My Brother's Keeper? Religious Cues and Support for Foreign Military Intervention

Americans are reluctant to support foreign military intervention. However, if victims of violence are identified as Christians, support for intervention is higher. We term this a “Brother's Keeper” effect as Americans, especially more religious Americans, will support intervention that aids co-...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Politics and religion 2016-09, Vol.9 (3), p.537-565
Main Authors: Wu, Joshua Su-Ya, Knuppe, Austin J.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Christian Islamic relations
Christianity
Christians
Cues
Evangelicalism
Experiments
Foreign policy
International relations
Intervention
Labeling
Militancy
Military intervention
Muslims
Obama, Barack
Political science
Politics
Polls & surveys
Presidents
Public opinion
Religion
Respondents
Victims
Vignettes
Violence
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Summary:Americans are reluctant to support foreign military intervention. However, if victims of violence are identified as Christians, support for intervention is higher. We term this a “Brother's Keeper” effect as Americans, especially more religious Americans, will support intervention that aids co-religionists. To test our argument, we use a survey experiment that randomly assigns respondents to varying accounts of violence in the Central African Republic. Respondents who read Christians are the victims of violence are more supportive of military intervention compared to respondents who read vignettes that do not identify the religious identities of victims. Moreover, these Brother's Keeper effects are stronger among more religious respondents. We also find even stronger effects when extrapolating results as a population effect with survey weights. Our findings reveal that labeling otherwise unknown foreign actors as Christian have significant effects on support for foreign military intervention.
ISSN:1755-0483
1755-0491
DOI:10.1017/S1755048316000390