Running head: THE ITALIANS AND THE WAR IN IRAQ Word count = 2,962 (tables excluded)
“Not in My Name”? The Italians and the War in Iraq
Michele Roccato Angela Fedi University of Torino
Date of submission: August, 8th 2006
Authors’ notes
Michele Roccato, University of Torino, Via Verdi 10, 10124 Torino, Phone ++390116702015 Fax ++390116702061; E-mail: roccato@psych.unito.it (corresponding author)
Angela Fedi, University of Torino, Via Verdi 10, 10124 Torino, Phone ++390116702017 Fax ++390116702061; E-mail: fedi@psych.unito.it
Abstract
We performed a secondary analysis of data collected on a representative sample of Italians to study the attitudes and behaviors developed by the Italians with regard to war in general and the war in Iraq particularly. Moreover, we built a model predicting the probability of participating in pro-peace demonstrations. The Italians seem polarized in their attitudes toward war and skeptical concerning the reasons for the attack on Iraq. Our models explained the probability of publicly showing one’s opposition to the war in Iraq in terms of beliefs toward war in general, of attitude toward this conflict particularly, of frequency of newspaper-reading and of values, showing that the sociodemographic and psychological variables played a significantly less relevant role.
“Not in My Name”? The Italians and the War in Iraq
In the last few years, several events shocked the world. First was the terrorist attack against the World Trade Center by Al Qaeda on September 11, 2001. On October 7, 2001, came the attack on the terrorist bases in Afghanistan, launched by the United States and Great Britain under the aegis of the UN; this was followed, on December 5, 2001, by the
establishment of the transition government under Mr. Karzai. More than a year after that, on March 20, 2003, the attack on Iraq was launched, without the approval of the UN, by a coalition led by the United States and Great Britain, including Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Portugal, Denmark, and Italy. On April 9, 2003, Baghdad fell; the principal leaders of the old regime were captured shortly thereafter, and Saddam Hussein himself was taken on December 14, 2003.
Both in the countries which participated in the war and in those which opposed it, numerous initiatives arose against the conflict, with the involvement of significant
percentages of the population. Such demonstrations were very relevant, since public opinion can be a major actor in influencing the results of a war (McAlister, 2000). Favorable public opinion may inspire the political institutions to make considerable investments in the war in question, or may promote a social climate of support for--or, at least, acceptance of--the conflict. This is a rather relevant point, given that wars can be harmful to public health, not only directly, in the countries where the conflict takes place, but also indirectly, in all of the countries involved, as they lead to the investment of public resources in construction of weapons for defense, retaliation, and coercion (Zwi & Ugalde, 1991).
Social psychologists studied the predictors of attitudes toward war. The following variables were found to foster a positive attitude toward war: (a) sociodemographic variables: to be a man (Covell, 1996; Lester, 1994; Nincic & Nincic, 2002; Rosenbaum & Rosenbaum, 1973) and an African-American (Nincic & Nincic, 2002); (b) psychological variables:
authoritarianism (Izzett, 1971), and an internal locus of control (Granberg & May, 1972); (c) political variables: to be a right-winger (Greene, Tighe, Conti, & Saxe, 1991); and (d) values: to be a person characterized by the willingness to use force or punishment, or to threaten the use thereof, as a means of resolving conflicts (Eckhardt & Alcock, 1970).
Moreover, empirical data show that, in the absence of direct experience with war, the attitudes of the general population tend to be shaped by the media (Furnham, 1985; Gallatin, 1980). Systematic exposure to TV transmissions expressing a viewpoint in favor of war improves the attitude displayed by the audience to war (Hakvoort & Oppenheimer, 1993).
At present there is a number of approaches studying the social psychology of protest, most of them underlining the importance of perceived efficacy. According to Kelly and Kelly (1994) and Klandermans (1997; Simon and Klandermans, 2001), protest action is based on perceived injustice, group identification and a politicized collective identity; according to van Zomeren, Spears, Fischer, and Leach (2004), the most important predictor of participating in social protest is anger. However, such models haven’t been used to predict social participation against war. Thus, the most relevant study on the topic is Granberg & May’s (1972), showing that positive attitudes toward war, a low level of education, authoritarianism and being religious negatively influenced the number of demonstrations against the war in Vietnam people participated in. However, the study in question is more than 30 years old, and it was performed on a small, undergraduate sample.
Goals
We had two goals: (a) to describe the opinions and behaviors developed by Italians with regard to war in general and the war in Iraq in particular; and (b) to build a first, exploratory model predicting anti-war behaviors.
Method
Sample
In order to pursue these two goals, we made use of secondary analysis of the data collected in 2002-2003 by the Osservatorio del Nord Ovest (North West Observatory). The sample was a mail panel, representative of the Italian population over the age of 18, surveyed in September-October 2002 (N = 3007) and January-February 2003 (N = 4023), May-June 2003 (N = 5409), and September-October 2003 (N = 4984). All in all, a total of 2605 persons responded to all four of the questionnaires. In each wave participants were asked to answer different questions: thus, the four occasions provided different data, but by the same people.
Variables
Eight sets of variables were available.
1. General opinions on the justifiability of wars (in which cases are wars admissible?). 2. Attitudes and behaviors toward the war in Iraq: (a) degree of support for Italy’s participation in the war (1 = very much or rather in favor; 0 = rather or very much opposed); (b) perceptions of the reasons for the war; (c) having / not having hung a peace flag; and (d) having / not having participated in demonstrations in favor of peace.
3. Sociodemographic variables: (a) sex (0 = male, 1 = female), (b) age, and (c) education.
4. Psychological variables: (a) right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) (Altemeyer, 1996), assessed by means of 4 items; factor analysis showed a single dimension underlying the four items (first two eigenvalues: 1.706, .955), explaining the 42.66% total variance of RWA; (b) social dominance orientation (SDO) (Sidanius & Pratto, 1999), assessed by means of 4 items; factor analysis showed a single factor (first two eigenvalues: 1.560, .856), explaining the
39.01% total variance of SDO; (c) perception of control over one’s own existence, assessed by a 10-categories item (from “no control” to “deep control”).
5. Political variables: political placement on the right-left axis (assessed by a 10-categories item).
6. Religiousness: importance ascribed to religion (assessed by a 5-categories item). 7. Values: assessed by the four items developed by Inglehart (1990) to assess adhesion to materialistic and post-materialistic values.
8. Mass media variables: (a) weekly frequency of reading the daily newspapers (1 = always or often; 0 = seldom or never), and (b) weekly frequency of exposure to TV news programs (1 = always or often; 0 = seldom or never).
Data Analysis
The data were analyzed from the descriptive standpoint (frequency analysis) with regard to the first goal. The second goal was approached by constructing two logistic regression models, respectively aimed at predicting the probability of hunging out the peace flag and of having publicly demonstrated against the war in the months before May 2003. The
independent variables we used were the other variables listed in the section entitled
Variables.1
Results
Italians and War
Table 1 shows that the situation in which war was most frequently evaluated as admissible was the interruption of a massacre launched against a civilian population group, followed by the defense of one’s own and that of an allied country. All of the other situations were not perceived by the majority of Italians as justifying recourse to military force. The
situation in which this was perceived as least admissible was that of war for economic reasons, but war in order to punish a country that protects or hides terrorists was also considered acceptable by less than one-quarter of Italians.
With regard to the degree of support shown for Italy’s participation in the Anglo-American action in Iraq, the population was more or less polarized: (47.6% expressed a favorable and 44.0% a negative opinion).
Table 2 shows that, according to Italians, the war in Iraq was conducted because of oil or in order to extend US control over the Middle East--two reasons which were indicated by a percentage of Italians rather higher than that which gave credit to the “official” reasons provided by the US Government. Among the “official” reasons, the one most often mentioned by Italians concerned the “war on terrorism”, whereas the elimination of chemical and
bacteriological weapons and freeing the Iraqi people from dictatorship were respectively cited by less than one-quarter and less than one-fifth of Italians. The reason concerning the
liberation of the Iraqi people from dictatorship received the least number of choices. Finally, 20.4% of Italians declared they hung out a peace flag and 16.5% of Italians declared they actively participated in demonstrations against the war.
Predicting Public Pro-Peace Behaviors
As shown in Table 3, frequent newspaper-reading had a positive effect on the
probability that Italians hung out the peace flag during the months before May 2003, while eight variables had a negative effect on that probability. Of them: (a) none belonged to the sociodemographic domain or to the domain of values; (b) one, RWA, belonged to the
psychological domain; (c) one, rightist political position, belonged to the political domain; (d) one, religiousness, belonged to the domain of religious belief: (e) three belonged to the domain of general opinions on the justifiability of wars: considering that war was justifiable
to defend the country in which one lives, to defend an unjustly attacked ally, and especially to eliminate weapons of mass destruction possessed by another nation; and (f) two belonged to the domain of attitudes toward the war in Iraq: the belief that the war was launched to fight terrorism and the degree of favor shown to the conflict (Nagelkerke’s pseudo r2 = .355; Cox and Snell’s pseudo r2 = .216).
Table 4 shows the predictors of the probability of having participated in pro-peace demonstrations during the 12 months which preceded the survey. The psychological variables didn’t have an effect on our dependent variable, which was positively affected by frequent reading of daily newspapers, and negatively affected by several variables belonging to the following domains: (a) sociodemographic (age), (b) political (rightist political position), (c) general opinions concerning the admissibility of war (war is admissible to prevent future terrorist attacks, for eliminating weapons of mass destruction possessed by another country, and for vital economic reasons), and (d) beliefs concerning the reasons for the war in Iraq (the war was launched in order to fight terrorism) (Nagelkerke’s pseudo r2 = .485; Cox and Snell’s pseudo r2 = .278).
Discussion
The theories of “just war” maintain that war is acceptable in the presence of a iusta
causa. In such cases, the conflict becomes similar to a judiciary procedure aimed at resolving
a conflict between subjects who aren’t governed by a common legal system, inverting the relationship between force and law by placing the former at the service of the latter (Bobbio, 1991). As a whole, Italians found few reasons capable of defining a war as iusta. Less than half of Italians considered admissible a war waged for the reasons officially adopted to justify the war in Iraq. At the same time, with regard to the degree of support for the war in Iraq, Italians proved to be rather polarized, being more or less equally divided between those in
favor and those against it. Italians proved to be especially skeptical concerning the reasons adopted by the Anglo-American alliance for supporting the attack on Iraq, interpreting it primarily in terms of economic and strategic power. The theme of dissent also seems to be particularly relevant when we consider the number of persons who state that they hung out a peace flag or participated in actions against the war.
Our data showed that, taken as a whole, the variables indicated in the literature as predictors of attitudes toward war also appear to be suitable as predictors of forms of pro-peace behaviors. The variables which influenced both of our dependent variables show that both of the public anti-war behavior we analyzed stem from a well-informed outlook on current events worldwide, a leftist political position, the general belief that war for the purpose of eliminating weapons of mass destruction possessed by another state is not admissible, and the specific conviction that the war in Iraq was not launched to fight against terrorism. Furthermore, both of our dependent variables were affected to only a slight degree, or not at all, by beliefs concerning the reasons for the conflict in Iraq. It appears that public opposition to the conflict, at least in Italy, depends less on pertinent beliefs with regard to that
particular war than on more general and basically stable beliefs.
What differences emerged between our two dependent variables? The fact of having hung a peace flag out of one’s window seems to connote a highly symbolic and expressive behavior, descended from the psychological sphere (RWA), from abstract values such as religious beliefs, and from one’s general attitude toward the Anglo-American action in Iraq. Participation in anti-war demonstrations appears to connote a more instrumental behavior, derived first and foremost from general beliefs relative to war. The secondary data we
analyzed did not permit us to perform empirical testing of these hypotheses, which we believe are worthy of subsequent ad hoc studies.
Our study shows some limits, most of which are due to the fact that it was based on secondary analysis. In fact, given that we used the files of the North West Observatory, we were limited to assessing the constructs in the way they were operationalized, by means of variables which were originally chosen for goals different from our own. Most importantly, we were not able to take into account the number of psychological and psychosocial variables which have been found by the literature on collective action to influence the decision to participate in demonstrations.
However, secondary analysis allowed us to obtain low-cost results that could be generalized to the whole Italian population. In our opinion, the generalizability of the results constitutes a great advantage for our research, both for the purposes of describing Italians’ attitudes toward war, and for starting to develop a model predicting the Italians’ public pro-peace behaviors, which can be fine-tuned, improved, and exported to other countries by means of additional studies.
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Footnotes
1 We recoded the ordinal variable assessing religiousness into a dummy variable (1 = religion is extremely or very important, 0 = religion is rather, not very or not at all important). As the beliefs concerning the main reasons for which the war in Iraq was launched were a nominal variable, we recoded it into five dummy variables, using “to free the Iraqis from their dictator” as reference category.
Table 1.
Admissibility of war according to Italians
Reason Percentage
To stop the massacre of a civilian population group 82.2%
To defend one’s own country 78.1%
To defend an unjustly attacked ally 57.4%
To institute democracy in a country governed by a cruel dictator 45.5% To eliminate weapons of mass destruction possessed by another country 43.5% To prevent future terrorist attacks by striking against a country which supports
terrorism
40.1%
Because a country is hiding and/or protecting persons responsible for a serious act of terror
23.1%
Table 2.
Reasons for the war in Iraq according to Italians
Reason Percentage
For oil 61.6%
In order to extend their control of the Middle East 54.4%
In order to fight against terrorism 39.0%
In order to find and destroy chemical and bacteriological weapons 22.7% In order to free the Iraqis from their dictator 18.8%
Table 3.
Predictors of having hung out the peace flag
Independent variable b S.E. Wald’s
test
Exp(b) (strength of relationship)
RWA -.088 .032 7.715** .915
Rightist political position -.186 .048 15.035*** .830
Being religious -.625 .207 9.121** .535
Frequency of daily newspaper-reading .453 .223 4.141* 1.573
War is admissible in order to eliminate weapons of mass destruction possessed by another country
-1.458 .286 25.922*** .233
War is admissible in order to defend one’s own country
-.613 .238 6.657** .542
War is admissible in order to defend an allied country which is unjustly attacked
-.483 .216 5.4.990* .617
Principal reason for the war in Iraq: to fight against terrorism
-1.137 .481 5.601* .321
Very much or rather in favor of Anglo-American action in Iraq
-.658 .235 7.843** .518
Constant 1.251 1.007
* p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.
Note. The column Exp(b) reports the degree to which the relation between having and not
Table 4.
Predictors of having participated in demonstrations in favor of peace or disarmament
Independent variable b S.E. Wald’s
test
Exp(b) (strength of relationship)
Age -.020 .008 6.312* .981
Rightist political position -.404 .069 34.506*** .668
Frequency of daily newspaper-reading 1.269 .297 18.246*** 3.557 War is admissible in order to prevent future
terrorist attacks by striking against a country which supports terrorism
-1.246 .460 7.345** .288
War is admissible in order to eliminate weapons of mass destruction possessed by another country
-.942 .342 7.576** .390
War is admissible for vital economic reasons -2.345 1.083 4.686* .096 Principal reason for the war in Iraq: to fight against
terrorism
-1.863 .805 5.360* .155
Constant 1.584 1.553 1.041
* p < .05. ** p < .01. *** p < .001.
Note. The column Exp(b) reports the degree to which the relation between having and not
having participated in demonstrations in favor of peace and disarmament changes as the independent variable changes by one unit.
