In particular, it is necessary to conduct a further study on ‘failed’ authorization cases, NAOKO MATSUMURA and ATSUSHI TAGO write in ‘Negative surprise in UN Security Council authorization: UK and French vetoes send valuable information for the general public in deciding if they support a US military action’, published in the Journal of Peace Research.
Existing research stresses how the general public can derive valuable information based on which of the permanent members of the Council casts a veto; this in turn affects public attitudes towards the use of force. An expected veto cast by the perpetual nay-sayer would not serve as information for the general public.
However, if the veto is cast by an allied state of a proposer of the authorizing resolution, the negative vote functions as an information short-cut signaling that the use of force presents a variety of problems, thus reducing public support for the military action.
Using online survey experiments, MATSUMURA and TAGO find supportive evidence for this argument. “Our data also suggest that surprising negative information changes the perceptions of legitimacy, legality, public goods, and US interest in a proposed military action, but is unrelated to the perception of costs, casualties or duration.”
The authors hypothesize that an unexpected veto from allies such as the UK or France on a proposed US use of force would significantly increase opposition to the military action among the general public because the public receive negative information from their veto. ‘No’ from either one of the democratic major powers matters to the respondents of the experiments.
“We do not find the same effect for the case of Russian and Chinese vetoes (i.e. non-democratic major powers) and this can be explained by the fact that their vetoes are expected. Also, our experiment, with its series of questions on public perceptions of the use of force, has revealed that the perceptions of legality, legitimacy, public goods, and US interest explain why people support the US use of force under the particular conditions of UN authorization success and failure.” What mattered was not cost, expected consequence, or intention.
It is surprising that there is no difference in terms of cost of the military operations and intention of the coalition leader state even if there is a successful or failed UN authorization. While one scholar has argued that the information on cost and intention will be transmitted to the general public through the successful UNSC resolutions, MATSUMURA and TAGO state that their study shows clearly that it was not the case. “Japanese survey respondents did not consider that it would be a less costly operation and it would be a restricted, less coercive operation if there is a successful authorization by the UN Security Council.”
It is possible that the Japanese experiment participants, who have had the Peace Constitution for nearly 70 years and shared a stable, high level of confidence in the UN, tend to believe in the power of UN authority and attribute more legitimacy to a UNSC resolution than other countries’ citizens. “While we admit that Japan may be a likely case to observe the power of legitimacy, it must also be noted that the conventional wisdom that a UN resolution would engender better perceptions in terms of cost and intentions is somehow denied by the two waves of survey experiments in Japan.” Further studies are needed to see how robust our results are when compared with other countries’ respondents, the authors state.
Matsumura, N., & Tago, A. (2019). ‘Negative surprise in UN Security Council authorization: UK and French vetoes send valuable information for the general public in deciding if they support a US military action’. Journal of Peace Research. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343318809786
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