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Domestic Attitudes Towards International Jurisdiction over Human Rights Violations

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Abstract

Building on research regarding the influence of national identity salience on attitudes towards international institutions and the impact of nationalism on foreign policy preferences, in a case study of America, I explore the role of chauvinistic nationalism to understand its impact on attitudes towards international jurisdiction of punishment for alleged human rights violations by members of the American military. Using binomial regression of survey responses from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I find that respondents with higher levels of chauvinistic nationalist sentiment also have higher levels of opposition to the jurisdiction of international legal institutions to prosecute members of a nation’s military. This study is the first of its kind to offer a systematic and multivariate explanation for public opinion towards the jurisdiction of international human rights institutions over a nation’s armed forces using national survey data.

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Notes

  1. Internet panels have been shown to have similar response rates and validity of other forms of survey research such as random digit dialing and mail surveys (Truell et al. 2002; Fricker et al. 2005). In fact, Internet panels are shown to decrease respondents giving a socially desirable response and increase more honest answers from respondents (Chang and Krosnick 2009).

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Mandi Bates Bailey, Daniel Berliner, Jessica Maves Braithwaite, Erik Bumgardner, Magda Hinojosa, Kyleanne Hunter, Milli Lake, Paul Lewis, Will H. Moore, Victor Peskin, Mark Ramirez, Sarah Shair-Rosenfield, Valerie Simmons, Ryan Welch, Reed Wood, and Thorin Wright for their valuable, detailed, and critical feedback on this project. This work was previously presented in the School of Politics and Global Studies at Arizona State University and at the 2016 Southern Political Science Conference. All remaining mistakes, oversights, and omissions rest solely with myself.

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    Alan J. Simmons

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Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 Additional models of factors influencing opposition
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Table 4 Additional robustness checks for race and ethnicity
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Table 5 Robustness checks for income
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Table 6 Descriptive statistics of key variables
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Table 7 Correlations of key variables
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Simmons, A.J. Domestic Attitudes Towards International Jurisdiction over Human Rights Violations. Hum Rights Rev 18, 321–345 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12142-017-0459-1

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