Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
- Paul L. Johnson and Max Z. Margulies, “Divided Loyalty: Are Conscript Militaries Less Likely to Repress Antigovernment Protests?” Journal of Peace Research (2024). DOI: 10.1177/00223433241256274.
- Max. Z. Margulies, “Drafting Restraint: Do Military Recruitment Policies affect Interstate Conflict Initiation,” Journal of Peace Research (2024). DOI: 10.1177/00223433241255.
- Max Margulies and Rachel Metz, “Issue Linkage in Security Assistance: A Pathway to Recipient Security Sector Reform,” Journal of Strategic Studies (2024). DOI: 10.1080/01402390.2024.2376541.
- Max Z. Margulies, "Patrons and Personnel: The Foreign Determinants of Military Recruitment Policies," Security Studies 33, no. 3 (2021): 354-384.
- Max Z. Margulies and Leah E. Foodman, "Suboptimal Selective Service: An Analysis of the Obstacles to Selective Service Reform in American Political Institutions," Journal of Strategic Security 14, no. 2 (2021): 74-88.
Select Other Scholarly Publications
- Max Z. Margulies and Jessica Blankshain, “Specific Sources of Trust in Generals: Individual-Level Trust in the US Military,” Daedalus 151, no. 4 (2022): 280–301. DOI: 10.1162/daed_a_01954.
- Michael A. Robinson, Lindsay P. Cohn, and Max Z, Margulies, “Dissents and Sensibility: Conflicting Loyalties, Democracy, and Civil-Military Relations,” in Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: The Military, Society, Politics and Modern War, eds. Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks, and Dan Maurer, 63–83 (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020).
Select Work in Progress
Call of Duty: Military Volunteerism and U.S. Public Opinion About the Use of Force Abroad
Author: Max Margulies and Keith Carter
Abstract:
What explains the American public’s support for using military force abroad? While existing explanations emphasize individuals’ demographics, partisanship, and characteristics of the mission, we identify a “norm of volunteerism” that increases public support when soldiers are thought of as wanting to participate. Furthermore, we argue that the public perceives some types of units—special operations force—as embodying this norm more than others—like the national guard. We test this argument using original survey experiments of a representative sample of the American public to examine first, whether public opinion changes for deployments of Active Duty, national guard, or special operations forces; and second, what traits the public associates with each. Results support the existence of a norm of volunteerism, underscoring the role of ideational factors in the study of public opinion and use of force and with consequences for American civil-military relations and foreign policy.
Imagining Regime Security: The Role of Ideology in Mediating Security Force Design
Author: Drew Kinney and Max Margulies
Abstract:
Governments often face a tradeoff when building their military between prioritizing security against internal and external threats. How does this threat calculus affect a government’s strategy for recruiting personnel into its military? A growing literature argues that domestic political threats have major implications for military design and behavior, but state officials adopt different recruitment strategies to address similar threats. While some regimes use ethnic recruiting to rely on a narrow but loyal segment of the population, others try to broaden their support through broader, representative recruitment. We argue that whether states rely on ethnic or broad-based recruitment cannot simply be reduced to an evaluation of their perceived threat environment or domestic culture. Instead, leaders’ ideologies play an important role in mediating the relationship between threat perception and military recruitment. When leaders adopt ideologies that emphasize republican notions of citizenship, they are more likely to perceive the military as an appropriate and effective vehicle for nation-building, and thus will pursue a broad-based recruitment policy. We draw on archival materials to examine competing hypotheses about the relationship between ideology, threat, and military recruitment over several decades of Iraq's post-independence history. Our findings underscore the importance of individual and party-level factors in statebuilding and the challenges of inferring clear patterns of military organization from threat assessments.
Author: Max Margulies and Keith Carter
Abstract:
What explains the American public’s support for using military force abroad? While existing explanations emphasize individuals’ demographics, partisanship, and characteristics of the mission, we identify a “norm of volunteerism” that increases public support when soldiers are thought of as wanting to participate. Furthermore, we argue that the public perceives some types of units—special operations force—as embodying this norm more than others—like the national guard. We test this argument using original survey experiments of a representative sample of the American public to examine first, whether public opinion changes for deployments of Active Duty, national guard, or special operations forces; and second, what traits the public associates with each. Results support the existence of a norm of volunteerism, underscoring the role of ideational factors in the study of public opinion and use of force and with consequences for American civil-military relations and foreign policy.
Imagining Regime Security: The Role of Ideology in Mediating Security Force Design
Author: Drew Kinney and Max Margulies
Abstract:
Governments often face a tradeoff when building their military between prioritizing security against internal and external threats. How does this threat calculus affect a government’s strategy for recruiting personnel into its military? A growing literature argues that domestic political threats have major implications for military design and behavior, but state officials adopt different recruitment strategies to address similar threats. While some regimes use ethnic recruiting to rely on a narrow but loyal segment of the population, others try to broaden their support through broader, representative recruitment. We argue that whether states rely on ethnic or broad-based recruitment cannot simply be reduced to an evaluation of their perceived threat environment or domestic culture. Instead, leaders’ ideologies play an important role in mediating the relationship between threat perception and military recruitment. When leaders adopt ideologies that emphasize republican notions of citizenship, they are more likely to perceive the military as an appropriate and effective vehicle for nation-building, and thus will pursue a broad-based recruitment policy. We draw on archival materials to examine competing hypotheses about the relationship between ideology, threat, and military recruitment over several decades of Iraq's post-independence history. Our findings underscore the importance of individual and party-level factors in statebuilding and the challenges of inferring clear patterns of military organization from threat assessments.