World Table Version 7.1. Center of Comparisons of Production, Income and Prices, The University of Pennsylvania. Available from http://www.rug.nl/ggdc/productivity/pwt/pwt-releases/pwt-7.1, accessed 13 September, 2017.Google Scholar
HorowitzMichael, C. Michael, C., and Levendusky, Matthew S.. 2011. Drafting Support for War: Conscription and Mass Support for Warfare. Journal of Politics 73 (2):524–534.Google Scholar
Huber, John D., and Mayoral, Laura. 2013. Inequality, Ethnicity and Civil Conflict. Barcelona GSE Working Paper No. 744. Available from http://www.barcelonagse.eu/research/working-papers/inequality-ethnicity-and-civil-conflict, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
Humphreys, Macartan, and Weinstein, Jeremy M.. 2008. Who Fights? The Determinants of Participation in Civil War. American Journal of Political Science 52 (2):436–455.Google Scholar
Inglehart, Ronald, and Baker, Wayne E.. 2000. Modernization, Cultural Change, and the Persistence of Traditional Values. American Sociological Review 65:19–51.Google Scholar
Inglehart, Ronald F., Puranen, Bi, and Welzel, Christian. 2015. Declining Willingness to Fight for One’s Country: The Individual-Level Basis of the Long Peace. Journal of Peace Research 52 (4):418–434.Google Scholar
Kenwick, Michael R., Lane, Matthew, Ostick, Benjamin, and Palmer, Glenn. 2013. Militarized Interstate Dispute Data, Version 4.0. Available from http://cow.dss.ucdavis.edu/data-sets/MIDs, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
Klein, Daniel. 2014. MIMRGNS: Stata Module to Run –margins- After -mi estimate-. Available from https://ideas.repec.org/c/boc/bocode/s457795.html#cites, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
Krebs, Ronald R. 2004. A School for the Nation? How Military Service Does Not Build Nations, and How it Might. International Security 28 (4):85–124.Google Scholar
KuhnPatrick, M. Patrick, M., and Weidmann, Nils B.. 2015. Unequal We Fight: Between- and Within-Group Inequality and Ethnic Civil War. Political Science Research and Methods 3 (3):543–568.Google Scholar
Lotta, Themnér, and Wallensteen, Peter. 2014. Armed conflicts, 1946–2013. Journal of Peace Research 51 (4):541–554.Google Scholar
Lutz, Amy. 2008. Who Joins the Military? A Look at Race, Class, and Immigration Status. Journal of Political and Military Sociology 36 (2):167–188.Google Scholar
Marshall, Monty G., Gurr, Ted R., and Jaggers, Keith. 2013. Polity IV Project: Political Regime Characteristics and Transitions, 1800-2013. Available from http://www.systemicpeace.org/inscrdata.html, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
Puranen, Bi. 2014. Allegiance Eroding: People’s Dwindling Willingness to Fight in Wars. In The Civic Culture Transformed: From Allegiant to Assertive Citizens, edited by Russell J Dalton and Christian Welzel, 261–281. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Reiter, Dan, and Stam, Allan. 2002. Democracies At War. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Roeder, Philip G. 2001. Ethnolinguistic Fractionalization (ELF) Indices, 1961 and 1985. 16 February. Available from http://pages.ucsd.edu/~proeder/elf.htm, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
Rothstein, Bo, and Uslaner, Eric M.. 2005. All for All: Equality, Corruption, and Social Trust. World Politics 58 (1):41–72.Google Scholar
Sampson, Robert J., and Laub, John H.. 1996. Socioeconomic Achievement in the Life Course of Disadvantaged Men: Military Service as a Turning Point, Circa 1940-1965. American Sociological Review 61 (3):347–367.Google Scholar
Scheve, Kenneth, and Stasavage, David. 2010. The Conscription of Wealth: Mass Warfare and the Demand for Progressive Taxation. International Organization 64 (4):529–561.Google Scholar
Shayo, Moses. 2009. A Model of Social Identity with an Application to Political Economy: Nation, Class and Redistribution. American Political Science Review 103 (2):147–174.Google Scholar
Solt, Frederik. 2009. Standardizing the World Income Inequality Database. Social Science Quarterly 90 (2):231–242.Google Scholar
Solt, Frederick. 2011. Diversionary Nationalism: Economic Inequality and the Formation of National Pride. The Journal of Politics 73 (3):821–830.Google Scholar
Stata Corporation. 2013. Mi Estimate – Estimation Using Multiple Imputations. Available from https://www.stata.com/manuals13/mimiestimate.pdf#mimiestimate, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
Torgler, Benno. 2003. Why Do People Go to War? Defence and Peace Economics 144:261–280.Google Scholar
War Resisters’ International (WRI). 2005. World Survey of Conscription and Conscientious Objection to Military Service. Available from https://www.wri-irg.org/en/co/rtba/index.html, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
World Value Survey (WVS). 1981–2014. Longitudinal Aggregate File, v2015-04-19. Available from http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSDocumentationWVL.jsp, accessed 13 September 2017.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Anderson et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/EIZWXX
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Anderson et al. supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Anderson et al. supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.1 MB