Strongmen cry too: The effect of aerial bombing on voting for the incumbent in competitive autocracies
| Author | Milos Popovic |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00223433211056517 |
| Published date | 01 November 2022 |
| Date | 01 November 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Regular Articles |
Strongmen cry too: The effect of aerial
bombing on voting for the incumbent
in competitive autocracies
Milos Popovic
Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University
Abstract
How does exposure to aerial bombing influence voting for the target country’s leadership? Do voters tend to punish
incumbents for policy failure? These questions are relevant for understanding the target country’s postwar politics
because aerial bombing remains one of the deadliest and most widely used military options for coercive bargaining.
Despite the historical and contemporary relevance of these questions, there are only a few studies in the air-power
literature arguing that strategic bombing produces a temporary rally effect but no subsequent political consequences
other than political apathy. Most studies ignore important variation within states even though leadership respon-
sibility can vary tremendously on the substate level. This article analyzes the effect of the 1999 NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia on Serbian local elections using the difference-in-differences identification strategy and identifies the
effect of airstrikes on the vote-share of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime. The results show that the regime’s vote-share is
2.6% lower in municipalities exposed to the bombing. Challenging prior studies, this finding demonstrates that
retrospective voting applies to aerial bombing even in competitive authoritarian regimes.
Keywords
bombing, competitive authoritarianism, difference-in-differences, elections, Serbia
Introduction
How does exposure to aerial bombing influence voting
patterns? Do voters tend to punish incumbents for policy
failure? These questions are relevant for understanding
the target country’s postwar politics because aerial bomb-
ing remains one of the deadliest and most widely used
military options for coercive bargaining (Pape, 1996;
Horowitz & Reiter, 2001; Allen & Vincent, 2011).
Existing knowledge provides few explicit predictions
about the effect of aerial bombing on the incumbent’s
approval in the aftermath of airstrikes, and much less
about whether airstrikes shape voting patterns absent free
and fair elections, as happens in electoral democracies.
Most studies ignore important variation within states
even though leadership responsibility can vary tremen-
dously on the substate level (Croco & Weeks, 2016).
Those studies that examine the use of aerial bombing
for coercive bargaining argue that punishment strategies
produce a rally effect during the operation but no
tangible postwar political consequences other than polit-
ical apathy (Pape, 1996; Horowitz & Reiter, 2001;
Slantchev, 2003). Other studies analyze how exposure
to terrorist bombings influences voting for incumbents
in democracies: some argue that such bombings shore up
right-wing incumbents (Kibris, 2011; Getmansky &
Zeitzoff, 2014), while others provide evidence to the
contrary (Montalvo, 2011).
This study improves on the existing work in several
ways. It examines the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia,
which lasted for 78 days, claimed 755 lives (Humanitar-
ian Law Center, 2014), and damaged or destroyed over
1,000 objects (Smiljanic
´, 2009: 72–73). The magnitude
of this event exceeds average terrorist bombings, offering
a unique opportunity to analyze the effect of a prolonged
exposure to violence on voting. This is the case of
Corresponding author:
milos.agathon@gmail.com
Journal of Peace Research
2022, Vol. 59(6) 844–859
ªThe Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/00223433211056517
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competitive autocracy that deters domestic upheaval in
the aftermath of defeat only to lose in the elections.
Competitive autocracy is a non-democratic form of gov-
ernment in which multiparty elections are subject to
frequent government manipulation through media cen-
sorship, voter intimidation, and fraud (Schedler, 2015:
1). While these regimes are non-democratic, they are also
different from full-blown authoritarianism in that com-
petitive authoritarians are unable to eliminate elections
or reduce them to a formality and prefer institutional
harassment to physical elimination of political oppo-
nents (Levitsky & Way, 2002). The literature finds that
Milosevic’s government resembles competitive authori-
tarian regimes (Levitsky & Way, 2002; Schedler, 2015;
Vladisavljevic
´, 2016). Such cases as postwar Serbia are
rare among non-democratic governments because mili-
tary defeat usually unseats authoritarian leaders (Bueno
de Mesquita & Siverson, 1995; Goemans, 2000).
Following retrospective voting theory (Achen & Bar-
tels, 2008; Kayser & Peress, 2012),
1
this article argues
that the electorate attributed the responsibility for the
failure to remedy the negative economic consequences of
the bombing to Slobodan Milosevic’s regime. Analyzing
the results of the local elections in 1992 and 1996 versus
2000 using the difference-in-differences (DID) identifi-
cation strategy, this article shows that the incumbent’s
vote-share dropped in municipalities exposed to the
bombing. The estimated effect of being bomb ed is a
decrease of 2.6% in Milosevic’s vote-share; in compari-
son, Milosevic lost the 2000 election by a 4% margin.
Furthermore, the article finds that the bombing also led
to a 3.8% decline of Milosevic’s junior coalition partner,
the right-wing Serbian Radical Party (SRS), showing that
the incumbent suffers as a result of policy failure irre-
spective of its ideology. The results also show that the
bombing had no effect on voter turnout, ruling out a
possibility that Milosevic’s electoral decline was driven
by the abstention of his voting base. Finally, this article
demonstrates that the incumbent’s vote-share was not
driven by either population change or immigration.
These findings contribute to the theory of retrospec-
tive voting, suggesting that accountability mechanisms
might apply even in non-democratic regimes. This study
also contributes to the air-power literature: while punish-
ment strategies may not be the most effective tool of
coercion (Pape, 1996; Horowitz & Reiter, 2001;
Slantchev, 2003), this article shows that aerial bombings
could damage the regime politically after the war.
Regarding the literature on the Kosovo war, this study
corroborates anecdotal evidence by Byman & Waxman
(2000) that NATO’s selection of targets, aimed to
undermine public support for the regime, ultimately
harmed Milosevic’s electoral performance. But, contrary
to Allen & Vincent (2011), who suggest that NATO’s
degradation of Milosevic’s political structures weakened
the regime’s ability to perpetuate electoral fraud in the
affected localities, this article finds that voters punished
the regime for suffering the fall-out from the bombing.
Finally, this article contributes to an emerging literature
on audience costs in the postwar environment (Croco,
2011, 2015; Croco & Weeks, 2016). The local effects of
the bombing are under-explored in this body of work,
even though they occupy a prominent place in the lit-
erature’s theories. Using a within-country research
design, this article sheds more light on the mechanisms
under which competitive authoritarians face punishment
in the aftermath of war.
Voting in the aftermath of bombings
How does exposure to bombings affect voting for the
incumbent? There are two strands of the literature that
address this question: (1) general studies on the effect of
war devastation on postwar public support for war-time
leaders; and (2) specific studies on how terrorist bomb-
ings influence the government’s vote-share.
More general studies on war devastation and postwar
public support for the incumbent arrive at inconclusive
findings. While Douhet (2019: 53–54) posits that stra-
tegic bombing may ruin the morale of target population
and brew into a domestic uprising against the defending
government, the air-power literature counter-argues that
such punishment strategies are bound to fail as affected
leaders can resist the domestic political consequences of
bombing (Pape, 1996; Horowitz & Reiter, 2001; Allen,
2007; Allen & Martinez Machain, 2019). The latter
holds that a more intense bombing campaign boosts
domestic support for the incumbent irrespective of the
nation’s political system (Pape, 1996; Horowitz &
Reiter, 2001: 25). For instance, the British public rallied
around Churchill during the 1940 Battle of Britain while
German workers continued to work in factories under
heavy Allied bombing even after their disillusionment in
government propaganda (United States Strategic Bomb-
ing Survey, 1947).
However, the air-power literature concurs that rallies
are short-lived. For instance, President George H. W.
Bush enjoyed public approval during and shortly after
the 1991 Gulf War, but 18 months later he was voted
1
See Healy & Malhotra (2013) for a thorough literature review.
Popovic 845
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