RAPID: Red lines and Negotiables: How Exposure to Wartime Violence Influences Support for Peace Settlements

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This project will study how exposure to wartime conditions influences public support for different possible peace settlements. Does exposure to violence lead citizens to take a hardline approach to any peace settlements? Or does it make them more open to peace settlements in order to end the violence? To answer these questions, the project will conduct a series of surveys and survey experiments looking at which types of peace deals are considered acceptable, and conversely which terms of terms peace are unacceptable. Finding credible estimates of different potential terms of peace settlements that publics would accept during wartime is a crucial national security question that can influence the policies of national leaders on questions of wartime negotiations and war termination. What kind of peace settlements would a public living through the violence of a foreign invasion be willing to accept? How does exposure to violence and displacement influence these attitudes? These are crucial questions to understanding war termination. In this project researchers develop a novel theory of how exposure to wartime violence leads people to harden resolve on certain issues by turning negotiable terms of settlement into “red lines,” while being increasingly flexible on other terms of settlement. Using a survey experimental approach, along with novel measurements of self-reported and observational exposure to violence paired with administrative data, this project will test hypotheses when and why citizens engage in both deontological (red lines) and consequentialist (negotiables) reasoning during wartime when considering different possible peace plans. The results of this project will make innovative and significant contributions to scholarship on questions relating to the causes of public opinion, wartime negotiations, and the domestic sources of war termination.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.