This article tests whether social distance between the military and society leads soldiers to refrain from violence against protesters, and how that expectation affects the regime’s decision of whether to deploy the military in the first place. In contrast with previous research that primarily examined aggregated protest campaigns and often in geographically limited samples, this study is conducted at the micro-level using daily event data. It employs the Integrated Crisis Early Warning System dataset to identify more than 36,000 protest-day events in 168 countries between 1997 and 2015, coding whether and how soldiers responded. In addition, this study also demonstrates theoretically and empirically the need to differentiate conscription from the military participation rate as measures of social distance. Contrary to expectations, it does not find evidence that conscription results in a lower likelihood of violence or deters the regime from deploying soldiers to put down protests, and it finds only weak evidence that higher military participation rate results in a lower likelihood of violence. It also finds that conscription increases rather than decreases the likelihood of soldiers being deployed against protests.

中文翻译：

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忠诚度分裂：广泛招募的军队镇压非暴力反政府抗议的可能性是否较小？


本文检验了军队与社会之间的社会距离是否会导致士兵避免对抗议者使用暴力，以及这种期望如何影响政权是否首先部署军队的决定。与之前主要考察总体抗议活动且通常在地理上有限的样本中进行的研究相比，这项研究是使用每日事件数据在微观层面上进行的。它利用综合危机早期预警系统数据集来识别 1997 年至 2015 年间 168 个国家的 36,000 多起抗议日事件，并对士兵是否以及如何做出反应进行编码。此外，本研究还从理论上和实证上证明了将征兵与参军率作为社会距离衡量标准的必要性。与预期相反，它没有发现证据表明征兵会导致暴力可能性降低或阻止政权部署士兵镇压抗议，而且只发现了微弱的证据表明较高的军事参与率会导致暴力可能性降低。报告还发现，征兵增加而不是减少了部署士兵反对抗议的可能性。