Flying under the radar: A study of public attitudes towards unmanned aerial vehicles
Open accessAbstract
Unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, have become a central feature of American foreign policy, with over 400 strikes in Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen in the last decade. Despite criticisms that have arisen about ethics and legality of this policy, polls have registered high levels of public support for drone strikes. This article shows that the standard formulation of poll questions takes as a given the government’s controversial claims about combatant status and source of legal authorization. I conduct a survey experiment that evaluates how varying the terms of the debate –in particular whether the strikes are compatible with international humanitarian law (IHL) and have legal authorization – affects public support for the drone policy. Treatments that incorporated contested assumptions about IHL meaningfully decreased public support while the public was less moved by questions about domestic or international legal authorization.
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Soft support for drone strikes likely exists because drones are perceived as a way to strike at adversaries without putting US troops at risk.
“Soft support for drone strikes likely exists because drones are perceived as a way to strike at adversaries without putting US troops at risk (Kreps 2014, Walsh & Schulzke 2018).”
From Do Emerging Military Technologies Matter for International Politics? (2020) · cites this paper as Kreps 2014
The public becomes less supportive of drone strikes when they are perceived to violate international law.
“The public becomes less supportive of drone strikes when they are perceived to violate international law (Kreps 2014).”
From Do Emerging Military Technologies Matter for International Politics? (2020) · cites this paper as Kreps 2014
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Separating Fact from Fiction in the Debate over Drone Proliferation
Horowitz, M. C., Kreps, S. E., & Fuhrmann, M. (2016) · International Security · doi:10.1162/isec_a_00257 · Cited by 113 · see citing works
Self-citationDo Emerging Military Technologies Matter for International Politics?
Horowitz, M. C. (2020) · Annual Review of Political Science · doi:10.1146/annurev-polisci-050718-032725 · Cited by 73 · see citing works
- Authors
- Kreps, S.
- Affiliations
- Council on Foreign Relations (US)
- Corresponding author
- Kreps, Sarah
- ORCID
- Kreps, Sarah
- Venue
- Research & Politics
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2014-01-01
- Volume
- 1
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2053-1680 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2106621162
- Cited by
- 66
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 3 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 4 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 7 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 8 · 2016: 5 · 2015: 2 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 34.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Research & Politics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › Electoral Systems and Political Participation
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence
- Social Sciences › Political Science and International Relations › International Relations and Foreign Policy
- Keywords
- unmanned aerial vehicles, drone strikes, public opinion, international humanitarian law, legal authorization, combatant status, US foreign policy, counterterrorism, survey experiment
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