Interstate Conflict Can Reduce Support for Incumbents: Evidence from the Israeli Electorate and the Yom Kippur War

• Author: Anna Getmansky,Chagai M. Weiss
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/00220027221114086
• Published date: 01 February 2023
• Date: 01 February 2023
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2023, Vol. 67(2-3) 326–348

© The Author(s) 2022

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DOI: 10.1177/00220027221114086

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

Interstate Conf‌lict Can

Reduce Support for

Incumbents: Evidence from

the Israeli Electorate and the

Yom Kippur War

Anna Getmansky

1

and Chagai M. Weiss

2



Abstract

Does war affect support for incumbent leaders and parties? The literature is divide d

with studies reporting negative, positive, or null-effects. Many studies analyze the

consequences of foreign intervention, and less is known about the political costs of

wars fought close to home. Building on theories of retrospective voting, we theorize

that wars inform voters about leader’s competence, and in turn affect mass attitudes

and behaviors. Leveraging the unexpected onset of the 1973 Yom Kippur war which

interrupted an ongoing Israeli public opinion poll, and voting records from four national

elections linked with Israeli military fatality data, we demonstrate that despite the

ultimate military victory, the war and its casualties reduced support for incumbent

parties and leaders, and increased support for the opposition. By moving beyond

foreign interventions, we provide strong evidence that wars over a country’s core

territory can be politically costly for incumbent leaders and parties.

Keywords

military fatalities, war, elections, retrospective voting

1

Department of International Relations, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK

2

Department of Political Science, University of Wisconsin—Madison, Madison, WI, USA

Corresponding Author:

Anna Getmansky, Department of International Relations, LSE, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK.

Email: a.getmansky@lse.ac.uk

Introduction

Wars can have profound political consequences for democratic leaders. Understanding

these consequences, and especially how voters reward or punish elected off‌icials for

their war performance, can shed light on the circumstances under which leaders are

willing to use force. That said, the existing literature, which has focused almost entirely

on US and UK foreign interventions, does not reach a clear conclusion regarding the

political effects of war.

Indeed, many studies report that wars and their costs are detrimental for leaders’

public support (Croco 2011;Karol and Miguel 2007). In contrast, theories relating to

the ‘rally-round-the-f‌lag’effect (Baker and Oneal 2001), and frameworks emphasizing

citizens’sensitivity to past costs of conf‌lict (Boettcher and Cobb 2009), suggest that

wars and their fatalities can increase support for incumbents. Furthermore, others argue

that wars and fatalities–by themselves–do not affect support for leaders, and that instead

partisanship and elite discourse shape how voters assess leaders’war performance

(Berinsky 2007). These diverging f‌indings, and the the limited consideration of cases

other than US and UK foreign interventions, motivate additional attention which can

enhance our understanding of whether, when, and how wars affect political attitudes

and behaviors.

Building on theories of retrospective voting which have mostly been used to link

between economic performance and support for incumbents (Healy and Malhotra

2013), we argue that wars and their costs provide voters with information about leaders’

competence. Accordingly, voters observe the dynamics of war and its outcomes, and

attribute the consequences of wars to the performance of elected off‌icials. Based on this

attribution, voters form beliefs about the competence of their leaders, which in turn

shape their political attitudes and behaviors. We apply this model to generate hy-

potheses about how war and its costs lead voters to withdraw support from incumbents,

and instead support the opposition. To test our hypotheses, we focus on Israeli voters

reaction to the Yom-Kippur war.

The Yom Kippur war is especially informative because it was unanticipated by the

Israeli public and many of its leaders, and it provided a strong negative shock to

Israelis’sense of security. Moreover, the war broke out during an election year, and

interrupted an ongoing national public opinion poll. This provides us with a rare

opportunity to examine how the experience of an interstate war affects political at-

titudes. We further leverage the fact that national elections took place 2 months after the

end of the war to examine the effect of military casualties on local election patterns in

the immediate aftermath of the war as well as 4 years after its conclusion.

Together, our empirical analyses of public opinion data and voting records sur-

rounding the Yom-Kippur war provide strong support for our theoretical framework of

retrospective voting. Specif‌ically, comparing pre- and post-war survey respondents we

f‌ind that the Prime Minister’s popularity dropped by over 19 percentage points in the

post-war surveys. In addition, the overall support for the incumbent party dropped by

over 10 percentage points after the war, whereas support for the main opposition party

Getmansky and Weiss 327