The Two Faces of Opposition to Chemical Weapons: Sincere Versus Insincere Norm-Holders

• Author: Christopher W. Blair,Jonathan A. Chu,Joshua A. Schwartz
• DOI: 10.1177/00220027211057057
• Published date: 01 May 2022
• Date: 01 May 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution

2022, Vol. 66(4-5) 677–703

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/00220027211057057

journals.sagepub.com/home/jcr

The Two Faces of Opposition

to Chemical Weapons:

Sincere Versus Insincere

Norm-Holders

Christopher W. Blair

1

, Jonathan A. Chu

2

, and

Joshua A. Schwartz

3

Abstract

Prominent research holds that the use of weapons of mass destruction is taboo. But

how strong are these norms? Investigating this question among the mass public, we

argue that some citizens actually support taboo policies in private but are unwilling to

express counter-normative opinions openly due to fear of social sanction. These

insincere norm-holders are diff‌icult to identify empirically because they are obser-

vationally equivalent to sincere norm-holders in direct-question surveys.To overcome this

challenge, we use a list design, which allows survey respondents to indirectly express

sensitive opinions. The results from three list experiments show that between 10% and 17%

of Americans falsify their preferences over chemical weapons use when asked directly. In an

extension, we explore our framework in the realm of nuclear weapons and elite behavior.

Our f‌indings advance a specif‌ic debate on the strength of weapons taboos, while our

conceptualization of insincere norm-holders and methodological application have broader

implications for how scholars might think about and measure norms in international politics.

Keywords

chemical weapons, norms, list experiment, taboos, nuclear weapons and hypocrisy

1

Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

2

Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

3

Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Christopher W. Blair, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania, 133 S. 36th Street,

Philadelphia, PA 19104-6243, USA.

Email: cwblair@sas.upenn.edu

Seminal studies argue that the use of certain weapons—most notably weapons of mass

destruction like chemical and nuclear weapons—is taboo (Price 1997;Tannenwald

1999). While norms outline standards of appropriate behavior, taboos are stronger and

more deeply internalized than regular norms because they connote “unthinkingness”—

violations are viewed as so morally abhorrent that they are not even considered

(Tannenwald 1999, 436). Recent research, however, suggests important limits to the

strength of these alleged “taboos.”Members of the public and elites may be willing to

break a taboo if doing so offers military advantages (Press, Sagan, and Valentino 2013;

Pauly 2018;Rathbun and Stein 2019) or preserves other core values like saving the

lives of co-national soldiers (Dolan 2013;Sagan and Valentino 2017;Smetana and

Vranka 2020). Importantly,even when people suppor t a norm, they may be doing so for

consequentialist or strategic reasons rather than for reasons relating to intrinsic moral

outrage (Press, Sagan, and Valentino 2013).

In this article, we draw on the broader literature on norms to more fully develop an

additional rationale for why people might voice support for an anti-weapons norm.

Because norms are morally salient, individuals may fear that publicly expressing counter-

normative beliefs will lead to social sanctioning or other negative consequences (Shannon

2000). As a result, some respondents who do not genuinely, privately support a norm may

still publicly express support when asked directly. We call these “insincere”norm-holders.

Why is it important to distinguish sincere from insincere norm-holders? If scholars

and policymakers treat sincere and insincere norm-holders as equivalent, we will

overstate the true strength of norms. As other literatures show, failing to appreciate the

difference between true believers and preference falsif‌iers has political consequences.

For example, Kuran (1995) shows that revolutions are often ex ante surprising and

unpredictable because it is diff‌icult to observe the distribution of citizens who

sincerely versus insincerely support an authoritarian regime since voicing opposition

could lead to sanctioning. Opposition to female political candidates follows a similar

logic (Schwartz and Blair 2020,Streb et al. 2008). Ultimately, understanding and

identifying insincere norm-holders helps us to better understand the strength and

robustness of norms (McKeown 2009).

Despite their importance, insincere norm-holders are diff‌icult to identify. Recent

work in the weapons taboo literature has sought to measure the existence of norms

among the general public using survey methodology (Press, Sagan, and Valentino

2013;Sagan and Valentino 2017;Rathbun and Stein 2019;Carpenter and Montgomery

2020;Koch and Wells 2020) and item-response techniques (Girard 2021), but these

established approaches cannot distinguish between the sincere and insincere types.

When asked directly, both sincere and insincere norm-holders will appear to support a

norm.

We overcome this methodological challenge by employing list experiments, a

technique used to elicit truthful responses about sensitive topics (Blair and Imai 2012),

such as vote buying (Gonzalez-Ocantos et al. 2012;Frye, Reuter, and Szakonyi 2019),

sexual violence (Traunmüller, Kijewski, and Freitag 2019), and holding racist

(Kuklinski, Cobb, and Gilens, 1997;Gilens, Sniderman, and Kuklinski 1998) or sexist

678 Journal of Conf‌lict Resolution 66(4-5)