the vietnam war draft made people hate war a lot
How come I have not heard of this paper? Political scientists Robert Erickson of Columbia and Laura Stoker of Berkeley have a really outstanding working paper called “Caught in the Draft: Vietnam Draft Lottery Status and Political Attitudes.” The concept is simple: use the draft lottery as a random assignment. The main finding? The lower the draft number, the more likely you are to permanently turn antiwar and more Democratic.
In 1969, the first Vietnam draft lottery assigned numbers to birth dates, determining which young men would be called to fight in Vietnam. We exploit this natural experiment to examine how draft vulnerability influenced opinions about the Vietnam War, party identification, political ideology, and attitudes toward salient political figures and issues of the day. Data analyzed come from the Jennings-Niemi Panel Study of Political Socialization, which surveyed high school seniors from the Class of 1965 both before and after the national draft lottery was instituted. Males holding low lottery numbers became more anti-war, more liberal, and more Democratic in their voting compared to those whose high numbers protected them from the draft. Trace effects are found even when the respondents were re-interviewed in the 1990s. Draft number effects typically exceed those for pre-adult party identification and are not mediated by military service or the acquisition of higher education.
Strongly recommended.
Update: Fsolt points out that this paper is now in print at the American Political Science Review.
Actually, the paper is now out in the APSR:
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8278955
fsolt
July 4, 2011 at 1:24 am
I read your article about war and find some interesting comments, although I tend to disagree with some. War is something that is man’s sinful way of hurting another
country whether it be for money, revenge, or power. Jesus said at; Matthew 26:52…
“Return your sword to its place, for all those who take the sword will perish by the sword” mind you we don’t use swords, but the message is the same about any weapons taken against another. Luke 6:27,28 “I say to you who are listening, continue to love your enemies, to do good to those hating you, to bless those cursing you, to pray for those insulting you” I know you may say well we must defend our country, but can you imagine a world if everyone followed these scriptures? Jehovah also said, soon they’ll be a world with no more sickness, death. crime or wars. I look forward to this.
cheryl
March 9, 2013 at 12:07 am