In Thanks for Your Service, Peter D. Feaver shows that the public's high confidence in the military is based partly on deservedness and partly based on an underlying partisan gap and social desirability bias: extremely high confidence levels among self-identified Republican respondents but much less among Democrats and still weaker confidence among Independents. Not only does Feaver helps us understand how and why the public has confidence in the military, but he also exposes problems that policymakers need to be aware of. Specifically, he elucidates how confidence or over-confidence in the institution shapes public attitudes on the use of force and may not support the best practices in democratic civil-military relations.
