Original
Elite Partisan Disagreement and Military Victory: Evidence from South Korean Battle Experiments
Abstract
Does partisan disagreement impact expectations of victory in war? We conjectured it could by degrading military cohesion. We registered two main predictions: (a) soldiers fight less effectively if they observe political parties disagree during a crisis about whether to initiate war and (b) the effects of (a) are amplified when soldiers are affiliated with a dissenting opposition party. With some nuance, we found broad support for these predictions through two preregistered survey experiments that recruited South Korean military cadets and soldiers of appropriate ranks for warfighting. Our novel design estimated effects on the will to perform six essential battlefield tasks given land-battle doctrine, unit structures, and force employment of modern democratic armies. Thirteen exploratory tests yield findings consistent with arguments that military institutions provide nonpartisan socialization, but surprising for research on nationalism, soldier-to-soldier trust, and the psychological and dispositional determinants of military effectiveness. We also introduce and calibrate rifle shooting outcomes for experiments.
中文
精英党派分歧与军事胜利：来自韩国战斗实验的证据
摘要
党派分歧是否会影响对战争胜利的预期？我们推测，它可能通过削弱军队凝聚力产生这种影响。我们预先注册了两项主要预测：(a) 如果士兵在危机期间观察到政党就是否发动战争存在分歧，他们的作战效能会降低；(b) 当士兵隶属于持异议的反对党时，(a) 的效应会放大。通过两项预先注册的调查实验，我们招募了韩国军校学员和适合作战的相应军衔士兵，并大体上支持了这些预测，尽管存在一些细微差异。我们的新颖设计估计了在现代民主军队的陆战条令、单位结构和兵力运用条件下，士兵执行六项关键战场任务的意愿所受的影响。十三项探索性检验所得发现，与军事机构提供非党派社会化这一论点一致，但对民族主义、士兵间信任以及军事效能的心理与性情决定因素研究而言则令人意外。我们还引入并校准了实验中的步枪射击结果。
关键词
党派分歧、军事胜利、军队凝聚力、韩国、调查实验、军事效能、战斗任务、党派认同