State Rivalry and Individual Willingness to Fight: How Do Hostile State Relations Condition Individual Sentiment?

State Rivalry and Individual Willingness to Fight: How Do Hostile State Relations Condition Individual Sentiment? | Authorea try { document.documentElement.classList.add('js'); } catch (e) { } var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'G-8VDV14Y67G']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Skip to main content Preprints Collections Wiley Open Research IET Open Research Ecological Society of Japan All Collections About About Authorea FAQs Contact Us Quick Search anywhere Search for preprint articles, keywords, etc. Search Search ADVANCED SEARCH SCROLL This is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Data may be preliminary. 21 May 2025 V1 Latest version Share on State Rivalry and Individual Willingness to Fight: How Do Hostile State Relations Condition Individual Sentiment? Author : Ray Hartman 0000-0002-0517-4339 [email protected] Authors Info & Affiliations https://doi.org/10.22541/au.174785216.63409969/v1 320 views 142 downloads Contents Abstract Information & Authors Metrics & Citations View Options References Figures Tables Media Share Abstract It is a foregone conclusion that the presence of rivalry between states increases the likelihood and frequency they will experience conflict and war. Recent research has shown that territorial disputes, an important causal mechanism for rivalry onset, influences citizens’ willingness to fight. However, the relationship between state rivalry and individuals’ willingness to fight remains unexamined. Drawing from Social Identity Theory and Prospect Theory, I argue that citizens in states which have rivals are socialized into rivalry. Utilizing World Values Survey along with the Peace Data dataset, I show there is a strong, positive correlation between the presence of rivalry between states and the willingness of citizens in those states to fight for their country. Moreover, I find the effect is stronger among individuals in states that either have an identity claim with or share a border with a rival. Further tests using different rivalry taxonomies reveal the results are robust. Key words: Willingness to fight, rivalry, contiguity, war, democracy, national pride Introduction Rivalry is a defining feature of international conflict, characterized by long-term adversarial relationships between states. These interactions are shaped by recurring disputes, mutual distrust, and competition in military, political, and economic arenas (DiCicco & Valeriano 2017). Rivalries are not just isolated conflicts; they create long-term cycles of hostility that shape state decision-making (Diehl & Goertz 2012), foreign policy (White 1995), and public sentiment (Kim et al. 2024). While previous research has extensively examined the origins (Klein, Goertz, & Diehl 2006; Thompson 2001), escalation (Colaresi, Rasler, & Thompson 2007; Goertz, Jones, & Diehl 2005), and termination of rivalries (Colaresi et al. 2007; Rasler, Thompson, & Ganguly 2013), little is known about how rivalry affects individual attitudes toward war and national defense. Most scholarship on rivalry focuses on the dyadic level, analyzing how states interact with their adversaries. A growing body of research, however, has explored how rivalry influences domestic politics, showing that rivalries shape leadership perceptions (Thompson 2011), influence electoral outcomes (Vasquez 1993), and create incentives for leaders to sustain hostilities (Colaresi 2004). Others have examined the impact of rivalry on domestic conflict, revealing that rivalry can fuel political repression (Uzonyi 2018), heighten domestic polarization (Bak et al. 2020), and shift public preferences toward militarized policies (Morey 2011). While these studies suggest that rivalry has significant domestic consequences, they do not directly address how rivalry conditions individual attitudes toward war. This gap is particularly striking given two well-established findings in the literature. First, national pride is strongly correlated with individuals’ willingness to fight for their country (Torgler 2003), and rivalries reinforce nationalistic sentiment (Thies 2001a). Second, territorial disputes – a common issue in many rivalries – significantly increase individuals’ willingness to go to war (Kim 2020). Given that rivalries often involve territorial and identity-based disputes, it stands to reason that individuals in rival states may be socialized into more belligerent attitudes, making them more likely to support military engagement. However, this remains an open empirical question. This article fills this gap by systematically examining how rivalry influences individual willingness to fight for one’s country. Drawing from Social Identity Theory and Prospect Theory, I argue that rivalry socializes individuals into an in-group/out-group mindset, reinforcing perceptions of the adversary as a persistent threat. This process strengthens national identity and increases the public’s acceptance of militarized responses to conflict. However, the effect of rivalry on willingness to fight is not uniform; it varies depending on the severity of the rivalry, the presence of territorial and identity claims, and other contextual factors. To test these claims, I analyze data from six waves of the World Values Survey (WVS) (Inglehart et al. 2022) alongside the Peace Data (Diehl, Goertz, & Gallegos 2021), Issue Correlates of War (ICOW) (Frederick, Hensel, & Macaulay 2017), and Correlates of War Direct Contiguity (Stinnett et al. 2002) datasets. My dataset includes responses from 256,792 individuals across 89 countries which cover the years 1990-2019, allowing for a comprehensive examination of how rivalry shapes public attitudes toward war. By incorporating different rivalry typologies – including Klein, Goertz, & Diehl’s (2006, 2008) and Thompson’s (2001) operationalizations – I assess the robustness of my findings across multiple conceptualizations of rivalry. Several key findings emerge from this study. First, individuals living in states engaged in severe rivalries are significantly more likely to express willingness to fight compared to those in states with no rivalry. Conversely, individuals in states experiencing lesser rivalries exhibit lower levels of belligerence, suggesting that not all rivalries equally heighten the public’s propensity for war. Second, I find that the presence of identity claims further amplifies this effect, particularly among challenger states, where individuals are more likely to view the rival as an existential threat. Third, my results show that national pride interacts with rivalry, strengthening willingness to fight in severe rivalry contexts while exerting a weaker effect in lesser rivalries. Finally, my findings reveal that democracy moderates the influence of rivalry on willingness to fight. While democratic institutions generally reduce belligerence, this effect is reversed in severe rivalries, suggesting democratic citizens are more likely to support military action when faced with a hostile rival. This article makes three key contributions. First, it advances the study of interstate rivalry by moving beyond dyadic interactions to examine how rivalries shape public attitudes. In doing so, it bridges the gap between international conflict research and political psychology, demonstrating that rivalries are not just state-level phenomena but are deeply embedded in national identity and public consciousness. Second, it contributes to the willingness-to-fight literature by identifying rivalry as a key contextual factor shaping public attitudes toward war. While previous research has emphasized the role of national pride and territorial disputes, this article highlights how the broader rivalry context influences these relationships, offering new insights into the psychological and strategic underpinnings of public support for conflict. Third, by incorporating a significantly larger dataset covering multiple rivalry contexts, this study provides a more robust and generalizable analysis of how rivalry conditions individuals’ attitudes toward war, extending beyond single-case studies or dyadic analyses. Rivalry Rivalry is characterized by long-term, competitive interactions between states, where each side views the other as a persistent threat or adversary. These relationships are marked by recurring disputes, mutual distrust, and escalatory behavior in political, military, and economic arenas (DiCicco & Valeriano 2017). Rivalries fundamentally shape state decision-making (Diehl & Goertz 2012), foreign policy (White 1995), and public sentiment (Kim et al. 2024), reinforcing militarized expectations between rival states. Scholars have operationalized rivalry in different ways. Earlier attempts to measure rivalry relied on two divergent methods: perceptual perspective (Colaresi et al. 2007; Thompson 2001) and dispute density (Klein, Goertz, & Diehl 2006). The perceptual perspective approach identifies rivalry based on leaders’ perceptions, relying on historical narratives and diplomatic interactions to determine whether a state views another as a strategic competitor. However, the dispute density approach defines rivalries as dyads experiencing at least three militarized disputes over time. More recent approaches have refined this concept, introducing the peace scale, which classifies dyadic relations along a spectrum from severe rivalry to security community (Klein, Goertz, & Diehl 2008). Along this continuum, there are two forms of rivalry: severe and lesser. States are considered severe rivals if they perceive each other as enemies or long-term competitors, have highly salient issues which are unresolved, engage in frequent and intense militarized disputes, and expect conflict to continue. Conversely, lesser rivals are states which still experience hostility and competition (albeit to a smaller extent), are involved in fewer and less hostile militarized disputes, have unresolved issues that are perceived as less threatening than those in severe rivalries, and maintain open diplomatic channels despite being diplomatically hostile. These distinctions are important given that the number of cases that constitute a rivalry differs according to how one operationalizes rivalry. Between the years 1816 to 2001, Klein et al. (2006) identify 290 cases of rivalry whereas Thompson’s (2001) approach yields 174 cases of strategic rivals. Moreover, the peace scale dataset has 181 cases of severe rivalry and 252 cases of lesser rivalry between 1900 and 2020 (Klein et al. 2008; Diehl, Goertz, and Gallegos 2021). Some rivalries overlap between these datasets while many do not. While these methods provide different ways of categorizing rivalry, they share a common finding: rivalries are among the most conflict-prone dyadic relationships, with over two-thirds of militarized disputes and 80% of wars occurring in a rivalry setting (Diehl & Goertz 2000, 2012). Rivalries are not isolated disputes; rather, they create long-term cycles of hostility, shaping both elite decision-making and mass public sentiment. Despite the extensive literature on rivalry at the dyadic level, a growing body of research has examined how rivalries influence domestic politics. Much of this work focuses on leaders’ perceptions and strategic decision-making in rivalry contexts. Thompson (2011) emphasizes that rivalry originates and persists due to elite perceptions while Cox (2010) and Rasler et al. (2013) argue that rivalry termination requires leaders to shift their perceptions and take conciliatory actions. However, leaders may face domestic constraints that prevent them from resolving rivalries, as rivalry often provides political benefits to incumbents. Colaresi (2004) finds that leaders who offer unreciprocated cooperation to a rival are more likely to face domestic political punishment, suggesting that rivalry persists partly because leaders fear electoral or political backlash from their own citizens and constituents. In addition to shaping leadership behavior, rivalry has been shown to influence public attitudes and political preferences. Vasquez (1993) demonstrates that rivalry settings favor hawkish leaders, who are more likely to sustain hostile foreign policies. Similarly, Thies (2001) finds that rivalries reinforce nationalistic attitudes, particularly when the dispute involves highly salient issues like territorial claims. However, while these studies suggest that rivalry strengthens domestic support for conflict, they do not directly address how rivalry conditions individual attitudes toward war. Some research suggests that public support for rivalry is conditional. Morey (2011) finds that public enthusiasm for sustaining a rivalry declines as conflicts escalate, particularly in the face of repeated military confrontations. Moreover, Uzonyi (2018) and Bak et al. (2020) show that rivalries can contribute to domestic political violence, rather than unifying the population, raising the question of how individuals within rival states internalize and respond to their country’s rivalry. Despite growing interest in the domestic effects of rivalry, very little research directly examines how rivalry shapes individual willingness to fight. The only study that comes close is Kim et al. (2024), which finds that the South Korean public is hesitant to use force against non-rival democracies but is more willing to fight against rival democracies. While this suggests a connection between rivalry and public attitudes toward conflict, it does not explore the mechanisms driving this relationship or test the broader applicability of this dynamic across different cases. This gap is particularly striking given two well-established findings in the literature. First, national pride is a strong predictor of willingness to fight (Torgler 2003), and rivalries reinforce nationalism (Thies 2001a). Second, territorial disputes – a common issue in rivalries – significantly increase individuals’ willingness to go to war (Kim 2020). Given that rivalries help shape national identity and create narratives of external threat, it follows that individuals in rival states may be socialized into more belligerent attitudes, leading them to express greater willingness to fight for their country. However, this has not been systematically tested. Argument In this section, I present a theoretical framework to explain how the presence of rivalry affects individual decisions to fight. I argue that individuals in rival states are more likely to be willing to fight because they are conditioned to view their rival as an adversary. Drawing from cognitive psychology and behavioral economics, I assert that an individual’s willingness to fight is contingent upon two mechanisms. First, in-group/out-group thinking socializes individuals in rival states to be more belligerent. Second, the heightened threat perceptions characteristic of rivalries affects how citizens view and respond to risks. Moreover, individuals’ responses are conditioned by contentious and situational factors, including contiguity, identity claims, national pride, and democracy. Both Social Identity Theory and Prospect Theory explain why individuals are willing to fight when their country is engaged in a rivalry, and at the same time, they illustrate why variation in rivalry lead respondents to give divergent responses to the query: Are you willing to fight for your country? First, citizens in rival states are socialized into rivalry. The presence of ongoing rivalry conditions individuals to perceive the adversary as an imminent threat (possibly an existential threat). This reinforces national identity, fosters in-group cohesion, and promotes out-group hostility. Framing foreign relations with rival states using in-group/out-group thinking, conditions citizens to accept conflict as a defining feature of their state’s external relations (Thies 2001). According to Coser (1956), conflict motivates individuals to act, strengthens in-group thinking by clearly differentiating those who are like us and those who are not, and, thus, helps individuals identify with a group. Building upon this work, Tajfel and Turner’s (1986) Social Identity Theory (SIT) asserts that in-group members perceive their group more favorably than other groups. Rivalries help to strengthen this in-group/out-group mentality among citizens, especially through the promotion of nationalism. Rivalry conditions individuals to perceive their adversary as a threat. Second, Prospect Theory explains that people feel the pain of losses more intensely than the pleasure of equivalent gains (Kahneman & Tversky 1979). As a result, they tend to be risk-averse when pursuing potential gains but risk-acceptant when facing possible losses. Rivalries are essentially zero-sum games, where perceived and real changes in the status quo can quickly escalate into conflict. One example of this behavior can be demonstrated with territorial disputes, a common issue in many rivalries. The side dispossessed of its territory seeks to reclaim its lost land while the side annexing the newly acquired territory experiences an endowment effect, assigning greater value to it. Both sides perceive the situation as either a loss or potential future loss, making them more willing to take risks (Levy 2003). This dynamic increases the likelihood of escalation, retaliation, and conflict. Rivalry is a major contributor to interstate conflict and war. Diehl and Goertz (2000: Ch. 4 2012) find that over two-thirds of militarized disputes occur in a rivalry setting and over 80% of wars arise from rivalry situations, making rivalries highly escalatory. As they are connected through space and time, rivalries are unique from other, more isolated disputes between states (Diehl & Goertz 2012). Since rivals share a history of interaction, especially military confrontations, this combined history influences foreign policy decisions and conditions both leaders and citizens to anticipate hostility. Prins (2005) shows that during interstate crises, rivals versus non-rivals adopt divergent foreign policy decision-making, with rivals being more likely to resort to military action than non-rivals. This reinforces the notion that rivalry normalizes militarized responses in the minds of both policymakers and the public. Beyond state-level dynamics, rivalries influence domestic politics by shaping national identity and reinforcing collective threat perceptions. Leaders may perpetuate rivalries for political purposes, using them to consolidate power, deflect domestic unrest, and mobilize nationalist sentiment (Levy 1989; Tir 2010). Mitchell and Prins (2004) show this is particularly true for states in a rivalry setting that are experiencing high levels of economic inflation. As Coser (1956, 104) suggests, ‘Groups may actually search for enemies with the deliberate purpose or the unwitting result of maintaining unity and internal cohesion.’ Therefore, rivalry can function as a feedback loop, and this dynamic reinforces leaders and citizens’ expectations for conflict. However, although leaders have reasons to avoid compromise in a rivalry, citizens can play an active role in sustaining rivalry dynamics as well. First, in a dynamic known as rivalry outbidding, individuals or groups within rival states may perpetuate or escalate the rivalry in pursuit of domestic or international political gains, creating a cycle of hostility and conflict that becomes difficult to de-escalate (Colaresi 2005). Second, public opinion can prolong rivalry among states (Lim & Tanaka 2022; McGinnis & Williams 2001; Thompson 2001). Citizens may push for escalation, resist changes to the rivalry status quo, and demand militarized responses to perceived slights or rebuffs (Maoz & Mor 2002). This suggests that rivalry is not only a geopolitical contest between states, but it is also a deeply engrained psychological and social phenomenon affecting citizens within those states (Thies 2001). While rivalry broadly influences individuals’ willingness to fight, the severity of the rivalry plays a crucial role in shaping this effect. As Diehl et al. (2019) note, not all rivalries are equal; they range from severe rivalries, where states perceive each other as existential threats and frequently engage in militarized disputes, to lesser rivalries, where tensions exist but are less escalatory. This distinction matters because different levels of rivalry produce different psychological and strategic responses among the public. In severe rivalries, where unresolved high-stakes disputes create persistent hostilities, individuals are more likely to be socialized into a belligerent national identity. The expectation of future conflict fosters greater acceptance of military solutions, and nationalistic narratives reinforce the adversarial nature of the rivalry. Additionally, as Levy (2003) explains, individuals in severe rivalries tend to be risk-acceptant, as they see backing down as a greater loss than engaging in conflict. Thus, I propose the following hypothesis: H 1 : Individuals living in states with an ongoing severe rivalry are more likely to be willing to fight. Conversely, individuals living in lesser rivalries are expected to be less willing to fight. Although some tensions exist, these rivalries involve fewer direct military confrontations, meaning that citizens are not constantly conditioned to see the adversary as an imminent threat. Diehl et al. (2019) highlight that lesser rivalries involve diplomatic hostility and occasional militarized disputes, but these interactions do not create the same entrenched expectations of war. Furthermore, without a perceived existential threat, citizens in lesser rivalries may favor diplomatic and economic solutions over military escalation. Public opinion in these cases tends to prioritize stability, particularly in democracies where leaders are more constrained by popular opposition to unnecessary military action (Lim & Tanaka 2022). Thus, I propose the following hypothesis: H 2 : Individuals living in states with an ongoing lesser rivalry are less likely to be willing to fight. One important aspect of rivalry is how it forms and persists over time. Rivalries develop for various reasons including territorial issues, ideology, or threat perceptions (Goertz & Diehl 1995; Thompson 2001). Of these, disagreements over territory are likely to result in long-standing rivalries since fights over territory are more difficult to resolve than other contentious issues (Dreyer 2012; Goertz & Diehl 1993; Fuhrmann & Tir 2009; Miller & Gibler 2011) as they often encompass issues related to national identity, historical grievances, and sovereignty (Hassner 2003, 2006; Vasquez 1995). This is especially true for territory that is considered sacred. Similarly, different types of nationalistic, religious, cultural, and emotive sentiment can be attached to territory, making it more difficult for parties to compromise and allowing these psychological, emotional, and normative aspects to drive and maintain territorial disputes between states (Barzilai & Peleg 1994; Forsberg 1996; Thies 2001a). Previous work (Kim 2020) has shown that the presence of territorial disputes affects individuals’ willingness to fight, especially when the disputed territory is more salient, holding symbolic or nationalist significance. Moreover, Hensel et al. (2024) confirm that states making identity claims, especially irredentist claims, are more prone to escalating conflict. As such, disputes over territory are not merely conflicts about land – they often entail identity claims in which states challenge the treatment, autonomy, or political status of ethnic or national groups abroad (Hensel et al. 2024; Hensel & McLaughlin 2017). According to SIT, territorial disputes and identity claims are both symbolic and psychological, not just political. When a challenger state claims that a target state is oppressing an ethnic or national group that shares its identity, or is restricting their freedom, or denying them access to their homeland, this assertion can reinforce group unity and strengthen national identity among the challenger state’s population, increasing their willingness to fight (Thies 2001). Moreover, challenger states are revisionist since they seek to alter the status quo. States that have revisionist goals are more likely to escalate disputes (Reiter 1999), resort to using violent force first in a MID (Caprioli and Trumbore 2005), and if they received external state support in the past, they are more likely to challenge the status quo again, leading to conflict occurrence (Karlén 2017). Wiegand (2011) provides empirical evidence that shows revisionist states initiate MIDs as costly signals of resolve, especially in territorial disputes. This suggests that individuals in the challenger state are socialized to view the target state as a threat, especially when irredentist identity claims are at stake. Prospect Theory also helps explain why citizens in challenger states would be more willing to fight. Since individuals in these states contend their identity, ethnic kin, and/or homeland are threatened, they view themselves as being in a domain of loss, making them more risk-acceptant. Given that identity claims are salient and closely intertwined with national identity, they should have a strong effect on individuals’ willingness to fight. However, the effect should be greater among challenger states since the perception of national identity under threat creates a sense of urgency and risk acceptance. Therefore, I test the following hypothesis: H 3 : Individuals living in states making identity claims against a rival are more likely to be willing to fight than individuals in states targeted by challenger making identity claims. Another factor that can affect individual willingness to fight is proximity to a rival state. We know that rivalries are more likely to develop between contiguous dyads (Colaresi, Kasler, & Thompson 2007: Ch. 6; Lemke & Reed 2001; Stinnett & Diehl 2001). Proximity leads to increased interaction, raising the likelihood of an initial conflict (Bremer 1992; Diehl 1991; Hensel 2000; Starr 1978). Once a conflict has occurred, contiguity makes it easier for states to become rivals as continued interaction allows them to clash over a variety of different issues, thus reinforcing in-group/out-group thinking. Additionally, given that contiguous states are less likely to be affected by the loss-of-strength gradient (Boulding 1962; Lemke 1995), it is easier for them to mobilize military forces and engage in conflict. For rival states, this situation can magnify threat-perceptions among citizens, making them more willing to fight. If closer proximity to a rival state increases individuals’ threat-perceptions so that citizens view themselves in a perpetual domain of loss or potential loss, then I expect them to be more risk-acceptant. Additionally, if the likelihood of having more frequent negative interactions which reinforce in-group/out-group behavior increases the closer two states are to one another, then I expect individuals from states that share a border with a rival will be more willing to fight. Therefore, I test the following hypothesis: H 4 : Individuals living in states with a contiguous rival are more likely to be willing to fight than individuals in states that have a non-contiguous rival. Rivalries are prone to be highly contentious, especially if salient issue claims are at their heart, leading rivals to regard each other as either competitors, threats, or enemies (Colaresi, Rasler, & Thompson 2007; Dreyer 2012). According to H 1 , this situation results in in-group/out-group thinking in which in-group members perceive their group more favorably than other groups (Coser 1956; Tajfel & Turner 1986), conditioning individuals to perceive their adversary as a rival. Oftentimes, the socialization of rivalry among citizens manifests itself through the promotion of nationalism. An individual’s national pride is positively correlated with willingness to fight (Torgler 2003). However, since rivalries are marked with repeated disputes and conflicts which help citizens identify as a nation while molding their perceptions of ‘the other’ as hostile, I expect national pride to play a greater role in people’s willingness to fight when their state is in an ongoing rivalry. Therefore, I test the conditional effect of national pride on willingness to fight with the following hypothesis: H 5 : The effect national pride has on individuals’ willingness to fight increases in rivalry contexts. Finally, rivalries affect regime types and their conflict behavior. Rasler and Thomspon (2005, 126) show that democracies are less conflict-prone than autocracies, but in the presence of rivalry, they display similar conflict propensities. As a matter of fact, any dyadic regime combination, whether it is democratic, autocratic, or mixed, exhibits higher dispute behavior when rivalry is present. Autocratic dyads have a 51% probability of being in a militarized dispute when rivalry is present while democratic dyads have a 38% chance. However, regardless of dyad type, the probability that democracies will be in a dispute in the presence of rivalry is less compared to non-democracies. This suggests that individuals in democracies may be socialized to rivalry (consider Americans during the Cold War); however, democratic norms and institutions are likely to dampen rivalry’s effect on individuals’ willingness to fight. Examining the factors for the Kantian peace, Russett, Oneal, and Davis (1998) reveal that while both democratic dyads and increased trade between dyads decrease the likelihood of conflict, if states in the dyad also share membership in intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), this further reduces the incidence of militarized disputes between them. When it comes to conflict, democracies are more likely to resolve international disputes through negotiation instead of military coercion (Dixon & Senese 2002) while non-democracies are more prone to use force first in a militarized dispute (Caprioli and Trumbore 2006). Furthermore, individuals living in democracies are significantly less likely to be willing to fight for their country (Inglehart et al. 2015). These findings may help explain why democratic dyads are less likely to become rivals (Conrad & Souva 2011). If rivalry can condition individuals in democracies to adopt more belligerent attitudes, but this effect is tempered by democratic norms and institutions, then the impact of rivalry on individual willingness to fight should be contingent on the intensity of the rivalry. In lesser rivalries, democratic institutions are likely to maintain their pacifying effect, reinforcing negotiation and conflict aversion. However, in severe rivalries, the repeated exposure to conflict, heightened threat perceptions, and nationalistic mobilization can override these pacifying influences, leading democratic citizens to perceive the adversary as an existential threat. Under these conditions, individuals in democracies may exhibit a greater willingness to fight, particularly as rivalry fosters public demand for militarized responses and a sense of national urgency in the face of a perceived, enduring adversary. Hence, I test the following: H 6 : In the presence of lesser rivalry, the pacifying effect democracy has on individual willingness to fight will remain while severe rivalry will reverse this effect. Data and Method Using data from the WVS, ICOW, and COW Direct Contiguity datasets, I tested the above-mentioned hypotheses concerning the effect rivalry has on individual willingness to fight for country. Available data for the variable of interest and all demographic predictors comes from the second to seventh waves of the WVS, covering the years 1989-2019. The sample includes 256,792 individual respondents from 89 countries. A list of each country along with the total number of respondents from each country as well as the percentage of the total number of respondents is provided in the Appendix. Dependent variable: Willingness to fight Willingness to fight is captured as a dummy variable. Respondents are asked the following prompt: ‘Of course, we all hope that there will not be another war, but if it were to come to that, would you be willing to fight for your country?’ Respondents answering ‘yes’ were coded 1, and those who responded ‘no’ received a 0. Participants who either said ‘I do not know’ or did not answer the question were dropped from the dataset. Figure 1 displays the distribution of responses to this question, revealing significant variation across countries. The percentage of affirmative responses ranges from 16% in Haiti to 98% in Qatar. Independent variables There are six main independent variables: severe rivalry , lesser rivalry , identity claim , challenger , target , and contiguous rival . Each is treated as a dummy variable. To measure rivalry, I utilize Diehl, Goertz, & Gallegos (2021) Peace Data dataset since it is considered a more refined measure compared to Klein, Goertz, & Diehl’s (2006, 2008) and Thompson’s (2001) rivalry operationalizations. Moreover, this dataset has been updated through 2020, allowing me to include the fifth, sixth, and seventh waves of the WVS, and thus expands upon Kim’s (2020) earlier work. The variable severe rivalry includes only those states engaged in severe rivalries, excluding lesser rivalries. Conversely, the variable lesser rivalry captures only states involved in lesser rivalries, excluding severe ones. To account for identity claims between states, I use the ICOW dataset (Frederick et al. 2017). If a state has an identity claim with a rival – whether as the challenger or the target – the variable identity claim is coded as 1. Next, the variable challenger is coded as 1 for states that act exclusively as challengers in a rivalry, whether severe or lesser. The same logic applies to the variable target , which is coded as 1 for states that are only considered targets in such rivalries. Finally, to measure whether a rivalry involves contiguous states, I use the COW Direct Contiguity dataset (Stinnett et al. 2002). A state is classified as a contiguous rival (coded as 1) only if it shares a direct land border with a rival. Control variables As with previous studies (Anderson et al. 2020; Kim 2020), I include several control variables for both the individual and country levels. All individual-level controls were collected from the WVS dataset. I have included three dummy variables: one for male respondents, another for college education, and another which captures marital status. The variable, married , also includes respondents who are living together as married. The model also includes a scaled variable for respondents’ level of religiosity (based on Welzel’s overall religious values), a ten-category variable for self-reported income, and a variable for age squared. Country-level controls include the natural log of GDP per capita, which comes from the Maddison Project Database (Bolt & van Zanden 2020), and a categorical variable for regime type . I use the Polity2 scores index to create the categorical variable for democracy (Marshall & Gurr 2020). Based on their polity index score, states are coded 1 for autocracy, 2 for anocracy, and 3 for democracy. Both variables are measured using the year prior to the given survey response. Previous studies (Anderson et al. 2020; Kim 2020) have incorporated fixed effects to control for time-invariant country-level factors and time trends across WVS waves. However, the use of fixed effects in rivalry analyses presents challenges as rivalries (or the absence thereof) tend to persist over time and are often highly correlated with dyad fixed effects. This issue has been debated in international conflict research (see, e.g., Oneal & Russett 2001), where fixed effects may absorb much of the variation of interest, making it difficult to isolate the effects of rivalry. Despite these concerns, I include two fixed-effects variables to account for key structural factors while acknowledging their limitations. First, certain countries – specifically Nordic nations and those defeated in World War II – have been shown to exhibit significantly lower willingness to fight (Inglehart et al. 2015). To capture this, I include outlier , a country-specific fixed effect coded as 1 for these countries. Second, since willingness to fight has generally declined over time (Inglehart et al. 2015), I include wave , a categorical fixed effect that accounts for trends across the six WVS waves. Tables A.1 and A.2 in the Appendix include these fixed effects and present the results for my hypotheses. (Results do not differ from my main findings.) The Model All hypotheses are tested using the following logit regression model to assess the effect state rivalry has on the probability that respondents will answer ‘yes’ to the WVS question regarding willingness to fight for their country. logit( P ( y ijt = 1)) = β 0 + β 1 X jt + β 2 Z ijt + ϵ ijt P ( y ijt = 1) denotes the probability that the binary outcome for the dependent variable y , willingness to fight, is equal to 1, or ‘yes’, for individual i in country j during year t . X jt represents the country-level predictors. These include the natural log of GDP per capita and a control for regime type, a categorical variable derived from states’ Polity2 scores. Both are lagged for one year, at time t . Z ijt represents the individual-level control variables including gender, marital status, and college education. The main independent variables, severe rivalry ijt and lesser rivalry ijt , are dummy variables. I expect the coefficients for severe rivalry to be positive and those for lesser rivalry to be negative. To test my hypotheses with the inclusion of fixed effects, I use the following logit regression model. logit( P ( y ijt = 1)) = β 0 + β 1 X jt + β 2 Z ijt + λ j + γ t + ϵ ijt λ j denotes a country-specific fixed effect that controls for unchanging factors at the country level, helping to reduce potential omitted variable bias. γ t refers to a survey-wave fixed effect that accounts for time-related patterns in responses to the question about willingness to fight. Results The results of the logit models for my first and second hypotheses are displayed in Table 1. Models 2 and 3 introduce the country-level variables, severe rivalry and lesser rivalry while Model 4 allows for comparison. The statistically significant positive coefficient for severe rivalry confirms H 1 – when states are in an ongoing severe rivalry, citizens living in those states are more willing to fight for their country. Conversely, the significant negative coefficient for lesser rivalry confirms H 2 , suggesting that individuals in states with only lesser rivalries are not as prone to want to fight on their country’s behalf. Calculating the contrast of predictive margins reveals that compared to citizens in states not experiencing severe rivalry, those that are, are 11% more likely to choose to fight for their country. As for those from states only involved in lesser rivalries, they are 11.5% less likely to be willing to fight. Finally, Model 1 contains both individual-level and country-level controls. As reflected in previous studies (Anderson et al. 2020; Inglehart et al. 2015; Kim 2020), respondents who are male, married, secular, and/or lacking a college education are more willing to fight for their country, and the results are statistically significant. Additionally, economic development and democracy are negatively correlated with willingness to fight, confirming earlier findings. Results for my third and fourth hypotheses are presented in Table 2. Models 1 and 2 show the effects of identity claim compared to contiguous rival on individual willingness to fight. As we can see, the coefficients are positive and statistically significant, which offer support for H 3 and confirm H 4 . As Starr (1978) explains, contiguous states have more opportunity and willingness to interact with each other. However, the influence identity claims have on willingness to fight is greater. The contrast in predictive margins for identity claim indicates that individuals in countries with identity claims are 7% more likely to choose to fight whereas citizens are just 2% more likely to go to war for their country if they share a border with a rival, emphasizing the importance of salient issues in rivalry contexts among citizens. This finding suggests that individuals in contiguous states which have become rivals may harbor animosity or may be conditioned to rivalry and, therefore, be more willing to fight. However, its effect is negligible compared to that of identity claim issues, which supports others’ findings that show salient issues, like territory disputes, and not contiguity are better determinants for conflict (Senese 2005; Vasquez 2001). As Model 1 indicates, the presence of identity claims increases individuals’ willingness to fight. However, this variable does not differentiate if the state is a challenger, a target, or both. To test these effects, I include the variables target and challenger in Models 3 and 4 on Table 2. Both are statistically significant, and their respective negative and positive coefficients confirm H 3 . Based on the predictive margins, individuals in states that are solely the targets of identity claims are 6.5% less likely to express willingness to fight for their country. In contrast, citizens in states that act only as challengers in identity claims are 7% more likely to be willing to fight – a difference of 13.5 percentage points. Finally, Model 5 incorporates all predictors for comparison. From here, I test H 5 . Across all models presented in Table 3, individuals with high national pride are significantly more likely to support fighting for their country, confirming Torgler (2003). This also supports SIT, which suggests that strong in-group identification (national pride) fosters out-group differentiation and, in conflictual contexts, increases willingness to defend the nation. Interacting national pride and severe rivalry reveals that in states engaged in only severe rivalries, individuals with high national pride are even more likely to support fighting. This aligns with Prospect Theory, which suggests that individuals become risk-acceptant when they perceive their state as facing existential threats. Figure 2 shows that the average marginal effect (AME) of national pride on individual willingness to fight increases by 5% in the presence of severe rivalry. Conversely, lesser rivalries are negatively correlated with willingness to fight. Even among individuals with high national pride, the presence of a lesser rivalry reduces their support for fighting, which implies individuals experiencing only lesser rivalries are less conditioned to perceive their adversary as an existential threat and may consider diplomacy as a viable option to military conflict. Figure 3 reveals that national pride’s AME on individual willingness decreases by 5% in lesser rivalry contexts. Next, Model 3 takes into consideration that states may be involved in both severe and lesser rivalries, which is captured by the variable all rivalry . In these cases, rivalry, in general, appears to be negatively associated with willingness to fight but interacting all rivalry with national pride indicates that national pride counters this effect. While some individuals in states experiencing rivalry become more pacifistic, those with high national pride become more belligerent. Figure 4 indicates that the AME national pride has on individuals’ willingness to fight increases by 7%, confirming H 5 . Finally, Table 4 reports the results for H 6 . While democracies are significantly less prone to being willing to fight compared to non-democracies, interacting democracy with severe rivalry in Model 1 reveals that this pacifistic effect flips in the presence of severe rivalries (see Figure 5). This result substantiates Rasler and Thompson’s (2005) findings that rivalry trumps regime. However, the results in Model 2 indicate that when democracy is interacted with lesser rivalry , democracy further reinforces the pacifying effect of lesser rivalries (see Figure 6). This suggests that lesser rivalries do not generate a strong enough threat perception to override democratic norms that discourage military actions and are more likely to utilize diplomatic mechanisms to resolve conflict, reducing public willingness to fight. Finally, Model 3 reveals that among all rivalries, democracy still maintains its pacifying effect, but it is not as strong as in states experiencing only lesser rivalries (see Figures 6 & 7). These findings confirm H 6 – democracies engaged in severe rivalries experience a surge in belligerent public attitudes suggesting citizens may view themselves in a domain of loss whereas in lesser rivalries, democracy reinforces pacifistic attitudes, suggesting that lesser rivalries allow for greater diplomatic engagement. [Figure 5 / Figure 6 / Figure 7] Robustness Checks Next, to determine if my findings are robust, I perform several additional analyses. First, to ensure that my results are not being driven solely by the Peace Data (Diehl et al. 2021) dataset, I test my models using both Thompson’s (2001) strategic rivalry dataset and Klein et al.’s (2006) rivalry dataset. Due to available data from both rivalry datasets and the WVS, I can only examine 65,209 individual respondents from 47 countries between 1990 to 2000. Although this sample size is far smaller, my focus is to test if my models are robust using different operationalizations of rivalry. Compared to Klein et al.’s operationalization of rivalry which utilizes a dispute density approach, Thompson adopts a historical narrative method which focuses on leaders’ perspectives to measure rivalry. Both methods differ from Diehl et al.’s (2021) approach which measures peace along a continuum, from severe rivalry to security community. Table A.3 presents the results which are consistent with my original findings. Willingness to fight increases in the presence of both rivalry and strategic rivalry, and the coefficients are statistically significant. Therefore, the findings hold regardless of how rivalry is operationalized, and the results are robust. From here, I include two attitudinal variables from the WVS—national pride and confidence in the armed services. Respondents are asked how proud they are to be a national of their country and how much confidence they have in the armed forces. The responses are coded on a four-point scale: (1) ‘very proud’ or ‘a great deal of confidence,’ (2) ‘quite proud’ or ‘a lot of confidence,’ (3) ‘not very proud’ or ‘not very much confidence,’ and (4) ‘not at all’ or ‘none at all.’ Since these variables are ordinal, but their original coding runs counter to intuitive expectations, I have inverted the response order to improve readability when interpreting coefficients in the results tables. To further simplify the analysis, I recode these ordinal variables into dummy variables. Here, responses coded as 3 or 4 indicate strong national pride or high confidence in the armed forces while responses coded as 1 or 2 reflect low or no national pride and limited to no confidence in the military. Both attitudinal variables have been found to correlate positively with willingness to fight (Torgler 2003). Including them in my model helps mitigate potential omitted variable bias. However, while they serve as useful controls, they could also be considered dependent variables since the independent variables – severe rivalry and lesser rivalry – might influence national pride and confidence in the military (Angrist & Pischke 2008). Additionally, given their strong correlation with the dependent variable, these attitudinal variables could introduce multicollinearity into the model. Nonetheless, as shown in Table A.4 in the Appendix, incorporating these variables does not alter my original findings. Next, I examine if my results remain robust in the presence of an additional extraneous variable. Using military recruitment data from Toronto (2014), I add the variable mandatory military service to the model. Results reported in Table A.5 in the Appendix reveal that not only is mandatory military service statistically significant and positively correlated with individual willingness to fight, but my main findings remain unchanged. This test suggests my results are not contingent upon a particular estimator. Finally, to determine if responses among males and females differ, I divide the sample according to gender. Results presented in Tables A.6 and A.7 in the Appendix indicate that there is no significant difference between the two groups. Again, results are robust – individual will to fight is positively correlated to severe rivalry and negatively linked to lesser rivalry . Conclusion This study advances research on both interstate rivalry and individual willingness to fight by examining how rivalry shapes public attitudes toward conflict. While prior scholarship has extensively explored the impact of rivalry on state behavior, this study shifts the focus to the individual level, demonstrating that rivalries not only structure international interactions but also influence how citizens perceive war and national defense. Using a broad dataset encompassing six waves of the WVS from 1990 to 2019, I analyze responses from 256,792 individuals across 89 countries, offering a comprehensive examination of how rivalry conditions individuals’ willingness to fight. The findings reveal that individuals in states engaged in ongoing rivalries are more likely to express willingness to fight compared to those in states without rivalries. However, this effect is conditional on the severity of the rivalry. In severe rivalries, where hostilities are persistent and deeply entrenched, individuals are significantly more belligerent, reinforcing the notion that rivalry socializes the public into conflict-oriented thinking. In contrast, lesser rivalries do not elicit the same degree of public support for war, suggesting that lower-intensity rivalries allow space for diplomatic resolution rather than military escalation. Additionally, I find that the presence of identity claims further amplifies individuals’ willingness to fight, particularly among citizens in challenger states. This suggests that national identity and perceived threats to territorial or ethnic sovereignty play a crucial role in shaping public attitudes toward war. Similarly, national pride interacts with rivalry, strengthening support for military engagement in severe rivalry contexts while exerting a weaker effect in lesser rivalries. One of the most significant findings concerns the role of democracy. While democratic institutions generally foster pacifism, this effect is reversed in severe rivalries. In such cases, democratic citizens exhibit greater willingness to fight, challenging conventional wisdom that democracies are inherently less belligerent. Instead, the repeated exposure to rivalry and the mobilization of nationalist sentiment can override democratic norms that typically discourage military action. This finding supports prior work suggesting that rivalry trumps regime type in shaping conflict behavior. By bridging the gap between international conflict studies and political psychology, this study makes three key contributions. First, it expands rivalry research beyond state-level interactions by demonstrating that rivalries influence individual-level attitudes toward war. Second, it contributes to the willingness-to-fight literature by identifying rivalry as a critical contextual factor shaping public opinion on military engagement. Finally, by utilizing a significantly larger dataset than previous studies, this research offers a more generalizable and empirically robust analysis of how rivalry conditions individuals’ willingness to fight. These findings open several avenues for future research. First, further investigation is needed to explore the psychological mechanisms underlying the socialization of rivalry. While this study highlights the role of in-group/out-group dynamics and threat perceptions, future work could examine how media narratives, historical education, and political rhetoric reinforce rivalry-based attitudes over time. Experimental approaches, such as framing-effect studies, could provide deeper insights into how individuals perceive threats in rivalry contexts. Second, more research is required to disentangle the effects of specific rivalry attributes, such as dispute severity, duration, and issue salience. While territorial disputes and identity claims appear to be strong drivers of willingness to fight, the extent to which other factors – such as economic competition or ideological divisions – shape public attitudes remains underexplored. Third, the interaction between democracy and rivalry warrants further examination. Although this study finds that severe rivalry increases willingness to fight among democratic citizens, future research should investigate the conditions under which democratic institutions constrain or amplify belligerent attitudes. Cross-national comparisons of media environments, elite rhetoric, and public discourse in democracies engaged in rivalries could provide valuable insights. Rivalry is more than a structural feature of international relations – it is a construct deeply embedded in the attitudes and perceptions of individuals within rival states. 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Transition to Global Rivalry: Alliance Diplomacy and the Quadruple Entente, 1895-1907 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Appendix Information & Authors Information Version history V1 Version 1 21 May 2025 Copyright This work is licensed under a Non Exclusive No Reuse License. Keyword willingness to fight, rivalry, contiguity, war, democracy, national pride Authors Affiliations Ray Hartman 0000-0002-0517-4339 [email protected] View all articles by this author Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 320 views 142 downloads .FvxKWukQNSOunydq8rnd { width: 100px; } Citations Download citation Ray Hartman. State Rivalry and Individual Willingness to Fight: How Do Hostile State Relations Condition Individual Sentiment?. Authorea . 21 May 2025. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.174785216.63409969/v1 If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. 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