Crime, punishment, and war
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- What explains public support for war? In my dissertation, I generate new insight into this question by developing a theory that treats war as one of the many kinds of violence that individuals regularly observe and experience over the course of their lives. I argue that the use of violence as punishment is pervasive throughout human society, and that individuals develop strong beliefs about the morality of punishment early in life. These beliefs then serve as a guide for forming opinions about the use of violence in three distinct domains: interpersonal, domestic and international. In particular, I focus on retributivism, a school of thought that justifies punishment on the basis of the moral value inherent in "just repayment" for an act of wrongdoing rather than on the basis of the positive future consequences that punishment will produce. Studies in a number of different fields have found that retributivism is the primary driver of support for harsh domestic criminal penalties in the United States. I build on this work by demonstrating that retributivism influences attitudes towards the kinds of punishment that take place between private individuals and between sovereign states, as well as the kinds of punishment that take place within an institutionalized system of criminal justice. This evidence is the subject of the first of three empirical chapters that comprise the dissertation. The second empirical chapter explores the implications of cross-national variation in popular retributivism for the use of military force by democracies, while the third empirical chapter investigates the cultural sources of that variation. The theories and evidence that I present in these chapters add a new dimension to the study of public opinion about war and generate new insights into the domestic sources of international conflict and the relationship between democracy and war.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2012 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Stein, Rachel Michelle |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Political Science. |
| Primary advisor | Segura, Gary M, 1963- |
| Primary advisor | Tomz, Michael |
| Thesis advisor | Segura, Gary M, 1963- |
| Thesis advisor | Tomz, Michael |
| Thesis advisor | Schultz, Kenneth A |
| Advisor | Schultz, Kenneth A |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Rachel Michelle Stein. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Political Science. |
| Thesis | Ph.D. Stanford University 2012 |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2012 by Rachel Michelle Stein
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...