Original
Public responses to atrocities depend on partisanship and context, not legal labels
Abstract
Legal labels such as genocide and crimes against humanity carry substantial legal and diplomatic weight in elite and institutional arenas, where classification shapes treaty obligations, ICC jurisdiction, and the perceived stakes of inaction. A common assumption in advocacy and policy discourse is that these labels also shape mass public judgment. Direct evidence is limited and ambiguous. We test this assumption in a preregistered, nationally representative survey experiment [Formula: see text] comparing four legally salient atrocity terms-genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing-against a nonlegal control across five real-world conflict contexts, measuring support for punitive and humanitarian policies as well as moral attributions of responsibility. Across outcomes, estimated label effects are small and rarely distinguishable from zero. Critically, even within a given partisan and country context, swapping legal labels produces smaller shifts than the baseline gaps across partisan and geopolitical contexts-indicating that where you stand and who you are matter far more than what word is used. Any departures from zero are narrow and do not accumulate into a consistent pattern across outcomes or conflicts. These results suggest that the political significance of atrocity labeling lies primarily in elite and institutional arenas; for mass publics, legal terminology is a weak lever compared to country context and partisan commitments.
中文
公众对暴行的反应取决于党派立场与具体情境，而非法律标签
摘要
种族灭绝和危害人类罪等法律标签在精英与制度场域中具有重大法律与外交分量，此类定性会影响条约义务、国际刑事法院管辖权以及对不作为所涉利害的认知。倡导和政策讨论中一个常见假设是，这些标签同样会塑造大众公众判断。直接证据有限且模糊。我们通过一项预注册的、具有全国代表性的调查实验[公式：见正文]，在五个现实冲突情境中，将四个具有法律显著性的暴行术语——种族灭绝、战争罪、危害人类罪和种族清洗——与非法律控制组进行比较，测量对惩罚性政策与人道主义政策的支持，以及对责任的道德归因。在所有结果指标上，估计得到的标签效应都很小，且很少能与零区分开来。关键的是，即便在给定的党派与国别情境内，替换法律标签所导致的变动也小于不同党派与地缘政治情境之间的基线差距——这表明，你站在哪一方以及你是谁，远比使用哪个词更重要。任何偏离零的结果都是局部的，且未能在不同结果或冲突之间累积成一致模式。这些结果表明，暴行定性的政治意义主要存在于精英与制度场域；对大众公众而言，与国别情境和党派承诺相比，法律术语是一个微弱的杠杆。
关键词
暴行标签、公众舆论、党派性、调查实验、国际冲突、法律标签、政策支持、道德归因